Notes from: Saturday March 10, 2012

We drove from Entebbe this morning and met Damali (Sonrise Baby Home) in Kampala as she had stayed there the night before.  She called me this morning to ask if she could get a ride back to Jinja.  It was a welcome thought, because while I’m up for some adventure, I’m not too sure about navigating Kampala.  Anyone who has driven through Kampala can appreciate that it isn’t for the faint hearted.  It isn’t known for its street signs and gridlike formation.  So, in discussing where we would meet up Damali said she’d meet us at ‘the roundabout’.  Now there are a number of roundabouts in Kampala so she clarified it for me saying the one with the ‘Shell Station’.  Remarkably the first major roundabout we came to had a Shell Station so we pulled off, called Damali and soon she was hopping off the back of a boda with her purse in hand (Africans pack light) ready to guide us through the mayhem. 

African directions are poetic actually.  It goes something like this: ‘when you arrive at that big ant hill you keep going until the second big ant hill after which you branch this way (motioning right or left who really knows) at a ‘somehow’ crooked tree.  Follow the road with the big bumps until you reach the tall sugarcane.  I will meet you there.’  ‘What time’, I say.  ‘Let us say, morning time’, she answers.  ‘Yes, but what time in the morning’, I say.  ‘mmmm.  We shall say first thing’ she clarifies.  Just then I decide to throw my watch out just concentrate on whether it’s morning, afternoon, or night.           

I intuited that Ugandans don’t like maps because I’ve asked a couple of times for help with the map and each time the Ugandan looked like they’d just swallowed bleach.  ‘It’s not a part of our culture’ they say.  In the same way ‘left’ and ‘right’ aren’t either.  Ivan (Damali’s brother) told me that the way he remembers which way is ‘left’ is he looks at which hand has the scar on it and he knows that is ‘left’ but he was quick to point out that, ‘if you’re giving instructions in the heat of a Kampala traffic situation you don’t have that kind of time’, he said.   A Ugandan will be sitting in the back seat telling me which way to go but he will say, ‘it is there’ or ‘just branch here’ but not say which way.  They tell me I need to be here a little longer and I will understand which way they mean by the intonation in their voices and the timing of their instructions.  Somehow I believe it.  Somehow.

babies...love going for rides in the car.

been venturing out a bit with the local food...been getting it well done.  stomach still has something to say about it.