5 March 2006

So I’m back from Kampala and the March issue of Focus is up there getting printed. Now I can put my intestines back where they go, because it felt like somebody ripped them out over the course of the last week trying to get the paper out.

I think that rather than regale you all with the details of what happened last week here at Focus – to put it succinctly, even if I leave instructions nothing gets done here unless I do it – I will begin spinning stories about Uganda.

First off, it was just fabulous to get to do what I actually love doing. I like editing this ridiculous little newspaper just fine (although I fear what will happen to it when I’m no longer in Kigali), but I’m a reporter. Being in an office all day is entirely too constricting.

I took the Jaguar Executive Coach from Kigali, an eight-hour drive that is dominated by Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys and N’Sync videos and terrible Nigerian movies. You have no idea how bad a Nigerian movie is until you’ve had to sit through three of them. These movies follow families through generations, and they come in two, sometimes three parts.

Destroying one’s family in order to make a larger point is one of the characteristics of a Nigerian movie. For example, in one a woman faked her step-daughter’s death to show the young woman’s father just how much he would miss his daughter if she were gone. The step-mom hid the daughter out in their home village and when the father shows up to explain to his parents that their granddaughter died during a botched abortion, the daughter comes out.

The step-mom then explains that she faked the whole thing. Rather than ending up in a divorce or fist-fight, the movie ends in hugs. They’re all like this, and my Rwandan friends can’t get enough of them.

Anyway, I survived the movies, the videos and the people jabbing foot-long skewers of meat into the window every time we stopped inside Uganda. I almost took one in the eye because my window was open. On the Rwanda side, every time we stopped people rushed the window begging.

It’s possible to feel the grip of the police state I’m living in ease almost immediately after crossing the border. And when we finally got to Uganda, I saw just what a deranged country Rwanda is. People are on the streets in Kampala at all hours. Vendors sell food in stalls, bodaboda drivers (that’s what they call the motorcycle taxis there) are available at 4 in the morning. There are movie theaters, bowling alleys, tree-lined avenues with comfortable places to eat outside – it’s a real city. Kampala is just as safe as Kigali, but it’s far freer.

People who say they speak English in Uganda actually speak the language. And I got far less of the muzungu nonsense. When I did, it was much friendlier.

I don’t want to make Kampala sound perfect, because it’s not. It’s dirty and congested. I thought the bodaboda men would be the end of me on several occasions. There are drastic power cuts there that can last 24 or 36 hours in parts of the city. The police are ineffectual and take bribes. It’s hot and muggy and smelly. But I think we could’ve made a comfortable home there.

I fear that this will come out too long if I try to cram everything in. I’ll leave the election stuff until next time. But I’ll leave you with a few closing items:

My laptop died on my third day there. Fortunately, there is an Apple licenser in Kampala and they should be taking care of the repairs. So it’s good that it happened there. And it showed to all the established foreign correspondents there that I’m a guy who can solve problems. That’s never bad. I may not have the computer back for a while. That’s really bad.

Ugandans tend to switch their l’s and r’s. Hilarity often ensued when we discussed elections.