In Uganda, all movement halts for the rain. Life pauses, patient, watching raindrops fall, droplets that land with a ting on tin rooftops and delicate splashes into growing, red puddles, with a million soft thwumps into the grass and the maize and the soft, fertile orange-red earth. Life pauses, patient, and takes a few slow, even breathes as it rests beneath rooftop overhangs and crowds into shops and homes. Huddled, life watches the rain.
In Uganda, rain is a perfectly good excuse for schoolchildren to be late to school. Kampala businessmen caught at lunch by a storm sit for hours over long cups of tea, unrushed, unworried, all appointments and deadlines put to rest for the rain. Taxis, even, cease to run: Boda men abandon their bodas to crowd beneath trees or into small, corner-side shops – they must be bribed with extra-high payment to venture out to the wetness.
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This blog is for Mickey, as I never pass a food stand without thinking of him!
Chapatti stands are ubiquitous in Uganda. At any point of human traffic, whether by foot or by bus, along dirt or cement, among building or trees – in any place of human congregation, chapatti stands spring like mushrooms.
I have never yet seen a woman chapatti vendor. Usually they are boys, between 13 and 25 years, and often a crowd of friends hangs around the stand, chatting and milling and haranguing passing muzungus to “Jangu, jangu, you first come – you come and you buy!” Most of the boys are school dropouts – or rather, force-outs, or fee-outs, as the case may be. Perhaps some of them hope to rejoin classes once they have raised a little money at the stand. Perhaps some of them work selling chapattis in the evening, and go to school during the day.
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We sit in a small, darkened room before a stern, middle-aged man. Besides us kneel two of his children, estranged since his second marriage, and a friend of ours and the girl’s. Daylight noises call through cracks in the walls and the window – children, roosters, washing and shouting – but only their ghosts slip through, curiously out-of-place and dampened by the dark air. Adorned in a long, bark-cloth robe, the man sits straight up, an expression of ominous dignity on his shadowed face and a long wooden pipe in his hands. By lighting this pipe, he tells us through our friend’s translation, he will call the spirits into his own body, and they will speak with his own tongue. Call them, urges his young daughter, light the pipe and call them! What is it, we ask, this mysterious substance that calls forth spirits? Marijana, he replies heavily, and we mold our faces to match his own serious expression.
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This church is small – half a dirt floor and half cement, a red clay stage and four walls of multi-sheeted tin, held together by long wooden beams. A stained-light window of dappled sky and trees peers in from above the curtained stage, a triangle of light and warmth that meets rivers of sun streaming through cracks in the walls, lighting the congregation. Inside the church dwell a few potted plants, plastic chairs set neatly in rows, a worn black speaker held aloft on a rusty pedestal, and one surprising corner of musical instruments – a small drum set, an electric guitar, a keyboard, and microphones that stretch to the stage.
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The soil of Uganda is red. On occasion, it is a deep, soulful red – a red that winds along the blue of the Nile, circles the deep lake, or cuts like a liquid-ruby trail through hills of rich, shifting green. Often, though, the red is weary, deadened by time and neglect and sorrow - a dust that drapes the country like a thread-worn shawl. It is this dust, a brown-red, rusty shade of silence, that slowly coats the dresses of the village girls, the brand-new shop fronts full of promise, the leaves on the trees along scenic dirt roads – which might, themselves, be a shade of unimaginable emerald life but for the ever-creeping wash of rusted red.
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Playing “pass the story” with a huge group of Ugandan kids, ages 10 through 18 or so, is hilarious. We sat, about 20 of us, in a circle, and passed around a box of cookies as we “passed” the story – whoever held the cookies told the story. Our first story was about two children, who ran into a crocodile on the road. But no, it wasn’t a crocodile (the next kid corrected), it was a snake, a huge snake, ready to bite the children in half. No, it WAS a crocodile after all (the next kid insisted), laying in the road with its mouth open, waiting to swallow them whole. Actually, it was both a crocodile and a snake (I amended), and the children stood, amazed at such a coincidence, too scared to move. The girl ‘urinated’ from fright (provoking much laughter from the boys, and a slap from one of the girls), and the children ran away.
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“Gonja” is a sweet, roasted banana, sold on the corners and curb sides of Evening Kampala. You’ll buy it from a middle-aged lady, or perhaps a young girl – women who appear like spirits at dusk, materializing alongside food stands, vendors, and previously-non-existent, hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Crouched over a small, battered, charcoal grill, the lady turns bananas slowly with her fingers, but hands you yours in a bit of torn-off notebook paper. You’ll give her 100 shillings in return, and she’ll take it politely, with both hands. Gonja is a medium-sized banana, tannish-yellow and almost leathery on the outside, with black marks from the grill – not entirely appealing. On the inside, though, it is soft, an egg-yolk yellow, sweet but not overly. You’ll continue walking along the street, night-life and food stands humming like folklore, eating your Gonja and watching the dance of Kampala at night.
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