Wednesday, July 9: Kampala II

A most eventful day!

It started when we met David in the hall on the way out. He told us Danielle was sick and wouldn’t be able to come with us. We left her with our phone and Vincent’s number. She said she was planning to sleep.

We were off by 8:00. Our first stop was to exchange money. The rate was down by 10 shillings on the dollar. I wasn’t the only one behind on my blog, so we went to the Internet café in Garden City. The mall stores weren’t open yet, but the café was. We spent about an hour working on our blogs and emails. The one thing Kolping House needs to be the perfect Uganda hotel is a business center with Internet! While I was working on the blog, Lisa was shopping in the bookstore. She found a book for her classroom about some bunnies in Uganda.

Our schools were scattered around Kampala today. We went to two and saw a total of two kids! Scovia (Gary and Terry) was home sick. We are planning to go check on her next week if she isn’t back in school. We saw five kids at the next school, but they were taking a test so we could only snap a quick picture and send them on their way.

Kennedy Secondary School was our next stop. We were looking for Byakatonda Mary (Gary and Paula ), a very bright young woman who sometimes serves as an interpreter. We learned that Mary was sick with malaria. Vincent knew where she lived.

So we left the main road and drove about 2 miles on a wide, not-to-rutted dirt road. Vincent pulled up beside a small but very well kept house. There was a small store at the front of the house and sweet banana trees (as opposed to matoki) growing in neat rows behind it. Mary’s father brought all of us chairs from the house, and Mary joined us in a few minutes. She said she was feeling somewhat better and she thought she would be ready to return to school tomorrow. The problem is she would have to walk the miles we’d driven going and coming, so she would need to feel really well! She is a delightful girl and her English in perfect!

Vincent was anxious to come to this house because he recently bought some land where he is planning to build a house. The property is behind Mary’s house. It is flat and plenty large enough for a house and small garden. Right now, it is grown over with under-brush and a few banana plants. The corners of his plot were marked with pineapple plants. As we were walking back to the house, I looked into a pot that was boiling over a small fire. It was filled with an opaque pinkish substance with silvery minnows bubbling around in it. I assume it was their lunch, but I didn’t really want to know that. Mary’s father brought water for all of us from the store and we sat under the shade of a banana plant sipping our cool water.

A young man came up to me while I was finishing my water. “Sir, would you like to see my snakes, turtles, and chameleons?”

I stared at the man because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Every Ugandan I know is petrified of any reptile or amphibian. This one was asking about snakes. “Sir, would you like to see?”

“Where are these things?” I asked. I was a bit reluctant to go running off into the jungle with this man, even if we all went.

“They are in my yard, sir,” he said.

“You have snakes and lizards and turtles in your yard? What are they doing there?”

“We capture them. My brothers are out today gathering samples. We have permit. It is all legal.”

Who could possibly pass up a group of snakes, turtles, and lizards growing legally in a Ugandan back yard? I almost walked over the man in my excitement. We walked down a slope to the street then crossed it. The brick house sat about 50 feet from the road. We walked around the end of the house to see a row of white concrete walls which were about waste high. A series of cages sat at the back of the lot. There was jungle beyond these cages. Our new friend stopped at the back wall of his house and picked up a plastic anti-freeze container. It was bright yellow and had holes punched in its plastic side near its mouth. He shook the container and a small snake fell out. He called it a house snake and said it wasn’t harmful. When he reached for it, the snake tried its very best to bite him. He let it settle down then picked it up and let it wrap around his hand. The snake was gray about a foot long and thinner than a pencil.

After a few minutes of playing with the snake and letting us take pictures, he returned it to its yellow home and picked up a red container. “This one contains the yellow cobra,” he said in a grave voice. He unscrewed the top and looked into the container, but this time, he kept his face far from the opening. “It is in there,” he said as he continued to look into the container. Finally, he poured the contents of the container onto the grass. There were three slugs and two snakes. “The other one is the house snake,” he took a stick and separated the two snakes. “and this is the deadly yellow cobra.” As if on cue, the 14 inch black snake raised its head off the grass. It immediately flattened out its neck and began to weave back and forth, exactly as snakes do on television. There was a gold mark on its chest. It struck at anything that moved near it. After a minute, it dropped back into the grass. David wanted a picture so he started to kick the snake.

“What are you doing,” I yelled.

“My boots are snake proof, said David. “Don’t you remember? That’s what the box said.”

“A cobra isn’t the time to test to make sure it’s true!” The snake raised up again based on the aggravation David had already caused it. He got his picture!

The man told us he collected wild game for customers in the UK and Japan. He said he has all his permits and he treats the animals very well. As he talked, he returned the cobra and house snake to their home. He led us across his yard to the four waste high concrete enclosures.

“Here are turtles,” he said as he reached into one of the concrete enclosures. He took out six turtles. He then went to the next enclosure and pulled out two larger turtles with yellow patterns on their shell. He explained something about one of the turtles coming from dry climate and one from wet but I wasn’t paying attention. I had walked past the enclosures to four cages at the back of the lot.

“They are empty,” he called to David and me. “I will be catching some animals for that soon.”

We turned and walked back to the enclosure. Jeff was standing by the enclosure grinning at us. He was holding one of the turtles. This wasn’t a large turtle by any means, but it required two hands to hold it. Jeff started to tell us something when the turtle answered a nature call. I don’t think there was a single molecule that missed Jeff’s pants! Jeff tried to be cool about it all, but he kept looking down at his pants as we walked back to Mary ‘s house.

This man didn’t ask for a penny, but David gave him 5,000 shillings anyway. I can’t ever remember seeing a cobra and I know I’ve never seen one in a back yard!

We walked across the street to Mary’s house once again. Jeff seemed to be trying to figure out a way to clean his pants. He finally gave up and wore them the rest of the day with their turtle decoration. We said goodbye to Mary and her family and climbed back into the van.

We called on two more children at two more schools, then decided to eat lunch (it was approaching 3:00 once again). Vincent said he knew just the place and it was close by. We had eaten at this place last summer. It is a converted garage selling ice cream and Italian food. Last year, they had nothing from their Italian menu. This year, there were a few items. I placed our order with the woman working at the ice cream stand. She was the only one with a cash register, so I assumed she was the right person. She rang up my order, collected my money, and gave me a receipt. She told me to take it to one of the workers at the food line. I had ordered mine and Lisa’s order separate from everyone else. I handed the woman the larger ticket. Grace and Vincent ordered traditional Ugandan dishes. The rest of us ordered a calzone and a softball sized fried dough thing. The waitress studied the bill for a minute. “You want sausages?” she asked.

Since this was the closest she had come to mentioning food, I said that we had. She looked some more and asked what kind of drinks. She got them, then turned around and started filling another order. I stepped up close to the counter and asked where our food was. She turned back to the trays of food and walked past them. She stayed in the back a few minutes, then came out and took another order. Lisa, in the meantime, walked up to another of the waitresses and handed her our ticket. The woman looked at it carefully as Lisa explained our order. The woman studied the order for a long time, then went to the food and took out two calzones and one dough ball. “There should be two of those,” Lisa said.

The waitress looked around for a minute, then went and got another dough gob and two Cokes. Lisa carried the orders to the counter beside the food preparation area. When the woman came back, she said, “You see? We need four orders just like this one. Can you do that?”

The woman came over and looked at the food, then at her receipt. She walked to the food counter and selected two calzones and two dough balls. She brought them back and looked at the bill. “You are short one calzone,” she said as she pointed to the receipt. I hurried back to the other counter and ordered a calzone. The woman took my money and gave me a receipt. I carried it back to the food counter lady. She studied it very carefully. “It’s a receipt for a calzone,“ I said. She didn’t look up at all, she just kept staring at the receipt. Finally, she walked to the food counter and brought us the final calzone. I thanked her profusely and we hurried outside with our food.

Even though the service in this place is terrible (the problem is the receipt doesn’t identify the food ordered. There is only a price and a category, like snack), the dining area outside is almost worth the hassle. There are 8 tables surrounded by trees and undergrowth. There is a green canopy overhead and the undergrowth hardly allows air in. It is cool and breezy at the picnic tables. When I got out, Joseph had selected a table in the center of the picnic area.

As hard as it was to get the food, it was even harder to eat it. At least that’s true for the calzone. The fried dough balls were exactly like gigantic hush puppies without any onion. The calzone, however, had meat inside and no cheese at all. And the meat was a sickly pinkish red color. “It’s corned beef,” said David.

After tasting it I was less sure. “Maybe the meat has gone bad.”

We discussed it for a while and everyone decided not to eat any more of their calzone. But we finished all the giant hushpuppies!

When we were finished, Lisa, Joseph, and Jeff went back inside and ordered Italian ice cream for everyone. I ordered coconut, and it was delicious. Lisa’s coffee flavored was equally good.

Time to get back on the road! We visited six more schools ranging from an “infant school” to one high school. We tried to find Mutebi Dennis (Deborah’s child) at Crane High School, but he had left. He had terrible health problems earlier in the year, but everyone thought he was well. It wasn’t clear that he was sick, but he certainly wasn’t there. We will look for him later.

It was time to take David to church. He was scheduled to teach a group of ministers from Kiwatule and surrounding areas at 5:00. We dropped him off and hit two more high schools. At Rise and Shine Secondary School, there was a group of children in the corner of the lawn. One was on the ground and a small, round woman had a thin cane in her hands. She swung it terribly at the backside of a young woman, who burst into tears. The caner hit her again, and a third time. We never found out what these kids had done wrong, but a number of them paid dearly for it while their classmates stood around supervising the event.

We dropped the team at the Guesthouse and I rode with Vincent back to the church. We were about 20 minutes, so we were able to hear most of David’s message. He spoke about servanthood and about the purpose of being a leader is to serve those you lead. It was an excellent lesson and resulted in several questions.

We rode back to the Guesthouse where we found the team sitting under the stars waiting for their meals. We both ordered spaghetti bolognaise. It took it nearly an hour to arrive, but it was actually good. The beef scare from the day before was apparently over. We sat at our table and talked until 9:15, then everyone went in.