Its been nearly two weeks since I left comfy Amsterdam to head eastwards to Africa, and everything has happened in a whirlwind since.

After Istanbul, I headed to Uganda and landed in Entebbe Airport, which is about 30 minutes away from the Ugandan Capital, Kampala.

Uganda bears many similarities to Singapore: it used to be a British colony, it got independence in 1962, which is one year earlier than Singapore, and the climate is pretty hot and humid too.

One major difference between Kampala and Singapore are the roads. The roads in Kampala are insane. There are few traffic lights around, and those around aren’t noticed much by drivers. I took the bodah-bodah (motorcycle taxis) and it was like crazy taxi (an arcade game where you have to drive a taxi as fast as possible, with as little regard to safety as possible) on two wheels. With a heavy backpack behind, I nearly fell off my ride a couple of times.

I had to take the midnight bus to Rwanda, since the morning bus was too full. Its crazy how packed it was, and just as I thought I lucked out by getting an individual seat, a massive Ugandan dude came out of nowhere and put himself into my seat. Honestly, this seat was meant for one person, one and a half at most, and he sat there and elbowed me into the armrest.

Two hours into the worst bus ride in my life, at 2 am in the morning, I had to do something even if it got me killed. I told the massive dude to get another seat, because it was a rough journey for me. I think he was bewildered at first, a skinny asian muzungu (foreigner) asking him to move, but in the end he told me to put up with it.

I was actually quite happy not to be stabbed, so I sat down beside him and tried to sleep through the rest of the night. Surprisingly, Big Man tried to give me a little more space (which didn’t amount to much, but i give him a ten for effort), and I reached the Uganda-Rwanda border.

It took us an hour to clear the border, because in Africa, queuing is not a very popular idea. People kept trying, and succeeding, in cutting our line, until I got fed up and slithered in between the one centimeter space between two sneaky, queue-jumping Kenyans. These kiswahili-speaking Kenyans also tried to steal my wallet, but I was lucky he was a really bad thief, because he felt my ass up at least twice before he tried to take my wallet, by which time I had removed it already, and I gave him a cheeky smile and apologized for removing my wallet to a safer location.

After a harrowing night, I finally got off the African road, into Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city. Of course, nothing could go smoothly for me, so the moment I stepped off the bus at 6 am in the morning, the entire city had to suffer a blackout.

I made my way out by special hire taxi to Patrick’s place and ended my time on the road completely exhausted on a bed shared by a Rwandan, a German, and me.