Monday (29Nov), I finally received all of my research letters and identity card from the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, which means that I was immediately on the phone trying to find out how I could get myself to Bwindi as quickly as possible. Turns out the directors of the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation in Bwindi-Ruhija were just coming back from leave and on their way there, maybe Wednesday morning, but they would have to stay in Mbarara for administrative meetings and things. I was welcome to join if I wanted. Then I met Festo at the Uganda Wildlife Authority, he's the Transport Officer....a.k.a. the guy who knows where all the UWA cars are going...and he told me that a car just happened to be in for repairs and that as soon as it's done, I'm on it and off to Bwindi. So, I was stoked...I had a ride! And with UWA! Maybe I could even get loads of delicious information about conservation in Uganda and protected areas issues in the region.
So the next day I went to Immigrations with my stack of documents and a wad of cash (costs $100 for a Pupil's Pass....aka the research visa). What I thought would take months of bureaucratic administrative paper pushing, mostly with papers going nowhere, took only 2.5 hours. I think I just got supremely lucky though and asked the right guy where the copy machine is. He ended up taking my documents, making the photocopies, submitting them to the immigrations people and 2 hours later, I had a visa. I walked out with a visa!! This is unheard of. So many people had told me that this would be such a difficult process....that it would take 2, maybe 3 months even. A lot of Fulbrighters never even make it through the process. They just exit the country every 3 months and deal with paying tourist visa fees every single time. I really didn't want to do that, especially if my research might take me across to DRC and Rwanda more than once or twice. Single-entry tourist visas could really rack up the bills. I don't know who in Immigrations slipped who what, but somehow the visa thing worked out all too easily.
Crazy thing happened right after I left the building though. I was there on the street negotiating with a boda boda man for a ride to UWA where I was meeting Dada for lunch and the guy wanted about 2x what I wanted to pay. So, some haggling later, he drove off.....and not 20 feet away, he hit another boda boda with a passenger on it, a rather large woman. All three went flying to the ground, bodas on their sides, woman looked really painfully unhappy. Her shirt had flown up and the rolls of skin scraped across the neither smooth nor clean asphalt, her facial expression oozed hurt. A small crowd gathered round, picked them all up and set them right again, so not much later, they were actually all on their way again. I was a bit dazed though....I mean, if I hadn't stopped him, he wouldn't have been in that exact place at that unfortunate time and maybe there would be no accident. I couldn't help but ask myself if it was my fault. Or, we could have settled a price and I could have been on it...on the ground, like that woman, maybe worse. Someway, somehow, I was a part of it....although to any outsider, I was just another spectator on the side of the road. Just the day before, the security guy at the Embassy had given me a small fatherly talk on buying a motorcycle helmet if I'm going to be engaging in risky boda boda riding. And of course, ABSOLUTELY NO BODAS AT NIGHT, strict Embassy rule. Yessah. Eh, so now I'm seriously contemplating getting a motorcycle helmet. Of course, I'm still also contemplating getting a motorcycle....but you know, just to make my field work easier. Anyway, I ended up taking the slow/long way to UWA....2 taxis (aka matatus).
Wednesday, I got a phone call from Festo that the UWA truck would be leaving on Thursday morning.....so get ready, I was going to Bwindi!!
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