UGANDA DISPATCH 4: Welcome to Kampala

Today's email will take you on a tour of Uganda's capital city, Kampala, where I've been for the better part of the last two weeks.

Coming in by bus you arrive at the city's frenetic bus park.  It's about half a city block square, surrounded by chain-link fence, which in turn is surrounded by and an even more impenatrable chain of taxis and bodaboda drivers.  (Bodabodas, by the way, are the ubiquitous old motorcycles and tortured scooters that you can hop on the back of if you want cheap, quick transport anywhere in the city... and if you don't value your life too highly.)  Inside the dirt square are many aging buses, either parked or engaged in any manner of inscrutable manuevers with little to no regard for pedestrians.

After waiting in the damp heat of the bus for the passengers to sort out themselves and their carry-ons, you climb down into the slightly less damp heat of midday Kampala.  The bus's luggage compartments are thrown open.  About seven Ugandan men, all acting with an air of some authority and speaking Luganda (which, by the way, you don't speak a word of) argue with each other over which bags are yours.  When you point them out they are handed to you by the seven men, none of whom ask for anything, and they are immediately grabbed by several hands from behind you.  These are the hands of the taxi and boda drivers.  They proceed to argue with each other over which of them was there first, each using you as a witness to their promptness, and using your luggage as leverage.  You take your bags from them, ask which of them has a car, and go with the most enthusiastic of them.  His enthusiasm fades quickly when you tell him how much you are willing to pay for the ride.  Not the typical mzungu (white guy) price.  But he his amiable and talkative, and you can even understand a good portion of his English.

He lurches out into traffic, cutting off not one but three cars as he takes his place in the lane.  When a man in a suit steps out in front of his car he makes no move for the brake, but instead honks and maintains his course.  The suit hops nimbly back.  It won't be the last near-death of your ride.  The mutatus are out in force just now.  These old vans, white with peeling blue stripes, rattle like screws aren't just loose but long lost and forgotten as the weave through the roads, jutting their fat faces into lanes and demanding right of way.  Your driver cowers from them, and good thing.  They weren't about to stop.

You pass through the city center, a street lined with banks and restaurants and shops.  Its sidewalks filled with men in nice shirts and women sitting on the ground, selling things like newspapers, pens, and trousers.  A hill takes you down to one of the traffic roundabouts left over from British city planning and slowly, painfully being phased out.  On the way down you see parliment, a dusty building with a beautiful modern clocktower.

At the bottom of the hill you enter a rich suburb of Kampala.  Garden City, a four story, open air mall, passes on your left, filled with all manner of old white travellers in safari gear walking the clean, tiled walkways.

Then comes the golf course, the only one in Kampala.  NGO vehicles become thick on Acacia Rd.  You turn into Cornerstone's parking lot, pay the driver his modest wage, and drop off you things.  Time for lunch.

You need to use the internet so you head for Cafe Pap on Parliment Ave, where free wireless come with the food.  There you see the same faces that you saw last time you were in Kampala - the two journalists, the British NGO worker, the inexplicable old white man with the same young Ugandan model.

After an overpriced meal and a number of refreshing emails you get to work.  Your partner organization is in Ntinda, about 10 minutes by boda.  You flag down a decent looking bike, haggle mercilessly, and situate yourself on the back.  The downhills are the worst as the bike picks up spead, hitting bumps that feel as if they could launch you off the back.  But, as per usual, you make it safely to your destination.  It's off the main area throroughfaire, down a rutted dirt road and tucked away behind a fence grown over with green.  Bosco the gatekeeper open the gate for you and give you the Ugandan handshake of respect, his left hand holding his right elbow as he shakes.

It's all smiles to see you, with questions shooting around and everyone wanting a handshake or a wave.  You don't know most of these people.  There are over 60 of them, after all, and you've only been here a couple times.  But everyone knows you, depends on you, worries over your presence and absence with fervor.  You reassure them again and answer questions and take off in an hour or so.  Maybe you hold a meeting first to tell everyone that they're doing very well.  They are, in fact.  You check out the quality control room where thousands of bracelets are checked every week, packed into a box and shipped to San Diego.  You ask Jwanica about the materials supply and encourage him to restock by the end of the week.  You say goodbye to these kind people and you go back to Cornerstone where more friends wait.  Lakers (pronounced Lah-kay) greets you warmly.  He'll be coming up to Gulu with you later in the week to work with Cornerstone.  You talk to him about his work and his recent boda accident.  The bandages are still on his head.

Later you'll walk with him up and over the hilly Acacia Road and to his favorite restaurant, set on the edge of a slum market, with the bitter odors of the place wafting gently and occasionally around you.  They are excited to see a mzungu.  They'll remember your name for months.  They'll ask Lakers about you if you don't come back soon.

Power goes out before night has fully set.  You walk back to the guesthouse and talk in the darkness.  It's bedtime, but not before you read a bit by candlelight.