On Uganda

So I have been tasked to write about Uganda, using my perspective as a non-Ugandan who until recently, two years past, resided in Uganda as well as the fact that I studied and worked in the East African nation. This is the fourth draft that I am penning and I hope I do not get to trash it at the end.

Why is it hard for me to write about Uganda? Well, for a start, I could fill entire volumes with experiences that range from the very unusual to the exceedingly mundane, experiences that meant a lot to me but will probably bore the reader into a coma. So cutting down is the word here, and like anyone on a diet will tell you, it’s HELL. Second, I would hate to turn into a sycophantic, over-excited travel brochure seller putting together a kumbaya-style Uganda/topia or even worse, minting cash from the very real misery of some of Uganda’s downtrodden. A just middle is what I hope to achieve. 

Bear in mind that this is one person’s limited perspective and one that is Kampala centric for the most part, at the end of the day i can only talk about what I know best. If you have been to Uganda, you will recognize and perhaps disagree with some of the facts and if you have not visited, this will hopefully make you want to go.

I have chosen, as a start, ten things to do while in Uganda, in no particular order. So I would recommend:

White water rafting

On the Nile. Let me say that again, the NILE! Everyone has to. It can be done within a day and I personally guarantee a thrill of epic proportions. I have done it three times and I cannot get over it still. It takes a day and it’s close to Kampala itself. The scenery is beautiful, the rafting outfits are professional and you get to see your toughest friends shriek for Mum to come and get them. Did I mention there is cold complementary beer in the bus that drives you back? That won me over.

Visiting a national park

How predictable! But yes, you are in Uganda so you might as well. You are spoilt for choice here as the country is peppered with parks and reserves that are as good as any that Tanzania and Kenya, the more famous neighbours have on offer. And they have glaciers too.

Party in Kampala

Where do I start? On offer you will have options including little unpretentious little friendly dives, huge bars that pack thousands, Über-posh lounges where everyone is terribly nice and loaded as well as clubs by the dozen. But why party in Kampala? Because Kampalans have successfully made it into an art form. When they say, let’s party, they mean business; no dead-fish allowed, better-drink-a-redbull-before-during-and-after business. And they are respectful too, and friendly. The musical selection is varied allowing for transitions between local music, the latest Beyonce song and Coldplay to happen within an hour. I am yet to meet a person who did not enjoy the party scene in Kampala, but that’s probably because they were at home sleeping.

Oh and dress up, these people take fashion seriously.

Go off the beaten path

Get out of town and away from the tourist traps. If you can go and stay with people, explore small towns and villages or just relax at a friend’s place in the suburbs, do it. Crash a party or two, Ugandans don’t mind, just bring a drink. You will find it very rewarding and you stand a chance of learning something that no tourist hotel will tell you. Go to Owino market and buy some second hand jeans, visit Makerere University or go to Mabira forest for a picnic (with sandwiches from Quality hill delicatessen.:-)

Eat Nsenene and ribs

The food is amazing. Kampala, especially, is a cosmopolitan city and you will find all manner of restaurants there and very good ones at that. But you must try Nsenene, the surprisingly nice tasting fried grasshoppers, that still have accusing eyes ogling you as you eat them. You must have a Rolex (rolled eggs), fast-food the Ugandan way consisting of a chapatti topped with an omelette and anything you fancy, from salad to minced meat, then rolled into a wrap.  You have to have matoke( mashed green bananas), with beans and rice and most of all you must go to a pork joint. The pork joint is a Ugandan institution, with a proud history of making the world a better place, one platter of ribs at a time, every day from five pm. They are packed, efficient little places that will serve pork meat done beautifully. You will literally pig-out.

Get on a BodaBoda

Avoid the traffic, jump on a motorbike taxi and get to anywhere you want. I once saw a very smart lady in a power suit step out of her parked Mercedes-Benz,  flag down a passing boda-boda and sit on it side-saddle a la Queen Elizabeth II,  all prim and proper and oh so very Kampalan.

Am I easily impressed or is that seriously cool?

Experience Entebbe

Get out of town for the weekend and go to the gentler, fairer, cleaner, greener sister city to Kampala. Forty kilometers away, the beaches are packed on the weekend, with shows often being staged. You must call into the botanical gardens, a massive place that combines jungle and manicured lawns where you are guaranteed to see more birds and monkeys than you will see people. True story!

Listen to the music

Ugandan people hail from different tribes and regions and cultures with very old and established musical traditions. A true kaleidoscope of influences and rythms that will not leave you disappointed. Go to Ndere center for the Sunday show, a true crash course in Ugandan traditional music, attend Jam session for a touch of Reggae at the Alliance Francaise of Kampala and download Mwooyo Kirya’s music for a taste of contemporary soul.

Plug into Kampala

There are discussion groups on the internet, run and attended by well-informed, learned, feisty people young and old alike. The pulse of the country can be felt through those groups, with politics, social issues, religion and the like are dissected, debated, fought over and agreed upon. There are poetry reading sessions, charity runs, goat races and more. The art scene is vibrant and diverse with internationally recognized personalities and all manner of upcoming artists…. If you are looking for an airbender, you will probably find one in Kampala.

Get involved with a community group (for real.)

Share something. If you have sometime in Uganda, get involved with a project, learn a skill or teach one or both.  Ugandans are fiercely proud people who react in two general ways to “charity”. The first way is by taking offence and being too polite to say anything. The second is by taking you for a ride; milking every single cent you are so willing to toss away and then some more. The Jesus-saviour complex is an easy trap to fall into and many have. If however you are humble enough to deal with people on an equal footing, giving as much as you are willing to receive, you’ll be part of a family, part of a concerted effort to move forward, in a way that no Aid Money can do.

 The truth, however, is that during your stay, Uganda can and will occasionally drive you to unparalleled depths of despair. Corruption is rampant, politicians fit for hanging, obscure beliefs and practices seem to get in the way of progress, intolerance is tolerated and there is the wounded past (Thanks Amin and Kony). Poverty is no myth, social inequalities shocking and SO MUCH REMAINS TO BE DONE. That said, you only need watch the news to realise that the DR Congo next door REALLY knows what corruption is about, that politics in Russia and America and South Africa (anywhere in the World really) are nothing but a dirty, cold and repugnant affair and then I sigh with relief when I remember that Pastor Terry Jones is not Ugandan (Praise the Lord!).

Looking back at my seven years, living, studying and working in Uganda, I realise this. Uganda is not perfect, never has been and probably never will be. That is not the point.  As my French teacher, Madame Christine, used to drum into us “La perfection n’est pas de ce monde”-Perfection is unearthly. If anything.

Uganda has issues, just like everybody else. And the redeeming feature in all this is, the Ugandan people. Survivors-extraordinaire, who somehow make it happen, come what may. A people who are hardworking, entrepreneurial and optimistic and proud and fun. A people who know that they have to keep trying again and again and again, until it works. Uganda is one of those places in the World where you open your eyes and realise today is better than yesterday and probably worse than tomorrow. It’s a place you can believe in. 

And that’s why I love Uganda. And I hope you do too.

Hawassa Hyenas

Think of low hills running as far as the eye can see, covered with cropped grass the color of a lion's coat. The hills are doted with the occasional naked acacia tree . I am bound for Hawassa, three hundred kilometers  from Addis. The colors are vivid, to the point of seeming photo-shopped to stand out in clear contrast with one another.

 The deep blue- black ribbon of the road, the grey dusty gravel on the roadside, the sun burnt hills, the hazy blue lakes that ambush you by appearing and disappearing out of view and the blinding almost-white sky. Or maybe I'm tired from the fact that I haven't slept in twenty-four hours and when I'm tired I go all lyrical and poetic.

For the first three hours of the trip, the bus had driven from the tight housing and eucalyptus groves of Addis, through parched wheat and teff fields, past small roadside markets, distant golden church domes  and small towns. I saw a huge ground Calao hornbill  hobbling with the uprightness and seriousness of a victorian gentleman.

, and what seemed to me (there was no herder in sight) to be a wild camel herd, about sixty of them, tall, graceful, sand colored magnificent animals with faces that look a bit stupid.

We plodded through the beautiful landscape , our progress interrupted only by the occasional cow herd, each cow and cow-herder dignified and utterly unfazed by our speed and hooting. There was a short stop, for a very welcome grilled tilapia, soggy chips and cold cokes.

 I dozed on and off, waking occasionally to look out the window, change tracks on my iPod and shift to a more comfortable position, something I had to do quite often as my seat was right behind the driver, with my legs on the heat-radiating, throbbing engine which was like sitting on a washing machine during its spin-dry cycle, facing a pre-heated oven with its door open.  I didn't know I had so much sweat in me.

About thirty miles from Hawassa is a fork in the road leading to Shashamane, a village built on a tract of land that the Negus famously gave to the people who believed he was the reincarnation of God on earth, the Rastafarians, so they could build their own little utopia. You know you are getting close to it because small shops with the signature Rasta colors of gold, red and green start popping up along the road and increase in number the closer you get to the junction leading there. Hawassa twenty minutes later surprised me by being a much larger city than I had expected.

The hotel was simply and surprisingly magnificent, with one of the most high-tech shower units I have ever seen. Suffice to say that I could have a rain shower while my feet were being massaged by bubbling water and my nether bits spray cleaned by multi directional jets of water. An experience that I am not exactly used to, as accomodation tends to be of the more modest variety.

I naturally pigged out on the food. Ethiopian food just does it for me, it is spicy, it is hot, it is sour, it is varied. And there is always enough of it. After work, the unavoidable place to go is the Hawassa lakeside park, large and gentle mounds that roll down to the lake, dotted with fever trees and carpeted with yellowing grass. There are cows grazing and chewing cud, whole bands of monkeys playing up and down the trees and the background noise of birds, ciccadas and the soft repetitive sound of the water lapping at the rocks. I drank many a St. Georges beer taking in the colours of the fading day, feeling at peace and awestruck as I always get when in the face of immensity. Lake Hawassa is a big lake( although one of the smallest in the rift), surrounded by hills that seem to encase it.

One of the waiters, came over and asked me if I had a ride. I said no, but the hotel being about a mile away, and the city looking safe I felt confident I could walk back. He said it was fine, so long as I knew that after dark hyenas come out looking for rubbish heaps and the occasional passed-out drunk.

My brain cross-referenced all the national geographic hyena related programs I have ever watched (strongest bite force etc), the Lion King(1 and 2) and I began to sweat. He completed his advice by saying that if you stand your ground and look intimidating they won't dare attack, at least in theory. By then, I was the dictionary definition of abject terror and  I knew that even a slow, blind hyena could have guessed as  much. So I hauled Arse as you would have it, screaming like a girl inside my head and doing the fastest power walk ever practiced in the Ethiopian highlands.

On the way back to Addis, I noticed bridges and gorges that I had missed the week before, signs with the names of towns of Nazareth, Debreizet, and the fact that the closer you got to the city the greener and lusher it got. I hung out over the weekend in three different places, the Sheraton in Addis, a monstrously sized Italian palace where there was an African American band performing, very posh people, expensive ladies-of-the-night and overpriced beer.

The next day I went with a friend to one of the most frequented clubs in Addis, a very dingy place called the Concorde, but I was in the mood for dingy and the ambiance was great save for the super-agressive prostitutes, the OBVIOUS pickpockets and the smell of humanity. The evening was ended at an upstairs bar that was mostly frequented by students and young professional, with plenty of reggae for music and uninterrupted dancing. I had a great time.

Generally, the Ethiopians I met are very polite people, exceedingly welcoming, mild-mannered ( except for this one hussy that dragged another by the hair when she called her BIG MAMA), with the sense and confidence that they are a great PEOPLE.

Amasegnallu for making me want to visit again.