TUESDAY JUNE 5: KAMPALA SCHOOLS AND SHOPPING

TUESDAY JUNE 5, 2007: KAMPALA SCHOOLS AND SHOPPING

A typical day in Uganda!

We had breakfast in the hotel for the first time. We set 8:00 as our meeting time, but Lisa and I got there early. We were told about making toast and offered tea or Nescafe. We were given a banana each and offered a fried egg or omelet. We ordered plain omelets and toasted our bread. We had finished the bread before the fried eggs arrived!

Bill, Ron, and Ray joined us as the eggs arrived. Ron ordered a scrambled egg (not one of the options offered us). The eggs were okay.

Everyone ran upstairs to brush their teeth before the van arrived. Lisa and I didn’t realize it was here and we were about fifteen minutes late. We loaded up and started out into the city.

Our day was busy. We didn’t go far at all: all the kids were within five miles of the church. But both Kalinabari Primary and Kalinabari Secondary schools are in that radius, and these are our two largest concentrations of students. We actually saw more than 40 kids between the two schools which are next door to each other.

We worked until 2:00 and visited with 68 kids! When we finally decided it was time for lunch, I asked Vincent for a recommendation for African food. He drove us to House of Olaf, about as un-African name as one could imagine! The building wasn’t impressive at all, just a small, square building with white walls. The sign WAS impressive. It proudly announced that the menu was all authentic African, but that there was no cholesterol in any of the food. The menu was loaded with beef, lamb, and pork. The sign was simply untrue!!

We were shown to a small room away from the street. It was quite cool. The white walls were spotless. We sat at a large table and poured over the extensive menu. In the end, Lisa ordered tilapia and I ordered smoked Nile perch. We thought we ordered a selection of African side dishes, but when it arrived, we had only a huge triple portion of matoke!

The menu said that everything was made with authentic Ugandan sauce, which turned out to be the dreaded g-nut sauce, a deep brown, peanutty sauce with a distinctly earthy (read that mud-like) taste. I had chunks of something about the thickness of a plastic plate floating in this dark brown “sauce” and only matoke to cut it with. I stabbed a piece of my plastic fish and took a big bite. I immediately discovered that the menu had a misspelling by a single letter. I wasn’t served smoked Nile perch, I received smoked Vile perch! It was about as chewy as a plastic plate and the “earthy” flavor of the g-nut overwhelmed all other tastes except the inescapable burned taste of the fish.

The matoke wasn’t too bad for matoke. It had no flavor and was the consistency of over cooked mashed potatoes. In fairness, the fish tasted better as I ate it, and once I grew accustomed to the overwhelming charred overtones, I almost came to enjoy it. Lisa’s tilapia was quite good, and everyone else enjoyed their meals.

We took Ron and Bill to the church. Everyone got off there except Vincent who had to drive the rest of us. The purpose of their afternoon was to review the bookkeeping procedures that were being used in the Project.

Lisa, Ray, and I had other issues. We had been in our clothes since Saturday, we desperately needed some new, less odorous clothing. Vincent wanted us to try the African market which sold only African things. We went into a very small shop that had nothing of interest to Lisa or me. Ray found a shirt, but the price was too high so we hurried across the busy street to another market.

As we walked into the street, a man ran up carrying a stack of pants. He went straight to Ray and started holding pants up to him. In only a minute, Ray owned a new pair of pants for which he paid $6! I walked up, but the man took one look at me and shook his head.

Crossing the street is always an adventure in Uganda. It may only be my imagination, but drivers always seem to speed up when pedestrians enter the roadway. We made it safely to the other side.

We entered a market which appeared to be several cargo containers supplemented by shacks. They stretched up a steep hill in a horseshoe. Ray found a shirt at the very first shop, a brown, African shirt with no buttons and a bit of a plunging neckline. I found a shirt, too, but the pattern on the front wasn’t matched up properly, a very un-Ugandan kind of workmanship.

So I went back out into the stifling heat to find Lisa. She checked out several shops while I looked in a few more. I finally found a shop with some promising shirts and I went back to find Lisa. She was in a small shop with a woman with a bad eye who spoke very loudly. When we determined that she had nothing of interest to me and nothing short enough for Lisa, she said, “Come with me to my friend’s store.” She darted out of the shop and down the steep hill to another shop.

I dawdled along the various shops then went into the one where Lisa and the woman were holding up skirts to Lisa. She found an attractive purple shirt and matching top. It was very African in both the wrap-around style of the shirt and the distinctive purple pattern of the outfit. It even included a scarf! Everyone in the shop knew that Lisa was sold!

I, on the other hand, was a much more difficult case. I held up shirt after shirt, many of them hideous. We finally found a shirt that I could possibly have worn, but when I tried to pull it on, I found that it wouldn’t go all the way down. I tried another with the same result. “Jim,” said the lady with the bad eye, “you are simply too fat!”

My physical short-coming (or overabundance as it were) didn’t dissuade her for a minute, however. She continued to dig through shirts, talking without ceasing. “You are very smart in your new clothes,” she said to Lisa. “Lisa, you are far too smart to be married to Jim!”

Now a break for a Ugandan translation. They use SMART as we would use SHARP, to indicate stylish good looks. She was not commenting on my intelligence, or at least she said it in such a way that I couldn’t take it that way. The giggles from Lisa and the rest of the store staff made me wonder about her meaning, however.

We returned to the van and Vincent took us downtown. He pulled up at a bank into a parking space clearly marked for bank customers only. Vincent told the guard that he was a bank customer even though he had no business with the bank today. He told them that as a customer, he should be allowed to park there, and they let him!

We walked along the crowded sidewalk and across another street. We turned into a small side street by the bank, then into a narrow alley. The alley seemed to be dedicated to men’s clothing. We stopped at a shop and I spotted a shirt I liked. The man climbed up a step ladder to retrieve she shirt from the display where it hung in the blowing dust. He reached it down to me which required me to reach up, and the second I did, I felt a hand try to enter my pocket. I was carrying the camera on my belt, so his attempt failed. I spun around to catch the attempted thief, but he was running away. My interest in shopping down this alley was gone, so I insisted we look elsewhere.

We found a shop displaying shirts on the side street. A salesman came out and in a matter of a few minutes, I was the proud owner of two shirts, authentic American seconds. One of the shirts had buttons for the collar but no button holes in the collar. The defect on the other was less evident. Both were reasonably attractive, shirts I would buy on clearance to wear to Uganda.

But the issue of pants remained. The store clerk tried to tell me that I could wear 30 inch length pants. I wear 35. He held them in such a way that they looked long, but I knew better. “But sir,” he yelled after us as we started to leave, “I am sure these pants will fit. They are excellent pants. And you know I would never sell you anything that wouldn’t fit you.”

Right.

Vincent had no other ideas, so I decided I’d have to live one more day in my now deep khaki pants.

We drove back to the church and picked up Ron and Bill. Vincent drove us back to the hotel around 6:00. We decided to meet downstairs at the hotel’s restaurant, which was called Indian Summer.

We took a table outside. Ray said he didn’t want to eat. He went instead to sit with his new friends near the bar. The menu was a huge surprise. It contained a very large selection of interesting dishes from North India. We ordered a feast and ate until we thought we would pop. The food was outstanding, especially a chicken dish with a green sauce made of ground nuts, mint, and other spices. And the prices were incredibly reasonable. The only problem was we were eaten alive by mosquitos!

We finally got on the Internet, but for only a very few minutes. I had pressing business from work, so I had no time for the blog. It is now Saturday and I am far, far behind. Hopefully, there will be time tomorrow!