Kampala: It's A City, Not A Village

Kampala: It's a city not a village

I don't know how to begin to describe this city, as it is filled with everything you could ask for (fancy restaurants, bars, nightclubs, internet, cinema, etc.) and more (street vendors, crafts markets, herbal medicine expeditions, etc.) They even have electricity, really!

My first week spent in Kampala was superb and I was fortunate enough to have my own private, local tour guide (Leuben's brother). I experienced everything wonderful local like eating food from street vendors, frequenting the most local pubs where Muzungu's just don't go and dancing till the early hours of the morning beneath nothing more than banana trees and the stars. It may seem fantastical, surreal, or exotic. But it's just daily life. It's normal. It's Kampala.

Of course, there were also some normal, daily life, local things I experienced that were not so wonderful such as the boda-boda (motorcycle taxis) and the matatus (mini-bus taxis). My first and thus far only experience on a boda was necessary and cost efficient. But after I held on for dear life, pleading with the driver to slow down, I've decided to stick to private hire taxi or just my own reliable feet. We will see how long it is before I become too impatient to wait for a private hire and my feet prove to be unreliable. Then I suppose boda's will become my mode of transport. How much do helmet's cost? I may need a suit of armor as well.

Just the other day I was relaxing in the hostel bar with a chai and in came two girls, Muzungu's of course, scraped, frazzled, and disheveled, in hysterics, not of tears but laughter. I wondered about this and eavesdropped on the girls playback of what happened to each other.

Can you believe that pig just ran out in the road?

And then your boda smashed into mine as we rolled over the pig....

I can't believe neither driver was upset.

It's Kampala. It's normal.

continued giggles and laughter in between swigs of bell

Now I wonder if one day I will get thrown off a boda and find humor in it. As of now, I find it highly unlikely.

The matatu, I think, may have been worse than the boda. I felt as though I was in a death trap for three hours from Kampala to Masaka. I am not exaggerating when I say the experience, journey, whatever it was, is almost too traumatic for me to relive, but I will for the sake of this blog. Matatu's are vans, similar to Volkswagon vans, with four rows, including the row of the driver. I was one of the twenty-two people crammed into that little van, discounting the three babies on laps, 15+ suitcases shoved in any open space, 20 lb. bags of chicken feed, and chickens tied up so they had no use of their feet or wings. It took three hours of waiting in the taxi park for the van to fill up and then another three hours to get to my destination, Masaka. For the mathematically illiterate people, such as myself, that's six hours to travel a distance of approximately 120 miles.

Our journey began pleasantly, despite my seat which I was sharing with two other people, that is until we left the city and jumped onto a two-way, paved but filled with potholes road. The driver never went below 85 mph and at times I felt like we were either going to head on collide or tip off the road. My heart would slightly stop pounding as we came to a screeching halt in each village where passengers would get off with their suitcases in one hand and koko's in the other. It felt like a moment of peace and safety even though very few villages had enough electricity to see what was going on (the sun had set by this time) and it was my senses I started to rely on to know what the vendors were selling as their hands stuck through the window into your "private" space. But as soon as we were back on the road and the speed picked up, my heart was back to pounding and it did not stop until we reached another village. You can imagine how relieved I was to reach my final destination. I will leave bodas and matatus to the locals, for now.

People are poor here and struggle a lot, to live, to eat, to survive. But rarely will you find a beggar or a persistent street vendor in the streets of Kampala. There is dignity, value, and respect. I think that is very telling of this culture. It is something that I value and that I highly respect. I am thrilled to experience Ugandan culture for this short period of time in my life.