Go West! (Fort Portal, Uganda – KM 17,685)

« She too will be able to cycle to Rwanda? », asked the skeptical Ugandan border official to Pierre as if they were two adults discussing a six-year old child. “I’m just a girl in the world”, Gwen Stefani would say, and lately I am also just a mzungu from Wazunguland, kept at arm’s length with stares, giggles and some begging. The disconnect makes me practice the muscle of staying curious and interested in spite of how I am being treated—sometimes easier said than done! With our visa days ticking and our sight on the Batwa pygmies, living on the western edge of Uganda and the Albertine Rift, we hit the pedals hard towards the sunset.

After crossing the border from Kenya, Uganda seemed more fertile, lusher and greener, the big Victoria Lake seeping into the low-lying areas. On the Ugandan side there were less shoes, more bikes, less cement and more brick houses. Green and white mosques dotted the verdant scene as much as churches from denominations we had never heard of.

We stopped for three days in Jinja while Pierre wrote an article for a Canadian outdoor magazine. Our tent pitched on the lawn of a former mansion turned into a rafting base for trips on the Nile, by a slack line and under Tibetan prayer flags, we ate banana pancakes and met adrenaline junkies from Africa, Asia, Europe and the U.S. Jinja is famous for being the source of the Nile; the point at which the water leaves Lake Victoria and starts on a 6695-km journey to the Mediterranean!

After Kampala we descended and climbed steep one and two kilometres sections in quick succession, so that we would have gone up 900 metres over 80 kilometres but remained at 1,300 metres of altitude. In the lower swamps we would cross fields of papyrus, the tall stalks and curly heads a further proof that Uganda is the source of the Nile.

Even on a fast track to the west, travelling on our bicycles we could notice more garbage, more dancing and singing, more sweat, more sex and bicycles, and the landscape getting even greener. Marabou storks stayed around garbage heaps in towns while we saw cranes, herons, eagles and the chipper weaver birds along swamps, sugar cane fields, pine tree and tea plantations.

Forty kilometres before Fort Portal a couple of boys asked “How are you Madam? Aren’t you tired?” I answered that I was just fine before they asked “Why did the man leave you?”, pointing to Pierre who was some four-hundred metres ahead of me. I laughed and said I had stopped to take some pictures and would catch up to him later. I did not say anything about girls being as able, brave and tenacious as boys 🙂

We rolled into Ruwenzori View Guesthouse in Fort Portal just in time to dig in its famous mouth-watering dinner. There were soups, salads, pork meatballs, European bread and a fruit salad with passion cream from heaven. The polite and fascinating Danish organic farmers who shared the huge wooden table with us did not say anything when we polished off every communal plate, we must have looked like we had just cycled straight from Kenya!

The next day the guesthouse hosted its Christmas craft fair and we held ourselves tight not to buy every basket, jewellery, art, aprons and Christmas cookies on offer. Then, the next day I burped and it tasted like rotten eggs…and it all made sense. I had been feeling run down, raked over coals like my immune system was working overtime. With bags under my eyes I would sit by my bike at lunch time and fall asleep. A dry cough I had since Kisumu was not going away and Pierre could testify on my foul mood. With the sulfurous burp I could diagnose myself with giardiasis and take two grams of Tinidazole—it is always in our first aid kit. We should be up and rolling tomorrow morning.