I’m writing this on Saturday night around 9:00 (1:00 pm Saturday afternoon CDST). There is so much to write about; it won’t get done tonight.

We crammed so much into today; my senses are on overload.

Kampala came alive this morning with a vengeance. Ron met us at the University’s guest house with a different van. His sister-in-law runs a kindergarten day care so we ended up with a vehicle decked out bumper-to-bumper with her advertising replete with colored balloons.  Carly found a monkey to spend a few minutes with. The city was a sea of humanity all moving at once but in different directions. Death is literally but an inch or two away. The route through the city was lined with independent markets with everything you could imagine sold in open stalls. Motorcycles are everywhere as are bicycles. But they are not just motorcycles or bicycles; they are virtual trucks and family transportation.  Four passengers on a motorcycle is common.

Ron drove us in the kindermobile about 50 kilometers east of Kampala to the house we’ll be staying at this week. The drive was along the main highway that connects the Congo on the far west, through Entebbe and Kampala and then through Jinja, across the Nile, and on to the Kenyan border and the Indian Ocean. It’s a narrow, two-lane thoroughfare, a patchwork of patched works, bumper-to-bumper with buses, small vans, and 26-wheel trucks. Motorcycles tend to drive along the shoulder with the truck mirrors whizzing by just inches away. Diesel exhaust mixes with smoke from countless smoldering fires that are constantly burning trash, cooking meals or making charcoal. Much of the population has moved south from the northern counties of Uganda to find work and move away from the instability of Sudan and Somalia. There are people everywhere. Thousands upon thousands.

Sunday morning:

The house where we’re staying isn’t at all what I expected. Most people in this area live in tiny, rustic dwellings made of anything that can be found. Sometimes a blanket is tacked up as a front door. Some have electricity; many are lit by kerosene or candles. Still others live in their shops made of lumber from old pallets with corrugated metal roofs. The more pragmatic buy bricks, one at a time, and slowly, year-by-year, construct their dream. We left the main highway near Mukona onto a red dirt rutted “road”. Ron is a very skilled driver. There are rocks and ruts with deep drainage ditches on either side. Even in the middle of nowhere, there are people walking or pushing their bicycles loaded high with freight. We passed shack after shack and then came to a big house on a large, fenced plot of land. The gate was closed, so Ron had to get out and open it. Instantly, we were surrounded by a throng of little children all smiling, singing and cheering. The windows of the van were open and the children all wanted to touch us, shake our hands, and if we weren’t watching they would jump up to slap our arms. We pulled into the yard and unloaded our luggage.

The house is larger than ours back home with more amenities than I ever imagined in the heart of Uganda. It is owned by James, a UW professor who somehow manages to move back and forth between the US and his native Uganda. James is not with us, but freely offered his home to us for our stay. This week there are the four of us professors, our daughter Carly, Ron, and our caretaker Mukassa, a slight, cheerful man who knows little English but smiles quickly and wants to please.

Uganda is advertised as an English-speaking country, but that is not true. There are different groups of people with different languages. Here in the south along Lake Victoria the language is Luganda and the people call themselves Buganda. English is used in the schools and government. All the traffic signs are in English and just about every shop along the highway is covered in English language advertisements. The fact is that the native language is an oral language that has no written form, so the default is English. But the language of money is universal.

In the afternoon we piled back into our Kindervan to cram in as much sightseeing as possible. We headed east towards the source of the Nile. Maggie wanted us to try the baked bananas that people were selling along the highway. As soon as we pulled over, our van was surrounded by crowd of venders, men, women, and children, all trying to sell us whatever they were carrying: bananas, chicken on a stick, soda pop. There is no concrete or asphalt parking lots; the lots around the shops are red dirt with deep crevices carved by rain water. We bought a few bananas and Ron got us back into the stream of traffic heading east. Traffic in Uganda follow British laws; keep to the left.

We passed plantations of tea, sugar, and corn. There were a few preservation areas of untouched forest. Many areas have been turned into industrial parks; the largest we saw was a Coca Cola plant. One such area had been a graveyard, more accurately a dumping ground for Idi Amin’s victims.

We stopped at a nature preserve along the Ssizibwa River where there is a magnificent waterfall. In the area there are numerous crude shrines to the traditional gods of the Bugandi.

Around 3pm we arrived in Jinja. We paid the required entrance fee to get to the river. Each nature preserve has an entrance fee which effectively protects it from the masses. One must be of privilege to enter. The walkway down the bank to the river is lined with hawkers, mostly of tourist art. Cathy bought a bag to carry her small items (she loves to buy small bags). At the bottom of the hill at the bank of the river is an  outdoor restaurant. We all ordered Tilapia which came baked in brine. The whole fist is placed in front of you which you pull apart as you eat. The locals do this skillfully so that when done, they have a complete skeleton left on their plates. Carly tore apart hers without the slightest intrepidity. She has blended in with our group of scholars; all grown up.

After lunch Ron negotiated a boat operator to take us up the Nile to its source where it flows from Lake Victoria. The boat is an ancient longboat with a small Yamaha motor. There once was a waterfall at this point, but a damn was built a mile or so downstream for hydro power so that now there is little difference between the water level of the lake and river. Our old boat bravely fought against the current. The river banks team with birds of all shapes and colors. The boat operator told us all the name of each species. Luckily, there was no test. Ron is quite an observer of nature and was very familiar with the flora and fauna. It was a bit surreal to think we were actually plying the waters of the Nile river.

We made our way back home after dark. The shoulders of the road still teamed with humanity even in the darkness with people going here and there shopping and dating. Young men would drive their small motorcycles with their girlfriends riding sidesaddle behind them.

More to come….