Introduction to “African time”

So I went to the main market downtown today with a group of VSO ex-pats. The moment you walk in you’re assaulted by a thick wall of varied smells, not all of them pleasant, and a litany of “Mzungu! Mzungu!” There are sections of the market devoted to different things. About six of us, all timid mzungus new to the country, slowly snaked our way through the never-ending maze of narrow hallways flanked by stalls. The market is outdoors, although part of it is covered. We walked past the groundnut section with aluminium pots, the meat section (no fridges!), the fruit and vegetable section and finally a massive clothing section. People yelled “Madam, this is your size!” while pointing at matronly size 16 skirts. People grabbed us as we walked by. The atmosphere got increasingly claustrophobic and after an hour or so we started to make our way out.

I stopped on the way to bargain for a cutlery set. I ended up paying about $CDN 2.50 for them. When I got home that night, I tried to make a peanut butter sandwich. The peanut butter bent one of my flimsily new knives almost to the point of breaking. I guess I got my money’s worth.

Later in the day we went swimming at one of the hotels, got some Indian food and went to the last day of the Kampala International Film Festival. The festival showed a mishmash of unlikely films, ranging from the somewhat understandable Ugandan films from the 1960s to the completely inexplicable Motorcycle Diaries. On this particular day they were showing the latter. We sat at the restaurant, killing time, texting our friend to find out when we should arrive at the theatre. The movie was scheduled for 9:30. At 8:00 we were told they were running an hour and a half behind schedule. A few minutes later, 2 hours. A while after that we received a call urging us to hurry up, as the movie was “preponed” and was due to started imminently. Five minutes later, it was back to 9:30.

We showed up about then, then waited half an hour to 45 minutes for the previous movie to end. So, the 9:30 movie started shortly after 10, which I’m learning, in this part of the world, is pretty good.

I enjoyed the Motorcycle Diaries. Felt like a good time to be watching it, although instead of freeing the people through revolution I seem to be tinkering around my office, doing legal research, with only the vaguest inkling about what I’m actually going to do. I have no illusions about freeing anyone.

Anyway, after the film we all clambered to the car, piled in and got set to be driven home. The key turns in the ignition. Nothing. The car won’t start. Dead battery. It was around 1 in the morning. Normally I’d be aggravated, but this kind of thing happens all the time here. Even though I was absolutely exhausted I couldn’t even muster up annoyance. Apparently I’m adjusting to African life. Hakuna matata!

We approached a special hire taxi driver and asked him for a boost. He told us he’d do it for 10,000 shillings. After about 15 minutes of haggling we knocked him down to 5,000. The booster cables were a couple of thin wires. After many false starts, including a close call with Dominik, a Canadian VSO volunteer, stopping the taxi driver from crossing the wires in the nick of time. All of this was supervised by one of the ever-present rifle-toting security guards. Finally, the car started and we got home to bed, but not before Rebecca (yes, another VSO) and I strung up a mosquito net using two of the world’s most useful items: dental floss and carabiners.

Fake soap!

The soap in the work washroom produces absolutely no suds. Julia, the VSO librarian here, wisely realized that something was awry. The water here is so soft that the tiniest bit of soap usually produces mounds of lather. She replaced it and asked one of our Ugandan colleagues about it. The soap was fake! Apparently fake soap is a major problem here, along with fake shoe polish and fake bottled water. The most popular goods are the most counterfeited (people here are crazy about shining their shoes, and bottled water is a necessity). The bottled water is drained from a hole drilled in the bottom of the bottle, replaced with water from the tap, and then stopped up again so that the seal on the cap remains intact. What an amazing feat of innovation! It makes you wonder what those people would be up to if they didn’t have to struggle for basic necessities. Maybe the guy making fake soap would be curing cancer.

How to quit smoking

If you know me you’re familiar with my endless attempts to quit smoking. The last one was 3 days before I left for Kampala. For anyone who’s wondering, it’s very easy to be a non-smoker here. You can’t smoke inside any public places. Most people don’t smoke –most people can’t afford to smoke. No one at work smokes. Of all the people I’ve met, only one or two ever take a puff, and they’re ex-pats.

So, for anyone looking to quit, moving to Uganda is an effective method. I tried nicotine gum, the patch, self-help books and Zyban. Nothing worked. So I decided to take drastic measures. You generally don’t crave, because no one’s smoking, and when you do crave you can’t be bothered to trek for half an hour down the bumpy dirt road to the off-licence shop that sells cigarettes. You don’t gain weight because there’s largely no junk food to be had here. When you do get snacky you go to the kitchen and ask yourself “Do I want this variety of banana, or this slightly different variety of banana?” Also, conducting daily tasks is a lot of work (no washing machines etc.) so you get exercise without even trying. Nothing works up a sweat like walking up Kampala’s hills under the blazing sun.

The down side is that my lungs feel as if I still smoked, thanks to the air pollution. You’d be amazed (or disgusted) by the black stuff I blow out my nose each day. Not to mention the red dust.

So don’t worry folks, you too can quit smoking.

Would you like some banana with your banana?

Julia, Sam and I work together in the Legal Resources Centre here at the Uganda Law Society. Each day we buy groundnuts (peanuts) from a woman with a stall. You get a generous portion, say a third of a cup, wrapped in a scrap paper cone (right now the paper is an application to join a Kampala Indian association). Each cone of g-nuts costs 100 shillings.

Speaking of shillings, the people at work gasped today when I told them I paid 500 shillings for what should have been a 300 shilling matutu trip. A matatu is a minibus taxi and it’s the closest thing to public transit here. You hop in and cling for dear life while the driver whizzes around town at breakneck speed. When you want to get off, you say “stage.” Anyway, I didn’t know any better and gave 500 shs to the conductor and walked away. My friend was going on and on about how I’d been ripped off. I was annoyed, but then I thought about it and realized that 200 shillings is less than 14 cents.

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We get Ugandan food for lunch every day. It’s pretty good. It would take me three days to make all the dishes offered. It’s fairly healthy too, although Ugandans sure do like their starches. There are often 6 or 7 at a meal. Matoke (a kind of banana), cassava, posho, squash, Irish potato, sweet potato, rice and gonja (another kind of banana) all might be included in a single meal. There’s also groundnut sauce, stewed greens, chicken, meat stews and beans.

Matoke is the national dish of this part of Uganda. Apparently it’s an acquired taste. It tastes a little bland to me, but is good with sauce. Most people here absolutely adore it though. In some parts of the country it’s eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The grilled cassava definitely leaves something to be desired. It’s cut into long chunks and grilled. That’s it. It’s very dry. I imagine that eating it is somewhat similar to biting into a piece of drywall. On the whole though, I look forward to my African lunches.

Ki kati? from Kampala

I arrived in Kampala Friday morning. There was a slight mix-up so my ride did not pick me up from the airport in Entebbe. You may remember that I have never travelled in the developing world before. I was terribly frightened! I waited for a few hours, and then took a special hire (private taxi) to my room in Kampala.

Uganda is unlike anything I have ever seen. There is greenery almost everywhere. Where there is not greenery there is red dirt, the dust from which sticks to everything, including your clothing. I was in complete shock for the entire drive to Kampala. Barefoot children. Goats and chickens on the roads. No traffic laws to speak of. Tin shanties. Scaffolding made of thin tree limbs. Roaring around on motorcycles with no helmets. Huge piles of matoke (savoury bananas) everywhere you look. And that barely scratches the surface of the strange and (sometimes) wonderful things I’ve seen!

There is a British volunteer here at the Law Society (Julia) who took me under her wing. She and her partner Ron took me out for dinner the first night and took me around town the next day. The power had cut out, so I used my flashlight to find my way out of my hostel room. That was fortuitous, as I needed to use it on the walk to the restaurant to avoid falling into the uncovered manholes.

The next day one of my supervisors (Brendah) took me to my house. It is in a fairly posh part of the city called Bukoto. My house is on a street with no name and it has no house number. It’s a very pretty semi-detached with two bedrooms. There is a nice yard with a garden in both front and back, with a papaya tree and a banana tree. Unlike most flats in Kampala, my house came furnished. It is very luxurious, with television and hot water. It's surrounded by a high wall. Power cuts in my area are rare –in fact there has only been one since I moved in. Apparently an important person lives in my neighbourhood so the powers that be make extra efforts to keep the power on. I have a nighttime guard and a groundskeeper. It’s very strange to have people working for me and it makes me uncomfortable. My guard is Congolese, so I get to practice my French. Although it is a rich neighbourhood, all neighbourhoods here tend to be mixed, so right across the street there are people living in wooden shacks.

After dropping off my things we went to Julia and Ron’s place; they took me around town to buy things for my house. We took matatus (shared mini-buses) the whole way. It’s very exciting! After shopping we went to a barbecue with members of Julia’s volunteer organization. I met a bunch of people there, and we went for brunch together Sunday and out for traditional Ugandan dancing Sunday evening.

I started work yesterday. My colleagues are very warm and friendly. I think the work is going to be very interesting. My supervisor has not been able to meet with me yet, but I have found some other work to do in the meantime. I don’t want to only spend my time hanging out with expats, so I am trying to make some Ugandan friends as well. To that end, one of the young lawyers here went with me downtown yesterday. She took me for a soda and a banana and we had a nice chat. I hope to continue to develop these connections. I’m also looking for Luganda lessons. Swahili is useless here (it reminds people of the days of Idi Amin). I feel imperialist walking up to impoverished people who have not had the benefitof education and expecting them to speak my language. So Luganda it is.

All in all, things are going well. Although I am very privileged here, life is still difficult compared to Canada. Doing something like buying coffee can take the bulk of an afternoon. It will take time to get used to life here, but I think it will be worth it. Part of the adjustment means dealing with my new identity as “muzungu.” That is what white people are called, and people yell it to me as I walk down the street. It’s cute when it’s little children. It’s less cute when it’s a group of men standing in the shadows. I hope that learning to communicate in the local language will make me a little less of an outsider.