Bukoba Steve's Uganda birding blog: August 2017

I'm writing this at home in Hamilton, sw Victoria after a busy week packing up the house in Buloba, finishing off some work duties by Jenny and a couple of farewells with our School For Life colleagues.

Packing up was fairly painless and quite fun as most of our stuff was snapped up by SFL teachers at knockdown prices. Odds and ends were distributed with a draw names from a hat and make a choice system. Ever reliable Bosco arrived at the house and fitted a typically Ugandan amount of furniture on the back of SFL's small truck. We made a couple of trips to school with smaller items in our RAV.

Teachers Shamim, Janepher and Christine-Alice

Teacher Emma, Katuuso Facilities Manager Eddie, Teachers Dennis and Geofrey

The Saturday before we left we threw an afternoon party for all teachers at Danma Gardens - our local dining out place in Buloba. It was a fun party with everyone enjoying the food and sodas and the nice surroundings. Away from the school environment it was more obvious how young many of the teachers are and they were very busy posing for selfies with each other. We were particularly pleased with the nearly 100% turnout as some had to come from Kampala and distant villages.

Teacher Rita choosing carefully

Katuuso Facilities Manager Eddie and Head of Tailoring Winnie

We finished emptying and cleaning out the house on Monday and said a sad goodbye to our ever-reliable askari Richard. We were his first tenants and we had him to ourselves in our compound for about 4 months before others moved in. We had just found out his wife Olivia was expecting their second child soon. It is all too common in Uganda that couples live far apart for economic reasons and we hope our parting gift to Richard will help him see Olivia, Brilliant and new baby more often.

On Tuesday we drove into town. I was both dreading and looking forward to this. Dreading it because it was one last chance for a crash and looking forward to it because I wouldn't have to drive in Uganda again (at least until we come back for a visit in a couple of years' time). As it happened it was a typical drive in with crazy roundabout jams, weird driving behaviour and some swearing on my part.

We had sold the car for a fair price to Roadtrip Uganda. Regular readers of this blog might recognise that name as the company we used for our Land Cruiser hire for safaris when we had visitors. Our RAV will be well looked after by their mechanics (they have heaps of RAVs) and will have a hopefully long life as a safari vehicle visiting Uganda's lovely parks. Roadtrip give their cars names and Jenny suggested they call ours "Sweary Steve". There was a slight hitch over US dollars v Ugandan shillings but we sorted that out and the car was safely handed over.

We had a final dinner with the Kampala SFL office staff and friends on Wednesday night. CEO Annabelle was over from Sydney for a week or two so all the gang were there. The venue was Que Pasa - a Mexican-themed bar/restaurant run by an expat Aussie. Where else would you have your final meal in Uganda?

These Hornbills watched over us while we packed our suitcases in our Kampala hotel room.

Our reliable taxi driver Charles was ready for us on Thursday morning for the run to Entebbe airport. "How long does it take to get to the airport from Kampala?" is a common question. The inevitable answer is "It depends". It's 40 km and can take an hour (at say 3am) or over 3 hours. We allowed plenty of time and it took 2 hours. It would have been longer but at one point we were waved onto the not-yet-open expressway. Money changed hands, bollards were moved aside and we slipped through onto the near empty new road - mostly on the wrong side of the road. 20 mins later, and three or four more payments for bollard removal, we were back on the original road, well ahead of the jam and with a clear run to the airport.

Two uneventful flights with a night in Doha (40ºC) in between and we were back at my Dad's in Melbourne. Sunday we collected our car, didn't have lunch with son David (we did try!) and Monday we drove home via lunch with my sister Reagan at her new home in Buninyong.

So our 11 months in Uganda have ended and we are home with mixed feelings. It is so nice to be back in our house with our great internet, ugg boots, reliable power, tap water you can drink, neat and tidy streets, shops we understand. We will miss our two schools and will miss seeing their rapid development over the next few years. We will miss the teachers, the kids and support staff. We will miss our good friends in the Kampala office. We will miss the unexpectedly foggy mornings, the sunny, warm afternoons, the torrential rain every few days, the lush green of the farmland and remnant forests, the papyrus swamps, the birds, butterflies, mammals and landscapes of the varied national parks and the lovely safari lodges. We won't miss the driving!

Where to next?

As the days whiz by and our departure date comes ever closer we are still spending most days at either or both of the schools and I manage a bird walk most mornings. Jenny had organised a meeting in the city of Masaka about two hours west for Monday 7th so we found we could spend Saturday and Sunday night at Rwakobo Rock Lodge, Lake Mburo NP for our 7th visit to our favorite Uganda park.

The drive down on Saturday morning was 4 hours of the craziest behavior from fellow motorists we have experienced here. I can't recall any close calls (unusually) but we saw many examples of appallingly bad driving. We counted 12 police checkpoints on the 200km of the highway and were stopped for paperwork scrutiny twice. That's one every 16 km or so. The checkpoints are mostly regular and their location would be well known by most drivers along the highway. The behavior of drivers (either dangerous or just baffling) in-between is in no way affected by the high number of checkpoints.

The checkpoints can be quite hazardous themselves. A typical design is depicted below. Note how both directions of traffic are funneled into a single line. It becomes a game of chicken as no-one wants to give way to oncoming vehicles. I'm sure the police manning each checkpoint have tow-trucks on speed dial.