The Road to Kisoro

What is distance?  Some equation says that distance over time equals velocity, which so true.  Time.  A lot of it.  Velocity?  Fluctuating, but not high.  When I told our driver that in the US on a big road, you could expect to drive 60 km in a half hour or so, he was surprised.  60 km here is at least twice.   12 hours of driving gets me from Hartford to Mt Sterling, KY, or to Goldsboro, NC.  12 hours in Uganda gets you from Kampala to Kisoro.

   Given these options, I choose Kisoro.  Now, get one thing clear—think of friends and relations you may know from Manhattan who live (or once lived) in impossibly small apartments, with a toilet in the kitchen (or stove in the bathroom).  That’s crazy, you say.  Sometimes they think this thought too, and head through bridges and tunnels to New Jersey, Connecticut, and so on.  But the ones who stay point out that they spend as little time as possible in these tiny holes—they have the whole magnificent city, from Washington Square to Harlem.  Who needs a nice house, when you have this? 

   A smarty pants might point out that having both a nice house and all of Manhattan would be better, but ignore people like that.

   Likewise, Kisoro the town is a typical Ugandan bump in the road with a maze of unfinished houses, red dirt, tarps whipping around in the wind, people sitting under trees chewing sugar cane, roadside vendors, wandering dogs and goats, unpainted shops, and shops that are painted—with bright yellow or red mobile phone ads.  It is all either being built or falling down.  What’s so great about that?

   I am sitting in a rather dirty outdoor chair, in a rather dirty Guesthouse, looking at an absolutely huge green mountain haloed with white cloud.  It is flanked by dozens more, giant rounded mountains of 10,000 to 12,000 ft, some in Rwanda, some in Congo. Driving in was a bewildering snaking road of switchbacks and steep inclines, past gut-punching views of valleys as big as the world, and mountains that seem to puncture the sky.   The slopes are terraced farms, where the Chiga people maintain small fractured gardens.  The valleys are full of banana trees, Papyrus swamps, and the breathtaking lake Bunyonyi.  Who cares about the accommodation when you get all this for free?

   We drove past hundreds of people, their clothes becoming more traditional all the time.  Children waved, sometimes holding out their hands, yelling “money!”.  We passed a local football club game—people stopped at each bend in the road, at  increasing altitudes to watch. One adorable toddled waved excitedly, as only toddlers can.  He was standing, perfectly framed in front of a steep drop, revealing a cleft in the hills, and a rounded terraced mountain behind. Tianna waved at him.  Then he stuck up his middle finger. God, I wish I had snapped that picture.