Nomad's Pub

Just Another Day in Africa...

(Written Monday, the 5th Feb)

Every day in Africa means adventure for the misplaced muzungu… Today, of course, was no different. At 8:30, we begin our first class of the day at Makerere University here in Kampala… and a bus comes to pick us up and carry us there. This morning? No bus…

So, after a while, we call to find out what happened. Oh, you have class today? We didn’t realize that…

Ha. We only always have class at Makerere at 8:30 on Mondays…. So of course it would be natural to assume we didn’t have it today? Though we do rather wish…Development Economics for 3 hours on a Monday morning is not quite our idea of how to start off the week…

Well, we still don’t get a bus… we get… a matatu. That’s right.

For the 19 of us who usually fit comfortably in a bus… we squeezed 21 into a little old matatu—which technically only have maximum seating for what, 16 or 18? But it’s okay. There is always room for one more. Even if it means the conductor sits on your lap for the entire journey…

Expect the unexpected, we say…

After lecture, a few of us stayed on campus to do research and have consultations with our professor. All fine there… except that our professor went missing after a while and it is hard to make any sense of the library cataloguing system…

Now…usually the bus takes us back to where we live. But no bus today, remember?

SO, under an increasingly black sky, the 6 of us who stayed on campus decide we’re ready to leave. Right.

How?

We don’t know. We’ve only ever been driven here… Do we want to take a matatu back? Not really… oh right! We’re students! We don’t have money! So… we walk.

Do we know the way?

Of course we do! Look for the big mosque in the city and head towards it. When we get to it, then turn (almost a right angle) and you’ll be there no problem. It will just take…a while.

But we decide to experiment. Let’s just stay in the hills and not go into the city…do an arc instead of a right angle. It’s all in the maths…

So we head out, locate the hill that we want, use the mosque as our north star for orienting ourselves, and everything should be fine. Right?

Right. Although I suppose not many people I know can say that they walked a quarter of the way in the company of a half naked crazy man who muttered and flailed his arms and ran up and down and round about us. We were not sorry to leave him behind. Not sorry at all…

And up up up the hill we climbed, stepping over ruts, our feet twisting painfully in our loose sandals, dodging oncoming traffic that I am convinced speeds up at the sight of us in its path… Calling oli otya ebana to the children waving to us (here they do not cry at the sight of white skin) and smile… Commenting on the gigantic birds that roam this city (Side note: My roomie calls them “Walking Death” and I have concluded that they are the remains of the teradactyl or pterodactyl or whatever that flying dinosaur was called… And one of these days you will find a book called Guardians of the City and you will know it’s a horror-suspense novel I have written with them in mind) and shuddering at the sight of them holding open their giant wings to the breeze…

And finally, finally we make it to the top of the hill… having chosen our streets the whole way with the mosque and the hill we marked in mind… And we do not know where we are until suddenly, above us—heaven!

No, just our home. And so we trudge wearily back in, faces red; backs drenched with the sweat of our effort. Drop our computers that have beyond all doubt gained weight in the course of our walk; splash water and scrub with soap; and race to catch the end of lunch.

And we sit, sipping our sodas out of glass bottles with straws, and my roomie looks at me and says, “You know, it amazes me how so many people we know will never experience the things that we just did today. Who will never know what it’s like to squeeze 21 people into a dinky little matatu and hope you don’t tip over on the way…” And when she puts it like that, I have to agree. We did have a pretty amazing day… and I’m pretty glad that we were able to experience it. What a wealth of memories we get to collect! And all that to add to the wealth we already pull out and enjoy.

I love the adventure.

The getting sick and throwing up in a toilet is pretty rotten, but oh my goodness—I’m in Africa, hey! The hot nights that make you think of the snow everyone else is getting…and then smile because you got to avoid it and enjoy 8 months of summer instead… the men trying to buy you as their 3rd wife off of the guys you are out in the city with… I love going to the market with people who know how to work it… or learning to cook over charcoal on the ground outdoors… playing with little children… kneeling at the feet of elders and soak up knowledge. Learning to belly dance. (Yes, I’ve even got pictures of that!) To feel the cut and pain of learning a new culture; a culture which will never ever fully leave you, but find some ways to cling to you for the rest of your life. To remember that change is adventure, and that while lonely and frightening… it is also a blessed freeing.

So my love-hate relationship right now with adventure has finally veered again to the love side of it, and I am loving it even though I do not even still always like everything about it.

And today? Just another day here. But what days they are!

posted by Lada @ 3:08 AM