random

So on the drive home, jp gets a call from his girlfriend. She hangs up cuz he is in the car with all of us. Hey, can I sit on top of the car till we hit the main road? Jp finally convinced us it was in his best interest to call his girl back privately… on top of the car. So he climbs out the window of the moving car and proceeds to talk with his girl while we drive thru the villages towards the Entebbe road. All the adults we passed just stared, their faces asked what in the world these crazy mzungus were doing now. Honestly, those of us in the car also wondered.

Oh, the other day I walked past a restaurant playing evanescence. …and I didn’t have a bad reaction, for the first time in over 5 years. I leaned against the rail looking over the city listening to just another song which used to contain fear for me. I smiled at the victory and enjoyed the rest of a perfect warm evening.

Even tho the dirt here is mainly red, most of the rocks are quartz. The beach rocks consist of old pottery and cement, broken shells, and quartz. I found a hunk of smoky quartz as big as my fist. Its quite beautiful. In the store i find mainly malachite from the Congo next door. They sell it in raw form, or as beads and figurines.

Now, for those of you planning to visit kampala, be aware that this city will assault your senses till you get used to it. Smells constantly demand your attention, including sewage, burning garbage, roadside vendor’s cooking, and car exhaust. Ants tend to eat edible garbage before it rots too much. Next comes the noise. Cars, motorcycles, 1000’s of people walking and talking, police whistles, the radio stations on trucks, not to mention the constant American hip-hop or rap played by most stores. Take a noisy city and condense it. That’s kampala noise. Now add the sites of all that I just mentioned. the food isn’t too spicy thankfully.

The only words I have found to describe Uganda are bizarre and rudimentary. Rudimentary because this place seems to be governed only by what is and what isn’t physically possible. There isn’t much how-its-normally-done controlling how something is done because there isn’t a “normal” way to do something. Whatever works, goes.

It is because of this state of affairs that I call Uganda bizarre. You just wouldn’t find this sort of stuff in the US; furniture stores on front lawns, bodas carrying 10 mattresses on the back, welders welding with no protection for themselves or passerbys, or banana trucks with people perched on piles of green bananas all rolling over potholes. This stuff you just have to see to envision. Uganda is also rudimentary because you must ask more basic questions that you would think of in the western world. In the US, the first question is usually “where do I get it?”. Here the first question is “CAN you get it?”. Better to ask “is it possible?”, rather than “is it legal?”. The standard for acceptable risk is much more lenient.