Fort Portal, and an incident

Last weekend, the other interns and I went to a town a few hours away from kampala called Fort Portal, where the Rwenzori Mountain chain begins! It was definitely an adventure, and I feel like I became more in tune with nature haha. The first night we arrived, we went to watch the US vs. Slovenia game in an Italian Pizzeria. There were mostly white people there, but it was still fun, especially when the Ugandan bar tender taped up an American flag next to the TV!! Too bad we didn’t win, eeek!

The next day, we rented seven bikes (which were probably from like 1960) and we biked for a RIDICULOUSLY long journey through the mountains. The roads were dirt and they had a gazillion potholes in them (like pretty much everywhere in Uganda, haha). I pretty much almost got run over quite a few times, especially one time when a huge truck with a motorcycle next to it were zooming towards me and honking (“which means get the heck out of the road, because I am not stopping”). So I swerved onto the side of the road and crashed into a hill, but it’s all good because I am still alive! Haha

The mountains were beautiful. We left our bikes and took a hike through the jungle to a waterfall. It literally looked like the amazon rainforest or something, there were so many trees and we were dodging so many vines that we basically had to bend over the whole time. We also went to some caves, which happen to be the home of some African killer bees. Lovely! Then we left the jungle and hiked to a crater lake that was in between the mountains. We climbed to the top of the hill that was next to the crater lake…I felt like I was climbing mount everest. But then we just got to sit on the top and enjoy the AWESOME view. I definitely felt more like a hippie afterward!

That is mostly all we did in Fort Portal (besides when I bought an awesome Ugandan hiphop CD), and we were sitting at the bus stop about to head home when something crazy happened. All of the sudden, when we were just sitting there, we heard like 3 or 4 loud pops that kind of sounded like a tire had blown out. I didn’t really think anything of it…until then there were at least 4 or 5 more pops and a lot of the Ugandans started to look scared. We peered down the street, and I could see a man frantically running around a white SUV and opening all of the doors. Then we realized the loud noises had been gunshots!! So we ran to hide in the bus station, and the women was about to close the doors and lock us in so that no one could come get us, but then things started to calm down a little. A huge crowd started to form where the gunshots came from, and eventually we got to ask people what happened. It turns out that the people in the SUV were smugglers from the DRC (which is like 40 miles from Fort Portal). They had apparently hired a Ugandan driver to take them across the border into Uganda, and they refused to stop for the police because they didn’t want to pay taxes on what they were smuggling (which apparently were African purses, but I really think the purses must have been lined with cocaine or something…because why would they risk getting shot over some bags??). Anyway, so the police had ended up shooting the driver in the legs 8 times to get the car to stop ( I am guessing the smugglers were threatening the driver and telling him NOT to stop…I do not know what I would have done in that situation eek). Then they dragged the smugglers to jail and sent the driver to the hospital.

It was quite interesting being so close to an even like that and it was sort of a “cool” experience, although I hate that I actually thought that since people obviously got hurt. I did definitely feel strange when the police, who I assume had done the shooting, were walking non-chalantly away from the scene. And even though I don’t agree with shooting people, I don’t know enough about what goes on here to criticize what the police do. Uganda has been amazingly safe for me so far, so the police and Ugandan citizens are obviously doing something right. But it still reminded me that nowhere is completely safe, no matter how comfortable or at home I feel. Dang!

So that was Fort Portal! It was definitely really cool, and I rediscovered my desire to go to Congo (where the smugglers were from). But I suppose that can wait for awhile, hopefully it will become a safer country for everyone. There was another really sad part of my journey back from Fort Portal, besides the shooting. We were driving back through Kampala, in an area where there are a lot of street children. One little kid, maybe about seven, came up to our window and just stared inside at us. I have never seen such utter sadness in someone’s eyes in my life. Ever. I sort of wanted to cry. I could tell he was supposed to be begging for money on the street, and probably would have to give whatever money he made either to his family or to someone who exploits him. My heart hurt, so much, so I looked in my purse and looked for something I thought HE could use for himself. I ended up just giving him a half-full water bottle, which I know isn’t much. But I did see, just for a moment, a little bit of that sadness disappear from his face, right before he chugged he water in about 2 seconds and afterward held onto the bottle like he would die if something happened to it. I hope it made his day just a little bit better.