Bukoba Steve's Uganda birding blog: Mostly birds ...

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.