I am sitting in the office in my parents house. I am showered. I am clean. My clothes have been washed. I found a small stowaway bug in my luggage.
The trip is almost complete. Now there's just the part where I tell everyone all about it a thousand times. I can't wait. There is so much to say.
I will say this, I am going to slowly reimmerse myself into life, so if you don't get a phone call as soon as you'd hoped, be of good cheer my friend. Things take time.
It's strange being back here, where everything is clean and everything is available and easy. Suddenly I'm reflecting on the time I spent in Uganda as a past tense thing, and it's sort of uncomfortable. I feel as if I've abandoned Uganda for a hot shower and a bowl of cereal.
I'm going back. I don't know when, but I am.
I was trying to explain kampala to my parents last night. My mouth moved 100 miles a minute and I stumbled over my words and spouted them out desperately. There are no words.
And yet I am using so many words.
Here is an excerpt from my journal the day we flew out of Entebbe.
I was writing the story of how I came to buy a small book:
The story really starts, if we're going to be quite honest about it, at the dawn of time, but for the sake of brevity, I'll start with just this afternoon.
Lisa and I were picked up from the Namirembe girl's hostel at 5:06 pm by a man named Steven. Lisa has been my travleing companion in Uganda now for two months. She's blond, she's beautiful, witty. She's one of those "scrapbooking" types. Steven is a medical lab technician, Ugandan, who runs a small clinic in Entebbe. He has a very thick accent and a low rumbling pattern of grunting, which makes it difficult to navigate a conversation.
The Namirembe girl's hostel is home to a number of Ugandan girls, school age, who stay in bunks at the hostel while they get an education in or near kampala. They must be very dedicated, because around the time the rooster begins to crow in the morning (4am), we hear them clamouring into the study room. Ugandans are morning people. They're also tea-taking-types. At eleven, everything stops, and everybody takes tea. They hide little electronic kettles in closets and office cabinets, waiting for tea time, and then---out come the cups and the water and the milk and the conversation.
The hostel is run by a man named Patrick, tall, lanky, with skin like an aging plum,very separate and yellowish teeth, spectacles and graying, wiry hair. He is kind, he is warm, he speaks slowly. The first night we came back to Kampala from the hospital, I saw him walking around in wide, slow strides, searching for a girl from room 31. A few minutes later when i was in the showers, I heard him shuffle in in his silk robe and slippers and his warm, fatherly voice echoed in the concrete washrooms--
"Heh-DOH?"
I answer and he immediately knows I am not the one from my accent--distinctly American and curt, not melodic or slow, like Ugandans. He mutters worriedly to the security guard outside the washroom.
"Dih guhl eehn druum 31 aast fahr pen-killehrs uhnd naw I aave tem uhnd I con-you to such fahr hah...."
And I feel more at home as I picture him in his bathrobe finding the girl with the headache or the pain and caring for her like a father---here, family connections are about love, adoption and tenderness, not biology.
So Steven picks us up at five, before the sun goes down because it's dangerous enough to drive in Kampala at all, let alone at night. There are a thousand motorcycle taxis called boda bodas and they strain through the traffic in the overcrowded and dusty streets like sand through fingers, sliding around and through wherever they can, not wherever is safe.
We pass the mosque, huge and shining, the most beautiful thing in the city, heavily gated and manicured. A shining monument, a dream among the orange tinted streets and buildings, the trash littered trenches and war torn doorways. The city looks like a place destroyed, abandoned, dying---and yet the Africans are here, they have no where else to go. This is their city, their home, their hope. I feel conspicuosly white as I tumble down the streets on the back of the boda--and my heart hurts as I realize more and more, in the faces of the taxi drivers and street vendors, that I am a visitor in their world, that I may never understand life here, that I may never get in step with the pulse of this plot of humanity because I am of the privledged white race. I am perceived of as elite, easyand powerful.
And yet, in the middle of it all, the swimming and screaming African continent, with all its tears and all its mysteries, joys, in all its shrouded beauty--I feel more powerless than I have since I was a child.
We roll past the mosque, toward Entebbe, out of the city and across a brief stretch of country side. Stacks of avocados and mangoes pass by under floating faces, confused and then smiling at our white skin through the window. I feel alone and sad to be leaving Uganda. Strangely, I wish I could stumble through another labored conversation with an African just to get to the part when you both start laughing and smile, shaking hands as an African high pitched, soaring sigh eases the nerves and settles your heart in a feeling of friendship and ease.
I have more to learn from Uganda--the land and the people.
But now we're continuing toward Entebbe, to the airport to begin the journey home, the long transatlantic hop to home, where the comforts of wealth will bother me more than ever.
After a confusing exchange with Steven, the driver, it becomes clear that we are making one last stop. Steven runs a clinic near Entebbe and he wants us to stop, so we can see it. Come see my clinic, he says, you never know what the future will bring. Let us start friendship now, perhaps you come back.
So, we go. And there is one tree with a tire around the bottom and patchy green grass, beige buildings with beds inside, a surprisingly clean and tidy facility, surprisingly empty too. We are led into a small room where a man sits behind a desk, and we are told to sit please. So we sit please and without fail, the man behind the desk produces a visitor's book. Very strange phenomenon in Uganda. Everywhere you go, they have a visitor book and you're expected to sign in and write down your address and your signature and where you're from. I have yet to fully grasp the visitor book concept.
A short visit later, we are on the road again, and we arrive at the airport with five hours to spare. WONDERFUL
We get some instant coffee from the bar in the lobby, which, like many things here, bears the lingering essence of colonial Britain, with its cup and saucer, proper appeal.
We somehow manage to survive the checking in process, with its subtle African, laid back flavor. It takes a while and it's a little uncomfortable when the airline employee is genuinely interested in your stay in Uganda and what you were up to. The no-nonsense, no frills, American approach to service leaves you vulnerable to shock at contact with sincere and warm service here in Uganda. We've lost our sensitivity and gained a whole new vulnerability by our hard appearances and way of life.
After being in the bush for so long, where you will not see a cappuccino for miles, it's shocking coming into the airport terminal, where there are shelves upon shelves of tax-free goods, strategically lit, displayed, available. This is foreign now, as images in my mind of beggars without limbs impose themselves over posters of beautiful woman on all fours, selling fragrances.
THIS is uncomfortable. The comfort is uncomfortable.
We have time to kill, so we wander around the shelves and shelves of fragrances. Some are one hundred dollars, about two weeks pay for a man with a decent job in Uganda. As we smell each one, Lisa accidentally knocks one and we both watch as it falls to the ground and against the white marble. It shatters with a sharp, clean ringing sound---and then silence. For a moment.
I feel the cool perfume on my foot as it is rapidly evaporating and we look at one another, mouths gaping. I peek at the box. On the nose, $100 of tax free accident.
You know what we're both thinking at this point and so does the employee on the other side of the store. So we wait. This is a wonderful strategy for those who have no idea what to expect--which we have been very often since visiting in Uganda. When in doubt, wait to be addressed.
A man comes over and nervously communicates non-verbally, then another comes to sweep up. I notice the perfume has soaked my pant leg and the thought begins to develop that I will smell of this particular fragrance for the entirety of our journey---over 24 hours. After some time, the first man reappears to break the news.
"You pay fifteen dollars."
"Fifty?" we reply in unison.
"nonono fifTEEN."
ohokgreatalrightfinelet'sGO.
Nervously, we quickly make our way up to the counter before we cause any more problems. To soothe the subtle uncomfortable nature of the situation, I grab a small notebook from the rack.
This way, at least it was a customer who broke something and not an anonymous pair of careless American girls who terrorized the fragrance section. After all, we must represent the hoard of good consumers at home on OUR VERY OWN CONTINENT CALLED AMERICA.
Also,
next stop: India.
