Arrival: August 13th, 2008

What I knew before the plane: the currency is the Ugandan shilling, the capital of Uganda is Kampala, school lessons are taught in English, there are 200,000 child soldiers in Africa, 3 million die a year from malaria, “You’ve grown fat” is a compliment, Jamba is hello in Swahili

Armed with my mile high kit (thanks Stace) and good fiction (cheers Margolick) I head to Uganda…

My seat on Emirates from London to Dubai was crooked. No joke. I was mad uncomfortable and couldn’t sleep. Conclusion? Emirates not recommended people! By the time I got onto my Dubai – Entebbe plane (with a stop somewhere I forget the name, slept through it) my eyelids were like dead weights and I was shattered. Slept in various positions the entire flight until I heard “flight crew please get ready for landing” and suddenly my entire body perked up, my brain was alert and I kept trying to peer over my neighbour’s shoulder out the window (she ignored me).

First thought – I see red earth. And green. Lots of green. It’s like Christmas out there.

The weather was warm, but a dry warm, not overbearing. Much to my surprise the airport was pleasantly efficient. Eric (founder of Educate!-visionary-Amherst grad-from Boulder) and Angelica (newly hired program director-halfrican-Middlebury grad-from East Harlem) had come to meet me. We took a “special hire” (private taxi) down a few streets before finding a “taxi” which they call mattatus here (basically a Mexican colectivo where the taxi is like a shuttle and goes backwards and forwards on one route whenever it gets full) to take us into Kampala. Lake Victoria was on the right, the going was hilly and the traffic was Indian. Oh so Indian – the weaving, the dodging, the hooting, the fumes. The only things missing were the cows and the rickshaws. It was incredibly green, cheap painted advertisements everywhere, piles of furniture out in the sun, a lady walking with a plate of bananas on her head, pyramids of sneakers out for sale. The closer we got to Kampala, the less green there was and the denser the fumes became. The taxi dropped us off in the Old Taxi Park, (hence forth the OTP) which is literally a sea of mattatus grouped under signs with various destinations. We hopped into our second taxi mattatu to Buziga where the Educate! compound is.

As Eric knocked on the compound door, Angelica said I need to meet Akiki and Emma. Turns out Akiki is a hyperactive dog that Eric rescued in the wee hours of the morning after a night out. Akiki had been hit by some form of automobile and was nursed back to health by Eric. He’s not exactly the cutest puppy, (he looks like a dog, cat and a cow all at the same time) and he chews on shoes and jumps and bites and does most things that house dogs aren’t supposed to do in the West. Here though, anything goes. Turns out Emma is a man. 27 years old, Emma tends to the garden for us, does the laundry, has a wonderful smile, adores Akiki and has a disturbingly young wife (she’s 19 and they have a 5 year old child). I also met Alan the chapatti maker and Bright the local boda driver (a boda is a motorcycle that zips in and out of traffic in a highly efficient and dangerous manner).

The compound has a paw paw tree, a guava tree, an avocado tree and I think a jack fruit tree. It pretty much rocks. Inside the compound is also nice, although the loo has no sink (you wash your hands in the kitchen or using the shower next door), and kitchen has no stove (?!?) and there’s no hot water. More on this later.

My first meal in K-town was at a place called Hakuna Matata – sound familiar? Pork on a stick with avocado, matoke (mashed up banana type stuff with the consistency of mashed potatoe), posho (flour & boiled water) and cassava (very bland potato like root) on the side. When eating this stuff, one eats with one’s hands. Angelica got chips and was allowed a fork. Chips to me are finger food and I was dealing with mushy banana but nonetheless, this is how it goes over here. It’s a bit like India I suppose (very bad manners to use your left hand to eat, just like India) except there is no roti or chapati to sweep items off your plate delicately into your mouth (not that I ever managed to do this delicately in India). Most Indians manage to eat with their hands without getting any sauce on any of their fingers. Here, I generally get stew dribbling down all of my fingers.

After dinner we started walking back and I nearly got run over. Traffic is very intense here. In fact the traffic here deserves its own post...keep you posted...