10 Things I Did This Weekend...
1.) toured a banana plantation
2.) visited the gravesite of kings
3.) travelled 5 hours unescorted on an overloaded bus and made it alive
4.) got sick--sunstroke or dehydration or upset stomach or all the above...
5.) bought my first souvenir
6.) sang special music at the church I visited
7.) interviewed people all over the Mbarara countryside
8.) got sooo dirty I had to wash several times before the water was clear!
9.) got hit on and got REALLY mad about it
10.) visited a hospital with no electricy or running water
Kampala Living...
I’ve now been in Kampala for what, a week and a half? Things are becoming increasingly familiar here (as indeed, they ought)… and all is well. I thought perhaps today I would share with you some of my observations and thoughts about the city itself. This weekend I will actually be leaving early Friday morning for a “rural visit,” and will be sure to tell you about that experience later, as with yesterday’s expedition to Ssezzibwa Falls and the Place of the Martyrs.
Here in Kampala you see the grand Sheraton Hotel and the Stanbic Bank from all around the city. Yet, in their shadows are the dirty, garbage strewn streets; the beggared children crying “Sa!” (Sir); the crazed boda-boda’s (motor-bikes with everything on them from people to people with children to people with chickens, goats, or computers), and the smells and billows of pollution.
“God is Good,” and “God is Able” are written everywhere on buildings and autos and signs. But do not forget—and indeed, you cannot—the great mosque which now towers sas the city’s newest landmark. We judge direction by it.
And still all across the city you see the smiling face; the courageous brow; the student determined against all odds (and there are many) to succeed; the vendor likewise to survive another day, or feed the family a while more. And you hear the shouts and laughter of the youth playing on the futbal fields ever plentiful around the city, and see the best-dressed throngs walking through the jumble to church, then back again—even up five hours later!
The laundry on the lines; the taxi parks (for the matatu’s—beleaguered, overstuffed vans serving as public transportation alongside the boda-boda’s)…You see the women bent over their washing, or walking gracefully under a full head-load… Men staggering through the market, backs bent under the weight of oversized sacks… And then still there are the birds and the warm, dry breeze and the beautiful sunrises and the palm trees and hibiscus and bougainvillea plants in full flower.
And I wonder… who are we to determine how mankind should live? To demand development as if our society really were the better beyond doubt? It is not God I question—not why He should allow this, but rather those of us who come in the name of holy change.
It fascinates me to look out at this city. “It is as if we were hit by a missile,” a student I met and interviewed at Makerere University told me Sunday. The modernization is not a problem in the West because the two evolved together. Now it comes here, and as with Christianity, must learn to separate itself from mere cultural demands and influences and establish it’s own unique identity or “label” here—to possess it, so to speak. Can this be done? I want to know. But who can really say as yet?
Given the right amount of time, and resources and pressure, yes, eventually. But what will the equation look like in that eventuality? Chemistry and maths are not infallible, no more so those working them out.
It is a beautiful place here, and I am glad to stay. Glad to know “Africa” in these terms. Glad for this look and taste of it which so few find while still in university, too. Already I find myself the richer for being here, and for allowing myself to open up to its gifts. I know when I leave I will miss Kampala; maybe for what it is (time will tell), but truly for what it will be to me; be for me.
I just finished reading The River Between through for the second time here, and while I found the book as a whole one of the most beautiful and poignant works of art I have ever read, I found one particular passage absolutely riveting. I quote,
“For Waiyaki knew that not all the ways of the white man were bad. Even his religion was not essentially bad. Some good, some truth shone through it. But te religion, the faith, needed washing, cleaning away all the dirt, leaving only the eternal. And that eternal that was the truth had to be reconciled to the traditions of the people. A people’s traditions could not be swept away overnight. That way lay disintegration. Such a tribe would have no roots, for a people’s roots were in their traditions going back to the past, the very beginning, Gikuyu and Mumbi. A religion that took no count of people’s way of life, was useless. It would not satisfy. It would not be a living experience, a source of life and vitality. It would only maim a man’s soul, making him fanatically cling to whatever promised security, otherwise he would be lost.”
Beautifully expressed, I think.
Uganda at Last...
And the lady has arrived in Uganda, almost a week ago, actually…
I arrived safe and sound this past Friday, with all my luggage… and stepping outside the airport it was fairly easy to see why, at first glance, the people here call their country the “Pearl of Africa.” Absolutely beautiful. Monkeys were climbing all over the fence surrounding the airport, and beautiful flowers, from the marigold to the bouganvillia and hibiscus greeted me under the very bright sun. Ahhh…
This place has not been what I expected at all, though honestly I do not know what that was, exactly. One of the most striking things to me here is not the strangeness of the place, but the familiarity. I feel so comfortable here that sometimes it catches me by surprise. Kampala is a city of such contrasts… the Sheraton hotel and mud huts all here in the same city, for instance. But the surprising thing to me is that it is such a blend of all these other cultures I already know… One thing I will say for certain; Africa has had a huge impact on the culture of the Caribbean! So many similarities, from the architecture to the clothing colours to the food to the music and to many, many other things. I find myself more overwhelmed with memories than anything else.
Classes began on Monday morning, and I am thoroughly enjoying them for the most part. Most of our professors come from the University of Makerrere, though we only have one class that actually meets on that campus. Right now we are concerned a wee bit about the possibility of an upcoming strike there, that will inevitably effect us if it takes place.
We have so far enjoyed a drum and dance performance in an outdoor ampitheatre—the Ndere Drum Concert on Sunday, and just Wednesday went to the Kasubi Tombs, where the Kings (like Mutessa I) are buried. Interesting random fact; our guide at the Tombs was actually the grand nephew of one of the kings, and one of the girls we’ve met here is also a princess.
Beyond that, I am staying at one of the many guest houses here in the city, which is much nicer than I had expected. While my door will not close without being locked and the fan in the room didn’t work until day before yesterday… there is a door with a lock and a fan that now works…. The worst thing that has happened to me here so far has been me getting tragically locked in the WC for 15 minutes before I managed to break open the door. (And believe me, I really did break it, as the splintered wood and bent beyond repair metal prove…)
Having been properly educated about all the diseases, funguses, parasites, amoebas, and regular colds that I am bound to get, as well as all the terrifying aspects (such as going crazy) of the malaria medication I’m taking (Larium, for those of you who know and care), I am free to enjoy all the health hazards of the city life except the boda-boda’s. These are expressly forbidden… which having already seen several accidents involving them, I do not really mind.
Meals are fine here. Delicious thus far, actually. I am in more danger of adding extra padding than of starving. My favourite meal was the Friday night of my arrival, though, when I had roast goat and roasted plantains. SO good. I haven’t eaten goat in so many years… Also, I like the chapatti a lot, however you spell it and whatever it is (a fried flat bread of sorts)…
Enjoy the pictures and film clip, leave a note, and I will write again soon when I get back to this internet cafe!
One of the dancers at the Drum & Dance concert we went to...
View of Kampala
New Years Lessons in Europe
New Years is important everywhere, but in Slovakia I think we celebrate it with extra vigour. Fireworks last long into the night, and begin going off days earlier.
January 1st, in addition to the first day of the new year, is also the anniversary of our independence. We officially became our own little nation on that day in 1993, when we split off from Czechoslovakia...even if it was arranged as a power grab for Mečiar', our prime minister for too long. (Interested in this story? Check out
this link!)
It excites me to have been part of the history of this country; to grow up here where the country itself is just beginning to get on its feet and walk.
To watch the buildings be painted
See the lines in (or waiting outside of) stores become virtually extinct
Mečiar be at least temporarily defeated
Colours be worn instead of always just black clothing on everyone
I remember waiting to hear election results, and when the first mall was built and opened, and the days when border crossing could take at least six hours.
The new building onto the old. That is what this country is doing... what countries all over the world must do. What even Christianity has done... and what all of us do with our own lives. When we go into the new year, it seems like we get the notion we can have a completely new life, as if our past has no effect on our future. All our resolultions that are bound to fail because they break too cleanly with who we are right now...
Here is a picture for you, from Austria. Driving back from Vienna Airport with my Dad yesterday, I finally took a picture of it after driving through it all these years...
It is a picture of the old wall of Hainburg, built
centuries upon centuries ago. And we still pass through it's
gate today. The new built into the old.
