In Luganda there’s a saying: okutambula kulaba; okudda kunyumya —to travel is to see the world, to return is to share it.
From this, it seems to me that the sole purpose of travelling is to make one more interested in casual conversation. Unfortunately, voyagers never share how much it takes out of a person to sit in a vehicle hurtling through space for hours on end with the hope of going to a place where nobody knows you and where any passerby is likely to rob you. There’s nothing casual about conquering the miles between two nations, especially on a bus. I have learned this the hard way. Twice.
In June 2022, I travelled once more to Kenya. I went to Langata in 2018 with my family during what Ugandans shudder to think about: the Kenyan winter. It was weather so foreign to my skin, so far removed from what I always imagined. An African climate froze and the memory whips a chill on my back.
Purposely suppressing this memory of the liquid winds of Langata, I declared to my workmates, friends, and even strangers that for that birthday, I would brave another road trip to Nairobi to attend a Conference on Artificial Intelligence. This time, alone—an unimaginable feat.
My boss wondered why a “beautiful young lady” (me, apparently) was traipsing around East Africa without a companion (read, man) to protect me. I was asking myself the same thing. My friends and family know that I lose my way in supermarkets. Small towns in Uganda look identical to me. They have a signature tiny shop, selling old, yellow buns and sachets of tea leaves dangling like short curtains. This shop always has sacks of sugar, rice, and beans at its entrance which the shopkeeper sidesteps to give you your change; a bodaboda stage and a labyrinth of marram roads to confuse newcomers. I am a Ugandan. It is my home. Nevertheless, I can’t tell Kireka apart from Mityana.
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On hearing that I was going alone to a foreign country, my loved ones gave me up for dead. I assured them that since God famously takes care of fools, I would make myself a first-class one to tick solo travel off my bucket list.
I bought my ticket at Dewington a few days in advance and chose the seats I wanted on the bus.
My sister helped me to book a hotel in Nairobi, exposing her secret desire for me to die in luxury if I perished. My birthday was coming soon so she clothed this gesture as an early gift.
The last time I had gone to Kenya, the weather had nearly bitten off my nose with coldness. I knew better than to pack crop tops. I hoarded a large winter coat, two pairs of leggings, mittens and socks instead.
The conference was slated for the 1st and 2nd of June so I planned to travel a day in advance to get there the next day before 9:00 am in time for the event. I also wanted to pinch my sister’s pennies in the hotel by arriving on the exact day. Granted she was paying but I didn’t want to be too much of a parasite.
The bus was supposed to set off at six o’clock and move for twelve hours. My sisters took me to Café Javas to treat me to a Last Supper. Despite a large plate of cheesy junk, I couldn’t get much down. My stomach bubbled and my heart pounded. Why was I going on this suicide mission? It was one thing to challenge myself, but this was neither a novel nor noble pursuit. I wasn’t going to be the first woman on the moon. The only ego I was appeasing was my own and it was slowly shrinking inside me. Stamping on these fears again, I took a few ceremonial bites of my expensive food, and we headed to the bus park. It was 4 o’clock. I had forgotten that punctuality was a vice in Uganda. On arriving at the bus terminal, we languished in the waiting room, wondering if the ticket had the wrong time. During that wait, I made endless trips to the bathroom. The toilets in that bus terminal were yellow and looked older than colonialism. Squatting over them made me warn my nervous bladder to behave, to no avail.
Waiting with us in the room was a giggly pair whispering ominous nothings in each other’s ears. In another corner, a trio— two men, one tall and dark, one wearing red trousers, stood with one woman. In the center of the room, a man dressed in head-to-toe gray sipped on hard liquor from a straw in broad daylight, pointedly ignoring everyone. A woman with synthetic hair and a velvet tracksuit exuded friendliness from the front seat. The room hummed with grumbling voices that grew louder. It was seven o’clock and the bus was yet to arrive.
Settling in, we chatted with Tracksuit-lady who told us she was heading home to Nakuru. She told us that 1st June was Self-Independence day, different from Independence day and that Kenya celebrated both days. She wondered why Ugandans did not speak Swahili (We blamed the government).
The bus finally pulled up at 8:00PM. It had a side mirror which resembled a broken elbow held together with tape.
The idea of giving up started to become more attractive. Was the money I had spent on the bus fare and taxi to the hotel really worth my life? There was a Conference and I truly wanted to attend it. I had always thought that the crossroads analogy applied only to life-altering decisions: To be or not to be. I saw now that fear, when strong enough, can point to a third option. You can decide to take neither of the roads in the analogy. You can sit at the junction leading to these life-altering decisions or go back to where you came from. But, my mother did not raise a coward. I would not sit in the dust of indecision.
Donning my big-girl pants, I decided for the final time to be brave. My sisters waved so energetically as the bus set off that you would have thought I had won an election. Passengers giggled at the sight. I was too used to it to be embarrassed. In my family, we express ourselves like unpaid comedians, fueled by the undiluted incredulity our extremely eccentric natures evoke. I would have done just the same if I was sending one of them off.
Taking in my surroundings, I noted that I was far outnumbered by men. I reflected upon my acute lack of martial arts skills, kicking myself for having, until then, forgotten to worry about my bodily safety. I had shaken off all efforts to be escorted to Nairobi by people stronger and taller than me. My stubbornness started to look stupider by the minute.
Meanwhile, my neighbours started conversing animatedly in the corridors, particularly the man in red pants. My immediate seatmate, Mr-Whiskey-In-a-Straw continued to look around furtively. He did not seem to desire any company, making me wonder how I’d survive his company. My sister had told me to sweet-talk my neighbour on the bus to get a free phone call when I reached Kenya if I wanted to link up with my taxi. He didn’t seem easy to talk to.
However, as the bus sped past Lugogo Show grounds, he opened up. He said that he had moved to Uganda prior to the lockdown of 2020 and had never bought a sim card. A low-key social animal, he said his Kenyan sim card had been sufficient for him in ordering everything and contacting everyone. Uganda’s party scene is epic, and he said he enjoyed the nightlife most during the pandemic. His favourite and yet most alarming part of Uganda’s culture was how easily accessible alcohol is around the clock. He said that Kenya would never allow the sale of alcohol in shops. At some point, he poured whisky into a mineral water bottle, only for it to pour onto the floor when the person in front leaned back.
I realized that grey as a colour suited him metaphorically. He exuded a hands-off demeanour with his furtive ways and yet he had more depth than I had given him credit for. He advised me not to worry. My phone would work just fine across the Ugandan border. These are the rewards of travelling. You meet people with stories bottled inside them and sometimes they are plastic bottles of whisky.
The bus snailed through the night. I had worn socks and leggings inside my trousers to prepare for the cold. Instead, they started to cook for me.
Helpless to find any privacy to change out of my clothes, I clutched my travel documents to my stomach and waited for the border. Busia came and went without drama (One of the guys I befriended for phone call privileges asked if I had my Muzeeyi with me. I thought he meant father but he explained that he meant husband).
We got back on the bus after Immigration checks. My neighbor still talked with moderate enthusiasm but as morning came, he fell silent. The trip was getting on our collective nerves. My mood varied from wondering if I needed to go this far to make myself a better conversationalist and longing to reach the Conference on time. At dawn, we were still travelling through the country which became too vast to endure. My conference was supposed to start in the morning. I was supposed to rest before the event (Supposed to be the keyword).
At Nakuru, people stopped to eat. It was already seven o’clock and my event had two hours to start. My vegetarian diet made me a perfect candidate for food poisoning, so I chewed an apple I had packed and waited impatiently for the rest.
As the bus jogged through the grasslands, my neighbour fell into a disgruntled sleep. Sitting beside him, my brain sagged with the monotony of Kenya’s topography. The weather was not cooperating with my memories of Langata. Where were the school kids in head mittens? Where was the icy mist? It was June when I travelled in 2018. Had I imagined the wintry winds?
The weather grew a bit overcast to pacify my memories, but it was still warm. I took the socks off.
When we reached the city, I saw a gigantic billboard of William Ruto who was standing for president at the time.
“Who do you think will win?” I asked my neighbour.
“It’s Ruto’s to lose,” he said. This was the most sociable he had been since waking up. It was midday.
“That phrase is confusing.”
“When someone says that it’s yours to lose,” he explained, “it means that you’re the most likely to win.”
“I see.” I stored that tidbit. I had travelled to hoard good conversation after all.
We reached Nairobi at 1 pm on 1st June 2022. My feet had swollen like cassava tubers. Passengers swore that if this was how Ugandan buses moved, they were never coming back. The last thing my seatmate told me as we fetched my luggage was to avoid this bus on my return trip. “Take Mash Poa. It’s the fastest,” he said before vanishing into the crowd.
I can’t help but compare a bus journey to life. You sit and doze beside people for more than sixteen hours, get accustomed to their smell and their habits and then one second they alight, making you wonder why you met them at all. My neighbour said the word “alight” more than thrice in that journey, more times than I say it in a year.
Life is indifferent to fleeting bonds. The world has seven billion stories after all. Without a backward glance at him, I rushed back to my own life.
I needed to book my return ticket in advance while looking for a safe place to call the taxi. As I meandered like a lost tourist, a bus agent grabbed my suitcase when I asked for the way to the Mash Poa office. He claimed he wanted to show me the way there but I had been warned to distrust everybody in Nairobi. Though more sophisticated than my own Kampala, it has made a name for itself as a highly unsafe city. Fighting spiritedly for my suitcase, I told him I could manage but he refused to release it so I had to follow him, worrying I would land in a den of thieves. True to his word, he led me to the Mash Poa office. The woman at the ticket office eyed him suspiciously and told me to hold tight to my luggage, which I did after wrestling it off him and giving him his finder’s fee.
Making the phone call, I finally got into my taxi. I was charged an eye-watering fare to pay for my ignorance as a tourist. I could have sold a distant cousin for a chance to sit in a chair that didn’t vibrate underneath me. My body ached from sitting too long, I did not dare to look in the mirror. I still had more layers of clothing on an extremely sunny day and my courage had melted to a puddle at the frenetic energy I found in Nairobi.
I got into the hotel room at 2 pm. As I entered the air-conditioned corridor, my body shook with fatigue. I was operating on pure willpower. I had several unanswered messages on my phone from my sister. Answering them, I confirmed that I was alive.
The corridor of that hotel was sleek and had a carpet plush enough to sleep on. Resisting the urge, I swiped the magenta key card, with shaking hands and entered heaven: it is located in the whitest hotel room in Kenya.
When the Baganda said that to travel is to see the world, they forgot to mention the fullness of the heart, the utter relief one feels on arriving at the destination and turning a place, a tiny dot on a map into a tangible place.
Putting down my light-blue suitcase, I slumped on the dazzling-white bed, took off my shoes, saw my swollen feet and wept.
About The Author
Justin Teopista Nagundi is a Ugandan writer, actress, poet and writing mentor. She has been published in midnight and indigo, Writers’ Space Africa, Months to Year’s and Havik. She has a blog on WordPress titled “Smoke & Leaves”.
Twitter handle: @JT_Nagundi
Instagram: @justin.teopista.nagundi
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