How We Crossed In To Uganda

On more than one occasion I found myself admiring the individual stalks of papyrus over looking for the secretive Papyrus Yellow Warbler that calls them home. Truth be told, I didn’t want to be here. I was supposed to be in Uganda…

We had first visited a papyrus swamp that for all intents and purposes should have been perfect. We should have had these birds already and another stop shouldn’t have been necessary. We even went out on a boat to get into the thick of it, as it was too deep to walk, but still missed our birds. Unfortunately we had met a local who said there was papyrus we could walk through and we believed him. So we left our perfect spot to check out his. Despite the local telling us it was close, it took nearly 40 minutes to get there and when we arrived the habitat was all wrong and the heat of the day had set in. We still searched for a bit but then left, opting not to waste any more time and move forward to our next destination, Kakamega Forest.

But Kakamega went really well, so we had time, and we decided to try again at another location.
Oh, but I said we were supposed to be in Uganda and not looking for these birds, didn’t I? Well, we really didn’t need any of them. We decided it would be in our best interest to move forward with our trip and cross into Uganda a day ahead of schedule to take a rest day of ZERO BIRDING. We hadn’t had many breaks in Kenya thus far and the effects of hardcore, nonstop birding for the last 26 days were setting in. I can only go at that pace for so long before I just need a day to recoup and reset before we do it all again.
We were en route to the border, only an hour away in fact, when I made the mistake of looking into Uganda’s current COVID situation and the current curfew in place. I couldn’t find any up to date information, so I dug deeper, even asking around on an overlanding Facebook page that we are members of, and learned that Uganda might be going back into a lockdown. We also reached out to a few ex-pats living in the country and they could not predict what the president would do. This is not the kind of news you want to get when only an hour away from entering the country. We didn’t know what to do, but ultimately decided against crossing into Uganda for fear we could get stuck in a strict 14-day lockdown.
This is a perfect example of a risk we were willing to take in coming back to Africa at the tail-end of a global pandemic. We knew flexibility would be key, and making decisions in spite of uncertainty, a needed asset. We had a friend meeting us in Uganda on June 2nd, so not only did we need to do what is best for us, we needed to factor in what is best for our good friend Julien.
We decided it would be best to stay in Kenya until the president of Uganda announced his plans. It was Sunday and we thought the president would speak on Monday. But Monday came and he didn’t. Nor did he speak Tuesday. It was rumored he would speak Wednesday, the day after Julien was set to arrive, so Julien postponed his flight. We thought we were being safe, making the best decision in the little time we had to prepare, but then we looked a little closer into the numbers. Uganda is a country of 45 million people. 45 MILLION. And there have been a total of 364 deaths (at the time of this writing) in the country since LAST MARCH.
We realized there was no way the country could go into a complete lockdown with numbers looking like that so we opted to enter and as a result I got two full days at a Marriott Hotel right on the water of Lake Victoria in the city of Entebbe. (Hotel purchase made via Ross’s Marriott points so we didn’t pay a dime! And even got upgraded thanks to his “Embassador” Status!)
The president did make an announcement, and while inter-district travel was banned for most citizens, tourists and any tourist-registered vehicles were exempt in an attempt to retain some economic flow.
It looked like crossing into Uganda was a good decision and our trip could continue with little impact from these new restrictions.