So, the seven of us had all arrived in Uganda by about 2:00 in the afternoon. Entebbe airport was very different than I had expected. All I knew of this airport was that it was the same airport which had been held captive by Idi Amin when the Israeli flight hostages were waiting in Uganda, and the Israeli army was forced to storm the airport. So I expected it to be older, maybe run down…but it wasn’t noticeably so inside. I mean, it wasn’t Heathrow either, but still, pretty nice, just small.
Well, ever since last year, when a group of neurosurgeons, anesthetists, and nurses from Duke first came to Mulago Hospital for the neurosurgery clinic, communication between the two sides has been kept open. One of the neurosurgeons who most warmly welcomed the Duke members and who has been influential in continuing the partnership into a second year, is a man named Joel. Joel is a Ugandan, born and raised here, and one of the very few neurosurgeons in Uganda today. His father was actually the first neurosurgeon in Uganda, maybe even the first in Africa, I can’t remember (crazy). Oh, and he is one of the kindest, most hospitable, and most gracious people you will ever meet. Anyway, Joel has been excited about the group coming back, and so, he has become a sort of host for us, and our primary contact and networker here in the country and at Mulago Hospital.
So, Joel was ready for us seven, the early group, to arrive, and he was to be the person to pick us up at Entebbe airport. He actually expected all of us at 930am, but because Jenny, Steve, and I got held back onto the next flight, he was only greeted by four of the seven at that time. So, being the gracious guy that he is, even though he was taking so much of his own personal time to pick us up at the airport already, he welcomed the first four, took them out of the airport into the city of Entebbe for lunch, and even to see a local zoo (sad that I missed that). And, sure enough, he and the four were waiting for us as we stepped out of the airport at about 2:30.
Joel had a sort of large van with big, clear windows ready for us, and a driver, to take us and all of our luggage from Entebbe (the city on Lake Victoria which contains the international airport) to Kampala, the capital of the country and the city in which we will be staying and working. This drive is about 45 minutes, on a road that runs through the countryside between the huge city of Kampala (more than one million people) and the lakeside Entebbe. However, you wouldn’t really be able to tell it was countryside just by looking at the area directly surrounding the edge of that road. I guess that, even though there is a little bit of rural area between the two cities, people have grown up around that road because of the heavy traffic, which provides one of the best marketing opportunities around. Up and down almost the entire stretch of this roadway, are people who make their living off of those who travel on that road, but not like you would expect in a developed country. These aren’t tourist trap areas, or nice little shops. These are buildings which are falling apart, or old dumpsters which have been turned into a “store” or some sort. But mostly, its just piles of anything that could be sold or used to make a living off of, often with no roof whatsoever. For instance, one large stretch had nothing but couches and chair, laid out and someone walking around trying to sell them. Another just had loads and loads of used tires, while some people simply sat on a blanket and sold trinkets.
Along this road, there were also hundreds of men on small motorcycles (called boda-bodas here) who make their living by giving rides to usually just one, but sometimes two people who need to get somewhere quickly. This seems to be the second cheapest mode of local transportation around here, with matatus (large vans filled with up to 14 people) being the cheapest. Still others were forced to live in the slums surrounding this road, but were just going about daily chores, like washing clothes and drying them in the sun, or cooking over a fire.
So, needless to say, even though I wanted to look at all the green around me (which I had seen out the window of the plane as we landed) and to turn back and see if I could still see a glimmer of Lake Victoria in the distance, I could not pull my eyes from the desperateness of the situation: the people who sold anything because they had to survive, the broken and run-down nature of every structure, and the fires. Africans seem to burn about anything. There are fires going all the time.
Thinking about these fires makes me immediately think of that one sense that I was most excited about before I landed in Africa: the smell. We had many of the windows open in the van, in order to see better and to take pictures, but I was also excited that the smell which I had gotten a scent of as I stepped off the plane’s steps, was amongst us. Here’s how I can describe the smell: It is so different than what you smell in western cultures. It is a smell of soil, and land, and definitely of fire. In Kampala or other busy areas, this smell is mixed with strong exhaust and pollution, so the two can be easily confused; but exhaust is not the smell of “Africa” that I speak of. The fire part is strongest, and comes from the many fires that you see smouldering among the poor class everyday, either for cooking, destroying trash and land, or for whatever reason is needed. It is a smell that I describe as very “raw” or “primal”…a smell of the earth, and nature, and fire, which fits Africa very well. So if you ever get to Africa, enjoy the sights you see, but first, just take a deep breath, and enjoy the smell. Of course, I cannot categorize this smell as literally “the way it smells in Africa” because Africa is a large and varied place, but it is the smell of this part of Uganda and the surrounding area.
Oh, and something else basic that is just very striking about this area in Uganda: the dirt is a rust orange, very much like the red earth found in North Carolina, but dry and dusty, not clay-like. So, in the background of the bright greens of the vegetation, this orange makes for quite a picture. The dirt covers the city as well, every inch of it. The pavement forever has an orange tint, and people sweep the dirt from the front of their store, or mat, or street corner, as if it has anywhere else to go, or as if there won’t be more to replace it in just a few minutes.
Well, back to the Entebbe-Kampala road. Seeing so many people living, and working, and selling, and begging along this road, was a very big shock. And then, Joel announces about 20-25 minutes into our ride, that we are NOW approaching the edges of Kampala. Wow, all those people and all the traffic that I’ve just seen aren’t even in the city. Well, as we started to drive into the city, the orange and green land gave way to this orange-tinted pavement. Soon we could see the city rising up in front of us, a mass of poorly built structures and shacks at its base on the lower reaches of its hills, with slightly nicer buildings and flats on the hills, and topped off, as if some morbid bourgeoisie cherry, were expensive, upper class homes and businesses, all situated at the upper reaches of the hills. Kampala is spread over seven hills, which I have not learned the names of yet.
Before I write about my days here this first week in detail (in subsequent posts that are coming soon), I will just describe a few more general things about this place. Next major culture point: traffic is SO different than the U.S. Even though New York and other similar places are congested, there are still boundaries. People stay in a certain place, and cars in another. You don’t see them overlapping, people walking on the edge or into the street and cars hugging the dirt on the side. In the U.S. you don’t have free will to choose whatever speed you want (even though in Kampala, the congestion doesn’t let you go very fast anyway). You also don’t see cars pass and weave into and around anyone that is going to slow, at any whim, which is just the way driving works here. Boda-bodas are so popular because it is the best way to get somewhere quick, because of their ability to squeeze between cars, and fly past traffic jams. However, the fact that about 75% of neurosurgical patients on the ward the other day were there because of boda-boda accidents, will keep me from EVER riding one. Just stupid. Oh, and intersections are QUITE a thing to see, or to ride through. There are no traffic lights, except maybe at one intersection that I’ve seen so far. So instead, cars that are crossing paths with another direction of travel or who are merging, just put their front end out in front of the incoming car, and usually someone else next to you joins, and brakes are just used. The traffic moves so slow that it just fits. Drivers just have to push their way into a new road, and if you get far enough out, the cars you’ve stopped have no choice but to let you in. And this is how EVERYONE drives. No waving the other person on, not even slowing down for pedestrians that have crossed in front of you. If someone squeezes in front of you, then you just brake and accept defeat. People DO NOT have the right of way. Drivers may even continue to accelerate if someone walks out in front of them, trusting that they will get out of the way in time. And car horns are hit like it’s a musical instrument. The first time I road in that van…I was astonished. You think that your driver is just terrible, and must be incredibly impatient, but its not that way, its just the way you are expected to drive in Kampala.
The outskirts of the city were more of what we had seen on the road form Entebbe to Kampala, but just more crowded and more closely grouped together. Markets, street people selling bananas, cell phones, steering wheel covers, passport holders, tires, etc etc. In some traffic areas where the cars are often in stop-and-go traffic, markets hire workers to carry large amounts of merchandise (fruit, steering wheel covers, whatever) up to car windows and hold them out for transactions made on the go. From an Americans point of view, this is aggressive selling, to walk among lanes of traffic, holding out merchandise, and it feels very uncomfortable and invasive at first. But in the description of this by a Ugandan made me see it differently. He described it this way: some people in the city do not have time to go shop at the markets, so stores hire these men to go out and sell to the cars so that people can purchase items on-the-go, which blew my mind when he said it. That this was actually these men’s job. They were expected to walk up to cars. It wasn’t just our white skin that attracted them, because they were going to every car around us. Interesting.
I started to become very depressed for this town if the entire thing was going to look like this…dirt roads and markets and street people. But then, we entered the more central part of Kampala. The buildings became bigger, although not many became nicer or newer. Streets and sidewalks were both present, and they were entirely paved and concrete. But don’t get me wrong. The city doesn’t ever really like nice, like a downtown anywhere in America would. Its always cracked, old pavement and sidewalk, old run-down buildings, a drainage system following the edge of every road, full of sludge, mud, trash, and some water run-off, etc. And of course, the ever-present orange dirt. Though there are some very lofty and super-expensive luxury hotels, they are not on the main roads, and are usually set off to the side, and they sometimes even look like a sore of novelty and beauty upon a city which is mostly falling apart.
Oh, and Africa time. You’ve probably heard this already from someone, but its not a joke. Time in Africa is seen completely differently. If a meeting is set for 8am, it could be that everyone is there at 7:50 or they could not show up until 8:40. Dinner can be ordered and not brought out for 45 minutes or more. Then you eat, and the bill may never be brought until prompted, and even then it takes awhile. Its crazy. Things are taken care of as people come to them. Its literally just a list of things that need to be done, all in a certain order, and if on time, then great, if not, then they’ll get to it when its turn comes
FYI: Uganda uses “Ugandan Shillings” for currency. Prices seem to be always in denominations of at least hundreds (coins, like change) and usually thousands (paper cash, like whole dollars). The average exchange rate now, we think, is about 1,650 shillings per dollar. So something that costs 1,000 USh (sodas and bottled water in our guest house) is less than a dollar, and 5000 USh is slightly more than $3.
Oh, the people who told me that almost everyone I speak to and run into in this area will speak English: you are kind of wrong, especially once you leave Kampala. When I’m at the guest house, on the University campus, then yes, most people can speak English well, some very well. But, in the hospital, or on the street trying to make conversation or say hello, etc, it is rare to find English besides what people have learned just to help them sell things to foreigners. Almost everyone who is from the Kampala area can speak at least Luganda, if not both Luganda and English. There are also several other languages among the people of Uganda, but these are by far the most used in the Kampala area.
Lastly, some translations for you that I’ve learned since being here:
-Afrian tea = dark black tea with warm milk mixed in (I think)
-Theatre = operating room
-Chips = French fries (British influence)
-Sausage = small, fried hot-dog like things
-Coke Light = Diet Coke
-Mzungu = white person, or sometimes, even a darker skinned person that is known to be from the U.S. or somewhere western; kids love to greet anyone white by saying “Hi mzungu!” of “Mzungu, How ah youuuu?”
Luganda to English:
- “Wasuze Otyanno Ssebo/Nnyabo?” = Good morning Sir.Madam (or literally, how was the night?
This can be responded to by saying:
- “Bulungi, Ssebo/Nnyabo.” = Fine Sir/Madam
- “Weebale” = Thank you (to one person; to more than one, it is Mwebale)
- There is not word for hello, at least not that I’ve found. Which is why many English speaking Ugandans will, if you say “Hello” will respond with “fine, how are you?” because they have been taught that our greeting is “How are you?”
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