When it rains...

(First off, we’re safe and sound in Kampala - a long way from the landslides in the East.  Though that was where we had intended to go this weekend.... we’ve since changed our plans)

It’s March, and rainy season isn’t supposed to start until April - a shame for the touring Kenn & I will be doing at the beginning of April, but I didn’t think that it would be an issue for the rest of the trip.  Turns out I’m wrong.  Lucky us, rainy season has come early this year.

In Africa when it rains, it pours!  Storms like the storms in Ontario that I miss so much while in B.C. - however here they happen almost every other day.  Usually it’s a gross, rainy morning and then there’s some afternoon sun, but it’s amazing the effect that a few hours of rain has here!

First off, half the roads here aren’t paved.  Instead they’re dirt roads - red, red dirt.  And, unexpectedly, dirt that is very slippery!  Much different than the mud in Ontario or B.C.  It sticks to your shoes and coats them with a layer that just gets thicker and thicker until you kick it off.  Turns out that it also sticks to tires.  However, the fact that it sticks to tires  (making the treads on tires totally useless) doesn’t stop people from driving down these roads.  A couple weeks ago, Jen & I were on a matatu (taxi-bus) one night after it had rained the whole day.  This was the second scariest drive in Uganda to date.  (the scariest drive happened last night, and I won’t even try to describe it because without a video it wouldn’t do it justice).  Anyway, back to the mud.  So here we were driving down a back road, in the dark, and Bam! We hit a boda-boda (motorcycle) - the dude was okay, luckily.  We continue driving, engine revving as the tires spin, and the tail of the matatu swinging all over the place.  We ended up getting stuck - really, really stuck.  They ushered us all out and into another matatu that had to reverse out of this muddy mess - this driver thought he’d be a hero and take us the wrong way down a one-way mud road.  Not a good idea.  We almost hit people 3 times, almost ran into a brick wall at least twice.  It was awful!

We thought we’d learned our lesson, but this past weekend while in Jinja, Jen & I took a boda-boda out of town to get to a ranch.  Turns out that about 1 km of this journey was down a dirt road, during a rain storm.  Disaster.  We ended up falling off the boda because it spun out underneath us.  Some bruises, but otherwise all was fine.

So, rainy season here means a few things:

Rain = sore tailbones.  The potholes become full of water, so no one can judge their depth.  This doesn’t mean that people slow down and take it easy on the roads... if anything they seem to go faster.

Rain = flooding on the streets.  A good chunk of the main roads in Kampala get shut down on a regular basis because they're totally flooded and there's not really any drainage system here.

Rain = lots and lots of noise on the tin roof that covers the OT department.  Turns out that whoever decided to use tin as a roofing material didn't think about the autistic kids who are in there all day!  Coming here I wouldn't have anticipated this, but these rainy days mean that we often have our hands full!

On the bright side, rain = luscious green landscapes.  

This weekend we’re hoping to get further out of town so we can appreciate all the scenery, even if we get wet while we do it!  So we're off to the Ssesse islands down in Lake Victoria.  Updates to follow (about that and last weekend's trip to Jinja - the birthplace of the Nile!)

(above is Jen after the boda fall - note the red mud all over her pants.  I still haven't gotten the mud out of my jeans... the only pair of long pants I brought to Uganda... crap).