On leaving Uganda

Uganda is everything I expected and more. 

I expected red dirt roads, and saw and rode on many. I did not expect the growning pavement expanding from Kampala outwards. 

Nor did I expect that the roads—dirt or tarmac—that represent the grid of Kampala to be lined with improvised shops that sell everything.  I did not expect to see people carting giant bunches of bananas on bicycles (or, also on bicycles, jerry cans full of water, drywall and plywood, and in one case, another bicycle)

I expected nature to be more in evidence, and in some places it was overwhelming  I did not expect the degree to which it is tamed in the city, and often relegated to cowering in abandoned or unfinished spaces.

I expected to see wild animals, and I was fortunate enough to see elephants, hippos, giraffes and many others.  I did not expect to walk amongst them—at Zziwa, I stood 25 yards from a large family of rhinoceros.  Once at Murchison, three warthogs snuffled past three feet from where we were having lunch, preceded by a troop of Olive Baboons.

I was also surprised how quickly I became used to them.  I took a picture of the first baboon I saw, but after seeing hundreds of them, I didn’t even pick up the camera.

I expected to see desperately poor people.  I did see some, especially in the orphanages.  I was totally unprepared for the unbridled capitalistic energy that crackles everywhere, as busy people rush around selling everything they can, and living what look to me like meager but happy lives.

I expected foreign food, and I got to eat matoke and posho and beef curry and chapati.  I did not expect that some of it would be French, or Italian, or American.

I expected bugs.  In this case I was disappointed—I met very few.

I expected a different climate from what I am used to.  Uganda was much cooler that Connecticut, and posed less risk of sunburn.

  

I expected to feel like an outsider.  I did—though Ugandans are wonderfully friendly and welcoming.  It’s hard to know how to put this in a way that won’t offend anyone, but I really expected to feel out of place because I am tall and white.  But I am left with the surprising feeling that my skin color has little to do with it—it’s more that I was a foreigner—I felt no more out of place than I did in Italy or England.

I guess I expected a place that was backwards in many ways.  If dirt roads, sporadic electricity, unsafe water and needing a wall, steel gate, padlocks, iron bars on the windows, and an armed guard 24 hours a day is backwards, then so be it.  But at the same time, I met sophisticated Ugandans, dedicated professionals, Ugandan and foreigners, .  

I expected that I would be ready to come home.  And I am.  But a part of me will deeply miss Uganda, and yearn to come back sometime, if only for a little while.