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.