Friday, October 2, 2009

Friday, October 2, 2009

 

No water or power AT ALL today.  Lovely…didn’t get a chance to shower.  Feeling very natural today.  I decided to walk to Kolping House Hotel today to treat myself to a nice American breakfast with COFFEE!  Solomon told me that most mzungu’s like Kolping House so I thought I’d give it a shot.

I walked in.  “Do you have coffee?”  I asked the waitress?

“American coffee?  Yes of course!  What else would you like?  A Spanish omellete and a chapatti?”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“Okay – take a seat.”

Fantastic.  I sat down and eagerly awaited my breakfast.  A half hour came and went…no food…no coffee.  What a cruel joke….The “coffee” was a can of dried coffee, steamed milk and sugar.  I found it ironic that in a country known for coffee I was served dried, instant coffee.  This is a reoccurring issue in Uganda – it seems the people don’t reap the rewards bestowed upon them by their country. 

For example…Yesterday the headmaster of Morning Star Christian and I were talking about oil reserves that were recently discovered at the bottom of Lake Albert (lake on border of DRC and Uganda).

“Which side is the oil field on?”

“Uganda.”  He smiled.

“Good for the people of Uganda!” 

“Not really – the people wont see a cent of it.  All the revenue will be consumed by the corrup government.”

That’s the mentality here – the government is here to screw you over…and most of the time its true.

I tipped the waitress and left.  By the way…nobody tips here.  If you tip it’s a big deal.  I typically give the change back to the waiter / waitress.  For breakfast I tipped the woman 700 shillings (35 cents) and she was SO grateful.  It doesn’t take a lot to make people here happy.

As I walked back from the Kolping House I appreciated the beautiful sky…and the birds soaring high overhead…and the warm air sifting through the streets.  Life has slowed down a bit for me and I am once again appreciating things I haven’t appreciated in a long time.  I told Solomon the skies in Africa were actually beautiful.

“Maybe they are the same and now you are finally realizing their beauty.”

He could be right.

Afterwards I went to an internet café – but it was so slow that to open an email took 10 minutes.  I paid 500 shillings and left.

I went to another one and spent 5 minutes pulling up an email and just as it was about to open – WHAM – the lady in charge of the store knocked my internet out.  I spent 40 minutes checking a handful of emails.  This place teaches you to laugh instead of get frustrated – that’s all you can do sometimes. 

I met two German mzungu’s in the café – Patricia and Lucus.  Apparently after you graduate college in Germany you can either go into the armed services or do a year of public service abroad.  Lucus and Patricia chose the latter and they were teaching accounting in Hoima.  Very nice group.

Then I walked back to my hotel, met Solomon and we went to the bus station.  A few comments:

- All the buses, cars, matatu’s, boda boda’s are adorned with religious messages.  “Allah is great.”  “The Lord is my Shephard.”  “God Loves You.”  “God is good.”  Etcetera…why is that economic poverty and spiritual faith are positively correlated.  Seems the poorer the country the more zealous the religious adherents.  Is it a coping mechanism?  A way to make sense of the hand they’ve been dealt in life?  I don’t know – but its interesting to think about.

- On the bus a little girl was obsessed with the mzungu.  She sat with me for a half hour before the bus departed.  She was adorable and loved looking at my camera…although she did pick her nose and rub it on my leg.

- On the way home the bus stopped to drop someone off.  I couldn’t stop looking at a man literally crawling on the floor and eating fallen grains from the dirt.  He looked insane.  He looked up at me and we made eye contact, and it was chilling.  Interesting that we could be so physically close and yet our lives were world’s apart – literally and figuratively. 

It reminded me of a scene from the movie Wall Street when Gorden Gecko and Bud Fox are driving down the street in a limo.  They stop at a light and Gordon looks out the window at a bum sifting through the trash standing next to a businessman.  “You gonna tell me the difference between this guy and that guy is luck?”

- The bus pulled over at one point.  I didn’t know why…a lot of people got off and walked into the field and then I realized – bathroom time!  It was funny…guys were going next to women.  It was no big deal to these people.

- I saw a coffin shop that had windows in their coffins.  Hmm…

- Saw another boda boda driver with a tattered Notre Dame jacket.  Seem to be a lot of a

- Saw an albino black woman.  Given the endless attention my white skin gets I shudder to think how hard it must be for that poor woman to live in Uganda.

 

When I got home there was no power.  For four hours I sat in the dark.  BUT I spoke with Anand for an hour during the outage…and that was great.

 

In Mbale for two days.  Catch ya’ll on the flipside.