Photos: Mbale and Kampala

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Surprise Parties

Mbale and Kabale, Uganda



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There’s something about arriving in a beautiful place after dark akin to inviting yourself to your own surprise party. You know it’s coming but can’t be rushed; you know that it will be amazing but not the details.

Kampala is just north of the equator; the sun rises and sets between 6 and 7, and it’s strange to expect this to continue unchanging through the passing months. There will never be a season with late evenings or early darkness. The day begins with the Muslim call to prayer around 5:40, followed by the repetitive rooster. There is constant noise and motion in Kampala; people and animals are always living, all day and all night.

Given the early sunset it’s become tradition to arrive at weekend destinations after dark. This tradition began in Sipi falls near Mbale, at a campsite called the Crow’s Nest high on a ledge over the waterfalls and valley. Upon arrival we could hear the thundering power of cascading water but could not see it. We didn’t know how far away it was, how big, how beautiful – only that it would appear in its famous glory at sunrise. We could see only the tiny cabin, outhouses, and shack-with-water-can-shower. I woke in the night hoping for a view – there were more stars than I’ve seen in months, but the waterfall remained invisible.

The morning revealed an impressive vista over a valley and up the steep hillside opposite, with a cascade of three large (80m?) waterfalls ending in the longest and closest to our campsite. It was all the more stunning for its having been there many hours, hiding beyond our perception.

I interrupted a few German students, hoping to practice my language skills, and we hiked with them to stand in the falls' mist, looking from various angles at the panorama down a steep hill and out onto the endless green plains below. We also saw coffee plants and watched locals remove the shells, dry the beans, roast and grind them.

The campsite tradition continued in the southwest. Our first evening, we slept in tents erected on stilts with solid roofs and real beds inside…but the electricity was out and the generator wasn’t functioning that evening.

I’ve heard many different birds in my life, but adding all those sounds together would not have equaled the number of different calls I heard the next morning. There was chirping, singing, trumpeting, bell-ringing, and something like a graceful seal. The tent platform was like a houseless balcony over a lake. A steady trickle of dugout canoes (literally hollowed tree trunks) glided silently across the lake center and disappeared behind an island, each canoe loaded with bags of produce or people. Every hill around the lake was quilted in rectangles of terraced farmland, and in the distance tiny clusters of women were visible working along the terraces.

I wandered toward the lakeshore, watching the foliage for the diverse birds. There were small bright green and yellow ones, large greenish-blue ones, and from a tree across the lake came the song of the graceful seal. Using my pre-Africa gift to myself, my first binoculars, I followed the sound and located an enormous black and white figure standing atop a tree. It was startling to see a bird the size of a 4-year-old standing on top of a tree, and impressive to watch it alight and fly into the distance. Only with the binoculars could I make out the yellow mohawk of the crested crane, Uganda’s national bird.

It was clear to Joy and I that we needed to paddle a dugout canoe. With great confidence in my canoeing abilities I took the rear steering position on the only bench, and Joy squatted on a wooden stool halfway up. Our paddles were pointed at one end like leaves. The boat was neither streamlined nor symmetric, and my years of training at camp and with Megan provided little help…and so we paddled slalom, like a skier, zig-zagging around an island to the crowded market packed with people and produce from the trickle of canoes, then around a bend to discover a pair of crested cranes, one guarding and the other busy building a nest. They allowed us to watch them closely a long time before taking off past our canoe across the lake.

Man and Nature

Lake Bunyonyi, Southwest Uganda
 

There exist across the planet instances in which architecture and agriculture scar the land; thus it is sometimes assumed that only pure nature can achieve the greatest heights of beauty. Yet with the appropriate style in the right location, man’s intervention is capable of enhancing nature toward achievement of beauty unsurpassed in the pure wild.

The misty blue of Lake Bunyonyi lies in a sea of rolling hills; the islands within the lake and the land of every shore slope up from the lake to gentle humps. The natural landscape is unusual in its roundness and impressive in its green vitality and mist – but the dominant feature of the beauty is that absolutely every hill of land is quilted in terraced agriculture. Each rectangular terrace section contrasts to its neighbors in texture, shape, and shade of green. Seams between the squares are raised earth, sometimes erupting with small trees and grasses that could not be contained. Crop squares are repeated at irregular intervals across the hills, each time in a unique arrangement within neighboring sections and the undulating landscape. Imagining the panorama without this sculpted landscaping does a disservice to its beauty; the random shades of intense greenery characterizing more wild areas could not compete here with the current harmony of man and nature. Tiny bright streaks of pink, purple, yellow and orange are the skirts of the women bending on the hillsides, working the slanted fields; they are both the artists and the final crowning brushstrokes.

Amazement of Nature

Mbarara, Uganda

So we’re cruising down the smooth, wide two-lane highway in our white Toyota, watching the scenery turn from the red-brown of Kampala to complete greenery, and then progressing to greener, greener, and greener. Fifteen minutes have gone by since Moses, our friend and driver, asked laughingly if we want to see animals, to which we shouted an exuberant yes. It’s escaped our minds by now; the conversation really is stimulating. The scenery is flatland of grass and low trees, in every shade of green, with low hills rising in the distance.

Then Moses turns to us and comments, in the tone of voice one would use to say “See how the gas tank is 75% full” the following phrase: “Are you seeing the Zebras?”

We whip our heads out the window and, sure enough, there is a herd of Zebras grazing along the highway.

The strangest thing is actually not the Zebras along the highway. It’s that Moses is continuing at full speed to pass the herd of Zebras along the highway.

A little shrieking corrects the situation by bringing the car to a halt, and Joy and I stampede down the side of the road onto the grass. The herd is 15-20 animals, running, walking, eating, and watching. Through my binoculars I can see their necks twitch as they stand poised. Black and white striped wild horses are very queer to see. They remain near us while we stare and take pictures, but when we are too close they run along the side of the highway until out of sight. It’s our first major animal spotting in Uganda. The area turns out to be the smallest national park in the country, but its highway-side placement and lack of visible fencing makes the experience very otherworldly…though not relative to what we are destined to experience the following days.

Mbale in 3 or 4 parts =)

Part 1: The Abayudaya.

From atop the grassy hill there is a view over hundreds of miles of sloping green. Details of vegetation and land contours are difficult to distinguish within the single vivid color. The community is seated under a tree outside the Rabbi's home – men, women, and children. A courageous girl has walked silently to my chair and planted herself on my lap, where she is playing with my arm's white skin. It is Saturday just before noon; the service has concluded and the Rabbi leads a discussion of the week's torah portion. Everyone is invited to ask questions and propose interpretations, to apply the story to their lives. The Rabbi speaks in English for the guests – mostly young Jews from America and Israel – and his words are translated by his brother, the village elder, into the local language for those who have not mastered abstract concepts in English.

On the hill are three communities – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. The Jews are one of the smaller Jewish communities in the area, but they have achieved the greatest publicity. The rabbi attended rabinical school in the US, there is a very nice guest house, and CDs and other Jewish tourist gifts are for sale. Proceeds go primarily to the community but are also shared with Christian and Muslim neighbors. Unity is a cultural value for all three.

Several generations ago, a local was reading the bible and decided that the old testament was the right way. He founded a Jewish community which is still flourishing today with over 1000 members. Similar communities are scattered throughout Africa. This community has many prayers in the local language, with beautiful harmonious melodies unlike any prayer I have ever heard. They have also integrated customs and traditions that tie them now to the world Jewish community. I was honored with an aliyah, to go to the front of the service and witness the Rabbi reading directly from one of their 5 torahs; the rituals were the same as those I learned for my bat mitzah when I was 13. It was touching to the point of a magical eeriness – I thought: It's happening again. Judaism is being reborn in small communities scattered across Africa, the birthplace of humanity. It is beginning itself again – though the outside world has taught some of these communities our unwritten traditions and supports them with tourism and aid, the communities founded themselves with no outside pressure at all, no evangelism, and existed for many years before discovery by the outside.

And sitting with the community under a tree on the green hill, surrounded by the expansive vista of a fertile land as far as and beyond the horizon, a small child sleeping on my lap, men and women engaged in reflective discussion – it is hard not to believe in religion and to feel the presence of something divine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abayudaya

Part 2: Nature

There is a thin strip of grey about 8 inches wide raised 2 inches above the dirt; this is the only remnant of the paved road and serves now only as an obstacle. The current red dirt road is completely covered in potholes and ruts; there isn't a full minute when we are not weaving across the single lane, seeking a path for the wheels, inching forward dip by dip.

Families sit on the roadside watching calmly, as though they've been there all day. Children carrying small jugs of water up the hill stop to stare at us, then yell and wave. The youngest chase the car on their tiny legs, shouting. They shout “Muzungu!” which originally meant British person, but is now used for all white people and even some wealthy, westernized Ugandans. In Kampala they shout at us as well, then wave, shriek, or giggle in excitement. But these children clearly have less experience with Muzungus and often stare in wonder, awed and nervous, frozen by the thrill. The tiny villages along the road often have stores set 10 back meters from the road; this space is full of people buying and selling – bananas, plantains, chickens, cloth. Homes are scattered along the road and up into the hills behind the stores. Some villages are only a gathering of a few houses of mud with thatched roofs.

We are climbing the Cliffs of Wanale, the relatively small outer edge of an enormous extinct volcano. The volcano takes many days to scale and we have only one, but this section is rewarding. Along the roadside, back into the sloping hills above the cliffs, is the most lush, fertile, green area I have every seen. The cliffs are a reddish brown, setting off the bright greenery. The sight is overwhelming; it is hard to look at such a vibrant, intense area of one color. At the top we stand under a radio station at the highest edge, beside a soccer field, garden, and a few small homes. We can see the whole of Uganda, seemingly, and it is all green. The sun is setting and the misty edges of our vision blur the greenery; we know there is more beyond.

Photos - scenery and birthday

A few photos to show my initial Uganda experience
Just click on the link. In the top left corner of the new website you'll see "slideshow" and you can click there. I'm sorry I couldn't figure out how to start the slideshow more easily...

http://picasaweb.google.com/sleely/Uganda?authkey=Gv1sRgCIOGv5bOjvPuXQ&feat=directlink

Looking into the Slums

Kampala, Uganda

It is difficult to look with true understanding from a life of luxury into a life of poverty. Concrete observations are only a framework for understanding the daily concerns confronting each family; these in turn merely hint at the longterm challenges, which leave the imagination far from comprehending the mindset and emotions of individuals. To approach emotional understanding of such a contrasting life, one reaches perhaps for experiences of lesser comfort – the rainy camping trip, tiny dorm room, power or water outages, the time the car broke down on a highway in winter. But these are nothing. We pass through them smoothly because they are temporary.

To understand the experiences of those living where such a situation is not temporary – as is the case for inhabitants of slums throughout the world – one must ask how the difference in standards and experience affects how challenges are perceived. I predict with certainty the concern for daily food, for clean water, warmth and shelter. But how does the priority of cleanliness relate to where I imagine prioritizing my own discomfort? Are they plagued, as strikes me personally, by back pain inherent in bending over in small rooms, bending over cooking fires, bending over laundry, carrying food, water, and supplies? Do they find comfort in a calm and quiet place; can one yearn for a privacy one never experienced?

To see these personal lives even for only a moment is to feel the helpless struggle of improvement. How do we fix such a world?

The images I keep with me are of families stepping out of one-room wooden huts, clothed in jackets and stocking caps against the cool morning. Rain in the night means mud covering the ground. The wide spaces between slats in the walls and ceiling over the dirt floors remind me of the fierce, swirling wind of yesterday's storm. Women stoop over cooking pots outside the doors, near wooden tables shared with neighbors. Men toss bricks along a line, from a stockpile down hill to the top of a quickly laid wall. Is the wall new, or did it crumble in the storm? The homes are clustered by the highway; there were more before the highway was laid over the unlucky ones. Are the remaining inhabitants benefiting from living along a transportation hub, or are they merely exposed and disturbed by the speed, the noise, the black clouds of exhaust? Between the highway and the muddy plots are piles of refuse. Some men are working on the piles; some cows are feeding there. Between two piles is a water hole where two workmen are washing their rubber boots in opaque brown water. Where do they find water for drinking and washing? Is this the only source? Walking out of the community toward the highway, and presumably into jobs in town, are a steady trickle of adults, mostly men. Several men are dressed in very well-pressed western business clothes – collared button-down shirts, slacks – ironed and not a drop of red mud. How do they manage? How do they wash these clothes so clean, iron them so smoothly, walk with such clean dignity over the mud?

Even if stopped the car in the inching traffic jam and alighted to ask many questions, I doubt I could ever fully understand, deep in my mind, what this life means. And I could certainly not devise that efficient solution my mind tries to grasp.

Comparative Statistics

Important: It's been impossible to load official websites about Uganda's government finances; the internet isn't very steady and the files are big. Therefore I collected these numbers from wikipedia and online news articles and haven't validated them. However, they are certainly interesting...

	Uganda	California
Population estimate	32 million	37 million
Tax revenue estimate per year	1.8 billion	100 billion
	Uganda	USA
GDP per capita (PPP) 2009	$1,195	$46,381
GDP per capita (nominal) 2009	$474	$46,381

The Senses

Kampala, Uganda 20 October 2010

Enough about roads

Sights:

Our apartment is a spacious 2-bedroom with balcony, tv, bathtub, and large kitchen in a walled compound in a suburb. I'll try to take photos this weekend. My housemate took some photos of our environment in Nairobi which she posted on her blog; you can scroll through to see where I've been (thanks Joy!)

http://www.jewganda.blogspot.com/

Sounds:

I’d been curious about the medley of sounds that would surround my life in Kampala – there is often a generator at work rumbling outside my window and many voices. At home there's the thrilling sound of laughter from a bird I’ve never identified, energetic music, and our neighbor the rooster, who cheats by waiting for the Muslim call to prayer to initiate his morning call…and then tries to redeem himself through number of repetitions. Sometimes we hear voices of the Canadians living upstairs, with whom we bonded in candle light during a brief power outage. We’ve been going without running water for a couple days, which I have to mention because I like adding “jerry-can shower” to my list of experiences. Fortunately the handyman is the most attentive and helpful I’ve ever had, and I’ve struck gold with my housemate Joy, another American volunteer.

Tastes:

The pineapple here is sweet; the best I’ve ever had – ever. The avocados are 3 times bigger than in the US and the papayas (paw-paw) are 3 times bigger than your head. Seriously. We eat a lot of ground-nut sauce, which is a little like peanut sauce, on sweet potatoes, rice, or mashed plantains. I’ve heard the peas-in-a-pod are the best in the world but haven’t tried them yet. In Nairobi we encountered a green Mango, which was supposed to be chopped into salsa, not so sweet or soft.

For lunch a bodaboda is sent to bring orders. All meals cost about $1.50, including delivery fee. One can choose any combination of rice, mashed plantains, and sweet potatoes, plus groundnut sauce (akin to peanut sauce) cooked in a banana leaf with beef or dried fish. Personally the quantity could last me about 3 meals, though people here tend to eat large meals and never snack. Fortunately they give all the leftovers to refugees who don’t have enough to eat. The food is heavy enough that for dinner Joy and I have been gorging ourselves on pawpaw, pineapple, avocado, skinny eggplants, small red onions, and hardboiled eggs.

AJWS Volunteer Corps Photo

AJWS (East Africa October) Volunteer Corps and staff Nairobi - thanks to Valeska for the photo

Highway to Kampala

Kampala, Uganda 19 October 2010

Flying out of Nairobi I was struck by the vast expanse of brown desert; from the air Nairobi seemed an island of life on a hostile plane, at least with my limited survival skills. My next view out a window was of the immense Lake Victoria on Kenya’s western boarder. Though much shallower, its surface area is between that of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Beyond the lake lay Uganda, in rolling hills of green and red. Green trees, green grass, red earth, red roofs. Amid so much greenery I was surprised by the quantity of dust everywhere; I could feel it in my nose as I breathed. I have never seen a brighter sun – beautiful, yet painfully blinding on a clear day. The region seems so life-sustaining.

The highway from Entebbe to Kampala had steady traffic, auto and pedestrian. The taxis (bus-vans) are all highly robust Toyotas (most of my first ride to work involved at least one wheel on the sidewalk or rutted shoulder, wherever potholes didn’t prevent us using this maneuver to overtake – on the outside – the long single line of traffic. On each side of this long single line of traffic, the bodabodas – passenger mopeds – weave through any empty space. Add this to their driving on the British side of the road, and then imagine crossing these roads as a pedestrian without crosswalks, lights, or signs, hurrying across side-walk encroaching taxis, then weaving bodabodas, pressing traffic, another line of rapid bodabodas…and then the same thing traveling in the opposite direction. But I digress.)

The roads in Kampala are ridden with potholes and ruts, but the highway from Entebbe was smoothly paved, including a wide shoulder. This stressed the cultural justaposition of a woman walking on the shoulder, carrying on her head a rolling suitcase. Most of the men wear well-pressed long-sleeved western business clothes, looser than at home which makes sense in the heat.

The roadside buildings appear concrete, though most seem very fragile because the concrete is hidden behind corrugated iron roofs hanging over a porch crowded with whares. Where the concrete is visible it’s painted with colorful advertisements, as though each house is a billboard.

Normalcy and Infrastructure

Nairobi, Kenya – October 2010

At night I hear chirping and howling, but otherwise it is quiet. I sleep under a mosquito net and greet the guesthouse workers each morning with a “Hello – how are you? Fine.” Otherwise being in Nairobi feels very normal. Having brought few concrete expectations, I am seldom surprised – but the extent of normalcy here makes it difficult to open my first blog with a catchy adventure. Instead, I'll tell you about what I found most interesting – transportation infrastructure.

The highway from Nairobi airport to our neighborhood was three lanes in each direction, a wide barrier between, well maintained. It was clearly not constructed with a mind to the steady trickle of pedestrians appearing out of an apparently vast, desolate stretch of land on one side, walking across the first three lanes of traffic, climbing over the two metal barricades, and traversing the next three lanes in order to reach the buildings on the other side where they are, I assume, employed.

The road to the right of our compound is a dirt one, surrounded by compounds of apartment buildings that would appear luxurious in any western country. Between the compounds are clusters of 1-room wooden stores and homes. Each tree seems to hold a different color flower – red, orange, yellow, pale purple – with flowering magenta vines strung between. There is little traffic.

The road to the left of our compound, leading to the posh Yaya mall, is a two-lane paved road jammed, at rush hour, with buses, 15-passenger vans, and private cars – a large quantity of which look shiny and expensive. The roads have no shoulder and drop abruptly to rough, rutted dirt paths used as sidewalks. My first venture out of the compound with Tallie – who will be volunteering in Kisumu in western Kenya, on Lake Victoria – was anxiety-provoking both for the reputation of Nairobi as a robbery-ridden world (non of which we encountered), and, moreover, for the traffic. The buses seem too wide for their lanes and project into the pedestrian pathway within inches of the foot traffic. All drivers move rapidly and abruptly. There is no apparent traffic control – no speeding tickets, no shock at an overtaking car remaining in the opposite lane until a few meters before the oncoming traffic hits it, no stop sign, stop lights, or crosswalks at the intersections. Crossing requires alertness and courage. Most striking (that's something of a pun) are the 15-passenger “taxis” (called Mutatus in Kenya) which are run like buses. They pull abruptly off the road at designated yet unmarked stops, or anywhere else they think they might find customers. The conductor calls out their destination, soliciting customers, often waiting to depart until he's found enough. I've seen vans departing with the sliding door open and several people hanging out, though fortunately in Uganda that's punished by significant fines for every passenger involved.

The most interesting question to ask, I feel, is why? I've just come from Switzerland, a country possessing one of the most highly developed transportation infrastructures in the world. Why the contrast?

Having done zero independent research for lack of internet, here is what I learned from a co-volunteer: There is income tax in Kenya and the residents feel that it's high, though I don't know the percentage. The money collected, though, is a very small fraction of that available per person in a western country. The fundamental problem is not perceived as corruption; the money is prioritized toward national security, education, infrastructure, etc – similarly to the west. But there is simply not enough to cover all the infrastructure and services available in the US.