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 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.

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.