Safely home

I'm going to try to catch you up with the rest of my trip over the next few days -- internet access in Uganda was basically worthless. I wrote two extensive blogs, only to have them both eaten by the computer instead of it posting them. Needless to say, I gave up. So now I'm home -- 33 hours door-to-door, arriving Wednesday night, and although my brain seems to have gotten lost somewhere over the Atlantic, my intestines have managed to import something that got through customs with no problem. So I'm lying low. A good chance to catch up on my blog.

Uganda proved to be a vastly different experience than Kenya, pretty much as I expected it would be. Even though the countries are next to each other, Kenya has pockets of strong Western influence, Uganda not as much. Parts of Kenya are very developed, Uganda is a bit more behind the curve. I was told that during colonial rule, the British settled in Kenya, but ruled Uganda from afar, not actually living in the country. There are no third-generation whites in Uganda, as you find in Kenya. The contrast between the countries is not as strong as going over the border from the US to Mexico, but isn't it amazing what a difference a few miles can make? As for the land itself, much of what I saw in Kenya was brown and barren, while in Uganda it's strikingly green. Winston Churchill, when traveling there in 1920-something, called Uganda "the pearl of Africa" (a quote that's plastered everywhere).

The biggest bummer for me was that they really don't speak Swahili in Uganda -- after all my practicing! English is their official language, but it's only spoken by those who have an education. Otherwise, it's one of 52 tribal languages. I started trying to learn some Luganda, spoken by many of those in Kampala (Weberle nnyo! -- thank you very much!), but after a few hours on the road, I was told nope, now we're in Luo country and we don't speak Luganda. We speak Luo. (Afueyo matae! -- thank you very much!) Another couple of hours, and it's nope, we don't speak Luo, we speak...

I gave up on that too.

The capital city of Kampala, home to over 2 million people, is filled with countless wooden shacks and sports potholes the size of antelopes. Traffic is best endured with your eyes closed (as long as you're a passenger), so as not to jump out of your skin as bicycles, motorcycles, trucks and cars all compete for the same lane, seemingly engaged in a mad game of chicken. Bicycles are used for transport of every possible item. We saw one man wheeling an entire bed -- with the sheets still on it -- down the road on top of his bike. Motorcycle helmets are unheard of, and passengers riding sidesaddle, holding small babies, is a common sight. We saw a young girl thrown into the middle of the street when a scooter went down right in front of us – she landed head-first, screaming, blood was streaming everywhere, then someone else loaded her on yet another motorcycle to take her to the hospital (it looked like she was not injured too severely).

In all of Kampala, there are only 3 traffic lights, and two of them don't work. Instead, there are white-uniformed traffic cops -- THESE guys are wearing motorcycle helmets -- trying vainly to direct the clogged mess into some semblance of movement. Occasionally a goat or even a herd of cows gets into the act, then things really come to a standstill. Uganda has the highest rate of traffic fatalities in the world (a fact that our tour guide only tells people when they're on their way to catch their departing flight). Luckily, although there were some very close calls, we managed to complete the entire trip unscathed. I wouldn't trade jobs with our drivers for all the world!

In traveling around, we found ourselves transfixed by the shop signs. Stores can be "sponsored" by a company, and it will paint the entire store its company color and plaster the logo all over it. Many buildings were hot pink -- the color of the top cell phone provider -- but my favorite was the store that was sponsored by Stayfree Maxipads, the building baby blue and complete with a giant painting of a sanitary napkin in glorious detail ("with wings!" it declared in large type above the door). Others were privately owned enterprises: The Tick Hotel, God Willing Beauty Shop, and my first prize winner, Junga Junga Acrobatic Man. We'd see them as we sped down the road in the countryside, and it was all I could do to not yell, "STOP THE CAR! I've GOT to get a picture of that!!!" (I did get one of the Tick Hotel, for all you unbelievers.)

We got our first real exposure to local cuisine in Uganda (in Kenya we were served Western food exclusively), and while most is quite tasty, they pretty much eat the same thing over and over. One of the main dishes is matoke, made from small green bananas which have been cooked and smushed into something resembling mashed potatoes. The meals are heavy on starches, serving both rice AND potatoes (simply called "Irish"), matoke, sweet potatoes, and cassava root, which to me tastes alot like white school paste, only drier. But they also frequently serve chicken, beef, or dried fish (you have to be careful in your ordering or you could also end up with goat), and the gravies are quite tasty. Another common side dish is ground nut sauce, which is pretty similar to a Thai peanut sauce, and served over rice.

These are just the stage settings in which our journey took place. The real stories are about the people we met – the women we stayed with at BeadForLife’s Friendship Village, the street kids playing in the brass band at the orphanage, the old man in the rural village who worked as a blacksmith, using bellows made of goatskin, still crafting spears and arrows.

Those stories will come, maybe tomorrow. But this will do for now. I just got notice that my brain made it on the connecting flight in Chicago.