kampala — a city of chaos and charm.
Hello peeps!
Welcome back! If the previous post ended with a 22-hour bus ride, then this post begins in its shadow. At Villa Acacia, I slept like a cursed princess—except this wasn’t the peaceful slumber of fairy tales, but the kind induced by exhaustion after being shaken for hours by a bus that rattled like an old washing machine.
Apparently, it wasn’t so peaceful for everyone else. The girls claimed I snored through the night “like a rhino at full charge.” I denied it, of course, but their side-eye over breakfast suggested the verdict was unanimous. When I finally stirred, Kampala was already alive outside, the city vibrating with horns, shouts, and the high-pitched whine of motorbikes.
breakfast at villa acacia — the rolex awakening.
The courtyard was quiet compared to the storm outside. I sat beneath the shade of trees, breakfast waiting: a rolex, chapati rolled with eggs, tomatoes, onions, and spices, hot from the pan. It was messy and perfect, the kind of food that demands both hands and all your attention. With each bite, the fatigue of the journey slipped further away.
Yet beyond the garden walls, the pulse of Kampala beat louder—traffic snarling, bodas revving, life pressing in. The city would not let me linger.
enter the boda bodas — chaos on two wheels.
The only way to truly feel Kampala is on the back of a boda boda. To ride one is to surrender control and trust in speed, chaos, and reflexes. My driver grinned before taking off, as though he knew I had no idea what awaited me.
We plunged into the city’s bloodstream—past buses coughing black smoke, goats darting across lanes, vendors balancing baskets as they threaded through impossible traffic. The bike tilted, accelerated, squeezed into spaces I swore could not exist until we were already through them. My grip was iron, my heartbeat rapid, the city a blur of colour and sound.
By the time we stopped, my legs trembled, and my shirt clung to me. I had survived Kampala’s initiation rite.
the royal tombs — history in the quiet (and an expensive joke).
The Kasubi Royal Tombs rose before us, a vast thatched dome woven of reeds and palm, heavy with memory. This is no ordinary site—it is the spiritual heart of the Buganda Kingdom, once a royal palace, later transformed into the burial ground for its kings. Four Kabakas (Buganda monarchs) rest here, their spirits said to linger in the silence that hangs over the complex.
The entrance was solemn, guarded by tradition. As we stepped inside, the air cooled, as if time itself had slowed. It felt like entering a place where the past still breathes.
But reverence has its price. The ticket here cost us a fortune—enough that I half-expected the guide to hand me a crown and a seat on the throne for the afternoon.
Our guide spoke of the reed-woven dome—a marvel of Ganda architecture, crafted without a single nail—and of the fire in 2010 that nearly destroyed the site. The structure had since been rebuilt, but the scars lingered in the stories. UNESCO had declared the tombs a World Heritage Site, not just for their architecture but for what they represent: a living link between the Buganda people and their ancestors.
And then came the part that snapped us out of the solemnity. Tradition says that any girl who enters becomes one of the king’s wives.
I looked at Ida. “So… technically, you’re royalty now?”
She smirked. “If being a wife means paying this much for a ticket, I’ll pass.”
The thought of unwilling brides lining up at the entrance was enough to make us laugh, breaking the stillness for a moment. Yet even in laughter, the weight of the place lingered. We were standing not just in a tomb, but in a story that stretched back centuries—one that Kampala’s chaos could never drown out.
Outside, a distant boda horn pierced the air, as if to remind us: no matter how deep the history, the city is never far away.
gaddafi national mosque — kampala from the sky.
The Gaddafi National Mosque commands the hill it sits on, a towering structure of pale stone and wide arches, its golden dome gleaming in the afternoon light. Commissioned in the 1970s and completed decades later with funds from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, it is not only the largest mosque in Uganda but also one of the most striking in all of East Africa.
Inside, the space feels endless. The prayer hall stretches beneath high vaulted ceilings, vast carpets rolled across the floor like waves of red and green. Sunlight pours in through tall arched windows, illuminating delicate Arabic calligraphy along the walls. It is a place that feels both grand and serene—majestic yet inviting.
But the true reward waits above. A narrow spiral staircase winds its way to the minaret, the climb punishing in its repetition. Step after step, my lungs burned, and my legs wobbled. Ida counted loudly behind me, half encouragement, half mockery. Yet as we emerged at the top, breathless and flushed, the struggle was instantly forgotten.
From that height, Kampala revealed itself in full panorama.
The city stretched endlessly across rolling hills, its rust-red rooftops glowing in the sun, church spires and minarets punctuating the skyline, glass towers reflecting light like beacons. Roads snaked below, alive with a ceaseless flow of bodas and buses. Smoke curled lazily from cooking fires in the distance, while patches of green broke through the urban sprawl. On the horizon, the hills shimmered in a haze, framing the city like a stage backdrop.
It was a view that made sense of the chaos. From above, the noise and disorder softened into rhythm, the movement below turning into pattern. Kampala, overwhelming on the ground, became almost poetic from the sky.
I gripped the railing, dizzy not from the climb but from the sheer scale of it. In that moment, the city’s contradictions—its beauty and madness, its chaos and charm—folded together into a single breathtaking picture.
Ida, ever pragmatic, leaned on the railing and whispered, “Imagine the property prices from up here.”
The spell broke, and I laughed. Still, the view lingered long after we descended back into the noise of the streets.
the craft market — a swarm of colour.
If the mosque was calm from above, the craft market was its opposite: chaos at ground level. The moment we stepped in, it was as if a switch had been flipped. Vendors surged toward us in waves, voices overlapping like a chorus—
“Good price for you, my friend!”
“Necklace, madam, very cheap!”
“Come, see my stall, only quality here!”
Hands thrust items forward: carved masks, wooden animals, bold paintings of lions and sunsets, strings of beads glinting in the sunlight. The crowd pressed close, relentless, a sea of colour and insistence. I froze, unsure how to move without buying something from everyone.
Ida, however, lit up like she’d been waiting for this all day.
She picked up a beaded bracelet. “How much?”
“Twenty thousand shillings,” the vendor said, firm, almost daring her to argue.
Ida raised an eyebrow, tilted her head, and said calmly, “Twenty? For a bracelet this skinny? He hasn’t eaten in days.”
The man blinked, then chuckled despite himself. “Okay, thirty.”
She smiled, shook her head, set the bracelet down, and started to walk away. The vendor hurried after her. “Fifteen, final.”
Without even looking back, Ida replied, “Ten”
There was a pause. Then laughter. The man finally nodded. “Okay, madam. Ten”
Victory. One bracelet secured. Only more to come.
But Ida and the girls weren’t finished. At the next stall, they haggled over a beaded keychain. Next, a bright kitenge fabric. Each time, the dance repeated—vendor opening high, they countering low, voices rising and falling like a duet. They teased, bargained, and pretended to walk away. One vendor swore she’d never sell so cheap, only to burst into laughter minutes later as the girls pocketed her prize at half the price.
We stood there, juggling my single modest mask, watching in awe as my friends transformed negotiation into performance art. The vendors adored them, even as they dismantled their prices with charm and persistence.
By the time we left, they carried the souvenir prizes. They strutted out like champions, leaving the arena. The vendors called after them with grins, shaking their heads at how thoroughly they’d been outplayed.
Kampala may belong to the bodas, but that day, the market belonged to Ida, and the girls.
the bus out — shaken, not stirred.
Evening drew in. We returned to the same bus that had carried us into Uganda, its body groaning as though protesting another journey. The seats rattled, the air was thick with the cries of children, the conductor’s shouts, the endless coughing of the engine.
We lurched forward, leaving behind the glowing chaos of Kampala. Outside the window, the last light of day slid over the hills, painting the city in shades of copper and shadow before it vanished into the dark. The roads were rough, the ride merciless—each pothole lifting us briefly into the air before slamming us back into the seats.
In front of us, Tita and As tried to hold their ground. Tita sat upright, earphones in, staring fixedly ahead as though sheer willpower might keep the bus from shaking apart. As, meanwhile, had given up entirely—slumped against the window, mouth open, asleep in defiance of the chaos. Each bump jolted her awake for a split second, only for her to drift back into unconsciousness.
Ida leaned her head against the glass, half-asleep, her newly won treasures tucked safely at her feet. My own modest bracelet rested on my wrist, its beaded flag lookalike glaring back at me in the dim light, as if mocking my lack of bargaining skills.
The bus shook and groaned, but inside I felt still—caught between fatigue and reflection. Kampala had been a test: the bodas that threatened to fling me into traffic, the tombs heavy with history and strange traditions, the mosque where the city spread out like a mural, the market where Ida ruled like a queen of commerce. It was chaos and charm braided together, a city that laughed at your attempts to control it and demanded you surrender to its rhythm.
As we rattled toward Nakuru City, the darkness thickened, pierced only by the occasional roadside fire or the glow of a village far off the road. My body ached, my mind buzzed, and yet—beneath the exhaustion—there was a rising thrill. This was only the beginning. Kampala had shaken me, thrilled me, tested me. And ahead lay more borders, more chaos, and landscapes I could only imagine.
I leaned against the window, lulled by the rattle of the bus. The city was gone, but its hum lingered in my bones.
Kampala had not let me leave unchanged.
The road out of Uganda bent east toward Kenya, and with it came a new kind of chaos. At the border, patience became the only true currency—lines snaked endlessly, officials shuffled papers with deliberate slowness, and the air buzzed with arguments, bargains, and the low murmur of travellers trying to slip through faster. Beyond the gate, the tarmac surrendered to dust, the landscape opening wide into a vast ochre horizon.
It was the threshold of the wild—where towns grew thin, the air smelled of earth and sun, and every mile carried us closer to the southern frontier of Kenya’s great safaris. Starting at Lake Nakuru National Park for our first game drive.
Talk to you soon on the next post.
Emir xx
