Happy Birthday Mom

This post goes out to my wonderful mother. Today is her birthday, which means that it's time to celebrate the fact that she was born, that she exists. And who better to do that than someone who wouldn't exist without her.

So Mom, here's wishing you a very happy birthday. I love you very much and cherish your love and support in my life, wild trips around the world and all. Looking forward to spending the holidays with you!

Tugende, or not tugende

I'm designing a shirt.

Or rather, I'm designing the design that will go on a shirt that is already designed. It will be a reactionary shirt, reacting to the inevitable consequences of being a white person in an African country in which there are few white people. Those consequences? People want your money.

White people who come here are usually dogooders who can spare a couple thousand bucks - a relatively rare breed, but this place selects for them like Darwin himself, choosing the bleedingest hearts and the thickest wallets. So if your skin is lighter than, say, sienna, you hear this a lot:

"Mzungu, we go?" You hear it a lot. "Mzungu, we go? Mzungu, we go? Mzungu, we go?" From all sides, usually by drivers of the infamous bodabodas, the motorcycle taxis that will take you anywhere for a price, a price that is not adjusted for the risk to your life and well-being that riding a motorcycle in Kampala involves.

"Mzungu, we go?" Rough translation: "Hey you pallid sack of cash, you want to ride on the back of my rickety skooter and pay me three times what you should?"

I do appreciate the convenience of the bodaboda, but sometimes I just want to walk. The funniest propositions are those made by bodaboda drivers sitting in a long line of bodaboda drivers listening as they ask me if "we go." I say No thanks, and the next driver in line, with a confidence that is endearing in its utterly futile optimism looks at me with a gleam in his eye and says loudly, "Mzungu!" Yes, I answer. "We go?"

The shirt is a tank top. It says in letters so big that they are unavoidable, even annoying: WE DON'T GO.

explanatory note relating to the title of this post: tugende means we go, and is a very fun word to say with vigor when you hop on the back of a boda and point into the cloudy distance

The day will laugh again. I've seen it.

I found the end of the rainbow. It's outside the FedEx office in Kampala. It ends exactly on a curb that runs through the parking lot, a curb that is appropriately painted gold.

I was sitting in the FedEx office working on the various forms the manager had laid in front of me when a massive boulder, perhaps even a good portion of a mountain, crashed on the street outside. The sound exploded through the office. I looked out to see a cloud, no doubt the dust cloud or the volcanic ash, billowing into the hot blue sky, taking over the day.

I looked back to my forms. Kept writing.

The next time I looked up the sky was split evenly between night and day, a border line clearly marked but the former slowly swallowing the latter. But day was having its laugh, turning night's drops of darkness into golden sparks showering on the parking lot. They shimmered and shone as they fell, coating the lot in an undulating daylight of gold. And more, much more, the day was confidently (almost nonchalantly) holding its most spectacular display deep in night's territory.

A rainbow, large and round, almost a full circle, and infuriating to night because the rainbow is only possible on night's advance, as if a sign that day will surely overcome in the end.

The rainbow was big enough to fly a small airplane through and close enough to throw a rock at. And it came to an end on the golden curb, which curved from the night into the day.

Day in the Life: The Long Ride Home

Lightning.

Inside clouds in the distance, the near distance, the distance I'm going to reach soon. Tonight it looks menacing. Mean, like a gangster firing into the air, threatening me, knowing that I'll soon be in range.

Flash, flash, the clouds become real and thick and translucent. The motorcycle beneath me speeds closer to the exploding clouds. It whines and shakes against the wind and the few drops of rain that seem to hang in the air until my faces bursts them.

Flash. The clouds are closer, larger, the wind faster and denser. The drops start to sting. I duck behind the helmet of my driver to avoid the fast, stinging drops. He swerves around a mud-filled pothole. I remember why I have to watch the road.

Both of us, the driver and I, are huddled against the thick wind and stinging drops, shaken by every flash of the lightning, which is now like a flourescent overhead light struggling to stay on. My face, I realize, is a grimace. I try to relax it. But I feel like a grimace.

The whine of the motorcycle spikes as we push up a short dark hill. The drops in the sky feel heavy as the bike slows. And getting heavier.

A single bare incandescent light burns under an overhang that advertises a mobile phone service carrier. I point and say "First stop here" because the driver will understand if I talk like that. He pulls the bike into the deepening mud at the roadside and we push ourselves against the wall of the building.

Flash. The drops are growing and quickening, slanting through the air and exploding on the road. Like a crowd in a stadium their roar grows and grows, but it doesn't diminish. There is not rest to breathe, no end of the building emotion. Louder and louder. The mud thickens.

I pace. Tired. Cold for the first time in months. Near enough to home that I would keep going if not for the expensive camera in my backpack. My camera has me pinned to a wall.

So I wait.

Finally the emotion begins to level, and then to fade. The slanting drops sigh and become thin, their anger or enthusiasm spent and fulfilled. Soon their noise is like a hush, the silence around the drops as loud as the drops themselves.

We leave. The driver and I. Through the mud.

Lobby Day, Coming Up

The goal is to encourage the US government to help end the conflict in northern Uganda. Find more information here:


And for those stuck miles and miles from D.C., check this out to see how you can help.

Less Ordinary: A night out on the town, Kampala style

For any of you Americans who haven't travelled much and have cleverly blocked out high school Spanish, the word "football" means something different to the rest of the world. Rough translation: soccer.

That's what I wanted to watch last night, after a hearty meal of Ethiopian food cooked by the political refugee (her full story coming soon). I went next door to a large and rather seedy looking bar where Arsenal, a local favorite among football fans, were taking on, well... some other team. I'm still working on the Premiership.

I was greeted promptly at the door by a weathered and very drunk mzungu (white man) who thought he knew me. He didn't, I told him. He asked me if I wanted to do business with him. I didn't, I told him. He asked if he could have my number and call me in the morning. He couldn't, I told him. He gave me "the pound" instead of a handshake and staggered off, unperturbed.

I wandered through the meandering halls and open air seatings of the bar and found a nice little room centered around a television mounted above the bar. To the left were a few pool tables and one young mzungu man sitting with a scandalous looking Ugandan girl.

I ordered a Pilsner while the man next to me tried to explain Arsenal's advantage over... the other guys, in what I can only call shattered English. Good soccer, to me, looks like some combination of magic and magnetism. Seen from above the ball seems to stick to or revolve around the players, sometimes travelling half the field at great speed only to end up caught in the gravity of a midfielder's shoe. I had immersed myself in this alchemy when the drunk mzungu came tipping across the room.

Yes I remembered him, I assured the worried face. He still wanted to do business and I was still pretty sure that I didn't want to, but he took the rejection rather well and resorted to pouring out his ill-formed sorrows to me. "I'm a bad boy," he claimed over and over again. "I drink a lot." This he didn't have to repeat to be redundant. From what I gathered (and strained gathering it was) he claims to be some combination of mafioso, drug smuggler and womanizer. The latter he showed off to me when he invited a prostitute over from one of the pool tables.

Francine, I'll call her, asked if I minded her company. No, I didn't, so long as she liked watching football. She sat and lied about herself a bit, and soon was called over for a game of pool with another tightly clad girl. It seems bending over the pool table is a favorite local sales pitch, and over the course of the night her 'boss' called her to play several more games.

We also had time to chat, as my drunk friend moved in and out of the room, roaring about how in love we were and giving me "the pound." I asked her about love and helped her a bit with a definition. She thought it meant "a feeling... and trust." I told her that it was committment and sacrifice. She agreed and went to go bend over the pool table a bit more.

While she was away another, much drunker girl walked to my table. I was so handsome that she just had to come and offer herself to me, she said. "I'm coming to you as a prostitute," she said. "As long as we know what we're doing, Jesus doesn't care." Forgive me if I disagree.

The game ended with Arsenal taking a 2-1 victory over that other team, and I said goodnight to Francine, who seemed ambivalent at my leaving. Maybe she just wanted some business, after all, she bought me a beer. But I hope that she enjoyed the conversation. I didn't get to say goodbye to my would be business partner. Might just have to go back.

[In case you're wondering, this night was in no way typical of my life in Kampala. I just thought you'd all find in interesting.]

Mandatory Reading

Read this and reflect. Ivory Coast, by the way, is western Africa.

A Day in the Life: Dinner in Kampala

Remember how I said it’s tough to find rest in Uganda? I was pretty bushed this evening and decided to go out for a leisurely dinner. My first mistake.

I decided to walk, but bodaboda (motorcycle taxi) drivers can pick out a walking mzungu (white person) from 3 miles. While blindfolded. So they honked and tried their only sales pitch: “We go? We go?” We finally went. I was tired.

So I hopped off in front of my favorite Ethiopian place, a little nook in Kabalagala (go ahead, pronounce it, 3 times, fast), and ordered an amazing mixed vegetable plate. The owner and chef came out to greet me and as I finished my meal I asked her about how she came to Uganda.

Her husband, as it turns out, is a political prisoner in Ethiopia. She fled four years ago after he was arrested. She hasn’t seen him since. She’s digging out a life cooking cheap food for the small Ethiopian community. Not enough life to put her children in school, though. She just shared, and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She asked for nothing.

I sat silently, staring at the top of a tree across the street, trying to think of a way to help. A movement near my knees brought my eyes down. A polio victim pulling himself along, flip-flops on his hands, had noticed the mzungu, me.

”Money for food?” he asked. I told him he could eat with me. He decided against Ethiopian and just had a soda.

It was a good dinner.