A Little Snapshot of My Life in Kampala

My cellphone starts playing Fur Elise at 7am, which is far too melodious to actually raise me from bed, so I hit snooze repeatedly and drowse through the time I had, last week, planned to use for a jog. At 7:30 I get up, shower, shave, dress, eat yogurt, fruit, and granola, grab my motorcycle helmet and head out the door. No, concerned family and friends, I did not buy a motorcycle. To get to work I take Kampala’s boda bodas, motorcycle taxis which zoom around traffic and between gridlock to get you to work on time. They’re a lot of fun, only a couple steps down from the fun it must be to actually drive a motorcycle, but the constant excitement of weaving through moving traffic also bumps up the excitement factor a notch. Traffic gets bad in Kampala, like anywhere, and my ride from work which would take an hour in a car takes only 30 minutes by motorcycle. Yes, I bought my own helmet from the downtown Nakumatt. Inspecting their two varieties – one for $20 and the other for $40 – I instinctively opted for the cheaper, but still ostensibly sufficient one. Beginning to walk away, I think to myself: ‘that’s really really stupid’. I return, and get a snazzy silver $40 full-headed helmet with visor. The trip from home to work evens out to about a full-fare trip on the TTC ($3), which is expensive compared to the alternative matatu bus option, but hey, it’s fun, fast, and convenient. Kampala itself isn’t laid out in any particular system of order which I’ve figured out yet. It’s not a grid pattern, there aren’t main road arteries which I could use to orient myself (or there are but they’re a little tricky to discern/name) – it’s more of a spiderweb, without the symmetry or concentricity. The result is that I’m dependent on drivers and the periodic stranger on the street to point in the right direction. Of course, I’ve only been here a week and I’m living on the edge of town, so I haven’t had much time to figure out the urban area.

Arriving at work, we ride along an unassuming and bumpy red dirt road. One turn up the road, and we get to the gates of the Human Rights House, one of about a dozen Human Rights Houses around the world hosting and forming a network of established human rights organizations. The House itself is massive, even imposing, and certainly contrasts against the un-tarmacked road taken to get to it . There are ~5 organizations in the House, and they are all well established. I will save my actual work, organization, and experience to another post though.

I’m living with a young Ugandan woman named Lulu in a beautiful 2 bedroom apartment on the outskirts of town. I didn’t actually know the details of my accommodation when I arrived, so I was pretty surprised to walk into a posh and well-equipped apartment on arrival. The kitchen has everything I need to maintain my love of cooking, the living room is beautifully furnished by Lulu, and opens up onto the balcony with rattan chairs in the open air – perfect for morning coffee or evening aperitifs. There’s also a sweet and clever little dog who hangs around inside and outside the apartment and whom I’m quickly training using the tricks I learnt from Jenga (my relationship:‘its complicated’ dog)’s training classes.

Lulu had some food for me when I arrived – when I went to wash my plate afterwards, she says ‘I hope you’re not washing your dish – there’s someone here who does that’. So yes, there’s a woman here who does the dishes and cleaning and even laundry. I leave my dress shirts in a hamper in the bathroom, and the next day they’re magically clean, ironed, and hanging in the closet. Gendered divisions of labour, Marxist class analysis, radically participative economies - whatever… I’m not complaining.

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Today is Martyrs day, in which thousands of people in the region make the trek to a location not far from where I’m living to visit the tombs of a number of young people killed by the King of Buganda (the Kabaka – who still plays an important role in Ugandan politics) in the late 19th century. Well the upshot for me is that I get the day off work, Lulu is off to meet her father, and I get to stay in the apartment, write this blog, sit on the balcony and drink coffee, and oh ya, make pasta sauce!

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I’ve made pasta sauce from scratch a couple times before but I’ve never made a big batch properly. This morning we drove out to a market stand where we made a ‘drive-thru’ market transaction with the mama selling fruits and vegetables from a thatched lean-to. 25 fresh tomatoes, chili peppers, onions, garlic, plus the red wine left over from last night… that’s a good pasta! I marinated a couple chicken breasts in some of the red wine overnight, the sauce is done and very tasty right now, and when Lulu gets back I’ll sear then bake the breasts and serve them sliced over the pasta, maybe with a bit of cheese and fresh bread. Ain’t life grand?