Dialing Numbers in Kampala, Uganda
{ July 26th, 2008 }
One of the struggles of moving to a new place (especially one that’s still developing) is learning all the nuances of culture and daily living. Here’s one that confused the heck out of me for the first few days.
Most newer numbers in Kampala start with 7x. For example 71, 78 and 72. The full numbers usually have 8 digits in total with a “0″ prefix. So my number in Kampala is dailed (0)77-2500599 locally. If you were to call from America, you’d replace the “0″ with the country code for Uganda “256″. Pretty straight forward right?
Well here’s the confusing one. There are a bunch of Kampala numbers that start with 3x or 4x (31, 32 or 41, 42 etc.) prefixes but they only have 7 digits in total! When I tried calling these numbers by adding the “0″, they still didn’t work! It was maddening! After a while, Sarah and I summised that a digit had been added because all the working numbers had 8 digits while non-working ones had 7. It turns out that mystery digit is “4″. Are you confused? Here’s what I mean…
The number to Datanet is (0) 41-255520 but if you dail that, it won’t work. However if you dial (0) 414-255520 it does work! I have no idea why this is the case, someone will tell us some day but if you’re an expat with no clue like we are, hopefully this post will save you a ton of time and grief because half the numbers in the country don’t work without it!
