Just When We Thought We had Seen It All

Today is Sunday. We love Sundays very much. We drive Watoto Central in less than 15 minutes- a rare treat on Kampala roads. We take part in an amazing worship service and head back to our apartment or sometimes out for lunch. Sunday afternoons usually include a nap and quite often a walk or some other outing. We love Sundays!
However, today there was something different. As we were attempting to drive to church we saw the flags up- oh no, the dreaded flags! These mean that there are important people (usually government officials from other countries) visiting. What it means to all of us is more traffic delays and even tighter security than usual. Our first thought this morning was, “Who’s visiting Uganda now?”
However, these flags didn’t look like the usual flags and they weren’t in the places that they usually were when dignitaries visited. Each time we tried to go down a street to get to the church, there was police there with the street blocked off. We ended up driving through “downtown Kampala”, the part of the city that Greg refers to as “the belly”. Fortunately, the shops were all closed so the streets were not jammed to capacity with people, but still it’s “the belly” and one never really knows what to expect. This is our third trip to Uganda and we have been here for a long time now so not too much surprises us anymore. However, this morning there was a man leading a camel down the street! Yep, walking right past Nakasero market and heading up to Kampala Road with a camel! What on earth is going on in this city?
Finally, we arrive at church and find out that today is Kampala Festival 2013. There was a parade, bodas waiting to join some kind of parade, people, people, people and even more noise! I think it qualifies as the craziest thing we have seen in our time here.
After church, finding a route out of this chaos was another challenge. There are some one-way streets in Kampala, but there are no signs to tell you this- you just have to know it. Today- none of that mattered! One-way streets became two-way streets, but not everyone knew that it had happened. Driving in Kampala can always be described as chaos, but today it was ramped up to a whole new level.
Getting back to the apartment after church today was a really huge treat and believe me, we were really ready for a nap after that!

Bodas lining up on the street behind the church waiting to join in the fun. Not sure what the colour coordinated helmets are about. Who knows with boda drivers?!