A cast of characters.

I write this entry with a puppy half on top of my computer. Alejandro, Emily's puppy, has decided that he loves me, and he spends a lot of time these days biting my fingers and licking my face. Lucky me. He is an adorable little imp, and even though he poops and pees all over the apartment, I find that I really like having him in the apartment.

But enough about Alejandro. It occurred to me this evening that it might be interesting for me to describe the people I spend my time with on a daily basis here. This is somewhat difficult at this very moment, because Alejandro has my right thumb in his mouth and he is chewing away. However, I remain determined.

The concept for this entry started with my boda driver, so I'll talk about him first. His name is Sam. Boda bodas have "stages," which are sort of like home bases for where certain boda drivers go when they're not on a job somewhere. Sam's stage is right outside the driveway that leads into my work building's complex. I took him randomly the first time, but he knows my bosses and everyone in my office, and he used that to get me to take his number. I didn't use him for a long time, but I pass him at the stage almost every morning, where I say "good morning" to all the drivers who hang out there. There are a few others at the stage who I recognize and have chatted with -- mostly while I was waiting at the stage for Sam to come pick me up. Until this week, Sam was the friendly boda driver with the nice smile who gave me rides for free sometimes when he found me nearby the office. This week though, he's become "my" boda driver. He called me on Monday to ask if I wanted him to take me home after work. I decided sure, okay. I waited for him at the stage to come back to drive me home. It's easy with him, because he already knows where I live, so we can just chat on the drive home instead of me giving him directions of where to go. He drove me home yesterday too, when I discovered the perils of liking one's boda driver. He usually drops me off at the bypass that's about a 5 minute walk from my flat -- sometimes boda drivers add an extra thousand if I make them drive too far beyond Kabira Country Club, so I try to head it off by getting dropped off a little bit earlier. It was cold and rainy yesterday, so I asked Sam to drive me all the way to my flat -- and I felt obligated to pay him 7,000 shillings (instead of the 5,000 I should pay, and do pay every other boda driver) because he drove me the extra little bit. He didn't ask for it or anything, but I felt like it was the fair thing to do because I like him so much.

I was planning to take a taxi today, but he was right outside the office, and he smiled his stupid charming smile at me, so I decided to let him take me home instead. I really like him; he's a very sweet guy, even if I don't know him that well because conversation is difficult on a boda. It's made even more difficult by the fact that he's relatively soft-spoken, and he wears a helmet. In fact, he wasn't wearing his helmet today and I fretted until he put it on to make me feel better. I know people who have really close friendships with their boda drivers, which I'd like to have with Sam, but I don't know if we can get over the helmet barrier. He actually offered to let me wear the helmet today, but we were already driving, so that didn't happen. Sorry, Mom and Dad. But he's a really good, careful driver, and I trust him to get me places safely.

So let's see, who else can I talk about for the sake of posterity? I am getting to know both of my supervisors, who I really like. There's one mzungu co-director and one Ugandan co-director of the organization -- I won't use their names for the sake of anonymity, but I can tell you about them.

The mzungu co-director is a lawyer, but she's also very academic-minded -- she thinks about concepts like identity and citizenship in the way a professor would (in fact, I think she might teach sometimes at the local university), but she approaches the topics with a very sharp legal mind at the same time. I feel really comfortable telling her what I actually think about the work I'm doing, and I feel like I can communicate with her pretty candidly. I think it comes from being two lawyers (or an almost-lawyer, in my case) in an office of non-lawyers. She also really encourages me to take days off and explore Uganda, which I'm hoping to take advantage of more during July than I did in June. She is personally involved in so many different projects that my organization works on, I don't know if she ever stops working.

The Ugandan co-director is a journalist by training, and he is sassy. I don't know how else to describe him. He's very vocal about controversial topics, very frank, and very intense. For example, at a conference I attended a few weeks go where he was speaking about the role of the media, he said to a room full of people that Mouseveni is stupid. It wouldn't be a big deal to announce that the President is stupid in the United States (something I did many times during the Bush presidency), but it's gutsy to do it here. At the same time as being very uninterested in displaying tact in some ways, he's also very gregarious and personable, and he has great working relationships with a lot of people involved in Darfur in a lot of different ways, including Darfuri rebels and movement leaders. I was really intimidated by him at first, but after spending a few days working with him on research and interviews, I discovered that we actually get along pretty well.

Other people at my office include the guy I share my office with, who works specifically on refugee policy in the Great Lakes region, and the woman who cleans the office and makes us lunch every day. Debbie, the woman who makes us lunch, is a darling and always brings me coffee and water in the mornings. Her food is also excellent -- although I personally suspect that I got Giardia from something that wasn't properly washed in one of her meals, the food is always high-quality. She even makes matoke in a way that I like it, which is rare indeed. My co-worker who I share the office space with is a really nice guy as well. He's Ugandan, but I think (from piecing together disparate information) he spent some time as a refugee, possibly during the Amin years. He has lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, so he speaks French in addition to Luganda and English. I don't know his whole story (sort of hard to ask, "So, when were you a refugee?"), but I think he's only been at my organization for about a year.

I don't think I've properly talked about my flatmate, Emily -- also known as Alejandro's mommy. I emailed with Emily quite a bit before I got to Uganda, because she interned to my organization in its New York office a few years ago. I got the impression from the emails we exchanged (her answers were always prompt, detailed, and incredibly helpful) that she was the nicest person basically ever. I have not been disappointed in person. From my first day here, she has taken me around Kampala, given me insider tips (she's lived here for a year), and introduced me to her circle of friends to help me feel at home. I honestly don't know what I would have done here without her. Our organizations work really closely together, so I spend a lot of time all day emailing her, badgering her about information that I need to do my own work, and bugging her on Skype with random questions. And she takes it all in stride! She is incredibly generous too -- when I first moved in (and still to this day, if I'm honest), she let me eat all her food and use her shampoo and toothpaste. As a case in point: she's sick right now, and when I offered to make us both dinner last night, I somehow got talked into letting her make me grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Which were delicious, by the way. She is a very good mommy to Alejandro, and deals with the smell of her room much better than I would if I had a puppy.

Oh, randomly there is a woman at a water and snacks kiosk who I see pretty much every day. I promised my mother I would start drinking more water, and this stand is on the way from where the taxi drops me off in the morning on the way to my office. I started going every day because they always have changed for 20,000 //= (shillings/UGX), which makes it easy for me to stay hydrated, eat breakfast (usually a chapati or a little bag of groundnuts), and get small bills so I can continue to take taxis and boda bodas. It's a win-win situation. One of the girls who works there is always really happy to see me, and we have a sort of anonymous, business-y friendship blooming.

There are various other people I'm friendly with and spend time with on the weekends -- Abhi, Sonakshi, Ben, and Sharifa, for example, and of course Bruno and Diane (who I haven't properly discussed!) -- but these are the people I encounter on a daily basis. Maybe I'll do another entry like this for everyone else later.

This will probably be my last blog post until after I get back from Rwanda. I leave on Sunday for 4 days in Rwanda, during which time I will go to Musanze to see the mountain gorillas, tour Kigali, and visit the genocide memorial museum there. I will have LOTS of pictures and things to talk about when I get back, I'm sure. Happy Independence Day (the day I'll actually be with the gorillas)!

To end this post, Alejandro is licking the bottoms of my feet. Appropriate, given how we started the entry.

A tropical disease and more.

WARNING: This is a really long entry. The first part is all about health stuff -- feel free to skip down to the interesting part about meeting with Darfurian rebels groups instead.

I haven't posted in over a week, and this is in large part due to the fact that I have been really ill. At the risk of sharing too much, I had a couple of really bad days with my stomach, after which things settled down to the point where I felt fine unless I ate anything -- and then I felt violently, horribly unwell. I went to see a doctor when it first started, and he said, "Oh, it will pass." In retrospect, he was very wrong... he just assumed that I was having stomach issues because I'm white and in Uganda, so it must not need treatment. Well, he was wrong. A week later, and I still couldn't eat without feeling sick, so I had stopped eating entirely. I had also started taking a broad spectrum antibiotic that I happened to have with me, to see if it would be help. (This was stupid. You'll understand why in a minute.)

When I got to the office on Monday morning, I was feeling really weak and dizzy, so I went back to see a different doctor. She diagnosed it as an amoeba and gave me two drugs to take to treat it. I decided to get my INR checked while I was there (for those not "in the know": this is a measure of how "clotty" my blood is, based on the amount of Coumadin I'm taking). Not only did they literally stick me with 5 different needles in 5 different places before they could finally get enough blood for the machine to work, but... my INR was 5.4. It's supposed to be between 2.0 and 3.0, and anything above 4.0 puts me at risk for severe internal and/or external bleeding. Needless to say, I panicked a little bit. The doctor told me not to panic, it's not really a big deal until you hit 8.0 or 9.0 -- but I knew that wasn't true, so that just threw my entire faith in her medical advice and opinion into question. In the same breath as telling me it was no big deal, she told me not to take boda bodas, because I would bleed too much if I got hurt and it would be a problem. Oh, okay doctor. Screw you.

I left the clinic in a pretty foul mood and feeling really terrible, but I went back to the office to try to tough it out. As soon as my boss found out, she insisted that I a) stay in the office long enough to eat lunch (I hadn't eaten in two days), and then b) go home and rest. I did stay and eat, and then I had a colleague call a special hire (a private taxi) to take me home, as I was too miserable-feeling to take shared taxis and had been forbidden from taking a boda.

When I got home, I decided the world hated me. There was a soccer game going on in the field behind my building, and the kids were screaming non-stop. There were also a few drummers that were just beating on the drums over and over again. I literally wanted to die. I was so miserable, eating had made me feel worse, and I just wanted to sleep. No such luck -- I tried moving to different parts of the flat, but you could hear this soccer game (which lasted four hours) everywhere. When the power went out around 7pm on top of everything else, I burst into tears and just sat on the couch and cried for a while. Not my proudest moment.

My boss had insisted that I go back to the clinic and see the British GP who runs the place and is her personal doctor. I thought about canceling, but I ended up calling a special hire to come get me, and I dragged myself back to the clinic. I had been warned the doctor was very "brusque and very British," which he was, but also very warm and lovely. He did some tests, which revealed nothing -- which confirmed that it was Giardia (a parasite that takes up residence in the GI tract), which doesn't often show up on tests. He said the treatment for Giardia is the same as what the doctor had given me the day before for the supposed amoeba, but he said I should skip the first drug (the one that was going to interfere with the Coumadin anyway) because it makes you feel horrible for 24 hours and isn't necessary. So I stopped taking that one, and moved on to the second drug. I took another day (Wednesday) off from work to heal up a bit and get my INR checked again (4.5), and then on Thursday, I was back at the office.

So, on Thursday, they threw me back into things. My one boss called me in the morning to tell me that I was going to go with my other boss to take notes for interviews with Darfurian rebel movements. Oh, okay. Apparently, a Darfurian colleague said that the representatives would feel more comfortable talking to my organization if there was a white face there as well -- so that was me, the token white person.

It's the same research project as before, on Darfurian citizenship and belonging in an independent South Sudan, but these interviews were more focused on the political element: what has the Southern Sudanese government said? How do these movements see the Darfurian presence in South Sudan? Questions like that. We did two interviews on Thursday, and then another two today. My boss told me I should feel free to ask questions if I have any, but it takes so much concentration to take good notes on what everyone is saying that I didn't speak up very often.

For the last one today (when we met with a really big/well-known rebel group, which shall remain nameless), we met at Kampala Serena Hotel. The hotel is huge, situated on 17 acres. It has its own auditorium, and President Mouseveni apparently has an office in one of the buildings. The Queen stayed at this hotel when she visited on 2008, and apparently rooms cost $2,500 per night. My boss also told me that it's on a site where Idi Amin had killing "fields," where political opponents were tortured and killed. You could hardly tell today: it's well-manicured and beautifully designed, with a lovely fountain and pond area in the middle.

So, for now I'm feeling much better -- Emily and I went to Mamba Point Pizzeria last night at my insistence. I got a four cheese pizza with Gorgonzola, mozzarella, feta and parmesan, and it was so good. I am going to dream about this pizza for days. There's another place, Krua Thai, that I want to try soon. I have to say, the food in Kampala is really quite good and varied. Every type of cuisine you could want (except maybe authentic Mexican food), they've got it and they apparently do it well. Chinese, Korean, Indian, Thai, American, Italian.... mmm, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. And let me tell you, it's such a delight to be hungry after the week I've had.

Questions from the audience.

So, I haven't had much happen this week that's worth writing about. I was sick for two days, which means I mostly slept a lot. I did feel like writing a blog entry, though, so I solicited questions from the peanut gallery -- I should have known better. I think this entry is going to be pretty long.

From Mom: What effects are you seeing from the conflict in Sudan? Are refugees pouring in?

Uganda and Sudan have a long history of hosting one another's refugees. Many Ugandans fled to Sudan during the Idi Amin years, and many Southern Sudanese in particular have found sanctuary in Uganda during the decades-long civil war between North and South that officially ended in 2005. Though most Darfuri refugees are in Chad (actually, most Darfuri "refugees" aren't refugees at all -- they're internally displaced persons, still living in Sudan), there are a number in Kampala and refugee camps elsewhere in Uganda. However, I assume this question has to do with the recent fighting in South Kordofan (if you don't know what I'm talking about, do a quick Google search... it's pretty horrific stuff). In that case, the answer is: I don't think people from South Kordofan have made it as far as Kampala. My impression is that they're mostly internally displaced persons (IDPs), and have fled into neighboring North Kordofan and further into South Sudan. It's possible there will be a surge into Uganda, but Sudan is big -- the biggest country in Africa, in fact -- and that means that getting out requires a lot of travel and a lot of time. This most recent round of fighting only began 10 days ago, which means it's early days yet.

Lise asked: What do you find the most frustrating about your living/working experience so far - and what do you find the most fulfilling/rewarding so far? 

I've already talked a little bit about the frustration of working on the law in a part of the world where the law doesn't hold much weight, so I'll focus on the "living" part of this question. I think the most frustrating thing about living here is that everybody is always trying to rip you off. There is a "mzungu price" for pretty much everything -- boda rides and taxi rides being the main things I spend money on. It's a constant argument. For example, the other day I was trying to get a minibus taxi from Kamwokya to Kisaasi. The conversation went something like this: "How much to Kisaasi bypass?" "1,000." "1,000? Are you out of your mind? I'll give you 600." "Okay, get in." The mzungu price is always just an opening bid, and I can almost always get them down to what I think is a reasonable price, but it's very frustrating... and if I didn't know already that the price should actually be 500 or 600 shillings, I could easily be taken in. On the one hand, 1,000 UGX is literally less than $0.50... on the other hand, it's the principle of the thing. I hate getting ripped off so much, and it wears on me just a little bit to feel like every encounter I have with strangers all day long is a battle somehow. I'm genuinely surprised when boda drivers offer me what I think is the right price to begin with, and I'm usually so grateful that I end up over-paying anyway.

In terms of what's most rewarding, I'm going to have to come back to work. I didn't really want to work on cases this summer, as it didn't seem "big picture" enough for me. But I have been working on a few individual cases over the last week or two, and I've found it very rewarding. The reality of making progress towards justice, even just for one person, is very satisfying and makes me feel pretty important.

In terms of your other question (Are you cooking at all? If so - what is your specialty?)... I don't really cook here. To be honest, our kitchen is disgusting, and I try to go into it as infrequently as possible. I don't know how it gets so gross -- I never use any dishes as I hardly eat in the apartment. There's a woman at the office who makes us lunch every day, and Ugandan food is very rich/filling, so I generally don't really even want dinner... but on the rare occasion that I do, the grossness of the kitchen is usually enough to put me off food.

I did make ramen noodles the other night. I am a master chef. 

From Grandma: I'm interested in families in Uganda: Can you describe the "typical" family living in the villages as compared to a family living in a city like Kampala (how do they live, work, play? How are the elders cared for? etc.)?

Unfortunately, I am ill-qualified to answer this question, as I have spent no time in the villages and don't really know very many Ugandan families. But I'll tell you what I do know about urban families, at least. Most people I know with young children have at least one nanny -- apparently live-in nannies/maids are very poorly paid, as little as $10/month, so it's not a status symbol to have one like it is in the United States. The one marriage I've had cause the observe closely (Bruno and Diane) confirms what I heard at the wedding I went to: men are in charge. It's not in a domineering way, but there's a definite power imbalance, and Diane at least seems to think this is the way things should be. In terms of caring for elders, I know from a conversation I had with one of Bruno's friends that the "Western" practice of putting aging parents into nursing homes appalled him; he couldn't understand how children could be so ungrateful. I got the impression that here, the parents move in with the adult children and are taken care of that way. That's about all I can tell you, sadly.

And finally, a barrage of questions from Grandpa: 

What are you doing in Uganda to bring about a better life for the people there? 

In fact, nothing. Since I'm working on refugees' rights, my work has very little positive impact on Ugandans. I find it a bit awkward to tell Ugandans what my NGO does for that very reason, and I often am deliberately vague and say I'm doing "human rights work." Unlike the time I have spent in South Africa, I'm really just using Kampala as a base to do regional work. It's a strange situation to be in, because Uganda itself clearly has so many humanitarian needs. 

What do they produce? Do they export, and if so, what do they export? 

Uganda's main export is coffee. They also have natural resources like copper and cobalt, as well as some largely-untapped natural gas and oil reserves. 

How do you find the people there? Are they friendly? 

People here are exceedingly friendly, as long as you make the first move. Generally, people walk around sort of scowling, and I get a lot of stares and strange looks because I'm white. However, I find that a determined smile and a wave almost always cracks the veneer of unfriendliness, and 95% of the time, I get a genuine smile, hand wave, and/or "How are you?" in return. The people who recognize me -- the guys doing construction on my street, or the woman at the stall where I buy bottles of water in the morning -- are always very happy to see me and want to know how I am every day. One of the construction guys has taken to saying "Welcome back, my friend," whenever he sees me on my way home from work. People often respond to a simple "hello" with "I'm fine," anticipating your asking them how they are and answering before you have the chance to ask. Occasionally, I get a chatty boda driver, which is always fun. I had one the other day who was deeply impressed that I would be here for three months, and wanted to know why I was leaving in August. I told him I had to go home to study law, and he seemed duly impressed. There's a stereotype here (as there is in the United States) that lawyers are money-grubbing corporate types, so I always make sure to tell people, "I want to be a good lawyer, not a bad lawyer!" This boda driver laughed at me when I told him that, and said that it was a good thing to be a good lawyer.

Okay, that's just about a long enough entry, I think!

A Saturday spent working.

Not a huge entry, but I did observe some things today that I want to record for posterity.

So, as most of you probably remember, I interviewed a few Darfuri refugees during my first week at work in Kampala. After realizing that I wasn't doing a terribly good job, though, I decided to informally withdraw from participating to that extent. However, the interviews are mostly concluded now -- the ones in Kampala as well as the ones from South Sudan, and as I happen to type > 115 words per minute, it has fallen to me to type up the narratives from these interviews. For the interviews in Kampala, this mostly is just literally typing up an English translation narrative that one of the interviewers had written. For the ones from South Sudan, I'm working with one of the interviewers on translating them from Arabic, mostly as a silent typist, but every once in a while asking for clarification or helping come up with the right word for the translation.

The important thing to know is that all of the interviewers (except myself and one Ugandan) are themselves Darfuri refugees. They have all been absolutely lovely, and they all seem to like me rather a lot. Until today, it was easy to forget that they've all probably been traumatized by what happened in Darfur: they seem like nice, normal African guys who happen to be from Darfur.

I met with the interviewer who led the trip to South Sudan today, despite it being Saturday. He told me that he's homesick and wants to go back to Darfur for a visit this week, and I decided to do extra work on the weekend so he can get back sooner -- he won't go back until all the interviews are translated. We made a pretty significant dent today, with one mild "speed bump." We had just started working on an interview with a woman from Darfur, and he was telling me about how she had been really well-off before 2003, and then had to move to Khartoum and do basic domestic chores for a living. He remembered interviewing this particular woman, and he told me that she was having a lot of problems adjusting to her new life. He started telling me about the years he had spent traveling around in Darfur working as a translator, and relaying some of the stories of people he had met there. And then all of a sudden, he stood up, rifled through his backpack for a pack of cigarettes, and walked out of the room, telling me to finish drinking my tea.

It doesn't sound that dramatic, but there was something about the whole thing that forcibly reminded me that he's a victim, too. His mannerisms so clearly exuded trauma that I didn't know what to do. I let him go, and when he finally came back in, I asked him if he needed to stop working, but he insisted that he was fine. He bounced back admirably, and we kept working for another few hours, but it was different. We didn't joke around as much as we had been, and I spent a lot more time just silently typing what he was dictating. I didn't know what else to do -- he's much older than I am, and for the sake of our professional relationship I couldn't ask what happened to him or what kinds of things he's seen.

Despite having gone to the Middle East this year to actively seek out victims of torture for resettlement in the United States, this was the first time I've seen a traumatized person really act traumatized. And I was alone and completely unprepared; it never really sank in until that moment that these friendly, well-adjusted, professional people are refugees from a genocide, and that I have no idea what their stories really are.

Quite a Saturday.

A public holiday.

Today was a public holiday -- Heroes' Day, although no one has been able to tell me who the heroes are. I had made plans to go to Qaddafi Mosque with a few students from another law school who are in Kampala, but I realized last night that I didn't have any small bills to pay for a boda, so I canceled. But then this morning my phone rang, and it was Ben who wanted to go to the mosque -- so we ended up going after all. While I was waiting for him to come by with the boda, I watched some local kids playing soccer on the field near my flat -- I like to watch people from a distance, because it means I can take pictures; and with the incredible zoom on my new camera (thanks, Mom and Dad), it looks like I'm taking the photos from way closer than I really am. I am a creep.

I had called one of the law students and told her we'd meet her there, but she thought I meant somewhere else (the old taxi park), so when we got to the mosque, they weren't there. Oops... But the mosque was so huge and beautiful and I actually forgot we were even meeting anyone there at first. This mosque was begun by Idi Amin over 30 years ago, who had a dream to build the biggest mosque in Africa. When funds for construction ran out, Col. Qaddafi supplied the rest -- he and Idi Amin were buddies, and he and Mouseveni are still good friends. So the mosque is named after Qaddafi, and it's on Col. Muammar Qaddafi Road, which runs through a Somali neighborhood in Kampala. I was reading an article before we went about how the mosque revitalized Old Kampala, which is a very run-down neighborhood in the city, and completely changed the skyline of the eastern part of the city.

The mosque is beautiful. It's up the hill in Old Kampala, so it's a little bit removed from traffic and the rest of city life, and it feels very quiet there. I got yelled at by the guard for being dressed inappropriately as soon as we got there: we were so busy gawking at the size of the building that I had forgotten to take out/put on my head covering. Apparently, my (knee-length) skirt was also too racy, because the guard made me rent a piece of fabric and tie it around my waist to make an ankle-length skirt. Once I was properly dressed, though, the guard was very friendly and pointed us to the entrance and a guide who would take us inside. There was no one inside the HUGE prayer room -- this mosque holds 15,000 people.

The inside was also beautiful, with big chandelier-type light fixtures and Arabic passages written on the walls. I was mildly surprised that I was allowed into the men's prayer room, even with all my head coverings and other modest accoutrement. But the guide didn't seem to think twice about it, and he even let Ben go up into the women's prayer balcony as well. As it turned out, the guide was the muezzin, the guy responsible for chanting the calls for prayer five times a day. He showed us this giant version of the Q'uran and chanted a full page of it for us, which was beautiful. Then he translated the text, and it was all about how if you follow Islam, you go to heaven, and if you reject Islam, you go to hell. It sounded better in Arabic.

 

He checked the time and realized it was time for a call to prayer, and he asked us if we wanted to stay inside and watch him do it. Which -- duh, of course we did. He stood at a microphone in a niche in the wall and chanted the call to prayer, which (I imagine, though I couldn't hear it) was broadcast out into Kampala through speakers in the minaret. His voice echoed rather magnificently inside the mosque itself... it felt really cool to be able to watch him.

After that, he had to leave to attend and/or lead prayers, so we walked around for a bit. We were still trying to meet up with the Georgetown law students, who were on their way to the mosque. Ben had spied a cathedral on the next hill over, so we decided to go check it out and then come back to the mosque to meet the others.

The cathedral was St. Paul's, a protestant cathedral (which I didn't even know existed). It seemed a bit dull after the grandeur of the mosque, but its location was fantastic. It was even higher up and away from the city than the mosque, and it felt like a completely different universe. It reminded me forcibly of the Cloisters in New York -- there were students sitting around on the grounds doing work of some kind (art, maybe?), and people seemed like they were just lounging among all the greenery as a break from the noise and pollution of the city. And there were butterflies everywhere.

After we were done at St. Paul's, we decided it was time for lunch. So, instead of going back and meeting the other students at the mosque (we kept missing them all day... never did meet up with them), we took a boda into town to Centenary Park Gardens to get some food. We ended up trying a place called Kyoto, which does a combination of Japanese food and American food. Strange fusion, but Ben and I both got Asian-style dishes, and I think they were both good. I can say with certainty that my noodles were pretty yummy. It took a while though, and by the time we were finished it was already 4pm. We had toyed with the idea of going to the Kisubi tombs, where the Baganda kings are buried, but instead we went back to Etana Motel to hang out with Diane and Bruno.

Diane and Bruno (especially Bruno) were glad to see me; going to the motel feels kind of like going "home," as silly as that sounds. Diane made us her amazing ginger tea, and we got maize from a stall on the street, and Bruno came down to play cards with me. I always beat him when it's just the two of us, but then Ben and Diane joined in, and things went downhill from there. Bruno got desperate to win and started cheating horribly, which was actually pretty entertaining. After a few hours, I suggested that I should get back to my flat, but Diane insisted she was cooking for me. And what was she cooking, you ask? Well, she was cooking goat meat. I felt a little bit pressured to stay since she was making me food, and... well. Goat meat was interesting. It smelled amazing while she was cooking it, but the meat itself was really chewy, which put me off it. Add in the fact that Ben was making comments about muscles and joints and other anatomical features of goats, and I really didn't manage to eat very much. I felt terrible about it, and I hope I didn't offend Diane in particular, but I just couldn't do it. I got a ride home from Bruno, and that was that.

A crafty weekend.

So, I haven't updated in a while -- almost a week, I think? I really don't do very much interesting during the week, just go to work. We had a long weekend this week, with Friday off for Martyrs' Day. This week (tomorrow), I'm theoretically starting to work on a humanitarian parole case for someone my organization and others have been working to protect. The case is pretty sensitive, so I won't go into too many details here. But humanitarian parole is a temporary grant of asylum, basically -- usually less than a year, and it's for providing a safe, secure environment to people who are in constant danger for some reason. It could be a medical emergency, it would be a continuing risk of rape (I worked on a case like that with a few Haitian clients during the school year), or it could be a political danger. I hope the case isn't too far along, because it could theoretically involve a fair amount of interesting research and writing for the application. I'll find out tomorrow.

This weekend, one of Emily's interns arrived. Ben is an American who goes to school in Scotland, and has been teaching English in Germany for a year. He seems really cool, and we spent most of the weekend with him, helping show him the ropes. On Friday, we had to go rescue his taxi driver, who got lost trying to find the motel (the same one I stayed at for the first two weeks), and then we took him out to lunch nearby and to get a phone at Nakumatt Oasis. Nakumatt is a giant department store kind of thing, with a grocery section and all sorts of modern appliances. He was pretty tired from but my two flatmates and I went out on Friday night, along with some other of their friends who all seemed really nice. We went to a bar/dance club called Iguana, and Bruno (the guy who owns the motel) brought some friends to meet me. I ended up splitting my time between the Ugandans and the mzungus, which made for a sort of interesting night. And I got a ride home from Bruno and one of his friends, which meant I didn't have to take a boda really late at night -- victory!

On Saturday, I woke up before Emily and Ula (I had come home a little bit before they did), and Ben was bored, so he came over the flat and we chatted just the two of us for a while before everyone else woke up. Then Emily, Ben and I went to an art fair put on by the Alliance (sp?) Francais and German Cultural Centre. It was all local African artists, and a lot of organizations using art to further social causes. They weren't that interested in bargaining, I think because a) there were TONS of mzungus there, and b) the stuff was real art, and much higher quality that what you find at markets. I still ended up buying a fair amount of stuff -- a bracelet, an African love knot, a little figurine made out of Fanta bottle caps, and a poster of a gorgeous piece of art that I wanted but was much too expensive. There was a lot of live dance going on, including traditional Buganda dance that was seriously impressive (see below). We met up with some of Emily's friends from her French class, who have all been so nice so far.

I also got a pair of blue splatter-painted canvas flats that only sort of fit, but I liked them.

After we finished shopping/browsing, we went behind the Alliance Francais and found a spot on the ground to wait for the concomitant live concert of African music. There was a huge variety of music, from jazz to soul to hip-hop, but it was all really amazing -- there are some seriously talented musicians in Kampala. The concert lasted about 3 hours, and then Emily's classmate Sharifa gave us all a ride back to our place. Ben, Emily and I hung out for a bit longer, and then Emily escorted Ben back to the motel on a boda and then came back to the flat.

Today, we all got a bit of a late start -- like 1 or 2pm late. Ula (my second flatmate) suggested that we go to a craft market, and we invited Ben and Emily along as well. We all met at Nakumatt first because Emily had to exchange money, and we ended up getting lunch at a place there called Pizza Connection. I got a burger, which was actually really good... I find myself somewhat pining for American food on the weekends, since I mostly eat really heavy Ugandan food for lunch all week. The Ugandan food is really good -- the woman who cooks for us at the office is amazing in the kitchen, but it is really different. Sometimes you just want a hamburger and fries.

We made it to the craft market by around 5pm, and I was... a bit disappointed, to be honest. It's all in open stores, rather than stalls like in South Africa. Nobody is really that interested in bargaining, which I've always thought was part of the fun in markets. I also don't love the stuff they have for sale; I think partially the novelty of it has worn off after three trips to Africa, and partially I've gotten more responsible. Do I really need another pair of earrings that I'll never wear? No, so I stop myself from buying them. It saves me money and is probably a sign that I'm growing up (the horrors), but it's not as fun.

I did get another nice piece of art (sorry for the flash, it kind of ruins the effect) and a beaded basket/bowl for all the jewelry I brought with me. I thought a little basket would be nicer than the plastic bag I had them in before, and make it easier to look through and find things.

As the craft market started to close up, we all got on bodas and went our separate ways. Shortly after I got home, though, Ben called me to tell me that Bruno and Diane were at the motel until 11pm tonight, and they wanted me to come over. The power actually went out while I was on the phone with him, which I took as a sign from God that I should go. I took a taxi down to the motel and spent a few hours there with all of them. Emily came a little bit later, and actually there's another mzungu staying there who I had met at the art fair on Saturday. It's a small mzungu world. Bruno and Diane were wonderful as always, and made us dinner (matoke) and gave us Diane's amazing ginger tea, and later they broke out the wine. And they wouldn't let Emily and me pay for any of it. The power went out at the motel too, and one of Bruno's friends theorized that it's because the government was moving weapons and soldiers in the area. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, but it was interesting that that's where his mind went.

We played cards for a while... there's a Ugandan game that they taught me while I was staying there that's a bit like Uno, where you have to match either the suit or the number of the card, etc. Bruno and I have a bit of a competition going, because I beat him during our last "tournament," two days after learning how to play. Diane played with me and Ben tonight, and she's good. I lost a lot.


Emily and I came back home when Ula informed us that the power was back on, and now the weekend is over. I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow -- even with the new humanitarian parole case, Kampala is so much more fun when I can just spend time riding around and exploring the city.

There are more big protests against the government planned for tomorrow, but not near where I work. There's an outside chance things will spread/spiral out of control, but for now, the plan is to go to work as usual. At least Thursday is another public holiday!