Before we got here, the part I was most worried about--more than diseases, more than moving the cat halfway across the world, more than our stuff getting lost or destroyed--was driving. I was lucky enough to have a day of driving training before we left, which covered stuff like swerving, braking really fast, and driving backward to get out of a dangerous situation, but it did not cover driving on the other side or traffic.
And yeah, the first few times out were pretty rough. Constantly turning on the wipers instead of the turn signal, occasionally driving on the wrong side of the road (especially after turning), getting stuck at intersections without being able to get a break in traffic. The worst part was after my Civic, our car is huge and I just didn't know where the other side of it was...especially since it was the wrong side. More than once, I was driving and Dustin had to go "Too close too close too close TOO CLOSE!!!!" (he was correct, I hit someone's mirror once. It was fine.)
There are not very many traffic lights in Kampala (and fewer outside).* Most intersections are kind of a free-for-all; there might be a "give way" sign that is invariably ignored. Our social sponsor described it as like water in that once it's flowing it keeps flowing, but if you can find a break you can make it flow another direction. It's a better analogy in real life than it sounds written. So you nose out; if you can tailgate someone else doing the same thing so much the better (but you have to really tailgate so no one else gets in there). If someone is turning left, great - they'll cover you in one direction. Drive down the wrong side for a few seconds if you need to until there's a break you can get into (hopefully no one is coming?).
Speaking of driving on the wrong side, we do a lot of it. On purpose. Someone driving slower than you'd like? Just jump to the other side to pass. Person randomly stopped? Jump over to get around. Too many pedestrians, not enough shoulder? Big pothole? Same thing. People even add a third lane sometimes, often when there does not seem to be room for it. Sometimes this gets kind of terrifying, especially outside Kampala where you can go a bit faster. When we bought this SUV, someone who had been here before said it was good because it was big enough to drive over a median. Apparently a u-turn is sometimes a good idea if you hit a traffic jam (those do not move). We did it for the first time when someone guiding cars through a construction zone left us on the wrong side.
That braking practice in the driving class has come in handy. There are tons of potholes and speed bumps, and people without SUVs tend to take them all verrrrrry slowly. (side note: I've seen a pothole back up traffic for a mile or more.) People also turn out in front of you with no warning, boda-bodas (motorcycles/mopeds, more on those in a separate entry) are all over the place, and people will just decide that the gap in front of you is where they're going to cross the street.
The mitigating factor for all of this is that everything happens very slowly. The speed limit inside Kampala (or any town, I think), is 50 km/hour, which is 31 mph. Mostly you don't even go that fast. It's kind of surreal to see a daring pass happening and realize they're going 25. You can stop pretty fast when you're going that slow, so it's ok to dive into any gap and trust that people will stop/slow down for you.
*When traffic gets heavy, traffic police take the place of the lights and control other tricky intersections. They lengthen the cycles a lot; I think this is because so many people run lights when they turn that decreasing the number of changes decreases the inefficiency? But it's pretty maddening when you were early for a meeting and eight minutes of sitting later you're no longer early. Dustin was convinced they make traffic worse, but then someone told me that was a common misconception, so one Friday afternoon the head of the police got tired of it and benched all the traffic officers. Apparently everything was significantly worse.
