We arrive in Uganda. So we’re in the country with the definitely most dangerous driving habits in the world and millions of motorbike drivers with passenger but, all without helmets trying to survive between the suicide car drivers – as you can state all sounds a little familiar to situations in the Congo.As far as we could observe, Uganda has not yet adopted driving on the left or the right side of the road, they are still experimenting with all traffic crossing in the middle of the road. In this situation the real art of driving is not the selection of the correct gear, not being confused which is the pedal for the brake and the one for accelerating, or closing the car’s door before driving on a highway.
In Uganda driving has much more of a psychological touch. You see you have to cross a car. You and your oncoming counterpart car both drive in the middle. Of course both cars drive at least 150km/h. Now you have to find out within seconds – should you go on the left side of the road, or better on the right side, would maybe your counterpart go on the right side when you do the same, or maybe on the left one – all questions to be answered in no time and with a lot of psychological sensitivity. But once you master this and if you have the opportunity to gain some experience after having crossed a few cars – thus not being one on these numerous victims of these slightly unusual driving in Uganda – then you’re fine with the system of driving in the middle of the road, you enjoy your decisions and specially the correct ones of your oncoming driver who also seems to be quite sensitive on these questions. But we, especially Martin as the driver and Monika as the navigator, both lost 10kg (each) after driving through Kampala (don’t be afraid we regained our weight with water enriched with hope, malt and barley after leaving the proud capital of Uganda). The car got an extra filling of heavy, high sulphur diesel and it was happy to continue.
