If you don't go far, you'll be old 2

Chapter 8 Uganda: The Pearl of Africa

Uganda is like a pearl hidden on the beach, with a noble posture.It reminds you to find it quickly. Of course, even if you can't find it, you don't have to worry, you can still get rich overnight here.

China through black eyes

The media and travelers tend to have very different attitudes towards the good and the bad of travel.Journalists love to focus on the thrills and thrills of their travels, and love the bad guys and the bad stories.After all, the impact of negative reports is far greater than positive reports, and it is easy to catch people's attention.Travelers like to talk about the kind people and good things they met during their travels. After all, for themselves, positive energy heals far more than negative energy.There is no good or evil in travel itself, it is just a way to look at the world.Fortunately, what I have encountered along the way is always more kind-hearted people than villains, more kind-hearted than malicious, and more helpful than scammers.

Still, liars stalked me like flies.After traveling for more than a year, my anti-fraud level has risen rapidly, and I can almost calmly face all kinds of tricks of scammers.But often walking by the river, there is no way that your shoes will not get wet.Looking at the stack of 1000 shilling banknotes in the invisible wallet at the front desk of the hotel in Kampala, the capital, recalling that night three days ago, I realized that I had been cheated.

Three days ago, I entered Uganda from the western border of Kenya.After completing the visa on arrival, it was time for dinner when we transited the border.There are no street lights in the dilapidated frontier village, and the lights of people on both sides of the road are dimly shining.

Seeing that my business could not be done, the old man sitting on the steps of the immigration office and doing currency exchange business kindly reminded me not to be cheated by "those people".He was referring to the small groups of young people who roamed the streets of the small village, his counterparts, the money-changing peddlers.I didn't listen to his words, and I really fell for the trick. I was accidentally cheated out of a sum of money by those young people with bad ideas.The deception is not clever, but the small bills were sandwiched between the large bills, and they were exchanged for me as large bills.The 24 17 shilling notes in his hand are actually 7 [-] shilling notes and [-] [-] shilling notes.If it is daytime, there is no way to hide such a scam. Banknotes of different denominations have different colors, so it is impossible to confuse them.But in the dark night, in the dark place, I can't see the color clearly, and I can't count the dense pile of zeros on the banknotes. I am anxious to catch the last train to the capital, and I am not careful enough to count the money. The size of a thousand yuan bill.

In case you don't believe it, this is the first time I've been scammed at a currency exchange and the only time in nearly two years of travel.I have never crossed the border in the dark before, and I was very cautious when exchanging money. The more and more travel experience made me take it lightly.I lost about 15 Ugandan shillings, equivalent to more than 300 yuan.It's not a lot of money, but it's a lesson full of lessons.This tuition fee told me: When crossing the border by land, try to find a formal exchange point (such as Western Union) in a city close to the border to exchange money, even if the exchange rate is lower than that of the port exchange dealer; if you have to exchange money at a hawker, the first , raise a hundred minds, and beware of all possible deceptions, no matter whether three people are blocking you or five people are dragging you, you must find a bright place before you pay, and every banknote must be seen clearly and counted. The first thing to understand; second, the amount of money exchange should not be too much, just enough to support yourself for a few days when you arrive in the city. There are a lot of currency exchange shops and ATM machines in the city.It is best to avoid crossing the border at night if you can.

I looked at the stack of small bills in my hand in embarrassment, and realized that I would not be able to pay the room fee for a while, so I had the cheek to find an excuse to sneak to the city first.There is Standard Chartered Bank, which saved me from the dire straits. With it, my UnionPay debit card can be poured out of Ugandan shillings.

When mentioning Uganda, people may first think of Idi Amin, who is comparable to the reincarnation of King Zhou of the Shang Dynasty, the military dictator who ruled Uganda for 70 years in the 8s with cruelty and tyranny, "the last king of Scotland", Almost completely shattered the light and hope of this country.Today, the "Pearl of Africa", which is struggling in the dark, has some signs of prosperity.The capital, Kampala, looks like a big farm. The city is surrounded by austerity. The crumbling dilapidated houses are gradually being replaced by new buildings. The potholed dirt roads coexist with the beautiful asphalt roads, and you can vaguely find the ruins of the 80s. The dilapidated shadow of her neighbor, Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, does not have the western style of "Little Paris in East Africa".

With the red land as the background color, the blue sky and white clouds as the foil, the sweet smell of jackfruit wafting through the streets of Kampala, the aroma of grilled corn, grilled bananas, and the familiar masala tea - which can be seen everywhere in India and Nepal Everyday drink.Jackfruit is so cheap that I'm embarrassed not to eat it.The bazaar is frighteningly crowded, with eye-catching shops and random tricycles full of Chinese goods, cheap goods from mainland China that take up almost all of the market.Shouting and hawking sounded one after another.The vibrancy in the streets tells people that the worst is over.

Like Kenya, Uganda is also a country where English is the official language, although the penetration rate is not as fierce as that of Kenyans.I remember when I was in China, people often laughed at themselves in Chinglish with "Thank you! No thank you!"Here, I often hear another saying: Thank you! Thank you, too! In fact, they are not helping each other, but when they should simply say "you are welcome", the other party smiles and says "thank you too".This novelty is pleasantly polite.

Countries where English is commonly used give travelers more opportunities to chat with local ordinary people.The time spent on the long-distance bus on the mountain road was too long for people to see. The black youth beside me and I chatted from political trends to eating habits, from the rate of air crashes in Africa to the cats in the aunt’s house.Enduring the pain of hunger and hunger, I told the young man my yearning for Chinese food. Unfortunately, he grew up in Uganda and could not understand the patriotism of my stomach.He couldn't understand the difference between the taste of Chinese restaurants in Uganda and the authentic Chinese food in China, and he couldn't understand my almost drooling mood when describing those "weird" foods.Compared with Chinese food, young people are more interested in punching and kicking in Kung Fu movies.His eyes widened in surprise when he heard the Chinese girl in front of him claim that she knew no kung fu.This is obviously contrary to what he has believed in for many years, that "every Chinese knows kung fu".

Most people only care about things at home or at their doorstep, which is the case everywhere in the world.Just as the Chinese often cannot tell the difference between Pakistan and Palestine, refer to Sweden as Switzerland, and think Latin is still spoken in South America, for those countries far away from China, "China" is just a vague concept.I can list a long list of weird questions I have been asked by foreigners during my travels, such as "Do Chinese people still drink from wine jars?" Is it?"... The most frequent one is "Does every Chinese know Kung Fu?".I decided to use an analogy to explain this problem at the bottom of the Tower of Babel to the youth.

"Can you play the piano?" I asked the youth. "No, if you learn it, you will be able to." "Well, it's the same with kung fu." Looking at the doubtful face of the young man, I added: "It's all a kind of skill, if you learn it, you can master it, but if you don't learn it, you can't. If you want to learn kung fu, go to a martial arts school or training class, otherwise you won’t do it.”

The young man opened his mouth even wider, his eyes were empty, he ignored my explanation, and just muttered to himself: "How could this be the same thing... how could it be the same thing..." Perhaps he had never been in such a situation before. Look at this magical oriental martial art from a different perspective.People often have beautiful fantasies about things they don't understand. There is an excellent real-life example of this sentence-foreigners are always more superstitious about Chinese Kung Fu than Chinese people.

don't watch me take a shower

Standing on the street of Uganda and looking around, I am the whitest person in this five-mile radius.

And in the hotel, I became the blackest person.The Red Pepper Hotel is a well-known backpacker inn in Kampala. More than [-]% of the guests come from Europe, and most of them come for mountain chimpanzees-Uganda has more than half of the world's mountain gorillas.Here, I met Clement, a French guy who went to Shanghai to study Chinese for half a year. He majored in economics and was shooting a movie with a few friends in East Africa.Clement thought I was a Japanese girl—it’s not surprising, among the backpackers traveling around the world, European and Japanese backpackers have the largest number, while mainland Chinese backpackers are a rarity—once they heard that I was from China, The young man regained his energy, took out his French-Chinese dictionary and the Chinese-French bilingual version of the fairy tale "The Little Prince", and exchanged his Chinese learning experience with me.Opening Claremont's small book for Chinese practice, there are Chinese characters carefully written stroke by stroke on the whole page, which looks good.This kind of situation is rare in travel. Although popular songs sing "The whole world is learning Chinese", and Internet hot posts declare "Don't think that foreigners can't speak Chinese", the fact is that leaving China In the future, I can count the foreigners who understand Chinese with one hand. Let’s put it this way, the chances of finding a bag of gold in the desert are about the same.Before leaving, Clement did not forget to copy down my Sina Weibo name. He was a little proud and poked his chest with his thumb: Hey, I also have Weibo!

One of the great joys of traveling is making friends from all over the world. The intense collision and integration of different cultural backgrounds and values ​​may be one of the most exciting chapters of travel.And another great pleasure is to severely expand life experience.Rare is more strange, more common is not strange.

For example, I have experienced god cows running around in the streets in India, stray dogs sleeping in the middle of the road, sleeping in the dark, monkeys jumping out from time to time in Nepal and Sri Lanka, and India and Ethiopia after two battles with bedbugs. My love for animals Appeared much calmer.

In Fort Portal, in my hotel room, there was a little gray mouse scurrying around.I put down what I was busy with, sat on the bed seriously and watched the little mouse run around.I thought this little thing was cute from the bottom of my heart, but I just thought of the bacteria on the mouse, so I asked the front desk staff to work together to drive the poor little mouse out of the room.This is not a big deal. Later, in another hotel, I saw a frog lying calmly on the window sill of the bathroom, which shocked me when I walked into the bathroom in the middle of the night.It seems that the Frog Prince also has a hobby of peeking at people taking a bath.Well, I fulfilled your wish, took off all my clothes in one breath, and took a shower in front of it, which can be regarded as a little compensation for Mr. Frog who has been crawling for many days and waiting for a long time.

The journey is dangerous, travelers need to be careful!

seven people hitchhiking

I was bored in Fort Portal for a few days, so I decided to go south to Rwanda.It's not because this place is really depressing, it's because what I see in front of me is the same, and my visa is time-limited, so I'm not allowed to linger.

Departing from Fort Portal, the picture of the long-distance bus traveling through the forest is like the rainforest in the movie "Avatar".After the heavy rain, the mountains are shrouded in clouds and mist.Capable black women chop firewood and fetch water, carry sacks on their heads, and carry a large bundle of branches. They are capable of rough and heavy work, with a baby wrapped on their backs, and a bunch of babies behind them, walking on the bumpy and muddy mountain road .A woman with a string of children is a common sight in Uganda.The population of this impoverished agricultural country has swelled tremendously. Even when everyone is in danger, the common people are still desperately giving birth to children with great fearlessness.It is very common for a family to have seven or eight children. If there are more than a dozen, the mother will be regarded as a "hero mother".Such a situation is not new to the Chinese.Black men often joked to me: Have you ever thought about marrying to Africa and finding an African husband?I always shake my head and say: I don't want to have seven kids.The other party will laugh and show a mouthful of white teeth.

Vendors are always able to see through the gaps, seizing every opportunity of long-distance bus stops to sell food to passengers through the car windows, especially stuffed cassava, a lot of kebabs, sweet ripe corn and grilled bananas, They are all bullying my weak stomach.The main food here is far less than the snacks, and I can hardly eat any meal that will satisfy me.I'm going to appease a picky tongue with some kebabs and corn.But the ensuing taxi ride taught me that overstuffing your belly can be painful.

There are two hundred kilometers from Kabale to Kisoru, and there are few buses, so people mostly rely on taxis.It is said to be a taxi, but in fact it is used as a short-distance bus, and the number of people is enough to drive on the road.How many adults can a taxi take including the driver?Before the trip, I will answer honestly, five.After cramming seven people into a tuk-tuk in India, I began to suspect that a taxi might fit six, or even seven.Uganda, on the other hand, gave me a resounding answer: eight.

Four men sat in the front, four women sat in the back, and I was squeezed into the corner of the back seat, unable to move at all.In order to balance the weight, the driver switched a black woman and a black man to prevent the women from crowding the back seat.Unlike people of the yellow race, in the black world, men are mostly lean and lean, no matter how old or young, fat people are almost invisible; women are just the opposite, they have plump and round breasts and huge buttocks, especially those who have given birth Women, one woman is enough to match the size of two men, and you will wonder if there is something wrong with your eyes when you look at it.Look at these babes who can have a beer bottle on their ass, hey, how do I describe it properly.

Fortunately, a thin monkey like me helped reduce the pressure on the back seat, which would have been crushed otherwise.No, I can almost hear the panting of the taxi, the creaking and creaking of the over-squeezed body, and the wailing of parts that are on the verge of collapse.The miraculous thing is that the driver even had trouble shifting gears, but he was able to take the winding mountain road and deliver the seven passengers to their destination intact. Thank God.

After getting out of the car, I hurried out to catch my breath, thinking, no matter what, I finally got out alive.

When the sky was turning red, I climbed into the back seat of a motorcycle taxi, waved goodbye to the small volcano in the distance, the damn taxi, and the driver.

Parting will always make people feel small emotions.When the scooter climbed up the avenue, my eyes suddenly became blurred: What kind of danger will be waiting for me at the next stop?

(End of this chapter)