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.