Uganda 18: January 9, 2005

No big trips for me recently as Liz and I prepare for the upcoming parental invasi . . . er . . . eagerly anticipated visit. Instead, we spent the holidays around Kampala enjoying the lack of traffic as everyone went to visit relatives upcountry. Liz traveled to visit the Karamoja area of Uganda with the Ambassador. The Karamajong are cattle-rustlers and many now walk around carrying automatic weapons (and little else). Fortunately, she made it there (once the pilots found the landing strip) and back safely. She's got some good stories, which people should convince her to write up.

The Embassy held its holiday party at the Ambassador's residence. Boring American food supplemented with a genuine Ugandan delicacy --fried grasshopper (nsenene). Attendees were treated to barrells of the crunchy, fried insects. Ugandans look forward to Nsenene season the way some westerners wait for the new beaujolais nouveau. I found them to taste ok, but a little fishy. I don't see them soon replacing salted peanuts at American bars. I used them as a topping on pizza.

Last week, I was working on a cable and I needed to review a copy of the newly passed foreign exchange bill. We called over to Parliament and sent a driver to pick one up. He returned with the single original version, signed by the President. I carefully detached the pages and copied them one by one, not trusting the autocopy function and then tried to exactly re-staple. Hopefully, I did not lose any pages.

I've recently started to play golf again, after a three year layoff. Uganda has five or six golf courses and we've been playing at an old British course in Entebbe. It costs USD 12 for 18 holes overlooking Lake Victoria. Caddies are about six bucks but you have to deal with the pandemonium that occurs when they duke it out amongst each other for your bag. The course was of decent quality. For DC area public golfers, I would say it rated above Haines Point (what doesn't?) but somewhat below Rock Creek Park. The fairways were OK, but the greens are full of anthills, which I believe is the sole reason that can explain my triple digit scoring. OK, maybe one sand trap seemed more like an abandoned quarry and there are two holes in which people teeing off on the next hole actually have to hit over the green on the previous hole. Occasionally, monkeys wandered across the fairway and women carrying baskets of bananas on their heads would pause on the walking paths to wait for us to finish our drives before continuing to a local market. I brought great mirth to a host of little kids with one of my patented sideways bank shots off a tree.

Our friend Kathleen just turned 29 and we celebrated by going to Kampala's only bowling alley -- Alleygators. It's bowling . . . and so much more. Located in Kampala's most modern shopping mall, the alley also has an upscale bar and karaoke microphone. For some reason, the large screen broadcasting the song lyrics only shows scenes from Philippine tourist sites, so while knocking down the pins, we were treated to enthusiastic Ugandan versions of Cher and Celine Dione, plus one rather rotund fellow doing a credible job of "I'm just a teenage dirtbag" in front of a screen showing beautiful tropical waterfalls and beach scenes. With the addition of copious amounts of alcohol, it all seems to make sense.

Things I have seen on the back of a bicycle:

Another bicycle
Motor scooter
Muffler
Live pig
Live goat(s)
Dead goat (whole)
Dead goat (quartered)
Dead goat (pieces)
Chickens (variety of numbers and stages of life/death)
Fish
Matooke (plantains)
Bags of tomatos, potatos, onions and other vegetables
People (varying in number and degree of sobriety)
Coffin (do not know whether or not it was occupied)
Logs
Construction materials
Kitchen goods
Brooms, mops, brushes, buckets