Boda Boda

I did it.  I took the boda boda (East African motorcycle taxi).  To be honest, I'm not really a fan.  After all, this is the traffic in Kampala!

No I didn't ride the boda boda here in downtown Kampala.  

But I did it.  But not there.  I rode the boda boda on quieter streets in my neighborhood.

I know why women wear leggings under their skirts.  It must be for the boda boda.  I figured that the boda boda was in my future when I decided to go out to eat at the Italian Restaurant in near my apartment, Caffe Roma.  I did the right thing and wore leggings under my skirt, and was really glad I did.  

Does anyone know the boda boda etiquette about where to hold on?  I fear falling off with the massive potholes that dot the roads.  I wasn't going far but didn't want to redo how I rode the boda boda in Kenya...by clutching hands on the driver's shoulders as tightly as I could!  And even in Kenya I only rode the boda boda in the country side...on a very straight road.  

The thing about short people like me is that we have short arms.  My good old friend reminds me that people of my size are not so bendy and on this boda boda, there was no way I could reach the back of the boda boda to hold on with both hands.  I'm not balanced enough for side saddle either, but boy do people make side saddle look so easy!

No.  For me on this boda boda, I clutched the back bottom with my right hand and tried not to grip the gentleman's shoulder too tightly as we headed to a small slice of Italy in Uganda.

Notice how the man in the purple shirt has arms long enough to hold onto the back bottom of the boda boda.

I wondered how much Roma I could find in a Kampala cafe but I should not have been so pessimistic.  I kept wondering how on earth these two Italians men, hand gestures and all they arrived in Kampala.  I suppose the average Kampalan thinks the same about me too.  To answer that question I guess is a long story for later.
  
These Italian guys felt like a throwback to the men downstairs from my friend's Rome apartment wearing track suits and loudly playing cards outside their restaurant.  Even the waitresses were practically Italian (but Ugandan) paying little attention to you the entire evening as if saying, I'm on my own time; I'll come to you when I'm ready and forget about you quickly.

Ma che cosa?

Pizza and wine dinner throwback to my old days in the eternal city.  I didn't dare ask for an espresso after dinner.  Let's not push it.

Staples Street

About 30 seconds in I questioned why I listened to Damen.  My new buddy Damen works in a tiny little office in Central Kampala, impossible to find if you don’t already know him.

Let’s back track a bit.  When leaving my dentist appointment with cleaner teeth than I’ve had in years, my driver was making several phone calls.  At this point, I wished I had been studying Luganda because I hear my name in these conversations but nothing of the content.  John is the same driver I had the first time I came to Kampala.  He is professional, polite, punctual and provider of all things except conversation.  He is oh so quiet all the time, only speaks when he needs information about our destination or when spoken to.  I try to make conversation with him but he seems more interested in quiet and focusing on driving.  Maybe the quiet is nice, helps me listen to the sounds of the city around me.  And although he knows the city much better than I do obviously, I can’t help but think we are sometimes driving in circles, backtracking or just plain lost; maybe it’s just this hilly maze of a city but we do always get there.

Staples Street

We arrive to what I like to call ‘Staples Street’, a straight, long one-way street with shop after shop selling stationary and school supplies.  Paper Place, Staples Street, School City, Homework Hub – I like alliteration and making up names for new places.  When we pull aside next to a row of motorcycle taxis, here known as boda bodas, a tall man is waiting for me – so that’s what those phone calls were about.  John leaves me to go park somewhere and wait for me; I will call him when I’m finished.

This man whose name I can’t recall takes me deeper into the maze.  Scattered between the shops are entrances to buildings with more shops.  We enter one building and ascend the staircase.  It is a dizzying experience on your first go.  Not only are there more stationary shops, others sell laminating services, engravings, book binding and more.  Sprawled out within the open air space, countless women sit together swiftly stamping books, stapling what looks like geometry packets and packing boxes of school textbooks.  It is the week before the school year starts in Uganda and so I wonder if the chaos and scurrying around is in preparation for school to start or if it’s always like this.

No matter, the man takes me up a flight a stairs and back into a small office where I meet Damen, the man who will make stamps for me.  He is polite, greets me with a big smile and takes my order.  The man who brought me here was already gone and I didn’t see him again the rest of the time I was on Paper Ream Road. There is no shopping around for the best price or seeing what the other shops offer; when you know nothing about where you are and know you wouldn’t have found it on your own but were helped by a series of people, you take the deal.  

When Damen tells me the price of the stamp, I don’t really know what to think.  Is it a good deal?  Is he charging me more because I’m a foreigner? Because I’m white?  What’s that conversion rate again because my heart still palpitates every time I hear the word ‘thousand’ even though I know it doesn’t so mean much here.  I gently push with the price asking oh so cautiously, ‘Oh really, I didn’t think it would be so much!  Is that the best price you can give me?’  He politely informs me that is the price and I agree to it.  I’m still trying to convert the price in my head but what difference does it make really?  I don’t know how much it costs to make a stamp in any country that I’ve lived in and I need one here and now in this country. 

We finish our arrangements and I ask for his advice.  I need school supplies.  I research students and schools and I need supplies.  I want a recommendation where the prices are fixed and fair.  He knew exactly where to send me; Damen tells me that’s where he goes.  I slowly leave his office wondering if I will find the place.  I do.

My shop is the one overflowing with customers moving up and down the stairs.  I try to patiently wait in line and wonder if I shouldn’t have listened to Damen. This shop is busy (understatement) and tiny while some others are more spacious, with fewer customers trying to get the attention of the one or shop attendants (Staples City somehow has pretty much all female shop attendants).  Besides, I don’t like to be rushed when shopping (ask my mom!) and I like to touch what I'm buying first, not point to it from afar.  Maybe I should risk getting ripped off at another store.  

It’s at this point that I think of the women who welcomed me into their kraal (village compound) up north and demonstrated to me how they cook when they have food.  When. They. Have. Food.  

Here's what the cooking area of the compound looked like when I arrived.

On that visit last year, I saw no signs of food or nourishment in any hut throughout the compound.  I read last night that the World Food Programme feeds approximately 2/3 of the people in the region where I'm moving.  Besides their land and lifestyle being altered or taken away since the British arrived and all the conflict that has left them with little resources, climate change is real.  The rain is gone.  Imagine someone demonstrating to you how they cook, when they have food.  There's some perspective.

Here the mother at this home demonstrates how the cooking is set up when there is food.

Empty USAID can delivered by the World Food Programme.

Spending more money than necessary or wasting money for my convenience was now so shameful, such a petty thing to get anxious about…a crowded little shop.  I waited like the rest and then purchase the fixed priced items.  As I waited for my items to be boxed up for me, I took a stroll down the street just to check the place out and see if any other stores looked interesting to me.  Damen was right.  Our store was packed; and the others?  Not so much at all really.

Second impressions of captivating Kampala, 

the city I barely saw first time 'round

The city was built on seven hills. Kampala, Hill of the Impala, derived from the Luganda language of the dominant Baganda people.  It was the hill of impalas when they still had places to roam, territory of the Kabakas (Kings) of years past. It was the land of the impala back before the British stripped this lush and nourishing land of plenty away from the Kabaka and his people, little by little, 1894, 1896, 1905.   It is an understatement of monumental proportions to say that much has happened in this part of the world between the British entering and then leaving in 1962 and the years of independence that followed.  It is a long, tumultuous, complex, devastating and hopeful story that can’t be done justice here. 

But here and now, at the dawn of 2017, this Kampala is growing faster than most cities, sprawling in size with a propelling population.  I read that it’s ranked as the best city to live in East Africa and I can see why.  Smiling faces and friendly welcomes find me wherever I go.  It feels like a small town but it’s also just everywhere.  Home construction clogs the steep dusty roads with walled, luxury apartment compounds with armed guards juxtaposed with tin scrap metal homes on dusty deep orange land.  

Inside the gate, I am surrounded by lush tropical trees, bright red bougainvilleas and a swimming pool.  But a short ride in an Uber brings me to a halted roundabout where shoeless children beg for money near elegant women selling the fresh fruit they balance in beautiful baskets on their heads.  Today I watched a young girl, about ten years young with a baby strapped on her back, as she tried to fill up an old water bottle from the water leaking out of a Chinese fish truck stuck in traffic.  It breaks my heart.

Kampala can seem like the queen of extremes but even with the poverty, which pokes itself into the city’s daylight on jammed packed roads, it is a beautiful land.  It is the land where young girls pass me on the street in my neighbourhood here greeting me with shy smiles and a soft, ‘Hello mother’ and women my own age and beyond smile and say, ‘Hello sister’.  I now am initiating the greeting to others which brings a warm smile to their faces.

Kampala is lively and full of contradictions.  Kampala means contrast, Kampala the chameleon, Kampala the capital of the pearl of Africa.  But for me, here and now, it is the embodiment of the Queen of Katwe, the place where beautiful souls can blossom.

My balcony with a view

And seriously, go see this movie, it's really great!