UGANDA – Rigatoni on the Southern Road

I’ve never eaten macaroni and cheese at an American style diner in Uganda before. Especially not one situated in the corner of a busy parkade. But then, it’s not exactly macaroni and cheese anyway; rather it’s rigatoni covered in cheese sauce. Is this the strangest cultural experience so far in East Africa?..


Flying out over Lake Victoria.

Despite the various hassles of Nairobi, it’s a little sad to be leaving Jomo Kenyatta Airport for the last time. How I will miss its identical corridors of identical stores selling identical, overpriced merchandise. Excitement builds, though, as my flight takes me north west and over Lake Victoria. The dry Kenyan countryside is left behind for lush green grasslands and jungle. It looks like that this area of Uganda isn’t suffering the same drought as Kenya. The area in question is Entebbe, a satellite town to the capital, Kampala. As my friend Rachel Leng tells me after she meets me at the airport, Uganda’s straddling of the equator means it’s prone to all sorts of diverse climate patterns. What’s true in Kampala isn’t the same a few hours to the south west close to Masaka, where she and other Canadians work at the Kibaale Community Centre.


Flying into the lush greenery of Entebbe.

Our first stop is to head into Kampala and to pick up some paint for the centre. Then, on to the local mall where we meet up with Shannon, another of the Canadians working in Kibaale. Apparently mall visiting is a high point for Canadian missionaries; for Shannon it’s a chance to buy more books for her fast reading children (after being surrounded by Swahili for two weeks; it’s strange to suddenly enter an East African country where English is the primary spoken and written language) and for Rachel, a chance to get the Community Centre’s new truck cleaned.

I, meanwhile, need to obtain some Ugandan shillings to pay for an excursion we’re planning which, first, means a trip to every bank in a mile’s radius looking for one which takes Canadian cards, and then means withdrawing a pile of notes so large I don’t need to worry about being robbed as I could easily beat someone to death with them. (A thousand dollars equates to almost two million shillings, and for some reason the cash machine won’t dispense a note with a greater value than twenty thousand) Following lunch at the aforementioned New York themed café, we head out in the sparkly truck for a drive through Kampala’s wondrously random traffic patterns and out into the countryside. The experience is probably more terrifying than Kenya since, rather than having large minibuses to dodge, on the mean streets of Kampala the cheap taxi driving is done via motorbikes; which seem to get everywhere at a moment’s notice. Traffic lights are untrustworthy devices and it seems lone traffic police at major junctions are all than stands between Kampala’s drivers and certain disaster. There’s one frightening moment where we and three other directions of traffic are all hurtling straight towards each other and it looks like nobody is going to stop until a few waves from the local police suddenly slow them all down.


On the road in Uganda

The drive to Kibaale takes several hours. We’re dodging pot holes all the way along sealed and not so sealed roads. We cross the equator but, as I’ve done it a few times and Rachel and Shannon do it every couple of weeks, we decide not to stop. Kibaale is far to Uganda’s south; within striking distance of the land border with Tanzania. On the outskirts of town is the large, guarded compound of the Kibaale Community Centre. In actuality, a community centre is just one of the functions of the site. Since the mid 90s, the site has grown to include primary and secondary schools, housing for staff, visitors and workers and, most recently, a community clinic. Much of the money for building these projects comes from Canada, via the Pacific Academy in the Lower Mainland of BC. Rachel and most of the other Canadian staff are either alumni or have close connections with the school, which is how they became part of the work in Kibaale. Rachel’s professional background is as an accountant; and so she came to Kibaale Community Centre to run the project’s finances. No small task when there’s over a hundred staff on the site and it’s easily the biggest employer in the area!


The guest house and staff accommodation at Kibaale Community Centre.

School has finished for the day by the time we arrive, so there’s enough time to meet Shannon’s husband, Jeff, and their children before settling in to the Kibaale guest house. The best feature of which is a large jigsaw lying unfinished on the dining room table. A great distraction although, sadly, it turns out to be impossible. Or, perhaps, just very, very difficult. But I prefer to think that it was impossible. It eases the pain.


The guest house at Kibaale Community Centre. All the comforts of home, including impossible chimpanzee jigsaw. Yes, you heard me: impossible.