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.