Notes from Stephen, Wan, Kweilin, and Li

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Kisumu, Uganda border, Jinja

We skipped a Luo cultural museum in the morning so that we'd have plenty of time to cross the Uganda border. Good thing we skipped the museum because the border crossing ended up being an almost two-hour ordeal.

An entrepreneurial young man named Victor helped us navigate the crossing. He talked with a few officials, got some documents, and told us where to go next. We ended up paying him $7 for his labor, which included a bribe for an official who overlooked a missing document.

When an official looked at our passports to stamp us out of Kenya, he found that Daddy's visa expired! He kindly overlooked the overstay with no bribe.

We had another problem with our papers, though. We didn't have the original car log, which is a log of the ownership history of the car. The border officials want the original log book to make sure we don't leave Kenya with one car and enter with another. Victor said he bribed the official to overlook our missing log book.[

We bought Uganda visas for $30 each. Jay saw that student visas are only $20 each so she got $10 * 2 = $20 back from the visa seller.

Victor bought us a Uganda road license for the pickup for $20.

A Uganda official told us that we needed to buy car insurance for $50. Jay talked with him and he halved the fee to $25 for two-week insurance instead of $50 for one-month insurance.

In the end, we crossed the border for $145 in official fees and $7 in "border helper" fees.

Jay did most of the talking and negotiating at the border. Daddy was with her but let her speak because the male officials were likely to be kinder to a girl.

While Jay and Daddy walked around getting papers, Mommy and I guarded our bags in the car.

Mommy spoke with two boys selling bananas. One said he hadn't sold anything in two days so he hadn't eaten. He gets beaten if he eats his own bananas. Mommy gave him and his friend a few hard-boiled eggs with salt.

As we drove off from the border into Uganda, we saw menacing clouds, so we brought in the bags from the back and piled them on us in the car to keep them dry.

The drive to Jinja scared me. One pothole was so big I thought we'd get stuck or get a flat or break an axle. Everyone screamed but we came out fine. Daddy forced some oncoming traffic to the side of the road when he passed a car. An aggressive bus driver passed us a few times. I finally gave up trying to help us avoid hazards and closed my eyes.

We arrived in Jinja, a little town on Lake Victoria at the source of the Nile River. We stayed in the Hotel Triangle and got another beautiful view of the lake. We saw lots of bats flying and hanging from the trees.

posted by Li at 11:36 AM