I am Back

Nkomyewo. I arrived yesterday morning. My pictures are not ready yet. I left my disposable camera with a friend who will send the photos once she finds someone coming to Uganda.

Otherwise, my memorable maloo...kyaloo experiences:

The African Fellowship
One memorable malooo…kyalooo experience was last Sunday. I went to a church with my friends where I met so many Africans, including Ugandans. I knew some of the Ugandans. The church had been having different regions of Africa talking about their countries. Last Sunday was West Africa’s turn and it was fun. You should have seen how the Nigerians, Ghanaians and people from the Ivory Coast boasted about their food, dressing and culture. I felt like Uganda had nothing to boast about when the video clip showed some of their footballers. Even their capital cities seemed more organised than our Kampala.

Ugandan Food
The second malooo..kyalooo experience was on Saturday and Sunday evenings when my hosts took me to their friends' houses for dinner. They were friends who grew up with my friend’s husband in Bugolobi flats, and one of them went to school with us. Since I am a Gishu, I was glad to discover that some of them were Gishus or half Gishus. We ate Ugandan food (including Matooke, Kamalewa, Tilapia and etc) and talked till midnight. Topics ranged from the Gishu accent to Obama. There was this story about a lady with a Gishu accent saying in Luganda how she forgot milk in the bus, but what she didn’t know was that what she was referring to as milk meant breasts in Luganda. So it appeared as if she was saying she left her breasts on the bus.

Wheeled Bags
The third malooo…kyalooo is the wheeled travel bag. Whoever invented wheeled bags did us good. It felt so great not having to lift my heavy suitcases to Heathrow, to and fro. It was so cute watching little children rolling their tiny bags on wheels at the airport. On London streets, it was quite common to see an elderly couple walking with a wheeled bag.

You can imagine my irritation when I reached Uganda and I had to lift my suitcases, thanks to our rough roads and streets. I ended up getting a special hire from Entebbe airport to Bukoto just to avoid lifting my bags. The smooth floors and streets in London make it so easy to roll your suitcases that at one point, when my friend and I were heading for Victoria Coach Station, I couldn’t help but gape at the noise that came from the bags as people crossed the streets. EVERYONE had a wheeled bag.

Transport
The last malooo…kyalooo is the way the transport system is organised. Whenever I used a tube (underground), overground, coach or bus, I was amazed.

Buses and trams share a common fare and ticketing system, and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) and the Underground another.

London has several travel zones. When buying a travel card including tube travel, you will need to specify how many zones you wish to travel in, for example, zones 1 - 3, zones 1 - 6, and the price varies depending on the number of zones you choose. I learnt that a travelcard provides zonal tickets which can be valid from one day to one year and that they are accepted on the DLR, buses, railways, trams and the Underground. There are no zones in London for buses, so one ticket or travel card is enough to travel any distance in the network. The ticket price remains the same, no matter how far you travel in London.

There was this plastic card that was used as a travel card called an Oyster card, which was given to me by my first host. Your credit and travel card information are stored electronically on the card. It can be used to pay individual fares or to carry various Travelcards and bus passes. It is used by holding the card close to a yellow card reader or touching it flat. I malocated at the way the gate would open and let me through at the ticket gates whenever I would feed my Oyster onto a Card reader. There was no need for a paper ticket. From one week onwards, using an Oyster Card is much cheaper than buying tickets daily. You can use pre-pay and 'top up' your Oyster card in the same way as a mobile phone. Credit is added to the Oyster card, and it is deducted each time you travel. This represents very good value for money compared to buying a daily paper ticket and is ideal for people making occasional journeys per week or month.

Oyster cards cannot be used on some Overground routes in London. No wonder I lost my card during one of my Overground trips on the day before I left London, as I was trying to put it back into my handbag and use a Travelcard instead. I felt so bad because my first host’s wife had put some money on it and had asked me to post it back to her from Heathrow since they received many visitors who might use whatever fare I had left on it. I cried when I realised I had lost it, yet I had even put bus passes for a whole week on it. My friend had to use her money to pay for my fare. I got to use a coach from Victoria Coach Station to Heathrow. Coaches are like our upcountry buses, but more organised.

Years later, I actually found that Oyster card! I reached out to my host to let him know, and he simply joked that I could use it the next time I was in London.

P.S. Just a quick note about the date on this post! While it shows as published today, July 6, 2025, it is an old post that I wrote in April 2009, which I have now pulled out of my drafts.