A few observations.

So, I've been in Kampala for over two weeks now. I've settled into a routine, and I thought it might be time for some general observations about Kampala, Uganda, work, and the people here. There isn't going to be much rhyme or reason in this entry -- but I keep having random thoughts throughout the day where I go, "I should remember to put that on my blog," and then I forget. So this is sort of a round-up of all those thoughts. And I took some photos of my new neighborhood over the weekend, so the observations will be punctuated with photos!

First of all: the smell of the city. When I first got here, I honestly thought everyone was smoking marijuana all the time. I realized recently, however, that's it's the garbage. People here burn their garbage, as there's no city service to come around and pick up trash. The smoke is everywhere, and it makes the whole city smell sickly-sweet all the time. The smoke adds to the dust from the unpaved parts of the roads and the pollution from the boda bodas and matatus (minibus taxis) to make for a pulmonary nightmare. I woke up on my second day here horribly congested and unable to breathe, but I've gotten used to it since then. Occasionally a boda or taxi will belch out an especially big burst of exhaust, but it's just part of life here.

[Security: broken glass bottles on top of a wall in my neighborhood.]

Thing the second: Ugandans are incredibly friendly people, but in a somewhat reserved way. Unlike in South Africa, no one is going to start a conversation with you in a taxi about what you're doing in their country. In fact, people generally don't initiate conversations with me at all -- unless "Hello, mzungu, how are you?" as they pass by counts. But I find that any time I smile at someone, they smile back. When I do get into conversations with Ugandans, they want to know how long I've been here, what I'm doing here, how I find it. They are eager to tell me how much I should pay for things, and to warn me that salesmen and taxi conductors are prone to ripping off mzungus. Ugandans are very frank, and they say things like: "you people," "you whites," "people like you," to talk about Americans and Europeans. I found this a little bit offensive at first -- race is such a sensitive topic in South Africa still, no black South African would ever say "you whites." But I've gotten used to it, and I've found that if I keep my ears open, I learn a lot about how Americans in particular are perceived here.

Thing the third: corruption is rampant here. Everyone talks about it. Everyone acknowledges it. I even had a few Ugandans tell me that America should stop giving aid money to the government, and just come to Uganda and the build roads and hospitals ourselves. There is very little faith in the government, and even less in the police. The lack of faith in the police manifests itself in the terrible phenomenon of "mob justice." Since no one believes the police can't be bought, Ugandans display a willingness to take the law into their own hands. It's common knowledge that if a criminal steals a woman's purse, for example, and she calls out, everyone around will turn on the criminal. This usually ends up with the criminal (or, in truly horrific instances of mistaken identity, an innocent bystander) being burnt alive in the street. The police usually arrive too late.

I have decided that if I get mugged here, I am going to keep my mouth shut. I don't want to be responsible for that kind of thing.

 [The street leading to my apartment complex.]

Thing the fourth: there is no way of getting around the city that my mother would be willing to use. This occurred to me this morning. The two main choices are boda bodas or matatus/minibus taxis. The boda bodas are the fastest option, and they can take you anywhere you want to go. On the downside, they're incredibly dangerous and, as I learned the hard way today, don't always understand where you want to go and end up in a completely unknown part of the city. They're also expensive, and really not safe to take at night. The matatus are much cheaper and safer, although sometimes as they go through an especially pot hole-y part of the city, it doesn't feel totally secure. Unfortunately, they don't go everywhere, and you really have to know where you're going to take them. They also get stuck in traffic jams so they take a lot longer than the bodas, despite the drivers' willingness to drive on sidewalks (true story: this happened to me this morning). With both bodas and taxis, there is always a chance of getting ripped off.

[Me, standing where I catch a matatu in the morning.]

Thing the fifth: it's somewhat frustrating to be a lawyer in a country where no one respects the law. I've never appreciated the culture of accountability that we have in the United States as much as I have in the last two weeks. Uganda can have the most progressive, modern Refugees Act, but that isn't going to stop the government from trying to (illegally) force out Rwandan refugees. The Constitution is meaningless when the President can amend it unilaterally to extend term limits and limit individual freedoms. I have so much respect for the NGOs that work hard here to hold governments to account for their actions -- it seems so futile that the people who commit their lives to this kind of work need to have a special kind of passion and determination, the likes of which I've rarely seen. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to observe and learn from them.

That seems like a good note to end on.

An apartment and a puppy.

So, it's been a few days, and a lot has happened. I'm now in my permanent apartment, and no longer at the motel. This is both a good and a bad thing -- but more on that in a bit.

My last day at the motel was actually rather dramatic. Things were fine when I left in the morning. I rushed back after work so I could pack everything up and be ready to leave, and Bruno (the owner) came up to my room to tell me that this weird guy who had been a guest... had left in the middle of the night, without paying, and taking one of the motel's laptops with him. Brian, who had been on duty when it happened, had been fired. I thought Bruno was joking at first about Brian, to be honest, but apparently he had a habit of letting people leave without paying. So... that was really strange. They called in an armed guard (armed with a baton, not a gun) to stand at the entrance to the motel; they were worried that Brian might try to come back, and/or they didn't want to take a chance on the same thing to happening again. Still, we all (Diane, Bruno, some of Bruno's friends, and myself) hung out at the reception desk for a while like usual after I finished packing. Bruno and his friend went to a "chidula" (I think that's the word?), which sounds like it's a bar with loud music and dancing and drinks. They invited me, but I decided to stick around the motel.

Diane, Samuel (one of the employees) and I ended up drinking ginger tea, eating Rolexes, and watching soap operas. We watched a Ugandan soap opera called "The Hostel," with acting so atrocious I thought it was a joke at first. But it was still good... I love African soap operas like nothing else in this world. I don't know why, but there's something charming about them. After it was over, there was a Mexican soap opera with really terrible English dubbing over the Spanish. Emily showed up in the middle of that, ready to take me to the flat in Kisaasi. I stalled a bit by offering her ginger tea; Diane makes really lovely ginger tea, with fresh ginger root. We hung out a bit longer, and Diane finally let me pay her (she had been putting it off because she was in denial and said she would miss me too much to let me leave), and we put all my stuff in her car. She had offered to drive me to the flat instead of making me get a taxi.

So, we set off. It's really not very far, although the roads off Kiira Road into Kisaasi are terrible and pot hole-y, so it took a while for Diane to carefully drive around them. Only part of the road is paved, and once you turn off even that road, it gets very dark. But we made it, and I said goodbye to Diane and promised to visit. After she left, one of the neighbors helped Emily and me up the stairs with my huge suitcase to the second floor. And then I met Alejandro.

Alejandro is Emily's very naughty puppy, who she saved from the street a little over a month ago. He has the most energy of any puppy I've ever seen, and it's hard to believe that when she first took him in, he was so weak she didn't think he'd survive. He has sharp little claws that need trimming, and he bites a lot -- not in a mean way, he just chews on hands and fingers. He's not house-trained terribly well, and the first thing I saw him do was poop on the living room floor. Charming. But really, he's a cute little guy -- despite being an undeniable pain in the butt. He looks like every African dog ever: they all interbreed and end up looking exactly the same, and he is no exception.

 Anyway, after a bit of puppy-related excitement, I made it to my room. It was set up like a hotel room, with a queen-sized bed and little bedside tables on each side. It also wasn't terribly clean -- Emily's old roommate only moved out the night before, and I guess there wasn't time to sweep the floor. The rest of the apartment is nice, although it was a bit messy. The kitchen is big and basic, and the bathroom is HUGE. There are two bathrooms -- Emily's room has its own en suite bathroom, but the shower doesn't work. So technically the other roommate, a British girl named Ula, and I share the big bathroom -- but everyone showers in there. The shower's not great, as I discovered this morning, but there's hot water at least.

Emily was going out to meet Ula at a bar somewhere, but I didn't feel like going (the Rolex was sitting in my stomach... those things are heavy!), so I just turned in for the night. The bed is surprisingly comfortable, as is the pillow. My sheets are pink, which... anyone who knows me will know that that's a little strange for me.

I got up in the morning at around 10:30 and spun my wheels until Emily woke up about an hour later. I don't have my own key yet, and I have no food in the kitchen and no real sense of what's nearby, so I couldn't do much without Emily. I did rearrange my room though, so it feels more like a bedroom and less like a hotel room.

Emily decided to make pasta for lunch (breakfast?), which ended up taking forever. There's no strainer, so the pasta was kind of soggy, but it was sustenance. While she was making the food, I saw three kids at the house next-door playing, and the little boy saw me and started waving. It was so adorable that I had to go get my camera, at which point they all started waving and posing for me. This is one thing I love about African kids -- they really love having their picture taken. Unlike in Latin America and Southeast Asia, where the kids pose and then demand money, kids in Africa really just get a kick out of cameras.

In other news, I also met Ula's boyfriend this morning... who is in high school. She's a little bit younger than Emily and me, and he's in his last year of high school, but it's still kind of weird. They were hungover from the night before, so they joined us for the food and then went back to bed. He seems nice enough. He's British, but his family has lived in Kampala for 8 years, so he's also kind of a local.

By the time we were done eating and ready to do something with the day, it was already 2:30. Emily had mentioned wanting to go to the pool at Kabira Country Club, which sounded absolutely lovely. We walked -- I'm still trying to avoid bodas, and it wasn't nearly far enough to justify taking a taxi. The area near the flat is so dark at night because it's wide open during the day: there's a makeshift soccer field, and grass and a stream, and there were about six cows hanging out by the bypass. It was really quite beautiful, and I would have taken a picture if I hadn't left my camera on my desk after the episode with the kids. I'll take pictures this week when I'm on my way to work.

The walk was... steep. Most of the walk is uphill, and the road isn't paved for most of the way, so it was very dusty and hot. We tried to buy Cokes along the way at a little shop, but they were out, so we tried again at the 24-hour little mart at the gas station. I prefer Coke in glass bottles, so we tried to buy them... but the woman at the cash register was like, "Do you have empties?" I told her no, and asked how much the Coke was, and she shook her head. What? Apparently, they won't sell you Coke in a glass bottle unless you have an empty glass bottle to trade in -- but at the same time, there was a sign saying that they would no longer be accepting empty bottle deposits. We had no idea what was going on, so we just bought them in plastic bottles instead. It was a strange moment though, and I couldn't help thinking about how any American would have just slapped a price on the glass bottles and made the sale. Capitalism at work, but not here apparently.

Emily had lost half of her bathing suit, so we went to a nearby all-purpose store called Nakumatt for her to buy a new one. I ended up buying some shower stuff and new hangers, and I also got matches and little incense-type things to make my room smell nice. (The apartment has a general smell of... puppy. I'd like to counteract that effect in my room.) We found Emily a bathing suit, and then headed to Kabira. It cost 25,000 UGX for a "day pass" to use the pool, which is a bit steep, but the country club is really nice so I guess it's worth it. I was really hot at that point, so I jumped right in the pool, and it felt lovely. I haven't been in a pool in so long, I forgot how relaxing it can be to just swim back and forth. I got out when Emily ordered spiced African tea (which is delicious), and we chatted and drank tea for about an hour before they started to close the pool. I knew from our email exchanges that Emily was really sweet, but I have been pleasantly surprised by how easy she is to talk to, as well.

After we left Kabira, I suggested that we go to a coffee place Emily had mentioned earlier. We got in a taxi, but we ended up going in the wrong direction. That's not as catastrophic as it sounds, because the main roads in Kampala run in a loop, and you can end up right back where you started going in either direction. But it would have been much quicker and cheaper to go clockwise rather than counterclockwise, which is what we did. I got to see parts of the city I'd never seen before, though... but we also got ripped off. When we got in the taxi, the conductor/fare collector told us it would be 1,500 UGX each, but when the time came, he demanded 4,000 UGX. It wasn't worth arguing over, but it always stings a little bit to get ripped off. The place we went is called Good African Coffee, and they also had food, so we decided to get coffee and dinner. We both got a drink called an Affocato (I think?), which was one or two shots of espresso mixed with ice cream and milk foam. It was seriously delicious. We also got and ate dinner, which was pretty good as well. I got a burger with fries (I had wanted something else, but they were out of it), and the fries were surprisingly good. It was way too much food though, and I felt sort of gross after eating it all in addition to the coffee/ice cream concoction.

We took a boda back to the flat, where we found that the power was out. It was really, really dark. It sounds stupid to say -- of course it was dark! But there aren't even lights out on the streets, so it was almost pitch black. Luckily, Emily's phone and mine both have "flashlights" built in, so we went in and found Ula and shone some light around the flat. Emily had a couple candles, and we had bought matches at Nakumatt, so she and I each put a candle in our rooms. Mood lighting, or something. Emily and I decided to watch TV on her computer, which died after about 20 minutes. But the power came back on shortly, so the day was saved. I think the power was out for about a little less than an hour.

Emily and Ula started making moves to go out for the night, but I was getting tired and decided not to go again. I'll have to be more fun next weekend. They left at around 10:30, and now here I am. Ready for night 2 in my Kampala apartment.

A stalker and a smorgasbord.

I didn't go to work yesterday because I was feeling sick -- my stomach was doing funny cramping things, and I didn't really sleep at night. I slept all afternoon instead. The people in the motel are really wonderful though -- Bruno (the motel owner) and Diane were both at the motel in the evening, and when I said I was going back up to my room after I had cereal for dinner, Bruno insisted that I not spend the whole day alone, and that I come back downstairs. I agreed, and it turned out to be a good call. His father and two of his brothers came by to visit, and we all spent time together at reception. His brothers are both my age: I think Diane said one is 23 and one is 26. We somehow ended up talking about South Africa, and Bruno's father asked me what I loved about it so much. I told them about how South Africans are so proud of their country and want visitors to love it as much as they do. Depressingly, all the Ugandans in the room agreed that there is nothing to be proud of in Uganda, and no reason to love their country. I guess that's what happens when you have the same leader for 25 years -- it's new and exciting and revolutionary at first, and then it stagnates and everyone becomes discontent.

The conversation turned to South African languages, and they were all fascinated by the three "clicks" from isiXhosa that I can do. They laughed at it and said that it sounded like monkeys talking. They really seemed to get a kick out of it -- even today, Bruno told me he's still laughing about it. As Bruno's father and brothers were leaving, the older one stuck his head in and said, "Katie, I have just one last question. Can they actually talk to monkeys?" and left laughing.

Random observation from last night: Ugandans appear to drink whiskey mixed with soda or tonic water here, instead of drinking it neat. I thought that was very strange, and Bruno has offered to have me try it twice now, but I'm a bit wary. It seems like it would taste really gross. Maybe I'll find out in the next few days.

Anyway, I woke up feeling fine, so I went to work today. My boss was very sweet and came in to check on me and give me advice about some of the adjustments foreign bodies have to make when they come to Uganda -- new bacteria, etc. She told me I still look a bit wan, but I've had people telling me that since I got here. I don't know how I'm supposed to look healthy! Anyway, she seemed satisfied that I'm not going to drop dead and gave me advice for questions to ask when I go see a doctor tomorrow. I already had the appointment to get my INR checked (for the Coumadin), but I figure I'll also have the doctor look at my burn and ask some questions about what I can do when I'm feeling nauseous in these first few weeks.

I successfully navigated the taxi back to the motel again. I'm trying to also identify landmarks near where I'll need to get out when I move into my flat, but I was sitting in the middle of the back row in the taxi today so I couldn't really see much. I was really hungry when I got home, but I was just going to wait until later to eat cereal. As I was going into my room, though, Christine (the woman from Monday who showed me the shortcut around the road block) saw me and shouted a "hello." She's known around the motel as my stalker, since she's called me at least four times since Monday. I decided to go say hello to her, though, and see if she could help me get a snack from the vendors on the street near the motel. The joke about her being my stalker got a little too real when she told me that she saw me through my room's window last night on my computer -- I guess that's what I get for sitting in my room with the light on and the curtains open, but it was still really creepy. Still, she helped me get food.

I had a veritable smorgasbord of food this evening. I wanted to try something called a Rolex, but the first thing I saw was a gonja -- a fried sweet yellow plantain. I decided to get one, but then she pointed out that the guy right next to the gonja woman was making Rolexes. A Rolex is a chapati (apparently the same thing as a roti, in India -- an unleavened flat bread of sorts) filled with fried egg, and the egg can be mixed with a number of things. Mine was mixed with slices of tomato. You put the egg and the tomatoes onto a hot surface, and it fries into what looks a bit like an omelet, then you put the chapati on top and roll it up like a burrito. I was told later that there's one called an "Obama" filled with meat and cabbage and lots of other things.

Christine came back to the motel with me, and she acted like she wanted to go upstairs, but Bruno saw what was happening and came out to subtly stop her. I told her I was going to take a shower, so she left (but said she'd come back -- seriously???). I went up to talk to Bruno about all of the food I had brought back, and he ended up inviting me to drink tea with him and some of his friends in the dining room. They have this really good ginger tea that isn't too strong, and it's lovely. I ate my gonja and Rolex while I was talking to him. The Rolex was SO GOOD. I mean, seriously, it was delicious. It might be my new favorite food here, which is a problem because it is not healthy. But worth it.

I sat and chatted with Bruno and his two friends for a while... and there was more food. Brian brought up corn that had been roasted or something, and it tasted just like popcorn, but it was still on the cob. It was rather delicious. We all sat around, eating the corn and drinking tea. The friend of Bruno's who I hadn't met before, Andrew, lived in London for 6 years and hates England and the English, so we sparred a bit on that topic. I also made the grave error of telling Bruno that the older brother, Emmanuel, is good-looking. He started teasing me about being my in-law, and when his brother called him later in the conversation, he actually told his brother that I "was missing him so much." He told me to say hello, and I shouted very loudly that I hate him and am not paying him to stay in his motel anymore. Because I am 12 years old. It was so embarrassing. All I said was that he's good-looking. And I might have mentioned that he's funny. But now I can obviously never see him again. Thanks a lot, Bruno.

I had the opportunity to take a picture of one of the guards outside the National Resistance Movement headquarters today. I find the guards really photograph-able, in their blue fatigues with their big guns. They seem to be always reading the newspaper. This guy wasn't actively reading the paper, but it was sitting right next to him. I guess guarding the headquarters of the ruling party doesn't keep them very busy.

I mostly think the yellow balloon-like things are very silly.

A police roadblock.

I wasn't going to update today because, quite frankly, sitting at a desk doing research on the status of refugees in the emerging East African Community isn't the stuff of thrilling blog posts. Don't get me wrong, it is sort of interesting -- East Africa is moving towards political federation, like the European Union on steroids, and my organization is looking at whether the concept of "refugee" will continue to be relevant in a region with free movement of people. I spent most of today researching how West Africa has dealt with the issue in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Still, not terribly compelling for a blog post in its own right.

The day got interesting when I left the office. I walked down to Wandegeya, but there didn't appear to be any taxis stopping. I wasn't quite sure what was going on, so I stood around for a few minutes, but taxis just kept passing by, completely full. I decided to bite the bullet and take a boda -- for the first time since I burned myself. I think I lucked out and got a very gentle driver, because he drove fairly slowly and didn't try to cut off every vehicle on the road. I was just feeling pretty good about the whole thing, and we were approaching where I would get off... when suddenly there were traffic police in all white, stopping traffic from continuing on Kiira Road. Not entirely sure what was going on, I got off the boda and paid him, thinking I would do better on foot. A truck full of policemen flew threw the junction, and then the traffic police put up moveable spikes in the road to pop the wheels of any vehicle that tried to come through. I asked a police officer if it was okay to walk through, and he said yes. But I only walked a little ways, before I saw a crowd of people standing on the side of the street and a giant police truck in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. I asked a police officer again if I could walk through, and he said no. At that point, I found out that President Mouseveni was beyond the truck, at a store opening -- and so traffic was blocked off, probably in both directions.

A number of Ugandans came over to ask me where I was trying to go, and when I told them, they said they could take me via a shortcut. I was a little bit skeptical of going along a back dirt road with random men I didn't know, so I sort of put them off at first. I knew they weren't flat-out lying to me about a shortcut because -- and isn't it funny how life has a way of working out like this? -- the taxi I took to work this morning had gone by the same dirt road shortcut. But I still hesitated to set off on back roads with random men I didn't know. I said I would wait, and a young woman came up to me and said it would be at least 2 or 3 hours before we could pass through. At that point, I agreed to go with her. She said she was also going to Frobel Road, so we set off together.

Her name was Christine, and the first thing she told me is, "I'm Catholic, God-fearing. Do you fear God?" It's funny how something that would sound so obnoxious in the United States, sounds fairly benign here. She wanted to know where I was from, how long I had been in Uganda, how long I would stay. She said she loves her country, which was refreshing -- she's the first Ugandan I've met who seems really excited about Uganda. Everyone else is really angry and pessimistic about politics, and I have to admit, it's sort of coloring my view of the country as well. But she was very upbeat about it, and asked me to tell people to come visit when I go back to the USA. She's a secretary, but also apparently interns at an organization called Femrite, which (per their website) "promotes women writing in Uganda." She says they meet every Monday evening at 5pm to discuss books and literature, and she invited me to come to the meetings. I think it would be a cool thing to do/experience, so I may take her up on her offer next week. It sounds like a really exciting organization.

In any case, she got me back to the motel safe and sound, and she actually lives just nearby. I was relieved that she didn't go out of her way to get me home.Diane was here when I got back, and she's the one who told me exactly what Mouseveni was doing on Kiira Road. She said I should have taken pictures of the police. It definitely occurred to me, but I thought they might be skeptical about why I was taking pictures and take my camera away. My general rule is not to take photos of police or military, as you never know how they'll react.

To make up for having no pictures of the police roadblock, I took some pictures out my back window of my neighborhood. Enjoy!

P.S. I know some of you are having trouble leaving comments that save. Try posting as Anonymous (I think it's the very bottom option in the drop-down menu).

An African wedding.

Yesterday was a bit strange. I woke up feeling sort of ill -- nothing specific, just a general sense of malaise. As soon as I went downstairs to reception, everyone commented on the fact that I didn't look well. I realized I hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day, so I had some cereal in the hopes that it would help me feel better. It didn't.

I had already decided to go to the pharmacy nearby to get something for the burn on my leg, so I added "something for feeling yucky" to my list. Diane, the motel owner's wife, walked with me to make sure the pharmacy didn't rip me off. I got a vitamin E lotion (instead of the cream for burns they initially offered, which was full of "natural herbs" from China. I was skeptical...), and then decided that maybe I should get a painkiller of some sort. The tricky thing was that, because of the Coumadin I'm still taking for the pulmonary embolism, I can only take acetominophen (Tylenol), not ibuprofen (Advil). There isn't Tylenol or Advil in this part of the world, so I tried to tell the pharmacist that I needed acetominophen. She stared blankly at me, and then had me look it up in her reference book. Apparently they call it paracetamol here, and that's what's in Panadol (the main painkiller they use). So I bought some Panadol, as well as some antacid sort of thing in case the Panadol didn't help my stomach feel more settled, and the vitamin E cream. It was all expensive -- 53,000 UGX, which is only around $20, but buys a lot more here than $20 does at home.

On the walk back to the motel, it occurred to me that I might also be dehydrated, so I bought three bottles of water at the supermarket. When we got back, I took the Panadol and drank one of the bottles of water, and I started to feel better. I decided to see what Emily was up to, but she was in Ntinda running errands. We planned for her to call me when she was on her way back, so that I could go see the apartment and meet the puppy. I didn't hear anything from her for about an hour, though, so I decided to take a nap until she called. She never called -- she texted me three hours later to say she was still out shopping, and I told her never mind, as I had agreed to go with Diane to her friend's wedding that evening.

I realized at that point that it was already 5:30, and we had agreed to leave for the wedding around 5. I got up, got dressed, and went downstairs, only to find that Diane wasn't ready yet. When she was, we got in her car and left the motel. It turned out that Diane had promised to visit her friend's baby in the hospital on the way, so we went to a private hospital and up to the children's ward, where we found a few of Diane's friends and a very happy-looking baby in a grown-up sized bed. The baby apparently has had a few episodes of trouble breathing, but she seemed fine when we were there. Diane told me that she had looked at the same hospital when she was looking for a place to give birth to one of her kids, but she felt it was "too luxurious." It would definitely not be considered luxurious by Western standards, but it wasn't terrible either.

In any case, we only stayed for a few minutes, and then went on to the wedding venue. Immediately after we parked, a professional photographer stopped us to take our picture. I was a little confused -- it seemed sort of "red carpet" for a wedding, but as it turns out, the photographers later circulate among the guests and try to sell the photos. Diane bought one of them for me. I only have a physical copy of the picture, but I took a photo of the photo with my digital camera so you all could see it. I look kind of stupid, but oh well.


We went over into a garden of sorts, where there was a giant tent set up with tables and chairs underneath it. One of Diane's girlfriends put us at a table with her and some of Diane's other friends and their husbands. By the time we got there, dinner was already being served, so we went over and got our food; it was all traditional Ugandan food like matoke and peanut sauce, green beans and rice rice, and some other things I couldn't quite identify. There was a separate tent in front of the big tent where the bridal party all sat -- the bride and groom and the maids of honor and groomsmen. The church ceremony had already taken place earlier in the day: the photographers were distributing photos from the church that guests could buy as well.

A random observation: women appear to wear to weddings in Uganda what Americans would consider to be prom dresses. I haven't seen so many tacky/ugly dresses since 2004.

There was a Master of Ceremonies who announced that it was time for the bride's family to speak. A lot of it was in another language (not Luganda, I don't think), but some of it was English, and Diane explained some of it to me. This was an inter-tribal wedding: the groom was from eastern Uganda and the bride from western Uganda. The bride's uncle, mother, and brother all spoke, and they introduced basically every other member of the family -- there were a lot of siblings. The bride's uncle gave the couple a cow, although Diane later explained that it really means the value of a cow; since the husband isn't a cattle-herder and they'll likely live in Kampala, an actual cow wouldn't do them a lot of good. The bride's brother, who gave her away in church (their father had died when the bride was a child) gave a speech that talked a lot about how, even though the bride is a "corporate woman" with a job, she has to remember that the man is the head of the household, and that's how it is in every species on the planet, so she has to let him be in charge. I sort of bristled at that (predictably), but everyone else seemed to be nodding and murmuring about how true it was.

After the bride's family spoke, it was the groom's family's turn. They all wore really bright colors, and they even seemed to have a sort of "theme song" that played as they danced up to the emcee/microphone. Again, what they said was mostly not in English, but they talked about having "crossed the Nile" to retrieve their bride and welcome her to the family. As the bride and groom had already been together for a long time and have two sons together, it all seemed a bit overly formal -- I mean, having added two kids to the groom's family seems like it would make her already part of the family, right? Apparently not.

The next thing that happened was cutting the cake. According to Diane, this is the really important moment in Ugandan weddings, when things really become official. The bride and groom got up from their separate tent and danced/processed together over to the cake, which the bridesmaids had stuck sparklers in. There was a bubble machine and a local musician who walked after them and sang local songs. At the moment that the bride cut the cake, there were also confetti guns that went off -- it was actually a very cool, colorful moment. After they cut the cake, the couple went and sat on the ground in front of the table with the cake on it, and they fed each other pieces of the cake that way. That was the first time the emcee referred to them as "Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so," so I think it's sort of the equivalent of "I now pronounce you man and wife."

The bride carried a plate of cake around for a bit, and the bridesmaids also helped distribute chunks of cake. At that point, the couple left to change clothes. When they came back in, everyone stood up to greet the bride, who walked up an unofficial aisle through all the tables to the groom. Then they distributed all the mini-cakes; the parents and other important family members each got one, and Diane's group of friends got one as well to share among them. Throughout all of this, the couple's sons were having a ball with the bubble machine, which was rather adorable.

Next, the couple stood up by their tent to receive all the gifts people had brought. After that was over, the bride and groom each spoke for a few minutes -- and after that, it was time to dance.

I got up and danced with Diane and her group of friends until my leg/the burn started to hurt, and then I went to sit down. I was relieved for an excuse, because the bride had come over and was dancing in the group -- and the video cameras followed the bride. I felt like it was a bit silly for a badly-dancing white stranger to be in the wedding videos, so it was a bit uncomfortable for me to be there. In any case, as people got drunker, it became more interesting to dance with the mzungu, I guess, because one of the venue workers decided to dance with me for a while. Diane came to rescue me, and I went back out with her group of friends, but then a man dancing with them decided he really wanted to dance with me, and even after I obliged for a bit, he still wouldn't leave me alone. Diane and her friends ended up having to yell at him to stop, even though that wasn't terribly effective.

Diane and I left after a while, and decided to go to a bar for a bit instead of going straight back to the motel. We went to a place called Fat Boyz. I have no idea what part of the city we were in, and I couldn't find it again if you paid me. There was a group of guys taking turns playing pool, which we watched for a while and tried to guess who would win each individual game. After we finished our drinks, we came back to the motel and I went to bed.

Settling into a routine.

I have almost nothing of interest to report today. Why then, you wonder, is she writing a blog post entry? I will tell you.

I have two things of marginal interest to report today -- a day in which I literally sat at my desk from 10am to 5pm and did not move. First of all: I took a taxi in both directions (to/from work) today, and I successfully navigated both times. I had to confirm that we were actually in Wandegeya in the morning, but I was 100% on my own coming back from work. I did it all by myself!

Secondly, a burn update. Against the recommendations and advice of Brian, who has been burned by a boda exhaust pipe before, I bandaged my leg up last night pretty well. He told me to leave it open to "let the heat out," and I (rather pompously, I must admit) thought he was using some sort of indigenous concept of medicine and cold/hot balance -- so I ignored him. Well, when I unbandaged it about half an hour ago, the joke was on me: it doesn't look good. I took a picture and tried to upload it to show you all, but luckily for you, the internet is so slow right now that the image won't upload. You will have to use your imaginations.

A battle wound.

So, I decided today that I really don't like boda bodas very much. And it's only a little bit because I just badly (okay, moderately) burned my leg on a boda's exhaust pipe.

I took a taxi to work this morning, finally. There was on about to leave as I walked up to Kiira Road, so I jumped in. It was pretty uneventful. I have yet to figure out exactly how long it should take, so I get nervous about halfway through the ride and start to wonder if I've missed my stop. I asked for help from the woman next to me, who told me where we were, and then when to get off. The walk to the office only took about 10 minutes, which is what I expected. The walk from Wandegeya to the office takes me right past the National Resistance Movement's headquarters -- that's Mouseveni's party. Even though the election was in February (I think?), there are posters of all the candidates all over the city and on every available surface. The entrance to headquarters has these big yellow balloon-type things with Mouseveni's face on them. The guards were sitting outside in their blue fatigues this morning, engrossed in their newspapers.

I started researching the East Africa Community this morning, but was interrupted when I got a call to come to Makerere University to conduct another interview with a Darfurian refugee. I reluctantly went, although really -- one was enough. This guy talked a lot more than the one yesterday, but it made it harder to ask all the questions. I don't think I'm doing a very good job getting at what the organization really wants to know, in part because I'm not really an expert interviewer, and in part because of a still-existing language barrier that prevents the refugees from articulating more abstract concepts about citizenship and belonging. I also have to take my own notes while I ask the questions, which makes it hard to think about good, incisive follow-up questions. They want me to do another one tomorrow, and I don't know if I can refuse, but I'd like to. I find that, although it was definitely really cool to do be able to do it, one was enough... I'd rather do research. (Maybe my dad is right, and I really am an academic at heart.)


I got back to the office in time for lunch, and for the battle of the American versus the Giant Black Ants to begin. I had noticed them before -- these ants are probably an inch long, and they're resilient buggers. They apparently like sugar, and so they climb all over the desk (and, in one truly gross moment, on me) in search of sugar. I would flick them off the desk, and another one would show up ten seconds later. It was unpleasant.

I stayed at the office until around 6:45 tonight, waiting for Emily (the girl I'll live with starting next week) to come get me so we could go to dinner. I found out there's a Nando's here, which is a South African fast food chain that is delicious, and we decided to go. She also invited her two roommates. We were going to meet the roommates at a craft market, but Emily was running late, so we just went straight to the restaurant. It was good, although the quality of the chicken was markedly worse than in South Africa, England, or the United States (all the countries I've eaten Nando's in). The four of us sat around and talked for about two hours. Then we got onto two bodas (two people on each) and headed back to the suburbs where we live. The two roommates went back to their apartment, but Emily came with me to my motel -- it was dark and she didn't want me to be on a boda alone (especially as a boda driver tried to rob her last night... oops), and she wanted to get something called a Rolex for dinner, since she didn't like her veggie burger from Nando's. A rolex appears to be a thin crepe-like pancake with egg on the inside. I was too full to try one, but it's good to know they exist. Then Emily went back home, and I went back to the motel.

The title of this entry ("a battle wound") refers to the pretty significant burn I now have on my leg that I got while dismounting the boda boda. Instead of foot rests on the sides, I realized (too late) that my foot had been resting on a very hot exhaust pipe. I hit it with the inside of my right calf when I got off the motorcycle. It's not the end of the world, but it blistered and the skin peeled off right away, and it hurts like hell. I've got it all bandaged up now, but it's still stinging and throbbing, even an hour later. The experience just compounded my observations from today, which is that I just... really don't like boda bodas. I imagine horrible accidents every time I'm on them, and when they tilt a bit to the side when taking a sharp turn, I always panic that the bike is going to fall over or that I'm going to fall off. Add to this the fact that they're expensive, and it makes for not a very attractive transportation option. Unfortunately, they're the only way to get to certain places, so I think I'll have to continue taking them -- but hopefully only for short distances. Emily and I took one the entire length of the city tonight, and I was pretty unhappy the whole time.

Oh, no big deal.

No big deal, I just interviewed a Darfurian refugee today.

But first things first: I was going to take a taxi to work today, since Fauzia showed me how to walk yesterday. At the last minute, the owner of the motel offered to drive me into town, since she had a doctor's appointment, and I figured -- free is better than 1,000 UGX, so I accepted. I appear to be getting to the office before everyone except the man I share an office with upstairs, and today was no exception. At least Debbie, the woman who makes us lunch every day, has figured out that I need to drink a lot of coffee in the morning, bless her heart. My mornings look something like this:

Anyway, I read yet another report (this time on the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo) for most of the morning, although I had to read it in the dark. I haven't mentioned it yet, but the power fails in Kampala pretty regularly -- both at the motel and at the office. The motel has a generator that it runs whenever the power shuts off, but in the office, we just sat around in the relative dark until it came back on. I think it was out for about 2.5 hours... most of the morning.

While I was reading the Congo report, the lead interviewer in Kampala for the Darfur project (Joseph) came in to tell me he wanted me to visit the refugees with him at noon. I headed out at around 11:45am, despite the fact that the boda driver didn't know the place I told him I needed to go. I had Joseph talk to the boda driver, and he said he knew where to go.... and then charged me 4,000 UGX to drop me off in the wrong place. I flagged down another boda boda, who talked to the interviewer on the phone again and agreed to take me the rest of the way for 2,000 UGX. It was a really short distance though, and when Joseph heard how much I was being charged, he insisted that I only pay 1,000. So I guess I got less ripped off than I would have otherwise.

We walked a bit to the home of a Darfurian refugee. It was a bit removed from the main road, and there were definitely goats tied up outside the house. In the capital city. That's the kind of stuff that I mean when I say you see things in Kampala that you would only see in rural South Africa. I'm not even kidding, I saw two giant cows walking along one of the main roads yesterday... who knows where they were going. Anyways, we went inside and sat on one of the beds in the front room, and Darfurians sort of... trickled in, until there were about 30 of them sitting on the floor. Joseph explained our project to them through a translator, a really cool Darfurian refugee named Quoscondy, who was an interviewer (rather than an interviewee). I was not just the only white person in the room; I was also the only female. There's a whole separate group of women refugees that we'll interview later, so it will be different then. Once we had introduced ourselves, we figured out who would talk to us when, and then the 5 or 6 of us doing interviews went to get lunch and discuss logistics among ourselves. We went to an Ethiopian place nearby, and I thought the entire time about how much my parents would have hated what we had to eat.

After lunch, the first group of refugees came for the interviews, which we did at the restaurant because of lack of space in the house. There was one refugee who spoke enough English that he was comfortable talking to me without a translator, so I sat with him for around two hours. I'm not allowed to say exactly what we talked about (it was confidential, after all), but generally speaking, we talked about the conflict in Darfur, life as a refugee in Kampala, the referendum for independence in South Sudan, and how he identifies (as a Sudanese, as a Darfurian, etc.). His English was really good, although he hesitated to really tell me a story -- he instead waited for me to ask questions, which we were hoping wouldn't happen. Still, I think it was a fairly successful interview. I finished first, because I didn't have to do any translating, and I sort of sat around until Quoscondy finished his interview. At that point, he got us some beer from the guy who owned the restaurant (I think?), who he knew, and he and I sat and chatted for a while. He studied philosophy in university in Khartoum, so we talked about our favorite philosophers and theories about government and power. It was a surreal moment: drinking beer in the late afternoon in Kampala with a refugee from Darfur, talking about John Locke's humanist theory of tabula rasa

When the final interview wrapped up, we all reconvened and talked about general impressions, themes from the interviews, and challenges we encountered. It didn't take very long, and then it was time to get home -- the true challenge of the day. I was so far away from the motel that a boda boda would have cost an arm and a leg, but there was no direct taxi route back to Bukoto. We ended up taking a taxi to one of the taxi parks, which was complete and utter chaos. I didn't really get a chance to look around much, because I was so busy trying to follow Joseph and not get run over by a taxi, bicycle, boda boda, or truck. Quoscondy eventually left us to go home, and Joseph found a taxi going in the right direction and shoved me into it, then promptly disappeared. I took the taxi to Wandegeya, where it stopped and we waited to re-load... then off in the direction of Ntinda, which is the suburb east of where I'm staying. It would have been fine, except that it was about 7pm by then, and the sun set very quickly and all of a sudden, it was dark. Most of Kampala looks the same to me, so I was keeping my eyes desperately peeled for landmarks I would recognize so I would know when to get off the taxi. Unfortunately, the taxi cut through a petrol station and drove for a while on a road I had never been on, and it was pitch black outside. I started to panic a bit, and asked the fare collector if we were even going to Frobel stage (my "stop"), and he told me we weren't there yet. So I relaxed a bit, and when we did approach it, he remembered me and made sure the driver stopped.

Crisis averted.

In other news, Ugandan mosquitoes find me delicious. I have at least a dozen bug bites, mostly on my feet and legs, and I am itchyitchyitchy. I went to the pharmacy the other day to get something to make them stop itching, and I wanted to buy bug spray, but they only had a repellant cream (?), which I haven't used yet. I would be perfectly content if all mosquitoes spontaneously died and/or stopped biting me, though. That would be just peachy.

Genocide and civil war and refugees, oh my?

Second day of work! I got up a little bit early, had breakfast (I tried matoke -- steamed green bananas, and a very popular dish in Uganda. It was yummy!), and took a boda boda to work. My boss had given me a bunch of different reports to read yesterday, so the first thing I did was finish the one I had started yesterday on Rwandan refugees living in Uganda. Apparently, the Rwandan government really wants all the refugees to come back, so it can say that everything is back to normal -- but a lot of the refugees are Hutus (the ethnic group who did most of the killing in the genocide), and they are scared to go back because the Hutus are collectively blamed for the genocide, even if a particular Hutu individual wasn't involved at all. The report was really interesting, and is apparently really controversial with the Rwandan government.

The Darfurians all met again in the office today, but I didn't join them like I did yesterday. However, after they finished, the two researchers who will be in Kampala came to talk to me, and apparently I am going with them tomorrow to interview Darfurians in Kampala. The goal is to interview as many people as possible, so if any of the refugees (likely the younger ones) speak English, I get to actually conduct the interview. Otherwise, I'll be taking notes based on the translation from Arabic. However, my boss didn't want to send me out to do interviews without me knowing details about what's going on in Darfur. And it's sort of embarrassing to admit, but until today I really didn't know all the details. I was sort of like "genocide is bad, janjaweed are bad guys." And okay, janjaweed are bad guys, but it's much more complicated and confusing than that. I'm sure I still only understand a small part of what happened there, but I spent many hours today reading histories and surveys about the conflict. The former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, led an African inquiry into the situation which has a nice summary of the history of the region, and there's an NGO that did a huge survey-based study of Darfurian refugees living in Chad that focused on the refugees' beliefs justice in Darfur and South Sudan.

Reading the reports, I was struck once again (as I often am when I'm in Africa) by how smart these people are. There's this assumption in the developed world that uneducated means unintelligent -- but the refugees who answered this NGO's survey questions had sophisticated ideas about freedom, democracy, justice, and blame. I think 99% of them were farmers before they were displaced, and most of them probably couldn't write their name in any language... but they know what's happening to them, they understand the politics, they know who is to blame (overwhelmingly, they blame Bashir and the Government of Sudan), and they know what punishment those people should get. I was amazed by the large proportion of refugees who firmly believe that Bashir and other war criminals should be tried by the International Criminal Court, and the faith they have in the impartiality and ability of the international community. Really remarkable stuff, and it's good to be reminded every once in a while that all the education in the world at the greatest schools doesn't mean I know or understand this stuff better than the people who have lived through it.

Anyway, I met with my boss in the afternoon about the Darfurian interviews and about a paper that we're going to write together on the emerging East African Community, which is kind of like the EU in its early phases. It's a confederation of east African states moving towards the free flow of goods, services, and (most relevant to my organization's mission) people. My organization is hosting a conference in the first week of July, and my boss is presenting a paper on the ramifications of the EAC on refugees and refugee law, and she wants me to do most of the research and write a first draft. So that will be my big project for the next month, along with working with the senior researcher in Cape Town on writing up a report based on the Darfurian interviews. Since I type so fast, all the interviews in Arabic will be orally translated for me to transcribe, so I'll really be the only one who has heard all the interviews. That puts me in a good position to pick up on repeated themes and topics that pop out in the different conversations.

After work, one of the Ugandan lawyers walked me to Wandegeya, which is a neighborhood in Kampala, and also a major hub for the minibus taxis. I decided it was time to learn how to take a taxi to and from the office. The walk took about 15 (maybe 20?) minutes, but we were walking slowly -- I think it would probably only take me about 10 minutes on my own. She put me into a taxi heading to Ntinda, which was the right direction for me, and off we went. The taxi was so low on gas that the motor kept dying every time we slowed down or stopped... I thought it was a more serious problem, but we stopped to get gas, and then it was fine after that. It was nice to be surrounded by metal, instead of flying down the street on the back of a motorcycle. The taxis are significantly cheaper (1,000 UGX vs. 4,000 UGX for a one-way ride between the motel and my office), but they are also significantly slower. None of the vehicles, which are all Toyota Hiaces from the 1980s, are in very good condition, and the one today was no different. I could feel the heat of the overburdened engine through my sandals on the floor, and when I pitched forward at one point as the driver stopped sharply, my knee hit the engine cover and I thought it was going to leave a burn mark, it was so hot. With all the stops and sitting in traffic, it took me about an hour to get home -- instead of the 15 minutes it would have taken on a boda boda -- and when I got home, I was sweaty and tired. But I think it's still probably a better idea to take them as much as possible instead of the bodas, if only for the cost difference. If I take a taxi both ways, that's 2,000 UGX per day instead of 8,000 UGX per day -- $0.80 cents versus $3.35 every day. It doesn't sound like much, but I think it will make a difference in the long-run. And this way, I don't need to buy a helmet or fear for my life twice a day.

Work!

So, today was my first day of work. And I, of course, slept through my alarm. Thankfully, Brian called me to let me know it was time for breakfast, and I got up with plenty of time to spare. Ate a quick breakfast, then waited around for Diana (the motel owner/owner's wife) to be ready to take me to work. She drove me into town, but asked me to pay 10,000 UGX for gas -- which I guess means she didn't give me a free ride after all. Anyway, she dropped me off at the office a bit after 9:00am. When I went inside, there was no one there except Debbie, who sort of serves tea and coffee and makes lunch, I guess? She appears to leave after lunchtime, and according to my office mate, she makes lunch every day. In any case, people came in a bit after I got there, and my boss emailed me some things to read while she was on her way in. It was a summary of the organization's activities in 2009-2010 -- and they did a LOT. After I read it, I went and met with her about what I found interesting and the things she thinks I should work on.

Apparently some of the work is pretty politically sensitive -- some of the members of this organization have received death threats based on certain reports (sorry, Mom), so I can't really go into details (that sounds so mysterious), but generally speaking, there are three areas she thinks I could work on: 1) Rwandan refugees in northern Uganda; 2) the emerging East African Community; and 3) citizenship and belonging among Darfurians in the newly-independent Southern Sudan (which becomes independent on July 9 -- happy birthday, Mom! I got you a new African country.) She gave me some reports to read about Rwanda and Darfurians in South Sudan. A group is actually heading to Juba in South Sudan on Wednesday to do research interviews about citizenship for a new report, and there are going to be interviews among Darfurians in Kampala, too. In the afternoon, the researchers came in and we had a big (read: 4 hours long) meeting about research methodology. It seems that I'm going to type up oral/dictated translations of the interviews, which will probably all be in Arabic. Even though the conversation sort of went in circles, and there were some language barriers, it was actually a lot of fun and very informative. One of the Darfurian refugees who's heading to South Sudan walked me out to the road and got a boda boda driver down to a reasonable price to take me home. Unfortunately, I thought I recognized the spot where the motel is and had the boda driver drop me off... but I was wrong. At least I was only about 500m away (according to the estimate of a man working at the nearby supermarket). When I realized my mistake, I decided to go into the supermarket and see what I could buy. Now that I'm friendly with Brian, it feels strange to ask him to cook meals for me -- even though I know he loves to cook. It's still weird, so I bought some cereal and non-refrigerated milk (the kind that comes in packets, like in Europe), and walked back to the motel.

When I got home, I had a bowl of cereal and then hung out at reception and talked to the owner, Bruno, and Brian. I somehow ended up on the topic of the American Constitution and went on and on about the details and everything I know now after a semester of Constitutional Law, AKA I proved that I am a giant nerd. I stayed down there for the whole evening chatting with Brian (who tends to monologue, and ended up telling me his whole life story and -- once again -- about how corrupt Mouseveni's government is) without even realizing it. Brian works pretty much 24 hours a day, every day, but he promised that the next time he goes home to his village, he'll take me with him. It's only 45 minutes from Kampala, and I think it will be fun. He had better not just be agreeing to pacify me.

So that's pretty much it. I have to make my own way to work tomorrow morning, and I still don't know how to walk from the Wandegeya taxi stage to my office. I'll probably end up just getting a boda... I really need to find a place to buy a helmet so I don't feel like I'm going to die every time I ride one. The taxis are less expensive than bodas, so hopefully I'll figure out how to use them soon. I was going to wander around the area a bit at lunchtime to see if I could orient myself (hah), but since Debbie brought food to my desk, I didn't really get the chance. But tomorrow is another day.

Newsflash

Note to self: while it might be fun to teach Ugandans to play gin rummy until 2 in the morning, it is probably a bad idea to go to your first day of work running on only 5 hours of sleep. There is not enough coffee in the world.

Day 3

So, today I switched hostels. The first hostel was, all told, pretty horrible. It wasn't any one big thing, but a bunch of small things that cumulatively made it un-liveable, and made the prospect of staying there for a week dim. I looked up Kampala on hostelworld.com and found a place called Etana Motel which looked like it was near where the flat is that I'll ultimately move into. I called last night, booked it for 12 nights, and crossed my fingers. When I got up this morning, I ate breakfast and then had the hostel-that-shall-not-be-named call me a special hire (what we think of as a taxi), and we set off on an adventure. The driver knew the general area where we were going, but I made a grave miscalculation. There's a minibus taxi stage right near the hostel, with a name. I assumed that, since it shows up on Google maps, it must be well-known to locals, right? Wrong. It turns out, I have learned, there are taxi stages every few blocks all over the city, and it was completely unreasonable for me to expect it to serve as a useful landmark. However, by stopping and asking boda-boda drivers for directions about five times and driving back and forth along Kira Road a few times, we finally found it.


I knew this place was an improvement based on the simple fact that someone was there to welcome me, and that there is a reception desk. Three friendly staff people came and insisted on each taking one of my bags, telling me, "You are most welcome," and showing me to my room. Which, by the way, is beautiful. The bed is clean, the floor is clean, there's a desk with a mirror, there's a closet, and the shower works and has hot water. I must literally be in heaven.

The young man at the front desk actually introduced himself to me (his name is Brian): another improvement over the last place. We chatted for a bit and he explained the taxi system in Kampala and how the major roads work. It turns out the main arteries in the city are named for the place they lead you -- e.g. Jinja Road will take you to the town of Jinja, Kira Road will take you to the sub-county of Kira, etc. After I picked his brain for a while, he made me lunch. He said it would take 30-40 minutes, but it took almost 2 hours. I am learning quickly that Ugandans do things very s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y. That said, lunch -- which was a delicious beef and vegetable stew with white rice -- was exactly the right size and very good. The beef wasn't exactly of kobe quality, but that's not exactly a shocker. I ate most of it in all its chewy glory, because the sauce was so damn good. Even the white rice tasted better than normal.

After lunch, Brian and I chatted a bit more about the political situation in Uganda right now. He is the second Ugandan I've talked politics with, and he's the second one to hate Mouseveni. He actually got caught up in the violence on Thursday; he said he hadn't gone to protest, but drove a taxi right into the middle of the confrontation, and when he got out to find out what was going on, he ended up getting beaten by a police officer. His elbow definitely looked freshly-wounded, although I can't say whether it was really an accident that he was there. He told me all about the tribal politics of Uganda, and how Mouseveni is from the western part of the country and favors those tribes over the Buganda, who form a majority, especially in Kampala. According to Brian, Mouseveni gives jobs to underqualified members of his own tribe, while passing over qualified Buganda and other central Ugandan tribe members. He also said that the political government of Uganda is supposed to pay money to the Buganda king, but Mouseveni stopped paying almost 10 years ago (I think?) and owes billions of shillings now.

Interestingly, Brian was very excited to find out that I'm American, and the first thing he said was, "President Obama!" He's read one of Obama's books (he couldn't remember the title, but I think it was probably The Audacity of Hope) and views the NATO mission in Libya as Obama following through on his promise to free Africa from its dictators. I've heard now from two sources that Mouseveni is good friends with Gaddafi -- there's even a road named "Col. Muammar Gaddafi Road" in the Somali neighborhood of Kampala, that Gaddafi funded and built with Mouseveni's permission/approval. The general consensus -- if there can be such a thing after four days in a new country -- is that Ugandans believe that anyone who rules for 20 or 30 years is bound to go bad. Like Gaddafi, like Mouseveni, and I imagine like Mugabe, although he hasn't come up. Brian and my taxi driver from Entebbe both agreed that Mouseveni was very good for the first 10 years, and then everything went to hell.

While Brian and I were talking, his boss and her three children showed up. Now, anyone who knows me know that I love nothing more than sassy African children, especially when they're dressed in patent leather shoes, jeans, white dress shirts, vests, and bow ties. So I went to introduce myself. The woman, whose name I embarrassingly didn't get or can't remember, and her husband own this motel, and she is lovely. We spent the next 4 hours talking about all sorts of things, from Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters to the difficulty of earning a good living in Uganda to the difficulties she's had with her sisters-in-law because she's from a different part of the country and had to convert to Catholicism to be allowed to marry her husband. The kids hung out, all of them calling me "auntie" to my great delight. The middle one, who is 4 years old, kept giving me and his mom flowers that he had picked from the decorative plants. So the afternoon flew by that way. She offered to take me to work tomorrow morning, and to show me where the taxis will stop so I can start to figure out how to get to/from the office on my own. This saves me about 25,000 UGX (around $10) in taxi fare and will hopefully enable me to get to the office completely on my own on Tuesday.

I finally had to leave her and the delicious South African wine we were drinking so that I could take a shower (allow me to say it again: hot water is a godsend) and put in my order for dinner. I am currently waiting for dinner, and am not hopeful that it will be ready anytime soon, given how long lunch took. But that's okay, I'm starting to adjust to things taking this long. It's not like I have anywhere to be at the moment.

Phew. Sorry for such a long entry. I guess I'm feeling verbose tonight. Tomorrow is my first day of work, and I'm very excited. But for now, I will leave you with a picture I took while I was waiting for lunch today, enjoying the smell of the coming rain. This woman looked so perfect standing in her doorway, watching her daughter do chores in the yard, that I couldn't help getting a little voyeuristic.

 

Day 1

Have arrived in Kampala. Getting into the country was uneventful, except for the fact that I couldn’t get a multiple entry visa at the airport, or a visa for longer than 90 days. I’ll have to figure out how to change both of those things once I’m a bit more settled. The hostel last night in Entebbe was fine. The power went out a few times this morning, but it’s not so hot that fans are necessary — at least not early in the morning. I got a taxi from the hostel into Kampala, with a nice driver named Daniel. The opposition leader Kizza Besigye returned to Kampala yesterday, and apparently the road into Kampala from Entebbe was full of roadblocks and the military fighting, as the presidential convoy met FDC supporters. The road was clear today, but there were TONS of men in military uniform and big guns standing along the side of the highway. It was definitely a noticeable presence, and more than a little bit intimidating.

The drive from Entebbe to Kampala confirmed what I already knew — Uganda is significantly less developed than South Africa. The sights in urban Uganda are things you would only see in rural South Afirca — bicycles carrying loads and loads of plantains, goats and cows tied up on the side of the highway, women walking with jugs of water on their heads, etc. It was hard to tell when we actually entered Kampala; we didn’t go into the “downtown” area, and the area I’m in (Old Kampala) doesn’t seem much more developed. The roads are TERRIBLE — huge potholes all over, the likes of which I’ve only seen in rural Eastern Cape South Africa. And this is the capital city.

The room at the hostel is fine — nothing except a bed, really, but it will do for a few weeks. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else checked in, but hopefully other people will come soon. There’s another hostel that’s more popular with backpackers a little farther away from downtown Kampala, which I might move to after the week at Tuhende Lodge. We’ll see how things go. Maybe the other hostel has a bed fan -- it's not as sweltering as I was promised, but it is warm.

When I emailed my boss and Emily, the girl whose puppy I am going to live, Emily emailed back right away and asked if I wanted to meet her at a big mall called Nakumatt Oasis to buy a phone and get lunch. I thought that sounded  like a good idea, so I had one of the staff at the hostel flag me down a boda boda to take me there. Boda bodas are sometimes referred to as "flying death traps" -- they're moped taxis where no one follows the rules of the road or wears a helmet. However, they're much easier than the minibus taxis: you just tell them where you want to go, and they take you there. With the taxis, you have to make sure you're getting on the right route, and you have to know where you're going, so you can tell the driver to pull over. They are apparently less expensive than boda bodas, though. Here's a picture of a boda boda from Wikipedia (in other words, I didn't take this photo):

So I got to Nakumatt Oasis and met Emily, who took me to get a phone. It's just a cheap Nokia, but it's nice to have one anyway. I feel more connected to the universe. Then we got lunch at an Indian place on the top floor of Garden City, which is a giant mall next-door to the other giant mall (go figure?), with nice views of the city. According to Emily, Indian food in Kampala is really good for some reason. I don't know about all Indian food here, but the place we ate was delicious. After lunch, we went to buy an Orange "dongle"... it's a USB stick that provides internet access wherever the Orange network has coverage, which is basically everywhere. I'm currently using it from the hostel, which doesn't have its own internet.

After I finished buying all my technology, Emily and I jumped on another boda boda together to go to the office of the organization where I'm working. I met some of the people in the office, including the lovely woman who interviewed me and with whom I've been in touch over email. They were all really nice, and seem to be looking forward to me starting on Monday. After a brief visit, I parted ways with Emily, got on my own boda boda, and headed back to the hostel. I played around on the internet for a while to make sure the dongle works, and then I ventured out to get dinner. I didn't venture very far, to be honest... just downstairs to the restaurant in the hostel. They served me a three-course meal for less than $10, which was good and very filling. I'm now back up in my room, killing time before I get tired and go to bed! I hope I won't have trouble sleeping without a fan. It's cool at night, but for some reason it's fairly warm in my room.

Anyway, that’s all I have to report — other than the fact that I heard a minibux taxi blasting the Macarena on the way into Kampala, in a truly multlcultural moment. Welcome to Africa, Katie.

Day 0

I am sitting in the Washington Dulles airport, waiting for my first international flight — to Amsterdam, and then onward to Entebbe (the airport serving Kampala). I am not looking forward to the next 24 hours, but I hope it will be worth it when I get there. At least Dulles has free wi-fi. There is, of course, a child at my gate screaming as though it were literally being murdered. Repeatedly. Hurrah!

In more serious news, the leader of the opposition party Forum for Democratic Change, Kizza Besigye, is returning to Kampala any day now from Nairobi to face charges for the “walk-to-work” campaign that has been running for the past few weeks. Selfishly, I hope it doesn’t cause problems for me when I arrive… the government has announced they will put in place an “exclusion area” to prevent FDC supporters from rallying at the airport, so they’re apparently planning to gather on the road into Kampala instead. I have a feeling that the next week will be a bit dicey (Mousevni is being inaugurated as President tomorrow in Kampala — the result of a disputed election), but hopefully things will settle down after that. I don’t know whose “side” to be on with these protests — I’d like them to stop so things go back to normal, but I don’t particularly like the government’s overly harsh response that has been responsible for tamping down on them.

The plan for when I arrive is to stay in the town of Entebbe the first night, as I’m getting in fairly late. The next day, I’ll catch a taxi into Kampala and check into a hostel for two weeks. The hostel is in Old Kampala, which is the next hill over from downtown (Kampala is built on a series of hills), where my office is. I’ll have my own room, so it won’t be too inconvenient. Then, at the end of May, I’ll move into the apartment with a person who appears to be the nicest girl on the face of the planet, and the puppy! That is basically all I know, but hopefully details will come in the next couple of weeks. That’s all for now. Next post will be from Uganda!

In case anyone wondered....

This is what packing for 4 months in Africa looks like.

The countdown continues.

I just realized that I leave for Kampala in one week!

An introductory post

So, this is a bit premature, as I still have to survive two finals and a lot of plane rides before I actually arrive in Kampala. But I needed something to do other than study for criminal law, so I decided to set up this blog. As many of you know from past experience, I love to write update emails/blog posts about what I'm doing when I'm abroad -- and this time, I have a real excuse! For my work this summer, I received an International Summer Human Rights Fellowship from my law school, and one of the requests is that we blog our experiences. I am more than happy to comply. :)

I've been put in touch with an American who interned at my organization a few years ago, and who is currently living in Kampala and working with another human rights organization. She seems completely lovely, and has offered me a room in her flat. She has a puppy, which is a major "pro" factor. It's a bit far away from where I'll be working -- she estimates it's about a 30 minute drive, but it's so much cheaper than places closer to downtown, and I think it would be really nice to live with someone who knows the ropes already. We'll see how things go in the next few days.

T-9 days until I leave!

P.S. "Mzungu" is a word used widely in southern, eastern, and central Africa for a foreigner -- especially a white foreigner. You hear kids yell it a lot when they see a white person -- "mzungu, mzungu!"

P.P.S. You can leave comments on these posts. If you click on "X comments" (right now, it says "0 comments"), it will take you to a page where you can write a comment and post it. But please let me know who you are!