The Legend of Taco Bell

So, thoughts on Uganda…
Kampala is a city built in a rugged valley near an inlet from Lake Victoria. The city boundary sign even proclaims it to be “The City of Seven Hills”, much akin to Rome I suppose. It is a developing city, but from what I hear it lost some of its charm with the advent on expansion. It was formerly quite green, maybe like a miniature Seattle, but now it is quite dirty, like a miniature Detroit. Some of the streets aren’t paved, and poor drainage systems channel water through them, creating enduring ruts and mud. This is prevalent throughout Kampala, so that the throngs of people track the muck even to paved avenues, and the result isn’t attractive.
Speaking of the multitudes of people, I should discuss traffic. I counted a total of two traffic lights in the entirety of the city. At every other intersection, there is a jumble of cars, small buses, large buses, bicycles, pedestrians, and motorcycles. There are no crosswalks, and by the end of my week there I picked up the local habit of walking into the middle of traffic and dodging and weaving my way across the street. I floated like a butterfly… There’s no other way to cross, unless you took a taxi or something, but then the taxi has to fight all the vehicular congestion, which is a nightmare. When I took the bus into Kampala, from the boundary sign to the bus depot was a distance of maybe 2 kilometers (that’s just a little over a mile, Davis). It took some frightening, adept moves by our driver to pass that distance in roughly forty-five minutes. I have decided I will never, ever even attempt to drive in that city. I’m pretty sure that the average distance between cars (front or side, they are insane) is about the width of a delicious Big Cheeseburger from Jack-in-the-Box. That’s less than a few inches, if you have yet to taste the rapture. They are called “Big” because they are big on taste. So yeah, traffic’s bad.
Even walking on the elusive sidewalks, human traffic was a pain. You know in some cities how everyone walks with their head down and with a purposeful stride, thus causing a few minor collisions? Yeah, its like that, except that when I was walking, a person would look right at me and then walk into me. I don’t understand. Maybe I was violating some national law by walking in straight lines and trying not to bump people. This was the most prevalent in the clothing market, which had one small alley with barely enough room for two people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. If you stop to look at a football half-shirt, or denim short-shorts, or you know, whatever you wanted to buy, people slam into you from behind incessantly. I guess it was half the fun though.
It seems like I’m painting Kampala some pretty dismal colors now, but I actually enjoyed the city very much. It was exciting and full of life, as evidenced by the frantic street crossings. When someone would bump into me, they would invariably apologize and smile, or even stop to talk. There’s hardly any animosity, even when a man is laying on his car horn he is laughing and chatting with other drivers nearby. And it was nice being able to speak English again, although American and Ugandan English are a bit different. “Do you want let’s go boss?” was one of the catchphrases of the motorcycle taxi drivers, who perch at every corner and then try swooping on the white folks who pass by, offering rides for twice the going rate. I took a regular taxi (Peace Corps put the kibosh on volunteers ever riding motorcycles; something about a high fatality rate, I dunno) one time, asking to go to Kabaka’s Palace. I asked the driver if he knew of it, and he assured me he did. I even repeated the name at least four times, slowly, because on the previous ride I took the driver misunderstood me. That time, we had sorted it out quickly and only wasted five or ten minutes. This time, he drove me in quite the wrong direction, and after half an hour, we reached a place called Backpacker’s Hostel. Hmmm… Back-pack-ers….Ka-ba-ka’s. Nope, I have no idea how he managed that one. When I finally reached the palace, he tried charging me about triple what we had agreed on, saying he used so much gas. What a chump. I gave them three snaps and walked away.
Whenever I decided to hoof it rather than face the traffic and chump drivers, I was assaulted with a barrage of “mzungu! mzungu!” that reached a level I hadn’t seen in Bukoba. Everywhere there were street peddlers, selling anything you could want (I found a book by Albert Camus at one) and when they see the great white man, they really put on the pressure. I took the wrong ATM card, so I only had available the small amount of cash I’d withdrawn before coming. Luckily it worked out, I left Uganda with 100 shillings in my pocket (about ten cents). But try as I might, I simply could not convince these hawkers that I was simply a poor volunteer ex-college student. The attention I got, and that I imagine every foreigner gets, was constant, and bordered on being overwhelming. A nice, simple, quiet night out is purely impossible. The shouts almost border on aggressive sometimes. But I found the antidote. No, not beer. Earlier I wrote that I picked up some of the local language here in Bukoba, and it worked wonders around town. Well, I copied that strategy and learned the greetings of Luganda, which is the native language and what everyone speaks before they are force-fed bad English. When I got hollered at, I hollered back (young’n) in Luganda. That made the crowded streets erupt with surprise and happiness, and all of a sudden they stopped trying to sell me overpriced necklaces. Try it out the next time you go somewhere that speaks a foreign language (except French Canada, screw that), and you’ll be surprised at how much the locals appreciate your attempts to use their language. Really.
Speaking of the force-feeding of English, that isn’t restricted only to the language. Uganda was one of the prize beauties during the European rush to colonize Africa, as it holds the legendary source of the Nile. Reason being, who ever controlled this source then had sway over every community which relied on the Nile to survive (*ahem, Egypt*). So basically, the Ugandans got it all ways, as both Germans and English vied for dominance. I hope its apparent that the English ended up prevailing, and then choke-slamming the Ugandans with their cultures and ideas, not to mention language. After a hundred-odd years of this, many of the aspects of their day-to-day life are very disparate from what you’d expect (at least from what I had expected). Naturally, they had to adopt many English customs, such as religion, style of dress, transport, habitation, government. But at the same time, it feels like a flicker of pride as to who they once were has remained, like they don’t want to forget their roots. Just ten years ago, in a huge ceremony, they re-crowned the old Kabaka (king) in his palace. He wasn’t given any political powers, but he has absolute moral precedence. I guess I would say that the entire culture seemed schizophrenic, like these two personalities, colonial English and traditional Ugandan, like they are clashing for national supremacy. The business men and college students gladly assume the role of the updated Englishman, and in fact you would be hard-pressed to realize they don’t hearken from a Western nation. Then, the taxi drivers, hawkers, and especially, villagers seem to live in a more communal, traditional sort of way. In between these extremes are the majority, and it felt to me like they were the rope in a game of tug-o-war between the businessmen and the villagers. I understand both ideas, the business men want their country to advance, to join the Westerners and perhaps to live with less poverty and hunger. The villagers want to keep Uganda’s spiritual and cultural side alive, to remember who they were and are, and to not become assimilated into the league of Western nations, just to lose their identity. Aren’t both desires valid? But I really feel like they are too disparate to exist together. Walking from the market district to the downtown hotel area was like traveling through time (trust me, I know), and I wondered how long these places would continue to survive, being so different yet only a kilometer apart. I imagine this same sort of thing is happening or has happened in many of the European colonies, and I’ve seen signs of it in Tanzania. A good analogy would be like when a fast food burger place begins to offer tacos. At first, you are excited. A fresh new type of food has arrived, and it is delicious. Perhaps the tacos are even so popular that they begin outselling the burgers. I mean, come on, everyone has burgers, but only this place has fresh new delicious tacos. So due to the popularity the burger place adds a second kind of taco, or a bigger one, or the ingredients of a taco wrapped in a tortilla (this is called a burr-i-to). You didn’t know that there were this many kinds of tacos, but you begin to learn the subtle differences between them. Soon, everyone that eats at this burger place knows that corn tortillas are superior to flour tortillas, or that black beans put refried beans to shame. People no longer crave the burger, it lost its luster. Of course, there are a few older people who remember when only burgers were offered, before all this taco nonsense. So the place keeps one or two types of burgers on its menu, to satiate these elders. But after a few more years, even these burgers lose their sway, and evolve into taquitos, quesadillas, and enchiladas. Without realizing it, this burger place has been changed into something completely different than its original state. And that, my friends, is the legend of Taco Bell...

Life is Fonder in Uganda

Hey, so I just got back from Uganda yesterday. I was pretty active during this trip, so I don't think I have the literary skills to write my activities and my impressions cogently in one post. So I decided I would recap what I did, then later I'll write what I thought. Savvy?
I left Bukoba together with another German friend of mine, Malara, who was going to fly home from Entebbe. The six hour bus ride was mostly harmless, but I committed a notable faux pas at the border. You know the quip, “They must pay you to say that”, or any of its various incarnations? If I said that to an American border guard, he’d likely be in on the joke and laugh it off, knowing I wasn’t serious. However, it doesn’t go over so well with Tanzanian customs officials. I was purchasing my transit visa from this fellow, and asked him where the best place to change money was- there at the border or in Kampala itself. Naturally, he said at the border, where he was stationed. With an ironical air, I made the ill-fated quip about his being paid. To say the least, he wasn’t happy. He ranted for about five minutes about how he wasn’t given any illicit donations, that he was offended by my implications, and so on. I’m pretty sure this aggressive type of defense means that he was in fact getting bribes, and therefore my comment became even more foolhardy. Oh well, I had already finished my visa business with him before this, so everything worked out. Under that auspicious beginning, we continued on to Kampala.
We arrived in the afternoon, so after booking a hostel, we had time to explore the town. The Ugandan Parliament building is the same as the old government buildings in Budapest: scarred with bullet holes from revolutions and coups. For the remainder of the day, we ambled around, taking in the bustling feel of the city. At night, we went to this place I’d heard about for dinner, called the Kampala Carnivore. Sounded pretty awesome to me. Well, this place was famous for cooking wild game and the like, hence the name. There was a board advertising what rare meats they would throw on a giant grill, and this board included crocodile, zebra, eland, and a few others. Naturally I went for the zebra, only to find out it was sold out. Why is it that the beautiful things in life are so often only empty promises? *boo-hoo-hoo* So both Malara and I settled on croc. I’ve eaten alligator before, in Florida, and it tasted like chicken. Go figure. Crocodile was more like an unholy hybrid of chicken, fish, and lots of oil. I ate about 10 McNugget (do they still make those?) sized pieces before I felt like I would die. I would be the first man to perish by croc from the inside. But I recovered with the help of a beer, and that was that.
The next day was our cultural learning binge. We started with the Kasubi Tombs, which were formerly the palace of the early kings of Uganda. The grounds consisted of an enormous hut surrounded by a multitude of old houses. Well, the king lived in the big hut, and all his wives (listen to this: 84 of them…!) lived in the adjacent homes. The scions of both the king’s clan as well as all the families of the wives still occupy the grounds, which was cool. The hut has been defunct as a palace for about a hundred years, so they transformed it into a tomb for the four most recent kings. Malara was informed that, while we were on the grounds, she was officially considered one of the current kings wives (good thing he was out of town, eh…). From there we went to the Uganda National Museum, which had quite a few artifacts but really wasn’t much on organization or presentation. The only section we found intriguing was some first-hand accounts of life written by the early explorers who were looking for the source of the Nile. After that, we grabbed burgers and ice cream, which might have been the highlight of my day. Last on the sightseeing agenda was the Baha’i Temple, the only one in all of Africa. Baha’i is a religion founded around 1840 or so saying that every religion is right, each apostle is the next in a continuous chain of God’s messengers. I didn’t really get more into than that, for when I was reading the board with all the tenets, a man approached us. First, he handed us each a flower, and then his first words were, verbatim “I knew you were coming. I’ve dreamed of you for three months.” His smile was a bit too large, and he was a little too soft-spoken. The "fanatic alarm" went off in my head began clamoring at that point. So obviously I asked for a tour of the place from him. He seemed to think Malara and I were the heralds of some great change for his church, and after I buttered him up a bit, he started taking us into some rooms in the House of Worship which were off limits to anyone but the most devoted. Sorry, I didn’t see any altars with cows or rooms like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the worst of the three movies). In fact, the whole of the House of Worship and its environs was really quite breathtaking. But once the head honcho saw where we were, we got kicked off the grounds, and I’m pretty sure Mr. Zealot got a good reaming. That evening we hopped an hour long bus to Entebbe, the home of the international airport. So far we’d been going by the seats of our pants, hoping that we could find boarding, but it turns out that doesn’t work in business traveler cities. We grabbed a taxi and asked to go to a nearby hotel we’d read about. The only room they had left was their nicest suite. Similar things happened at three more places, and by this point our taxi driver is practically crying with happiness at the size of our bill. Finally he makes a phone call for us, and we end up staying at the house of a woman on the city council. Being a councilor must have been a windfall, as she was beginning to renovate her residence into a guest house. Not yet having her hotelier’s license, she gave us a great deal on the room. On top of that, she owned a restaurant five-minutes’ walk from her house, where we got deals on food and beer. Not too shabby.
The next morning, Malara caught her flight home and I began my solo tour of Entebbe. First stop was the Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre, which we call in America a “zoo”. The rhinos and chimps were the highlights, and if you’ve never seen a rhino five feet away, you don’t know that they are like enormous cow-tank crossbreeds. The zoo offered a three kilometer “Forest Walk”, and I had time to kill, so I started wandering down the little trails. For one, I didn’t know that a log across the path meant “Path Closed”. For two, I didn’t know that Ugandan forests are home to a multitude of insects and the like. For three, “and the like” includes monstrous spiders, which I’ve already made clear that I am terrified of. It seems that normally, the paths are kept well-maintained and monstrous spider-free. I chose poorly, and went down the one which hasn’t been monitored in quite some time. Halfway through, I was on the verge of screaming or crying, I don’t know which. I had contemplated turning back, but I held on to the hope that I was almost through the bad part. Yeah, it got worse. Near the end, I was crawling on my hands and knees under these huge webs, and I felt like Frodo in Shelob’s cave. The spiders were the ones with a big, mottled black abdomen, long spindly legs, and fangs, and they were all somewhere in the range of three to five inches. When I saw freedom nearby, I gave up and ran with my arms like a boxer’s guard over my face. Then I tore off my shirt to find a couple two or three on my back, like in “The Last Crusade”. Brrrrrr… I asked about the path later, to find that no one has used it for months, as the guides warn most visitors about the monstrous spiders. I hate life sometimes. Anyway, after that harrowing experience, I headed to the Entebbe Botanical Gardens, 75 acres of trees and flowers. This time I took a guide… He showed me a small copse of trees where they filmed an old Tarzan movie from the 1930’s, and I even swung on those famous vines. Of course I attempted the classic yell, but all that accomplished was scaring some birds. I find a nice bench with a view of the lake, and read for a few hours ("Shadows of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, thanks Alex. It’s a gripping, fun read if you’re looking for a book). For dinner I found a local market where old women were selling fried fish balls for about ten cents apiece.
I returned to Kampala the following day, and really tried to walk around the city. I found a local clothing market that stretched for about 10 city blocks, and it was a vintage lover’s paradise (ahem, Andrew). Check this out, they were selling Diesel jeans in good condition for less than five dollars. So you can imagine old t-shirts were dirt cheap. I worked by way to the national art gallery, but again there was a problem with organization. There was more art lying in stacks on the floor than there was displayed, and only one piece out of every ten or so showed any inspiration or originality. But I’m no critic… For lunch I found a local joint serving boiled and mashed bananas (my recent favorite food) which was entirely staffed by cute 20-something waitresses. I immediately became a regular. On a masochistic impulse, I asked someone to point me to very cheap, but safe, lodgings. I specified that I didn’t need a “mzungu place”, and in doing so I’m pretty sure I sacrificed any hope of cleanliness. The place is stayed was called the China 888 Hotel, and my room was less than half the size of a typical college room, and the group bathroom put the fraternity one to shame in its dirtiness. It was perfect.
I finished up my tourist ventures the next day, when I visited the Kabaka’s Palace and Makerere University. Kabakas were kings, and I was given a tour of the palace grounds by an old fellow who had fought against Obote and Idi Amin in the revolution. He was awesome, and seemed pleased to find a tourist wanting to hear his stories. He showed me the prison where the tyrants held their political prisoners. There were five big concrete rooms, each about ten feet by twenty-five feet. In total, he said a thousand people were generally held in these rooms, and that they were in use for over ten years. The hallway outside of the rooms was filled with a foot of standing water, which the guards electrified. No escape… From there I went to the university, which was once the pride of East Africa. It was nice being surrounded by that familiar atmosphere of academia, but I didn’t see much worth commenting on. I browsed their library for awhile, and found that their literature section was immaculate. I was envious (Mr. Smith, they had “Mario and the Magician” in Mann’s original German. You know that’s been out of print for years, and I’ve yet to find it in English…) and wished I had a few days to spend there. I had lunch at the place with the foxy waitresses, and dinner at an Indian restaurant which was almost identical to Cedars, except without the awe-inspiring beer selection.
My last day I had run out of things to do, so I shopped a bit, and found a park and read. A precocious 13 year-old girl came up to me and we talked for a few hours, mainly about her conceptions of America versus the realities. A brief example, she thought that America has no crime or thieves, that there are no poor people, and so on. She was taught this in her school, which bothered me a bit. Lunch was with the ladies, and when I told them I was leaving the next morning they all asked me to take them to America. Boo-yah. That night, at the China 888, the man in the room next to me snored. At a Holiday Inn, there is insulation. At the 888, there is a cardboard wall. I wouldn’t have cared except he was the loudest snorer I’ve ever heard in my life. Yes, louder than Elliott, louder than Brandon, and amazingly, louder than Lance. In the early morning, he woke up from his deep sleeping to make a phone call. At this point I had just managed to fall asleep myself, only to be woken up to hear him say loudly over the phone “Yes, I slept very well last night, thank you.” Something snapped, and I think I developed a nervous twitch at that precise moment.
The bus ride back to Kampala passed quickly, as I was sitting between a cool fellow from Britain and an old Ugandan pilot. When the pilot sat down, he said he was ready with his “survival kit” which turned out to be a pint of cheap gin. He took half of it down, and offered me the rest. Like I said, the ride passed very quickly. The British guy was disillusioned with East African relief efforts, after working for one refugee organization and finding that the head of it made over 250K. He was traveling to find a worthwhile charity somewhere in East Africa to which he can give his assistance. Pretty noble, I thought. But I was a bit tipsy at that point. The pilot ended up procuring beer after beer for himself, and by the end of the trip he was passed out. Remind me not to fly Precision Air…
That’s it for my activities. I’ll write up a significantly shorter post in a few days’ time about what thoughts and impressions I now have. Rock like the Scorpions.

I Took A Trip...of DEATH

For the past week or two I’ve been on break from teaching. At first I found it a bit frustrating, as I was beginning to settle into a pretty solid groove. I wasn’t sure what to do with so much free time and no fraternity brothers wanting to go to happy hours. Well, as luck would have it, during my previous vacation around Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, I met a German fellow, Bjorn (after the Swede phenom Bjorn Borg, of course), who was living near Bukoba. His tenure as a forestry intern was ending a few days ago, so we made plans to hang out for his last hurrah and return to Bukoba together so he could catch a ferry out of this joint.
Bjorn was staying in a community called Omurushaka, which is about 120 kilometers from Bukoba (you do the math). Of course, the only possible method of travel from Bukoba to Omurushaka is my old friend, the bus. I was given two options though- a minibus (a.k.a. dala-dala) or a big poppa like the one I rode to Njombe. The day before I planned on going, I went to the stand and asked what time either would be departing. Apparently on Saturdays they only leave at 6am or 7am. Great. I show up bright and early the next morning, and some dude grabs my arm. He remembered me from the day before, and proceeded to haul me through the throng of other dudes like him, all trying desperately to find passengers for their respective vehicles. He leads me to a dala-dala (so long, choice), kicks someone out of the front seat and in I go. I’ll tell you what, despite all my plans, the three hour ride was shockingly comfortable. For the second half the road was dirt and potholes and there were four of us up front, but I managed to hang onto the shotgun seat, so everything worked out.
When I arrived, Bjorn gave me a run-down of the plans for the next few days. Among other things, the plans included us slaughtering a few chickens for his farewell dinner. This was a bit ironic, as just a week before Aaron and I received memos from the Peace Corps office discussing that scourge, the avian flu. The memos told us not to handle live chickens and, whatever else we do, definitely not to slaughter them. Aaron and I shrugged off the warning, as we haven’t so much as touched a chicken since we arrived here. Well, I’ve got Mr. TamiFlu Vaccine flowing in my veins, so I wasn’t too worried, mabye even a little eager. In the afternoon, we went to pick out our victims from the market. Turns out live chickens cost less than three dollars here, so I could have gotten one for the Christmas exchange quite easily. Live and learn. We asked for the chickens which would taste the most delicious after frying, and were given possibly the ugliest chicken that even lived, and a normal looking one. I’ll get ahead of myself and say that the ugly one became far and away the most delicious fried chicken I’ve had since arriving here. I wonder if there’s a correlation…? That same evening was the dinner, so when we got back, we prepared ourselves for the slaughter. Bjorn had two choices of killing instruments- a big machete or his Swiss Army knife. One was sharper, but the other one was bigger. In the end he opted for the sharp Swiss Army method. I was a bit disappointed. I didn’t bring any clothes that would look good with blood spatter, so I relegated myself to the role of photographer (yeah, you should check my pictures page). He started with the ugly chicken, because it seemed easier to kill I suppose. What went wrong, you ask? Well, the goal of slaughtering a chicken is to kill it as fast as possible, by beheading it. So what happens if you only cut through half the neck? The chicken flops around like crazy, spraying blood everywhere as it struggles for life. I was a bit stunned by the spectacle of a chicken with its head hanging by a thread flopping all over the place, it was more than a bit chaotic and macabre. The Tanzanian man who was instructing us started yelling and basically tackled the chicken and ripped the rest of the head off and held onto it for its final throes. I was in awe, and also felt like less of a man. Who tackles a dying chicken? A really manly man, that's who. So that was it, one down. So what went wrong on the second try? Bjorn learned his lesson on severing the head completely, so that wasn’t a problem. I said that the man who helped us held down the first one for its final muscular spasms. The standard way of doing this is to straddle the chicken and step on its two wings. Well, Bjorn stood on the wings, made the cut, and then forgot to stand still and keep the now headless chicken pinned. What follow was one of the most unsettling things I’ve even seen. As far as I know, when a body goes into death throes, the motions are very jerky, spasmodic. So imagine my shock as the corpse slowly, deliberately rose from its spread-eagle position on the ground and gradually came to its feet, wings at its sides. It then leisurely began to open its wings again, as it stood perfectly still on its two feet, without a head. This took maybe twenty seconds in total, and the entire time blood is spurting vertically out of its neck with each heartbeat. Once its wings were spread, I think the body made an attempt at flying, but only managed to get a foot or two off the ground before it lost all control and careened off the porch and into a tree. It was amazing. During this whole time, we all had those stupefied smiles you get when something ridiculous that you don't understand is happening (like when I found out the Seahawks made it to the superbowl). The rest of the slaughter proceeded without any incident, and Bjorn’s house help (he supported the economy, too) fried them up for us. Like I said, the ugly one was awesome.
The next day we went on a little hike, through a valley near his house to a river. I have a picture of the river, which was not really a river at all. From up on the rim of the basin, it was a strange light green ribbon cutting through the middle of a sparse forest of banana trees. Bjorn explained that the color was due to papyrus growing in the river. Well, we threaded our way into the valley, past many unsuspecting farmers who were bewildered to see two giant mzungu (he is even taller than I am) crashing through their backyards. Eventually we reached the river. I have heard stories about how muddy the Mississippi is, but I’ll wager that this one has it beat hands down. The cattle trail we were following continued right onto the river and all the way across it. I don’t know if all papyrus-growing rivers are like this, but the surface was dense and spongy, like walking on a giant Twinkie. I kept wondering if some beast would jump up from underneath and carry me down with it. Maybe a hippo… Or maybe some quicksand-type hole would swallow me silently to the bottom of the papyrus jungle. Well, we made it to the other side without any incident, after treading very carefully. The scenery was bizarre in this area, the ground looking parched yet having abundant foliage. It was a nice diversion of a day.
That night, we were all excited to go to what Bjorn called “the pork place”. I don’t know why, but the slang term for pork here is “kiti moto” which literally translates as “the hot seat”. Actually, now maybe I do know why…ahem, we‘ll get to that. We show up and order us some fried pork (we ordered by the kilo, it was very masculine). It came out by itself on this big plate and it was a veritable mountain of fried pork cutlets, I wish I would’ve remembered to bring my camera. We all dug in to the deliciousness that is fried pork. That was all well and good. Flash forward five hours. Its now one in the morning, and I’m rolling back and forth in my bed with the worst stomach pain I can remember. (That’s not quite true. Once at the fraternity I was a little drunk and ate about fifteen of those long jerky tube things right before going to bed. I literally couldn’t move the next day.) I won’t go into the details, but I wasn’t able to eat for another two long arduous days. Just the thought of that mound of glistening pork goodness was enough to send me spiraling into nausea. Ugh. Well, its all over. I’ve returned none the worse for wear, although Mama Shukuru says I look too skinny now and wants me to eat lots of bananas.
That was it for my trip. In two days I go to Kampala, Uganda for a week. Let’s cross our fingers that it is just as eventful, huh? And again, if you aren’t my parents or brother and you do more than just skim this atrociously long posts, I thank you. Peace from the Corps.

Seeing Red, or WWID

If you ever find yourself in a strange new environment, I have a fun game for you to play. Remember your good friends from your previous locale, and then insert them into the situations which you come across in your new one, to try and imagine how the friends would handle them. The more ridiculous the situation, the more humorous the game becomes. And naturally, some people have very memorable or vivid character traits which make them ideal for this. Well, I have been enjoying this diversion the whole time I’ve been here, without ever really thinking about it. Back when I was bested by the chickens, I recall wondering how a particular friend of mine would have responded to the entire event. The poisonous creatures turning up in my room, the evil ferry from Zanzibar, the basketball loudmouth. I can think of hilarious ways in which different people I have known would respond to each, maybe you can too. But I think my favorite person to put in any situation here, bar none, is Ivan Shiras. Most of you reading this probably know who he is to some extent, but for those who don’t, I suppose an brief explanation of Ivan is in order. First, let me set the stage by admitting that, shockingly, the fraternity had an adverse affect on my academic life. By about my junior year I was constantly debating switching majors to philosophy just so I could graduate quickly and painlessly. At this point, I’d known Mr. Shiras for several years, as he was a year under me in the fraternity. Midway through the year, we realized that we were both physics majors, and began taking classes together. I will freely declare that the support of Ivan is probably the main reason I ended up with a physics degree. Over the next two years (yes, three plus two makes five, so what…) Ivan and I became, I don’t think its presumptuous to say, great friends. During this tenure, in addition to studying together we even became coworkers. Suffice it to say I had ample time to get to know many of the aspects of Ivan’s personality. Earlier, I said that people who have more distinctive traits are the most amusing to imagine in these different situations. Well, Ivan has an unforgettable personality. Once during an interview, when asked how his friends would describe him, his reply was “salty.” But just to say that would give you a wrong impression as to the magnificence of Ivan. I’ve never known a more capable person. Our friend Ivan is devoted, earnest, intelligent, and has the potential of being very, very…shall we say…meticulous. If I use any more adjectives this will sound like a personals ad, and then I’d have to explain his resemblance to Chuck Norris (if only you grew a beefy mustache, Ivan…) and Ben Stiller. To get a feel for the full spectrum of Ivan, it will help to know that one of our physics professors once called him motivated and bright, and that one of our coworkers once asked me why he ironed his blue jeans (to be fair, he doesn‘t iron his blue jeans, only his sheets). Intellectual elite but obsessively neat, that is the essence.
So to return to my original idea, since I arrived, I have been unconsciously putting Ivan into all the various incidents which befall me. In fact, when I am teaching I tend to imagine how Ivan would explain a specific concept. Or if I become stuck on a problem a student brings to me from some archaic university text from India, I try to remember how he would attempt to solve it. Although this inspires me, its not the entertaining side of inserting Ivan into life here. For those of you who know Ivan well, or from my concise description can picture him, think of Ivan in some of the following situations.

There are relatively few restaurants in greater Bukoba, go figure. When the various mzungu factions decide to have a weekend dinner together, there are really only three places we can go. At the first one, the menu is shockingly varied, with everything from hamburgers (cheese is just too much to ask…) to perch thermidor. The downside? The menu does not correspond with what the restaurant actually serves, and usually its by about choice number four that I pick a winner. The second restaurant has the menu problem as well, to a lesser degree. But the major issue at this one is the service. It took over three hours to get our food once, and that was surprising because it generally only takes two hours. That last hour was pretty rough. The third restaurant is afflicted with the same difficulties as the first two, and even more. I remember once there were eight of us dining there. We waited for a little over the standard two hours, and when the food came, two people’s orders had been completely forgotten, and two others were just plain incorrect. Four for eight, after two long, hungry hours. The bizarre thing is that these places weren’t busy, which could have helped explain the confusion. In fact, generally we are the only ones there. How could a person whose sole job is to take an order from a table to a kitchen only succeed fifty percent of the time? Especially when that person is working so exasperatingly slowly! Ivan, you would let loose a legendary tantrum if you ever tried dining here, I‘m sure of it, and I‘m sure it would be hilarious.

Thinking of Ivan being present at my school meetings is usually the best way to keep entertained during them. These meetings have the tendency to be brutally tedious. For the opening of school in January, all the teachers met to go over the minutes from the previous closing of school meeting, as well as to cover the logistics of opening. All told, this lasted for seven hours. I’ll give you an idea of what critical issues were discussed during this time. For at least the first hour, the old minutes were read, and questions were raised. What kind of questions? Well, every time that a list of participants was mentioned, various teachers would raise their hands to say that they had been omitted. Come on, does it really matter that the scribe forgot to write that you attended a twenty-minute session six months ago on whether or not soda should be allowed at some ceremony? Is it worth then arguing over for ten minutes until your name is added? Ivan’s answer would be “no!”, and mine as well. And that was just the beginning! The rest of this meeting and most of the others have continued so much in this fashion that I began keeping myself entertained by writing physics lesson plans instead of listening. Think about that.

The last situation I have time to write about is a bit ironic, as it deals with blue jeans. I brought two pairs with me, which I am not allowed to wear on campus, Ihungo being a former missionary school. But I do wear them when Aaron and I walk into town, which is three miles away. The walk back is usually a bit rough, as I mentioned sometime earlier that the school is on a small mountain (or hill, I don‘t know the exact height requirements but I hear Hugh Grant could help me out) and we generally return at around three in the hot African afternoon. Have you ever walked up a mountain-hill in sweaty, clingy jeans? Each step is awful, like when you walk through deep snow and have to first move your leg directly up, then forward, then directly down again. Its just so inefficient, isn’t it Ivan…? But that’s not what I thought was ironic. After this uncomfortable trek home, my jeans are always dirty, so I toss them in the hamper for Mama Shukuru to wash (don’t shake your head at me; I’m supporting the economy) when she has time. All this means is that my jeans get the Mama Shukuru treatment at least once a week. And what does the Mama Shukuru treatment include? Yes, you guessed it. She irons my blue jeans. In fact, because she irons them so frequently, she has somehow succeeded in ironing into both pairs that classy line that slacks have going down the middle of each leg. Except in jeans it looks a little less than classy. Ivan, what would you do if you had blue jeans constantly ironed to look like slacks? I actually don’t know where you would stand on this one. Would you be pleased that they are so orderly, or bothered (yes, bothered) that your jeans have become terrible hybrids, "sleans"? Help a brother out...

Anyway, I’ve written way too much and I think I have mostly avoided being offensive to my certain friend so far, so I’ll call it a day. Ivan, I miss having you around, in every situation here.