A Tale of Two Cities

This afternoon we ventured into Kampala. Our purpose to get a SIM for Uganda and to see a bit of Western Civilisation – maybe even go to the Cinema. We took the local taxi (Matatu) equivalent to a Dala Dala in Tanzania and were deposited in Central Kampala. After 7 months in Mwanza it was a bit of a shock. It was so busy, so many people so many cars,  hundreds of Matatu and even more Boda Boda (motorbikes) equivalent to Piki Pikis in Mwanza.       

there were hundreds of little shops and  dozens of Shopping Arcades akin to Agoras in back MK – but not exactly what we were looking for. This was very much the centre for local Ugandans, very crowded. Think about Oxford Street in London on Christmas Eve  and treble it. We sorted out SIMS for the phones, then got directions to the Cinema. This was in a different part of town and might have been a different city, though it wasn’t. It was in the aptly named Oasis Shopping Mal. Here it felt like a drop of the West in the middle of Africa. A modern Supermarket (Nakamat), coffee shops, a multiplex cinema. We had not realised how much we had missed such things.  

          

We finished the afternoon with a film – Insurgent (from the Divergent series) in 3D and a free Pepsi to boot. We were the only ones in the cinema – if fact the film had just started so they stopped it and started again. We had a great time, then it was back out into the traffic of Kampala and off to our hostel.