Literary crimes: The angry blogger

OK, I have many wonderful observations on life in Uganda that I have written by hand and will one day soon commit to screen, but first, I must use this forum for the most grievous sort of blog faux pas -the hurriedly typed out knee-jerk reaction to something that ticks you off.

I was reading an article here about Radio Katwe, a Ugandan website that is sharply critical of the current regime. The website has been blocked in Uganda. At the bottom of the article is a reader comment:

Reader comment: John G. says,

While I agree that the censorship in the case of Radio Katwe is a
bad idea, there have been other occasions in Africa (specifically
Rwanda) where censorship or jamming of "hate radio" might have caused
the tragic events there to play out differently. Radio, like any
medium, is simply a tool that is imbued with positive or negative
influence by its creator, More here on radio's role in the Rwanda
Genocide: (link to very basic info about the use of the RTLM radio
station to incite genocide in 1994).

Since I can't figure out how to post comments on that page, I will tell you instead.

This person falls into the trap of failing to view sub-Saharan Africa as anything more than a non-distinct and blurry mass of "Africans," with all countries and peoples indistinguishable from one another at any given time. While African states do share many of the same problems, one must seek to avoid falling into the trap of conflating separate issues merely because they both happen to take place on the "dark continent."

Firstly, RTLM in Rwanda was a radio station, while Radio Katwe is not on the airwaves. As is clear from reading the article, the current issue is the blocking of the website. The internet and radio are two very different media, with very different levels of diffusion and impact in this part of the world. The RTLM was hate radio, which explicitly encouraged Hutu extremists to murder Tutsis, moderate Hutus, and UNAMIR representatives. Radio Katwe is sharply critical of the NRM government, but stops far short of encouraging violence of any kind. Comparing the RTLM in the Rwanda of 1994 to Radio Katwe in Uganda in 2006 indicates that the writer has absolutely no understanding of the respective situations aside from the fact that they both involve broadcast media and take place in East Africa (although from the writer's use of the term "sub-Saharan Africa," I doubt that he even knows that).

While the writer claims to distinguish between the two situations, his comment indicates otherwise, as he conflates them by referring to them both using the term "hate radio." The mere fact that he raises the comment in the form of a warning belies his true position. John G's comment is analogous to this:

"While I disagree with censorship in the case of the Russian press
today, there have been other occasions in Europe where censorship of hate speech might have caused tragic events to play out differently (specifically in Nazi Germany)."

Would anyone compare the efforts of a struggling democracy to engage in political speech to the hate campaigns of the Nazis, implying that the situations are somehow similar because they take place in Europe? No, of course, we realize they are not comparable. Then why is it any different when it's happening in Africa? Once again, it's poor woe begotten Ahhh-frique-ahhhh, a continent of identical children incapable of managing their own affairs; instead of a group of individual nations filled with intelligent human beings trying to make the most of their diverse situations.

Ahhhh. Sorry for the outburst, but I feel much better now.

A wise Muganda once said. . .

I just have to share this awesome Baganda saying my friend just told me:

"Ata natambula, awaana nnyina okufumba."

Translation?

"He who hasn't moved around in the neighbourhood, thinks his mother is the best cook."

How much is that chicken in the window?

I was having tea at my neighbour Rebecca’s tonight when we suddenly heard a great flutter and clucking. It sounded much closer than the usual cluckings of the chickens that wander our compound. We looked outside to find the groundskeeper Monica’s chicken sitting in Rebecca’s living room window, happily clucking away. Considering the current furor about avian flu, we decided the chicken should probably not sit in the window (about 2 feet from my head). She also appeared quite excited, so we feared she was stuck there, like a cat up a tree. I picked her up and gently placed her on the ground while she clucked bloody murder, seemingly immune to my soft mutterings of “good chicken.”

About five minutes later she was back in the window again. As I often do here, I thrust my hands up in the air and resigned myself to Fate, placidly chiding myself for expecting what I considered reasonable to prevail. The chicken would henceforth live in the window. Eventually Innocent, my guard from the D.R. Congo, arrived, and I excitedly shouted “Innocent, il y a une poule sur la fenêtre!” There are some situations that French class just doesn’t prepare you for. Innocent explained the chicken was looking for a place to roost for the night, and sure enough, she appeared to be sleeping peacefully. He then carried her around back to her chicken house.



She left some droppings on Rebecca’s porch. When I returned home I discovered, perhaps just in case I was feeling unloved because my window was not fit for roosting, she had defecated all over my porch as well.

Stranger than fiction

Things have quieted down on the political front. Certain banned political demonstrations (like the lawyers’ vigil at the High Court) went ahead without incident (read: no tear gas). Opposition leader Besigye was freed –after much humming and hawing. Things are still going on, but it’s basically life as usual.

Beyond politics, there are many things that happen hear that place me in situations far beyond the realm of my understanding. Take Sipi Falls.

I went there the first week of December. The falls themselves are beautiful, but we were there for Uganda’s only sport climbing –about 13 newly bolted routs of varying difficulty on a short cliff at the top of the valley.

It was a somewhat arduous journey to our hostel. My neighbour Rebecca and I left at 7am for the post office. They run a Post Bus along major routes, stopping at all post offices along the way to exchange packages and passengers. The bus takes longer than others, but is widely touted to be safer than the massive flying coffins that careen down cross country roads, passing blindly, speeding recklessly, and yes, crashing with alarming regularity. Our friend Karen joined us in Jinja.

It happened to be the end of the school term, so the bus was completely overcrowded and quite uncomfortable. Children crouched in the aisles and baggage teetered every which way. And as no long bus trip is complete without it, there was also a fairly sizable contingent of uncaged live chickens.

After eight gruelling hours we arrived at the town of Mbale. We paused at the bus park, where a gentleman peddling pictures with words of wisdom on them passed his wares to me through the window. I finally settled on one that says TRAINING A FOOL IS NOT A JOKE. Its hilarity is difficult to convey without showing the accompanying picture. Maybe I’ll scan it one day. Anyway, it now graces my living room wall. There were a great many sayings in this pile of accepted wisdom, but the one we found unbelievable said A WOMAN WHO DISOBEYS HER HUSBAND IS BEATEN EVERYDAY, along with a drawing of a woman cowering in fear beneath a menacing man with a raised fist. At that point I thought to myself, “Cara, you’re not in Kampala anymore.” Little did I know that this was just the beginning.

I should have bought the picture, simply because without seeing it I have trouble believing it exists. However, we had had a couple of other experiences on the trip that I felt had filled my misogyny quotient for the day. At this point, I felt slightly nauseated and just wanted the offending picture to go away.

We were finally dropped off on the streets of Mbale, were we were immediately surrounded by about 20 men, all yelling at the same time. It was hard to know what they were saying, but the gist seemed to be offers of transport to various places and orders that we modify our behaviour to bring it into line with their expectations. We tried to sneak away, which was largely to no avail and seemed to make things worse as the men became increasingly upset by our unfeminine impudence. After much brouhaha, we made our way to Sipi, chartering a special hire that operated as a group taxi, with the 3 of us paying for fare for 5 so we wouldn’t have to wait for more passengers. After reaching that agreement the driver proceeded to wait for more passengers anyway, seeing a chance to make a little extra coin since we had already said we’d pay the whole fare. After additional protracted negotiations, however, the three of us were on our way. We arrived at Sipi after all these hours exhausted and dehydrated (the only washroom is the side of the road, and as a white woman your “short call,” as the locals call it, is guaranteed to be the most widely watched show of the day, so unless you are a closet exhibitionist, you learn to moderate your intake). We sat back and ate, drank, used the facilities away from a hundred prying eyes, and relaxed with some more friends who arrived later in the day.

It was extremely cold that night, so the friendly hostel staff started a campfire and huddled around it, drinking their local brew. The people were Sabiny from Kapchorwa District. Two of the travellers around the fire were Baganda –Uganda’s largest ethnic group, who live in the centre and south of the country. A Muganda woman was talkling to the Sabiny about their local brew. The compared ingredients and methods. Finally, one of the Sabiny men mentioned that the brew played a special role in their circumcision ceremonies. All the non-Sabiny people gasped as we realized that they were referring to female genital mutilation. The Sabiny are the only tribe in Uganda to practice this.

The men defended the practice, noting that its incidence had dropped to a small proportion of women and girls, and that it was necessary to protect their unique culture. One told a story about the origins of the practice 1500 years ago. A hunter, gone away for an extended period, returned to find one of his wives pregnant (yes, polygamy happens here too). After explanation everyone understood that the reason for the practice was to make sex too painful for women to contemplate straying. We westerners and Baganda made grand speeches about the barbarous and deplorable nature of the practice, and as it went on I noticed our hosts seemed increasingly insulted. Not surprisingly, calling people barbarians dose not encourage them to see your point of view.

We never did settle our differences, and to a great extent our points seemed lost on each other. One of the other men defended the practice by saying that it didn’t matter because sex was still enjoyable. He was clearly speaking only of the male perspective. Knowing a woman could not get away with such a question, I urged my Muganda friend to ask “What about the women?” The Sabiny man looked at my friend like he’d asked how his flying pigs were faring.

Another memorable moment was when a Muganda woman cited examples of change in Baganda culture. The eradication of certain “harmful traditional practices” (to use the accepted term from the delicately worded world of international human rights law and development NGOs) that, while changing Baganda culture, did not erode it. Her example was the “harmful traditional practice” of men beating women. At that point one of the men interjected incredulously, saying “But beating women is not culture. That’s just normal.” There were no Sabiny women around the fire like that –the women seemed to work every waking hour- so we couldn’t get their perspective.

So, that was how I came to sit around a fire debating female genital mutilation with proponents of the practice.

Photos online

My yard
Originally uploaded by noisymonkey.

I have put some photos online. They are on www.flickr.com. If it the "noisymonkey" link above doesn't take you to them, then I'm sorry, I think you need to sign up to see them. They are either under the username noisymonkey or my first and last name with no spaces. Sorry to be so clueless.

A harlot in drag

Well, it seems like no matter how hard I try, I end up either looking like a man or like a prostitute.

Actually, I often end up OK, as I brought a lot of flowy skirt type things and blouses. The difference between what's considered acceptable dress for women in Canada and Uganda is quite interesting, however.

Here's an example of a serious letter to the editor sent to the respected New Vision newspaper:

Women should keep away from wearing pants
Monday, 28th November, 2005

SIR — In Uganda women have become masters at encroaching on men’s domain. First they tried to oust us in the corporate world, then in sports and for now, after the female condom, they are fighting for trousers with us.

For smooth running of our nation, let women keep away from trousers. Some of these women have decided to forego decency, leaving men to feast their eyes on the display of stretch marks and navels.

Yet they claim to understand that men are weak creatures who ‘melt’ at the sight of such delicate body parts.

Women seem to forget that trousers display their worst flaws which vary in degree from one wearer to another.

Until women change to long, loose skirts or decent trouser suits, men will not let them pass by undisturbed.

Chuma Festus Gakuo
Makerere University

(note: I am pretty sure that "stretch marks" refers not to those marks on skin from gaining or losing weight, but to the pull of fabric tight against the body)

The status of women here is something I haven't yet touched on. I'm trying to keep things light here, so I'm going to skip articulating a long list of incredibly depressing and graphic things and just say it's different than what Canadians are used to. At the same time, the status of women changes depending on who and where you are. The life of an educated woman in Kampala is worlds apart from that of most rural women, and the attitudes of the men are just as divergent.

As a foreigner, I can largely get away with doing whatever I want, but my wardrobe choices do sometimes have an effect.

As the letter to the editor indicates, the men here are particularly obsessed with the bottom half of a woman's anatomy. I try to be as inconspicuous as possible (not very easy for a white person in Africa) and so I tend to keep my shorts in the closet. An exception was when I ran the Kampala 10km race. During the race was fine, but I suffered endless harassment both to and from the race.

Women who exhibit certain behaviours commonly associated with men are assumed to be prostitutes. Of course, unbeknownst to me, I have been exhibiting these behaviours pretty much constantly.

I also wear pants at every given opportunity, something relatively new here. My neighbour Rebecca went to visit the Kasubi Tombs the other day. The Tombs are the burial site of one of the Kabakas, the kings of the Baganda (who live in Buganda in Uganda, where each individual Muganda can speak Luganda -holy complicated!). Anyway, Rebecca went there with her friend Blaze (a Ugandan). The man selling entrance tickets gave her a dirty look, threw a sarong-type piece of fabric to her and in a most accusatory tone told Blaze, "She must wear that because SHE IS DRESSED LIKE A MAN!"

So here I am, dressed like a man and acting like a prostitute, but I am assured by my friends that people here understand that my culture is different and they forgive accidental transgressions. Except for when dear old Chuma Festus Gakuo of Makerere University sees me in my running clothes. Then it's no holds barred.

Is there anybody out there?

The Uganda I’m living in now is not the Uganda I arrived in two months ago. Two months ago Uganda was a success story. High rates of economic growth for sub-Saharan Africa, increased quality of life, more political freedom, and so on. There were still some very bad things, like the never-ending war in the North with its 1.5 million displaced people, and some ominous signs of what was to come, like President Museveni amending the constitution to allow him to run for a third term. But despite these things, Uganda looked like a country on the rise.

In ten days everything has changed. President Museveni has betrayed his true intentions. The best leader Uganda has ever had has taken a serious turn for the worse. He could have bowed out and retained respect, like Tanzania’s Nyerere did. Instead, Museveni is following the footsteps of Mugabe and his ilk.

Here are the latest headlines.

• The men in black who surrounded the Court last week were a government paramilitary group that has become known as the “Black Mamba Urban Hit Squad.” An army official said they were there to re-arrest the 22 co-accused of Besigye and take them to be tried in a court martial (a military court). The 22 co-accused are all civilians.
  


• The judge hearing the civil case recused himself, ostensibly too intimidated by the prospect of military squads in his courtroom to continue hearing the case.
  


• The 22 co-accused, having already been arraigned in civil court, were also arraigned in a court martial for the same offences. This violates a well-known principle of law that prohibits being tried twice for the same offence. If found guilty in either court, they face the death penalty.
  


• An unknown gunman shot at Besigye’s cousin and close ally while she was driving in a car. She was not injured.
  


• Principal Judge James Oogala spoke out against the Black Mamba’s attack on the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law, referring to it as the “rape” of the justice system
  


• On Monday November 21, the Uganda Law Society convened an emergency meeting in Kampala. Members spoke out against recent events and resolved to sue the government for violating the constitution. They declared Besigye and his co-accused to be prisoners of conscience, and resolved to hold a sit-down strike this coming Monday. They are to not come to work but instead come to the High Court in their court attire to stand in solidarity with the Court in silent protest against Museveni’s trampling of the rule of law. It was big news.
  


• At the same Uganda Law Society meeting, Fox Odoi, the presidential legal assistant, said that the Black Mambas overtook the Court because they had received intelligence indicating there was a terrorist threat to be directed at the many diplomats in the courtroom. The Mambas were simply there for their protection. In response to this, a lawyer present at the meeting asked, if that was the case, why did the Mambas follow the prisoners to the jail, leaving the diplomats alone and unprotected?
  


• On Tuesday, Museveni issued a decree banning all “demonstrations, processions, public rallies and assemblies” related to the case against Besigye. This is despite constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and association. The Uganda Law Society’s planned strike is now illegal.
  


• Besigye was offered a deal under the Amnesty Act, which provides Amnesty to rebels who admit their guilt. He rejected it, maintaining his innocence. This deal was not a real deal at all, as by accepting the amnesty he would be barring himself from holding political office.
  


• On Wednseday, the government banned all talk shows and media debates on all pending court cases, including Besigye’s. The Minister of State for Information, Dr. James Nsaba, had this to say regarding cancelling the licences of media houses that disrespect the ban: “Revocation of the licence is something I am very eager to do” (Daily Monitor, Nov 24, 2005, p 1).
  


• On Thursday, riots are anticipated in response to Besigye’s scheduled bail hearing. The military deployed throughout the city. Uganda People’s Defence Force lined major streets with guns and batons. The Black Mambas were seen driving around town in military vehicles. Police were also deployed at Kampala fuel stations. Apparently this is to prevent “suspicious” people from purchasing fuel that might be used to destroy property in riots. One might also note, however, that preventing people from buying fuel has the additional effect of preventing them from leaving.
  


• Instead of being taken to the High Court for his scheduled bail hearing, Besigye was taken to the court martial on Thursday morning.
  


• Later on Thursday morning at the court martial, Besigye’s lawyers were arrested for “contempt of court” for arguing that the court martial does not have jurisdiction over Besigye, a civilian. The detained lawyers are Elias Lukwago and Caleb Alaka. My Canadian colleagues, imagine if you will being incarcerated simply for representing your client. It truly boggles the mind.
  


• Besigye, after being charged with terrorism and being in possession of illegal firearms at the court martial, was transferred to the High Court. Besigye was returned to Luzira Prison later this afternoon. His bail hearing could not be completed because his lawyers were still in detention at the court martial.
  

So, here we are. The situation has deteriorated rapidly, and who can really say what will happen next?

But wait, before you write this off as just another example of African failure, to be sighed at and then brushed from one’s mind, like so many other nameless places -Burundi, Zimbabwe, Congo, Rwanda- I want you to remember. Remember Innocent, the smiling night guard bearing sweet potatoes. Remember Max, the singing taxi driver. Remember Margaret, my cleaner from the war-torn north who cares for 6 children alone but never complains. Think of the child skipping behind me gaily, then presenting me with the gift of a coveted grasshopper before running off in a fit of shy giggles. Think of the man who walks for 10 minutes out of his way to make sure I find the place I’m looking for. Think of the lawyers sitting in prison because they fulfilled their professional duty. Don't worry if it makes you feel uncomfortable, that just means you're human. But remember them. Whatever happens, let it be recorded somewhere, anywhere.

We passed here. Like you, we lived, we loved, we died.

The wind beneath my wings

I have found a regular taxi driver. His name is Max and he’s awesome. He drives me around at night in a beat up old hatchback. His car always smells of gasoline. One day we drove through a puddle and my feet got wet. Sometimes we run out of gas (people here tend to drive with very little gas in the car.)

He loves singing, and we frequently sing together in the car. He’s a romantic, so he likes to sing romantic pop ballads from the 80s. He does a fantastic rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings.” He’s into word games too, referring to our car singing as “cara-oke.”

He offers fair prices without having to bargain, and sends me inspirational text messages on occasions such as when I ran the 10km race yesterday.

Speaking of that race, there was a picture of the runners on the front page of the New Vision today. If you look really closely you can see me standing next to my friend Shannon. I have saved it to lord my moment of fame over you all! (Just kidding, of course).

Kampala marathon

I ran in a 10km race today. A marathon started at 7 a.m., and then the 10km started at 7:30. Surprisingly, they both started on time.

The route avoided the worst of Kampala’s hills. It was hot though, and when I arrived at the water station at kilometre 3 I was told “the water is finished.” There were boxes of what appeared to be sealed and therefore full boxes of bottled water all around, so I suspected the water intended for the runners had been “diverted.” Apparently nothing is exempt from the corruption that is so endemic here.

I got some water at km 5, however, and managed to hobble along until the end, when I used the exertion as an excuse to spoil myself with rich meals and drinks on a poolside patio for the balance of the day.

There was also a 10km disabled race. The disabled racers don’t have the racing wheelchairs you see in Canada. In fact, most people don’t have wheelchairs at all. Instead, people fashion pads for their knees and wear flip flops on their hands and crawl around the town, which is dangerous considering the traffic. Those same people who doggedly crawl through life also crawled through 10 kilometres under the hot sun. Do you ever have those moments where you feel like the biggest whiner on earth for having ever complained about the relatively trite difficulties in your life? Yeah, me too.

Safety first!

I went climbing at a climbing wall in Jinja today. It’s the closest place to climb anything that I’m aware of. The next closest place (with real rock!) is Sipi Falls, about 8 hours away. The wall at Jinja is attached to a bungy tower. It’s made of planks of rough wood.

Not surprisingly, the safety measures were somewhat lacking. The top-rope was set up with a strand of fraying webbing tied to the iron girding of the bungy tower. The rope was attached via a single carabiner. The climbing guy tried to tie us in by tying a knot in the rope, attaching it to a carabiner, and then attaching said carabiner to the harness.

As we climbed, the holds frequently spun around, sending us flying. We climbed in bare feet. Bare feet + wooden wall = I’m sure you can imagine.
I’m usually much more frightened climbing on real rock than at climbing walls, but this was an exception! Anyway, we managed to get a little climbing in and survive to tell the tale. I have procured photographic evidence of the sketchy set-up, so if I ever manage to post pictures, you can see it for yourselves.

Culinary delights

I was taking a coaster (read: smaller than a regular bus, bigger than a minibus) to Jinja. When you stop at certain points, people in uniforms trying to sell snacks and drinks surround the bus. This includes water, fruit, and the omnipresent meat-on-a-stick. If you are foreign you can expect the snack-mongers to be particularly pressing. On this day, a gentleman was trying to sell me some meat-on-a-stick. We went back and forth, him telling me to buy meat, me politely shaking my head and saying “no, thank you.” Eventually he could take it no longer, and thrust the meat-on-a-stick through the window, waving it about 2 inches from my face, yelling “MUZUNGU! YOU EAT GOAT”

Needless to say, his tactics did not make me feel inclined to taste his wares.

I have since tried goat-on-a-stick, and while it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t something I’d care to repeat.

Speaking of tasty treats, it is grasshopper season. The grasshoppers here are big and bright green. When de-winged and de-legged and fried in a bit of oil, they are considered a great delicacy. At night people catch them in this huge corrugated metal traps. The grasshoppers fly towards the bright lights surrounding the traps and fall in somehow. You’ll note that while power cuts are happening all over the city at any given time, the grasshopper lights shine on the whole night through.

I tried a single grasshopper. It was actually quite tasty, with a flavour evocative of some sort of legume. But the yummy taste wasn’t quite enough for me to get over the fact that I was picking antennae out of my teeth, so this is another snack that I likely won’t try twice.

Calm

The riots of Monday and Tuesday gave way to calm on Wednesday. But despite the peace and quiet, there is a palpable air of uncertainty. More and more it seems that, despite almost 20 years of successful and relatively peaceful rule, President Museveni is acting like yet another strongarm African leader who refuses to relinquish power. It certainly doesn't make any sense to me. Museveni recently paid $US 1 million to promote Ugandan tourism on CNN, probably money wasted now. Over half of the Ugandan budget comes from foreign aid. If the president continues along this path, donors are sure to pull funding, and the results won't be good. At Besigye's court date Tuesday the room was full of representatives from the UK, Japan, the U.S., Scandinavian countries, etc.. They are watching.

Fourteen of Besigye's co-accused were granted bail yesterday, but elected to return to jail as a group of unidentified armed men in black t-shirts were waiting for them outside the court. The BBC has good coverage here. The BBC also has a good piece summarising some of the commentary in the local press. For anyone interested in following the news, I have linked to Uganda's two main dailies in the link section of this blog. Another good publication is the East African, published weekly.

I am going to a Scottish dancing class tonight and heading to Jinja for the weekend to see the source of the Nile and partake in other thrilling activities. So, assuming things remain as they are, I'll have more lighthearted fodder for my next entry.

Unrest in the capital

I have many amusing stories to share with you about grasshoppers, goat mongers, and taxi drivers, but that will be at a later time. This is not going to my best writing as I’m trying to be hasty, sorry if it’s not very readable.

Kampala has experienced some unrest over the past few days. On Friday, a student protest at Makerere University turned violent. One student was shot dead by riot police. My colleague saw about 5 people on stretchers not moving, so it is likely that there were additional casualties, although this was not reported in the media. The police here use tear gas at the slightest provocation. My colleague was gassed Friday and his eyes still have not recovered (which is unusual). Yesterday some rioting continued at the campus. Vestiges of the tear gas wafted into my office, making people cough.

But that’s not all. You may know that multiparty politics is a recent phenomenon in Uganda. There is a whole long history here that I will not get into now. The current leader –President Museveni- ousted the old leader via armed uprising in the mid 80s. A new constitution was passed in 1995 and elections were held in 2001. Parties, however, were banned. Everyone had to run under the auspices of Museveni’s National Resistence Movement. At that time, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Kizza Besigye ran against Museveni. There were serious irregularities in the elections, but Museveni won. Besigye fled the country. This was to be Museveni’s last term, but he spearheaded a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a third term. Are your suspicions piqued yet?

Anyway, Besigye returned in late October. Now that parties are allowed, Besigye heads the Forum for Democratic Change. He has been campaigning all around the country. We have been speculating about if and when he will be arrested at the behest of the current president.

It happened yesterday.

He was returning by car from campaigning in the west when police surrounded him. He has been charged with treason and rape (allegedly from 1997) and remanded to Luzira prison. His supporters immediately surrounded the police station and a riot commenced. Cars were burned, property was destroyed, shops closed. The police used rubber bullets, tear gas (on peaceful protesters, I saw news video of people standing there quietly; it was only after being gassed that things got hectic), and water trucks spraying water from hoses. Luckily, I am friends with a bunch of people from Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) who receive SMS updates whenever something like this happens.

Today Besigye is being remanded for trial at the High Court. The last communication I received indicates that rioting is continuing both in the city centre and at the University and that military police are using live ammunition. VSO volunteers from upcountry have been instructed not to come to Kampala.

Yesterday, I went home as soon as I learned of Besigye’s arrest. I knew there were riots and had no idea where they would spread. My area of town, which is far from the centre, was quiet. The area of town where I work has also been quiet, although it is still near enough to the university for the tear gas to float over here. That being said, my supervisor has suggested leaving early today, so I will be returning home shortly. My compound is very secure and I have everything I need in it in the highly unlikely event that it becomes unsafe to leave. I also have the means to leave the country at a moment’s notice, so no one worry. Also, if you avoid the riot areas Kampala remains as safe as ever. BBC.com has the most up-to-date news, aside from the Ugandan press.

Today's newspapers provided for a bit of amusement:

New Vision (Government daily): High schools are now free (no more fees)

Daily Monitor (Independent daily): BESIGYE JAILED
Government threatens to close Daily Monitor

In other news, I received an email from the Canadian consulate in Uganda today. I know what you're thinking; it was an email warning Canadians in Kampala to avoid the city centre. Wrong. The subject line reads: "CANADA COMMENTS ON U.S. PASSPORT REQUIREMENTS PROPOSAL" (now that's a headline that warrants all caps). It's nice to see that the Canadian foreign service is keeping on top of the issues that matter to me most. I'd gladly stick around to debate the merits of American passport requirements, but I've got to duck out the way of some tear gas.

I have had a suspicious feeling lately. It’s hard to feel upbeat living in a country scheduled for elections this March that has never had regime change without war. I noticed more military police driving around than I did before and had a sinking feeling. But I’ve only been here two months, am I just imagining it? The riots and the death on Friday reinforced that sinking feeling. Despite following the news, there is so much that goes unreported, I really felt like I didn’t have a handle on what’s going on. Considering the history of East Africa, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that things could go wrong. But what’s going to go wrong? Will it be a few isolated pockets of election violence or something worse? I knew things would get dicey coming here in an election year, I just didn’t expect them to get dicey this early on.

I have never experienced any form of insecurity before, so I don’t know if the tight feeling in my stomach is warranted or an overreaction. Similarly, my eyes are itching and watery –is it more tear gas or a psychosomatic reaction to stress?

In any event, I'm trying to pattern my reaction after the reaction of the people of Kampala, many of whom can remember living under regimes that were much, much, much more oppressive than Museveni's. They may be keeping their heads down and avoiding the problem neighbourhoods, but they're still smiling.

He’ll fall for you in fall’s luscious new lipsticks!

If I have any readers left after over a month without posting, you may be wondering why there are such long spurts between posts, and why a novel’s worth of posts show up after weeks of nothing. It’s because the internet has been down for about the last 3 weeks of the past month. It works intermittently, but I haven’t managed to get anything posted because I need to get my journal from home and stay after work to type it up. I didn’t manage to do that over the couple of days we had net access, especially since when it has been up it sometimes crashes again before evening.

We’ve been without a connection for a solid week now. We paid some company to pay the ISP for us. We paid until January. They paid until the end of October. We got cut off. They told us it would take 3 hours to get the service reconnected. That was 3 days ago.

I have yet to find an internet café that’s not achingly slow. Usually I check only a couple of email messages before logging off in frustration. I needed to send a single email the other day and it took me a full 20 minutes. Suffice it to say I’ve decided to wait and see if we ever get the connection back at work before I post again.

I can’t email anyone. I can’t call anyone because I can’t afford the $1.67 a minute rates. I feel completely cut off. My radio doesn’t even work. I am almost finished the novels that were supposed to last for my entire trip. I got some mail the other day though. I tried to download some music sets off my friend Laurence’s website but failed. So Matty in Canada downloaded them for me, put them on a disk, and mailed them. Three to four weeks later, they arrived. So by some miracle, DJ Sneak has dropped into the middle of Africa to play in my living room. I’m told there is another package coming. It may have sugarless gum, ginger candies, or green tea! Kraft Dinner would be nice, or any fake food that reminds me of home. I wish I had thought to ask for those little pantyhose ankle socks you wear with dress shoes. Oh well.

I also have a British Cosmopolitan magazine. In my former life I absolutely abhorred such magazines and made a point of never looking at them. Here, I’ve been anxiously waiting for over a month as it got passed from hand to hand. I am transfixed by the ads and the people in make-up and non second-hand clothes. I read 10 pages of man grabbing tips before my brain hurts and I have to put it down and go back to my serious literary fiction. After years of self-imposed snobbery I actually find it easier to understand than the magazine. But I put the magazine away carefully, knowing I will pick it up tomorrow, treasure it slowly, page by page, like candies melting on the tongue. I still don’t understand why anyone would care to read articles telling her how to please some mangy halfwit she picked up in a bar, but I am fascinated by it now. It’s like reading the National Geographic about some exotic place you once visited. Members of the fabled tribe of the Western Consumer, glittering in their native habitant. One language the world over. I believe all the lies the magazine tells me and I wonder if maybe, some day, I can go to that place too.

My friend was in Nairobi a couple of weeks ago and was totally culture shocked by how developed it was. If Nairobi is shocking, imagine what London is going to do to me four months from now! I’ll show up in late March, wearing light flowing trousers, a similar blouse, and sandals. I’ll have nothing but a thin scarf to guard against the cold, and will be sporting a variety of beaded jewellery and strange twists in my hair. I will eat with my hands. I will eat a hamburger with my hands! Yum!

Save me!

I never told you about Bible Man. Bible Man is an American television show. It involves a man dressed up as a superhero talking about Jesus. We struggle to get American anti-retrovirals but we have no lack of American Christian television. I watched it for 2 minutes once. Bible Man spurned some poor child and he ran to a female superhero and she patted his head and told him Bible Man was just having a bad day. One aspect of life here that differs from Canada is the importance of religion. Heathens walk all over Canada side by side with the pious and nobody ever knows the difference because it’s not really something you talk about and who cares anyway? Here, conversion is around every corner, and despite the sizeable Muslim population it seems that a few people can’t fathom the existence of anything outside of their particular form of Christianity. Member of the United Church of Canada? You need saving. Synagogue? You need saving. Devoted humanist? You’re gonna burn baby, better get saved quick. It started on my flight over here. I sat next to a Southern Baptist from South Carolina on his way to Mbale to start a few churches. We’re on the London to Entebbe flight and he asks me where I’m going. “Kampala,” I say, “And you?” “U-GAAIN-DUH,” he bleets. Of course everyone on the plane is going to Uganda but apparently he hasn’t clued into that yet. Perhaps he thinks Kampala is some kind of independent fiefdom. Anyway, he might not know the capital of the country he’s converting people in, but he sure knows his Bible. He brings out a folding cube with pictures on it that show people living in fiery sin, the death of Jesus, and everyone happily marching up to heaven. He cites Scripture and makes clever analogies between what he reads there and my work as a lawyer. I’m sitting in my seat quaking with fear about coming to Africa for the first time and this man is trying to get me to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. Save me! I am polite but unbending and eventually we come to an uneasy truce. I put on my headphones and pretend to be asleep. Eventually, I really am sleeping.

We have some local neighbours who have made it their mission to save us. People who are saved are called Savedees and they can’t fathom why we haven’t done it yet and why we consistently refuse to come to their church to be reborn. My neighbour Rebecca befriended a local man and we met him at a café. He turned out to be a minister and tried to drag us to his church. One woman made the mistake of telling him where she worked and when she got there on Monday he’d been there to drop off a copy of his uplifting spiritual book about the importance of being saved. Now, I have nothing against church. In fact, I would very much like to visit some of the ones here, as I am told they are full of wonderful singing and dancing, but all these attempts at conversion definitely grate on my nerves. I haven’t been approached this much since university, when people stalked the campus, stopping suspected heathens and inviting them to their churches so they could be saved from eternal damnation. There was someone for everybody on the main street on campus -converted Catholics, Jews for Jesus, you name it- and the school gave us all a handbook with a section devoted to aggressive religious recruiting.

There are more than just Christian shows on Ugandan television though. There are a couple of gems. Canada’s Just For Laughs Gags, where you get to watch Canadians doing funny things on the streets of Montreal. I ignore the gags and just stare at the streets and the shops and the people in their coats. I think about smoked meat sandwiches and dill pickles. There is also a cartoon with singing vegetables. I think it might be British and by the same people who made Wallace and Grommit. The singing vegetables show is the funniest thing in the history of the world, even funnier than Bible Man. They sing songs about cheeseburgers and yodelling doctors and I roll around laughing in hysterics and feeling thankful for British humour.

Looking for the moon

The huge hassle with my visa is finally over. After waiting for the appropriate person to show up to work to sign my passport I walked out of the immigration office officially legal in this country. They wrote a small essay in my passport and it’s only good until January, which means at that point I can go through this whole process again to get a two-month extension. That will leave me with 2 weeks before I leave the country where I’ll be here illegally (and this is all despite the 12-month visa I purchased in Canada months ago). I’m told you get a two-week grace period and I hope to ride off that if I can’t convince them to give me an extension for the additional two weeks. If the grace period turns out to be less than two weeks, my plan is to start crying uncontrollably and show them the year long visa in my passport. It’s a good plan, because if some immigration official tries to prevent me from leaving at the end of this, I’m sure that will be my natural reaction anyway.

Tomorrow is Eid. About ten percent of the population is Muslim and it’s a national holiday. Eid al Fitr is the holiday that comes at the end of Ramadan. Apparently you determine whether it’s Eid by looking up at the moon. If you see the moon, it’s Eid the next day, and if you don’t it won’t be Eid until the day after next. I’ve been told that in many countries the day is set in advance and everyone ensures they see the moon so the holiday can be at the anticipated time. That’s not how things are done here. Everyone was convinced Eid would be today. I had the news on and at around ten p.m. it was announced that, no, the moon had not been sighted and everyone had to go to work tomorrow. Of course, many people missed this news and didn’t bother showing up to work anyway. I’ve been talking to other foreigners and they’re perplexed, “How can you run businesses when you don’t even know when national holidays take place?” A very good question. Surprise national holidays seem to be somewhat commonplace, so I guess people get used to it. At least with Eid they know it will be one of two days. You might also ask, “how do you run a business with a lack of serviceable roads, traffic jams, unreliable telephone, electricity and internet service, and employees who are wont to sleep on the job?” but somehow people manage anyway.


Bruno returned to Uganda and we had a party. Bruno worked in the Mabira forest and speaks Luganda and is the man to go to if you want to buy a Ugandan drum. Bruno is also from France, and that is what’s relevant to this story. He smuggled in all manner of luxuries for the party. Compté cheese from his area in the northwest. Saucissons from the south of France. Wine from wherever Bordeaux is (forgive me, my grasp of European geography is fading as I become filled with information about where the different tribes live with their infinite number of languages; the shifting colonial and then national boundaries; the paths of rebel fighters and refugee flows). Bruno brought Brie and it was unlike any Brie I have ever had in my life. They obviously export the rejects. We munched on this with slightly stale baguettes and ate Swiss chocolate for dessert. Can you even believe that such things exist?

I can’t believe there are places out there where you can walk in and see all of these things and more, sitting in neatly arranged rows under bright lights. Supermarkets. Do they really exist like I remember or was that some sort of a dream? There are a couple of supermarkets in Kampala for rich people like me to shop at and the variety available is unlike anything in Uganda. But still, the shelves are often half empty and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get what’s on your shopping list. I bought olive oil and mediocre pecorino cheese from South Africa and when I dip my bread in the oil or sprinkle some of the precious cheese on my rice I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven. And always, always, whenever I feel deprived or frustrated I think of the huddled masses in the camps, the hungry children, my housekeeper Margaret from the war-torn north who takes care of 6 children by herself and never rests, my smiling guard Innocent who brings me sweet potatoes and French books, who came to work when he had malaria and lives on $13 a week, and I feel ashamed. I feel the shame seep through every pore of my being until my body is so heavy I have to lie on the bed. But lying around moping is even worse so I get up and smile and go to my Ugandan drumming lesson.

I send Innocent home to rest. Does he have tablets for the malaria? Yes, he does. Chloroquine, which nobody is supposed to use here anymore because the parasites have developed a resistance to it. When he gets better, he comes back and shows me a bottle of mosquito repellent. It had citronella in it and was empty. All you hippies and environmentalists out there are going to kill me for what I did next. I told him that stuff was useless. I brought out my mosquito repellent. It has tons of poisonous, evil DEET in it. It is sold only in the U.S. and was developed for the American military. It’s polymer-based so it won’t seep into your skin as much. I place the poison on my porch and tell him to use that on his ankles where the malaria mosquitoes bite. God knows whether that antiquated chloroquine will save him next time. Malaria kills many people here. He sits outdoors all night guarding my house instead of sleeping safe under a net because he can’t get any other job since he’s a foreigner with no official status in Uganda. He fled here from the Congo to escape the war, and there’s no way I’m going to let him escape death at the hands of rebels only to die of malaria in my front yard.

Before I left Canada I went into my friendly local Mountain Equipment Co-op to look at their mosquito nets. I asked them if they had insecticide treated ones for use abroad. The woman looks at me snidely and says “There is no reason anyone would ever have to use one of those. It’s a terrible poison, and everyone should wear repellent anyway, so it’s unnecessary.” I decline to point out to her that repellent is also a poison. Insecticide impregnated nets cut malaria deaths by a huge fraction because the mosquitoes don’t slip through the net via tiny gaps and holes. Without knowing it, this self-righteous yet well-meaning woman has sentenced a million African babies to an early grave. It’s so nonsensical, would she have everybody on the continent slather unaffordable mosquito repellent over their bodies every night, with a hope and a prayer that the killer doesn’t strike them? This lady is so clueless, loving the environment and the world, but she can’t even imagine using a net for anything other than a few days pretending she’s roughing it at a Northern Ontario lake surrounded by hundreds of dollars worth of camping gear. I want to tell her if she really cares about the environment she’d stop driving that big SUV up to the country, and move out of her snug warm house that burns all the precious fossil fuels, stop showering in gallons of hot water and flushing toilets left and right; cease eating organic veggies from California that travelled in trucks burning the same fuels. She leaves a footprint the size of Kentucky but begrudges the children the poison nets that save them from at least one form of early death. It’s impossible to imagine. She must not know. No one could ever know and still say what she said.

Life is simple. Poison is bad. Dead babies are worse. Find a way to get those babies houses with window screens and medicine if they get sick, and then you can rage against poison nets all you like.

Innocent covers up and uses my unaffordable repellent when the bugs are especially bad. There isn’t much malaria in Kampala and I know he’ll be OK. He caught the malaria while travelling to the DR Congo to visit his mother a few weeks ago. “But what about you?” he asks me in French as I leave him my repellent. I tell him not to worry about me. I’ll be fine. Innocent is safe, huddling in the guard post of my compound. I tip toe around my house feeling embarrassed for living in it. Feeling the shame, and the shame for the shame. No matter what I do here, it is not enough. It will never be enough.

Catharsis

This entry is bitter. I wrote it after a difficult week and while ill. I hate to be negative, but I really did feel better after writing it. And perhaps including the difficulties gives a more accurate portrayal of life here. Keep in mind, in real life I actually love Uganda and the people. The experience of a foreigner, however, also includes some negatives. Here are a few of them.

* * *

I’m fed up with Uganda. I’ve fought it; as everything goes awry and falls apart around me I think “don’t fall prey to the perils of culture shock” and “stay positive, don’t import North American expectations to a foreign climate.” But, you know what? Denying anything is wrong doesn’t make me feel any less annoyed. I need an outlet, and this blog is it.

This place is whack -nothing works, nothing makes sense and nothing gets done. And Canada is no better. Some of my problems here could have been avoided if Canadian bureaucrats (nudge, nudge, National Student Loan Centre!) were capable of dealing with anything but the most mundane situations (that is, situations that don’t involve Canadians moving to Uganda).

Target one: Immigration officials and taxi drivers
Let me tell you what happened when I first arrived in this country, over 5 weeks ago. I got in a line at the airport for people who already had visas. When it was my turn, the immigration officer examined my passport with my $240, 12-month Ugandan visa in it and gave me a stamp allowing me to stay in the country for one month. Visas purchased abroad are simply not honoured, and somehow my program has been sending interns here for two years without being informed of this.

I draft letters from my employer attesting to my situation and make copies of my return plane ticket. Then I mosey on down to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I find the immigration area, and am directed to stand in a line. There are two clerks working, they are sitting in a room together, their little wicket windows not four feet from each other. After about 30 minutes I get to the front of the line. The clerk examines my materials and tells me to get in the other line. I proceed to the second line and wait another 20 minutes. Then I present my materials to the other clerk. She examines them, says “you need the form” and looks at me blankly. I inquire about the possibility of her providing me with said form, which to her credit she does. Then she tells me to fill it out and get back in the first line again.

I don’t know if you caught that, but the two clerks are sitting four feet away from each other in the same room, and the first clerk, instead of reaching over and handing me a form, got me to go and wait in the second line. Brilliant. Finally, I submit the form and am told it will be ready in one week. About three weeks later it is ready. I then need to go to a particular branch of a particular bank to pay the 90,000 shilling fee. The fee must be in cash of course, as credit cards, bank cards and travellers cheques are not accepted in this country. If you pay in U.S. dollars, they must have been issued after the year 2000.

I decide to take a matatu there myself, as it is very easy to get to. So, I go to the bank, pay my fee, pay an additional previously unmentioned fee, and then wait 40 minutes for them to process it all. Finally I’m ready to head back to the office (all bank visits must be done during office hours, as the banks are only open from nine to three). I hail a matatu and say “I am going to Kamwokya” Kamwokya is an area of town right by my work. The conductor nods his head. This makes me suspicious, so I say “So you are saying that this taxi goes to Kamwokya.” The conductor says “Yes, it is going to Kamwokya.” I climb in and start to space out as we’re stuck in a terrible traffic jam. I stare at a traffic sign that says “Changed priorities ahead” and marvel that, in a city with so few traffic signs, they manage to get ones that are philosophical. I’m sitting in a crowed minibus taxi in tropical heat, which involves a lot of baking and smelling other people’s sweat. So one spaces out just to help deal with it all.

We drive for a long time. I am feeling slightly dizzy from the heat and am distracted by the man sitting next to me slyly trying to put his arm around me without me noticing. He’s as graceless and obvious as a teenager pulling the old “yawn and reach” on a hapless movie date. (Yes, a constant part of my existence here are my omnipresent suitors.) After completing my altercation with the man, the conductor says, “Mzungu! Where you going?” to which I reply “Kamwokya.” Everyone on the matatu gasps, and I realize that we must have travelled far, far away from Kamwokya. I say to the conductor “You told me you were going to Kamwokya” and he says “Sorry.” I say, “You lied, why did you lie to me?” He says nothing. I get off without paying.

I am hopelessly lost, and head back the way I think town is. I get off in a familiar area called Wandegeya, knowing I can get a matatu to work from there. But everything looks unfamiliar. I stop a person on the street. He is very helpful and nice. I tell him I need to get to Kira Road. He says no matatus go to Kira Road from here, I need to get a boda boda motorcycle to go. He hails one for me and says to him “take her to Jinja Road.” I say, “No, I need Kira Road.” And he says “You want to go to Jinja Road.” Jinja Road is in the opposite direction. I thank him for his help and walk away.

I hail the next matatu and say “I need to go to Kira Road, where Kamwokya is, does this taxi go there?” The conductor says yes and I get on. Things start becoming familiar and I realized I had actually been on the right route to take a direct taxi back to work when I asked the gentleman how to get to Kira Road. And the taxi I was on was going in the exact opposite direction, back downtown. I say to the conductor, “Where does this taxi go.” He ignores me, but a customer says “Old Taxi Park.” I call out “stop right here!” in Luganda, all the while chastising the conductor for lying to me. He said “You go old taxi park, then to Kira,” which is about as direct as standing at Yonge and Bloor Station with the intention of going to Bay Street, but instead of taking the subway west for one stop, travelling east all the way to Kennedy to get on a westbound train to Bay. So I didn’t pay that guy either.

Finally got back to work. My little jaunt took three hours. Still need to finish processing the visa, but my ability to do so has been hampered by the fact that the president of Uganda decided at the last minute to declare Monday a national holiday so we can mourn the death of the father of the nation cum repressive despot. And today I’m being treated for a parasitical infection, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Target two: National Student Loans Centre
This is where Canada demonstrates its whackness. It’s not Uganda’s fault, but it happened while I was here so it’s coloured my experience. I won’t set out the endless bureaucratic snafus, but basically it took NSLC 3 months to process a one-month application, being rude and unhelpful all the way, and almost denying me relief from my student loan payments while I’m here, despite the fact that my monthly payments are more than my total income on this internship. So, an intern funded by the federal government almost needed to abort her internship due to the actions of an agency funded by the same federal government. After dealing with NSLC, I found Ugandan bureaucracy comparably friendly, capable and efficient.

Target three: Illness
In four weeks, I have missed three days of work, all due to illness. One day three weeks ago, and two days last week. Last week I took some of the Cipro given to me by my travel doctor. I woke up this morning feeling very ill so I decided to finally go to the (very expensive and not covered by health insurance) doctor. He told me that no one uses Cipro here. It was over-prescribed and the bugs here have developed resistance to it. Remind me to thank my Canadian travel doctor for charging me $30 to meet with me for 6 minutes to prescribe me medication that doesn’t work in my destination. Way to go Canada!

I had to give a sample, and was made to suffer the humiliation of standing at the door to the lab holding a stinking plastic cup while the lab worker ignored my knock at the door. I eventually just walked in and put the cup next to him. He didn’t wear gloves while he smeared blood and poo onto his little microscope slides. And this is the ultra overpriced clinic favoured by foreigners as being the best thing going.

Turns out I have giardia, a parasitical bowel infection. Finding out I travelled to Uganda to catch the Beaver Fever of the Canadian backcountry is the best news I’ve gotten all week.

Target four: The impossibility of getting work done
You can see the link to Gulu Walk on this site. If you don’t know what it is, you can apprise yourself by reading the link. If you don’t know why people would walk for people in Gulu, here’s the short version:

1) There is a place called Africa.
2) In Africa, there is a country called Uganda. Yes, I’m sure it’s not in the Middle East.
3) There’s been a war there for the past two decades. Every so often the Western press does a piece about it and the whole world pretends that they’ve never heard of it before.

Anyway, my role in the Gulu Walk was twofold:

1) Promote the walk to a bunch of people by sending out an email and putting a blurb about the walk in our newsletter.
2) Participate in the Gulu Walk.

With respect to the newsletter, we had to wait for everyone to submit his or her articles. Unfortunately, someone who writes an integral component of it couldn’t provide their submission until it was too late to get the newsletter out in time. Ok, so nix that. Hakuna matata.

With respect to the email, here is what happened. On Wednesday October 12 I met with the person organizing the Kampala walk. On Thursday October 13 I wrote the text of the email and gathered the several hundred email addresses. On Friday I finished gathering the addresses and was ready to send the email after lunch. However an IT guy came in and without notice took my computer away to wash it, which is necessary because of all the dust.

On Monday our internet connection was down.

On Tuesday I was sick at home with giardia AND our internet connection was down.

On Wednesday I was sick at home with giardia AND our internet connection was down.

On Thursday our internet connection was down.

During this time, I visited internet cafés numerous times. I needed my big list of email addresses to send the mail though, and that was on my computer at work. I put them on a disk, and without fail whenever I tried to put my disk in a net café computer the Blue Screen of Death would pop up and the computer would crash. Yay Windows 98.

On Friday our internet connection came back up in the afternoon. Fine, it was the day before the Gulu Walk, but there’s nothing wrong with a last minute reminder. I tried to send the email, but couldn’t sign into my work webmail. I went to the café, now that I could email my list of addresses to another account and access them from the café without using a disk. But the webmail was totally down. It was 4:40 on Friday the day before Gulu Walk. Too late to do anything else. Luckily there had been lots of other promotion.

So that’s Africa. With a week and a half of notice I can’t manage to send a single email.

But all was not lost, I could still participate in the walk itself! I had a flyer and I had viewed the website. Both said the walk started at 1 p.m. and I had confirmed that verbally with the organizers. On Saturday I left my house at 11:30, thinking this would give me plenty of time to get to Makerere University, which is perhaps 3km away. I was told to take a taxi to the Old Taxi Park, and from there get one to Makerere. So I got stuck in a traffic jam on the way down. And the first taxi driver lied to me; he said he was going to the Taxi Park but he really wasn’t, so I had to get out and wait in the traffic jam for 15 minutes for a free matatu going my way. Then I got lost in the Taxi Park and couldn’t find my taxi. The Taxi Park is an acre of parking lot teeming with hundreds of identical white minibus taxis, with almost no signs anywhere. A half hour later I was on my way to Makerere. I got there at 1 p.m. sharp, which is a long time, but was perfect because the walk started at one. The campus is big, and I circled the whole thing. No sign of the walk anywhere. Finally I gave up and went home, getting back at 3:30. A four-hour trip for nothing. Marvellous. On the way back I realized the directions I was given were bad. By going all the way to the Taxi Park, I was doing the “travelling from Yonge to Kennedy to catch the subway to Bay Street” thing again. I could have saved an hour of travel time. No surprise the directions were bad. People here somehow find their way from place to place, but I think it must be by chance, as if you ask someone how to get somewhere, half the time they will be completely mystified and send you in the opposite direction.

I found out that evening why I couldn’t find the walk. They left an hour early. Now, I am used to Africa time, which means that everything is always late. But early? Now I need to show up an hour early for everything, because half the time it will start an hour early and the other half of the time it will start 2 hours late?

I can’t take it.

Anyway, so as you can tell, I haven’t gotten a lot of work done in the past week. I’m keen to get cracking, but was again thwarted on Monday by Museveni’s surprise national holiday. So here I am today, keen to work. Giardia. Doctor’s visit takes hours. When I get back there is a power cut.

I also have not been able to access files I regularly use since my computer was washed. They removed a hard drive from my computer without telling me first. Had I known, I could have copied what I needed. But I was not informed, so the files are lost to me.

I purchased some paper to print out articles I’m using for my work, since I frequently have problems finding paper. Last week, ALL I needed was a functioning internet connection. None was forthcoming. This week, ALL I need is a functioning printer. Of course, after 5 pages the toner runs out.

I know I’m not in North America. I know that outside my home continent worshiping speed and efficiency above all else is verboten. I know things will not work as smoothly as I’m used to. But does everything need to go wrong at the same time? I think this must be exceptional because all of my colleagues are also frustrated.
All I want is a single day where I can do work. One single task would be enough, so I can feel what it’s like to cross off just one thing from my to do list. Yes, I find other things to do in the meantime, but lately ALL my time is spent “finding something to do in the meantime.” Maybe I’ll take a breather and go travel to Kennedy Station. I need to get something on Bay Street.

Multifunctional bumpers

We spent yesterday swimming in the bilharzia-free Lake Nabugabo and lounging in the sun. I ate a fried fish for dinner. Not sure if it was Nile perch or tilapia. Looked like the kind you see tied to people’s front bumpers to dry in the sun as they speed down the road.

The precautionary principle doesn’t exist here

Today we went to Lake Nabugabo, a couple of hours south-west of Kampala. Fourteen of us went in a matatu, which we hired privately, thanks to the negotiating skills of Rohini. I sat in the front passenger seat, meaning I was cut off from the banter in the back but got a first-rate view of the passing scenery. This means that I was profoundly aware of how lucky we were to arrive at our destination alive. The Kampala-Mbarara road is very narrow. It undulates up and down over the hilly landscape. Without fail, our driver would shift into the highest gear and descend the 100 metre high hills at breakneck speed, honking at bicyclists and pedestrians in the hope they’d have the good sense to get out of our way, because we would almost certainly not be able to stop should they fail to.

Ugandan drivers can’t bear to be behind a slower moving vehicle, so they pass at the first opportunity, regardless of whether one can actually see whether any cars are approaching in the oncoming lane. Blind corner 20 metres ahead? No problem! I suppose in a country with a life expectancy in the mid-40s people are more willing to gamble with such things. Statistically, you have less time to lose.

Africa, in many ways, reminds me of the endless stacks of fruits and veggies you see at market stands. Bowls of tomatoes, green oranges and Irish potatoes are stacked up into pyramids. The peak of each pyramid consists of a single round fruit perched delicately atop another one; reminiscent of the way Acholi dancers here can balance clay pots on their heads. The effect is elegant, yet precarious. Most likely they will not fall, but there is still a very real possibility that they will. The risks taken here seem bigger, with real consequences. This is just a part of life. It is beautiful, yet potentially deadly. But the deadliness is part of the appeal -like an emerald green mamba snake, its sky blue mouth housing deadly poison.

But I digress.

Eventually we arrived at the equator. We all dutifully posed for photographs with one leg in the southern hemisphere and one in the north. We then had lunch at the local café, which offers chapatti chicken wraps and iced lattes. They also sell arts and crafts, with all proceeds going to orphans living with AIDS, which justifies the grossly inflated prices. We strolled languidly through the shop (how else does one move through places equatorial?), examining the crafts while classic North American Christmas tunes played in the background.

“And as we’ve no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”

Hit it, Bing!

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.

* *

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.