Written in caps

The source of the Nile

Composed in Jinja, Uganda, not the capital of anything that I know of. 

 

While I was in Uganda for work we drove about 100 km away from Kampala to Jinja, to see some field operations. As long as we were there we decided to take a couple of hours and see the source of the nile. You would never guess it's the source of anything, looking like a lake, but it's where the nile starts in Lake Victoria. We drove across the river and looked at the Nile Falls as well, which really look like rapids and are the playground of lots of Muzungu (white person) kayakers and white-water rafters. On the quiet side of the river is a monument showing that the Nile source is where Ghandi's ashes were scattered. 

There are more Uganda photos on the Flickr site, here.

Roadside commerce

There is a type of retail commerce that flourishes in every developing country I've visited. I saw it first in my 1999 trip to Uganda, where I find myself now. Along the main roads, which are two-lane affairs, there are small shops on each side of the road. My journal from 1999 describes these as looking like miles and miles of garage stalls with the doors open. These shops usually sell in one kind of product each: everything from food, to clothes, to bicycle parts, to truck tires, to cooked food. Many are like tiny 7-11 stores, selling a variety of seemingly-random stuff like cookies ("biscuits" here) and Coke and Fanta. How all these places make enough money to sustain them is way beyond me. Here are some examples from my recent trip to Jinja. 

 

Religious diversity in Uganda, and trying to keep up

When I lived in Addis, the Orthodox Christian church and Islam evenly divided the populace. In Uganda it's much more diverse. Christianity claims 66% of the population, Islam 16%, and the rest traditional religions. Christianity encompasses Catholics, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Seventh-Day Adventists, and other denominations. There seems to be a lot of tolerance for this religious diversity, and a live-and-let-live attitude. This does lead to some confusion on the part of onlookers like myself, however. The last time I spoke with my Muslim and Baptist friends, God didn't like dancing. How do we explain the billboard below, then?

Public transportation, Kampala style

There are three basic kinds of public transportation in most developing countries: large city buses, mini-bus taxis, and regular taxis (the kind that carry up to three people, like we have in the US). The mini-bus kinds usually have colorful local names, like Matatus in Kenya, Dala-Dalas in Tanzania, and Blue Donkeys in Ethiopia. Beyond these, there are sometimes variations by country. Bangladesh has the bicycle rickshas I wrote about here. 

Uganda has a unique class of public transport: Boda-Bodas, which are small motorcycles, which rent for between 500 and 2500 Uganda Shillings ($0.27-$1.35). You see the Boda-Boda drivers loitering everywhere, looking for passengers. Kampala traffic is dangerous and bumper-to-bumper even inside a car. The Boda-Boda drivers are fearless as they weave in an out of slow and stopped traffic. At first I wondered why all small motorbikes in Kampala have leg guards. Now I know. The Boda-Boda drivers often bounce wheels off of cars, and push away with their hands as they weave between stopped vehicles. It's common to see as many as three passengers on one Boda-Boda, and I've seen some passenger situations that made me cringe. For example I saw a Boda Boda speeding past our taxi, weaving in and out, carrying a woman, side-saddle, with an infant in her arms. Another Boda-Boda, coming straight at us in a seeming game of chicken, weaved aside at the last minute, which is when I saw the toddler riding on the gas tank.

Boda-Boda drivers are required to wear helmets, but almost none of them do. Their passengers are not required to wear helmets, and none do.

Greetings from Uganda

Written in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.

In 1999, when I started doing this work, and way before Blogs, my first trip to the continent of Africa was to Uganda. I remember thinking about how long it took to walk down the stairs from the door of a 747 to the tarmac at the airport. Back then, the Sheraton was the hotel and I was happy to learn that there was some kind of dial-up internet in my room so I could check my email. In the ensuing years I've found myself back in Kampala only a handful of times, and now not since 2004. The changes are subtle, but evident.

The airport is in Entebbe, which people of a certain age (my age or older) will remember from a made-for-TV movie starring Charles Bronson, called Raid on Entebbe, about a highjacked plane and the ensuing hostage crisis that played itself out at the airport. As you fly into Entebbe you can still see the highjacked plane, resting exactly where it ended up after it was pushed off the end of the runway over 30 years ago. The airport is about 30km from Kampala and the drive is beautiful in the daylight, mostly following the shores of Lake Victoria. Uganda is lush and green and everything grows here. The saying is that if, on your way to work, you throw a mango pit on the side of the road, on your way home you can pick fruit from the tree growing there. 

For this trip we started at the Sheraton, which is a down-at-the-heels reminder of its former glory. Like so many hotels in Africa the Sheraton suffers from being able to find lots of investment money for construction, but little for maintenance, and none for staff training or management. The rooms are dark and the list of things that didn't work was long: the A/C, the TV, the internet, the lamps, the shower... You get the idea. And the service is the please-get-out-of-my-face variety found in so many places I travel. "Yes, please just go back to your room and wait." But much has progressed in Uganda. More tomorrow.

Dhaka Drug Bust

When I read the headline "drugs seized" in the Daily Star this a.m. I had to look. Bangladesh is the home of many pharmaceutical factories. It's also famous as a place where one can buy prescription-grade drugs over the counter. Of course (of course) I have never checked this out, but I've overheard conversations about expats buying a year's worth of jet-lag sleeping pills for the price of a Starbuck's coffee. 

So I imagined a big heroin or cocaine bust, to make the paper. Money quote: "seized were two liters of wine." The biggest question is "why?" When you have access to unlimited, basically free valium, who needs alcohol?

Back in Bangladesh: the Dhaka Dinge

Written in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

I like working in Bangladesh. The people are friendly, hard working, and very well educated. The infrastructure is not bad, and the hotel is livable, although no Serena by any stretch. But there are downsides to any city. Expats that live here talk about the "Dhaka dinge," referring to the smog that settles over everything. Dhaka has 12 million people in its 1300 square kilometers. In a front-page article in the biggest-selling English language newspaper, the following features of daily life in Dhaka were presented:

The consequences of fast growth without planning is disastrous as evident in poor transportation services, inadequate housing, problematic supply of water and electricity, poor sanitation and sewerage systems, extremely poor drainage, poor health services for most people, poor air quality, degraded environmental indicators, high crime rate... degradation of the water quality so that in the dry season the quality of the surface water resembles septic condition[s].

The senior geographer from the Urban Development directorate opined "Dhaka's skyling is covered with soot. The noxious, black fumes from the city's dilapidated busses, trucks, and three-wheelers have turned the city into a dark, slate-gray maze, exposing city dwellers to health hazards." Dinge indeed.

Below is a photo I took of one of the "dilapidated busses." It makes you wonder what/who it scraped up against... And they all look like that.

Vandalism by... peat moss?

I think it was my father who originally pointed out to me that we have so many stupid laws because we have so many legislators with so much time on their hands and making laws is what they do and while we don't need any more laws, they have to do... something.

By the looks of the sign below, DC must have lots of rule-makers with not enough to do. I can see prohibiting littering, but this is getting ridiculous.

What's the opposite of "protect and serve?"

Here's a great DC-Police-related post, paraphrased from a story a friend told me. 

So I was walking to my parking space in A-M to get the car so I could do some heavy grocery shopping. I rent this space on a monthly basis, and it's in a private parking lot. As I walked towards space 16, which belongs to me and me alone, I noticed something unusual: a Prius-sized hole where my car should be. Aaaaack! My car has been stolen! I called the insurance company, then called the DC police. After taking the license tag number, the woman on the phone said "your car is at 123 Adams Mill NW." Huh? "Why is my car there?" "I don't know, but our system shows your car at 123 Adams Mill Rd." So I walked around a while before realizing that 123 Adams Mill Rd. is an impound lot. My car had been towed! 

To make a long story short, the impound lot person traded me $260 for my car and a police ticket that showed the badge number of the helpful officer who authorized my car to be towed from my private rented space. It seems the helpful office responded to a complaint that my car was in someone else's spot, simply believed the complainant, and had my car towed.

I called the police back, and told them the story. The helpful woman on the other end said (at least I think she said) that I would have to talk to the officer who authorized the towing. I read her the badge number on the ticket. She responded "there is no such badge number in our system." So I asked what to do next. "I have no idea ma'am." After much verbal goading she offered to put me in touch with her supervisor. (And seemed relieved that she would be rid of me finally and get back to playing solitaire on her work PC.) The transferred call went immediately to a full voicemail box. 

End of story. While DC's finest are never around to prevent the several-per-weekend break-ins, incidences of vandalism, shootings, muggings, and general mayhem in A-M, they had time to have someone's car towed from their private rented spot. And then, poof!, when told about their mistake, disappear again. 

Rally in Meridian Hill Park to Stop Child Trafficking

Our dogwalking park is really one of the nicer parks in Washington: lots of old trees, lots of space, moving water and fountains, two levels. So it gets used for all kinds of gatherings, including the Sunday afternoon drumming that I've written about before, rallies to free Cubans in American jails, MLK-day rallies, Palm Sunday services, what have you. Usually Toby and I stumble upon these gatherings as an accident of our normal exercise routine.

This morning it was a rally and "walk" to stop child traficking worldwide. I'm not sure how walking around Meridian Hill Park will stop child trafficking, but I'm sure these peoples' hearts are in the right place.