a year to indefinite: Small steps

Today I'm back in Kampala. I was here last week, for a rather short time I might add considering the amount of travel it takes to get here. A round trip, especially if you're on a public bus, will usually take around ten hours. Less than half the day! And last week it was particularly disappointing because I was here to go to Immigration to apply for my Entry Visa so that I can have an extended stay in Uganda. And after spending around an hour chasing down the right office and seeing the right people, I came away with a list of the 'real requirements' as I like to call them and felt not that much closer to my goal.

And the realisation that before I can apply for a work permit I have to get a recommendation from the NGO Board.

So today I headed back to Immigration and the NGO Board, armed with what I hoped were all the 'requirements' I needed. We will see. A very efficient guy took my papers and gave me a receipt and told me that I will check back to see how it is progressing. When I asked him how long before I should check, he told me that he couldn’t even guess when it might be.

So now I need a special pass, a visa that allows me three months grace while I wait for all these other papers to be processed. And the reason I couldn't put in my form today? That's another story.

Let's just say I'm learning to take smaller steps than I expected to.

But this did bring me to make the decision to stay in Kampala for the night (I really couldn't face another bus ride so soon). And so I spent the afternoon following Pastor Willy around the city. Which was a lot of fun. I saw a side to Kampala that I haven't seen before. And I hope that I'm somehow now more familiar with it's geography, although I suspect I would manage to get lost fairly easily on my own. Sometimes it's a shambles with buildings that look like they might fall down at any moment. Sometimes you find a quiet oasis and look around in astonishment. Sometimes you see beggars and sometimes you see businessmen. But there is a bustle, an energy, a sense of being alive that makes me try to soak it all in, grab all I can.