We Three Kings/Christmas in Kampala, or, Batshit Crazy with the Uganda Sexpat Society

Rough draft, to be edited.

Christmas Eve
This was the beginning of one those spans of several days that is absolutely legendary in the minds of those who were involved. From the outside it would seem madness, a throng of people bumping into each other in a mess of overflowing ashtrays and breakfast beers. From the inside, though, I think we managed to tap into something innately human – our ability to connect, to create, to share, to cry, and to laugh, laugh, laugh.

Christmas Eve began on the back of a 100cc motorcycle with a case of beer on my lap, limping up a hill to the house of two of Matt’s friends for Christmas Eve dinner, a group reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and a viewing of Love Actually. The house was gorgeous, expansive, the backyard sloping down in terraces, offering one of those peaceful nighttime views of Kampala from the top of one of the city’s seven major hills. These views allow for the big picture. On the street, Kampala can be a circus, twisting and turning in exhaust pipes, hawkers and peddlers, and broken pavement reverberating the heat of the hustle and bustle. From the top, however, especially at night, the view is beautiful, the city lights spelling words and drawing pictures you see once but then get lost when you try and find them a second time. I envy those who can come home at the end of the day and sit poolside and have the big picture presented to them, the noises of the everyday still audible but floating and faded, as if far, far away.

The film viewing, I think, hit the inside of a lot of our chests. Many of those present weren’t there because they wanted to be. Not because they didn’t want to be there, in that moment, with those people, but if they had had a choice they would be somewhere else, with family, in England, in Tennessee, in wherever home might be. Instead, because of work or finances or unexpected life happenings, they were stranded in Kampala.

Others had memories brought back of relationships past, relationships budding, and relationships ruined. This is the first Christmas, some realized, that they would be alone. For others, this was their first Christmas together. It was that classic nostalgia that holidays offer; painful, beautiful, longing for something that was and something that you’ve never had that you wish you could.

Subdued and melancholic turned into rowdiness as a group of us shifted out of the privacy of the home to the public arena of lionhearted celebration. Stumbling carols were sung spontaneously as tequila shots were passed around until the bar shut down.

Christmas, however, had but just finished its prologue.

The next chapter opens with We Three Kings – the name given to myself and my two exceedingly tall compatriots – sitting on the roof rack of Land Rover with a handful of US Marines. The air was refreshingly cold as Kampala whizzed by beneath us and for a second I wished it would snow, just a few flakes, for old time’s sake.

The night ended and dawn began at another house at which we would be spending Christmas Day. We Three Kings proceeded to continue the party on the patio, taking turns playing songs from our personal collections that meant something to us, explaining as we went where the song came from and the context behind it. As the sun came up we reached a several moments of truth, of sharing, and of friendship that would rival most.

It was one of those moments where through the haze everything seems connected somehow, when you’re talking about something so incredibly sad you can’t properly put it into words and then out of nowhere it starts raining, as if the sky itself is crying over your loss.

And you too begin to cry, because there’s nothing left to hold back.

Christmas Day
The night bled into the day, We Three Kings falling asleep long after the sun already came up to the sound of roosters crowing at our broken mending hearts. The rest of the day was a blur, trying desperately to get our bodies to recover, as we helped prepare the turkey that was slaughtered the day before. Mostly, though, coffee and Kahlua led to lazing about and watching movies as more and more people bled into the house to join us for the evening festivities.

For a few minutes, while half asleep on the couch, I saw dinosaurs a la Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, except they were wearing Santa hats.

The food was incredible and amply fed the thirty or so of us that were there. The community feeling and the meal brought out the illusion that Christmas was really happening, here, in East Africa, despite there being no snow and none my own family present. We created our own family for a day.

What happened next takes place over the span of forty-eight hours, much of which melts together like the wax of a candle that has been burning for hours. Many more were included in the fold of We Three Kings, feeding off our established delusion. Games of questions, truth or dare, would you rather, guessing the equations that make up the lives of the people who you have just met. Nothing was held back, secrets spilled, inadequacies confronted; embarrassing, invigorating, seducing. Things were said that made you squirm, made you think, made you realize that being human truly is an incredible experience, that a group of seemingly random individuals could find themselves together, far away from what any of us would call home, and bond together as such.

And between the incessant sex talk and increasingly nauseating Christopher Walken impressions, we found blinking moments of truth laid bare. These moments, I think, came at different times for each of us, but we all wanted them bottled so we could save them for harsher times.

Three nights later I finally found my way back to my own bed and slept soundly for the first time in almost a week. Christmas in Kampala has come and gone with 2010 bearing down upon us like a nuclear weapon stamped with a word of simple juxtaposition

LIFE

(none)

We are young and exceptionally blessed and there is no reason to feel the way we do or do the things we do the way we do them.

There is no reason not to do something exceptional, day after day after day.

You know you're in Africa when . . .

Yesterday I was hammering down on the last of my university assignments at Matt's apartment. I stepped out onto the balcony for some fresh air and saw the apartment building guard dog racing around the field in the next lot. He was charging back and forth frantically, smashing through the bushes like nothing could touch him.

Next, he starts fiercely rummaging through a particularly thick patch of tall grass and emerges with a large object in his mouth and trots, rather proudly, back through the gate into the apartment yard.

From where I was standing on the second floor I couldn't quite tell what he had snagged but whatever it was it looked like it had once been alive. I decided it was a bird, although it didn't really look like such, and was rather impressed that he had been able to bag a bird like that.

A few minutes later, as I was leaving the yard to head up town, I decided to pay the dog a visit on his stoop to further inspect what exactly it was he had found.

It was a severed goat head.

Mefloquine dreams

I'm standing over the dog on his stoop and he's chewing on the goat head, as he had been earlier that day. Except now there's something attached to head and is covered by a garbage bag.

I reach down and pull away the plastic to reveal a human torso stitched to the goat head with disproportionate and mismatched limbs sewed into the places where the arms and legs should have been.

Gotta love the pills.

Uganda Journal #2: Longitudes and latitudes

December 13, 2009
00°18′49″N 32°34′52″E

Uganda is very much a Christian country, a striking byproduct of European colonialism. In Namuwongo, however, because of the large influx of Sudanese refugees, there is a local mosque and the accompanying five-times-daily call to prayer. When called, many of the dogs here howl out their response and it reminds me of the sled dogs in Churchill who would howl back at the air raid siren that was sounded by the town every night to signal curfew.

I got my bags back after a lengthy ordeal at the Entebbe airport, including having to wait for half an hour to get a security pass which nobody ever checked. At least when I finally got to my luggage I found them under secure lockdown and all my shit was in order. Picking up a paper today, I'm glad I got them when I did - yesterday there was a fire at airport, something about aviation fuel tanks exploding, and I can only imagine the process it would have been trying to get my stuff back after something like that.

My driver on the way back insisted on taking some backward-ass route into Namuwongo due to the midday "jam". This basically consisted of climbing to the top of one of Kampala's seven major hills and coasting down the most decrepit roads available. We're talking potholes the size of small craters and water-carved ravines that rival the Grand Canyon. On a few occasions the car may as well have been right sideways with me smashed against the door and my driver trying to explain to me where we were and why this was a good idea. I don't think I'd ever even think about driving a vehicle here unless it was a 150cc motorcycle or something with some serious clearance and four-wheel drive. Any road that hasn't fallen apart is marked with speed bumps that would give a Land Rover a hard time.

Friday night
After work Matt and I headed to the gym and then proceeded to indulge in more pressing matters - most importantly a five dollar bottle of whiskey I found at the corner store. Half a bottle of what smelled like gasoline but didn't taste so bad after two or three half-and-halfs later, we headed out on bodas (motorcycle taxis) to meet up with Ian.

Ian is a doctor friend of ours who we met the last time I was around who we really only met one night at the bar because he, like both Matt and myself, is unreasonably tall.

Dinner was good and the beer hit the spot after the rough gas-whiskey mixture I had subjected us to. Matt and Ian knew of this party being thrown by a friend of a friend just up the road from the restaurant, and we decided to make our way over there to continue our evening, but not before securing another bottle of whiskey.

You'd think finding such a thing on a Friday night in downtown Kampala wouldn't be so hard, but it was. An hour and a harsh bargain later we end up at this Italian guy's house, bottle of Johnnie Walker Red in hand. Ian grabbed the Walker, split it into three tall glasses, and we proceeded to mingle with the crowd.

Everybody there was young and highly professional - aid workers, engineers, IT guys, medical professionals, doctors, lawyers, foreign service personnel from the world over - and the alcohol was flowing like milk and honey in Israel. It didn't take long to make young and highly professional friends and at some point throughout the night I ended up with my foot stuck in a tub full of ice with three other guys for nearly an hour in a competition to see who could keep it in the longest. Apparently somebody had money down on the bearded Canadian - me - winning the game so I wasn't about to pull out and shame my country. These things are important.

By 2:30 the party had mostly wound down and it just myself, Ian, Matt, and two ladies hanging out on a set of couches that had somehow found their way into the backyard. After a few more beers and an in depth discussion about the merits of ___________, we got those less mobile ready to move again and hit a cab to Bubbles where we played a variety of dancing-drinking games until they closed down the bar and the sun was nearly on its way up.

Another successful night in the KLA.

PS. Power surge fried the power cable to my laptop the other day. Some seemingly very capable Indian computer techs dudes are working on it but without a way to recharge my battery, blogging might be a little more difficult.

Uganda Journal #1: Uganda redux

I will try and post regularly throughout this next month in East Africa. I am also keeping a personal journal. At times I will post those entries (or edited versions of such), which will be marked as Uganda Journal Numbers, as this one is.

December 9, 2009. Kampala.

Got into Kampala last night. Barely made my connection in London Heathrow and so what I figured might happen, did happen – my bags are still in London. In all the international flights I've taken in the past five years this is the first time this is happened, so I figure I was due. There’s not another flight for a couple days so I’ll have to make do with the one spare t-shirt I had in my carry on. At least I have my laptop and most of my university notes so I can make some headway on my schoolwork in the mean time.

Matt picked me up from the airport but of course it took me longer to get out of the baggage area because it took a while to file the paperwork for my lost bags. Our taxi driver, Charles, the same guy who drove us in last time, then insisted on finding “pressure” for the tires. This took some time at 12:30 at night – fully functional gas stations are a tough find at any time of day - and only prolonged the trip in from Entebbe to Kampala.

Driving in was a surreal experience, partly because my reality was blurred having been in airports and airplanes for over 24 hours. Mostly, however, it was strange because it was so familiar. Having spent three months here earlier this year, Kampala is a place that is not quite home but is engrained in my consciousness as places I recognize. Other such places include Berlin and Hanover in Germany, Bangkok in Thailand, and Ottawa, Churchill, and Kississing Lake in Canada. Returning to any of those places would I would imagine would inhibit a similar feeling. I say they are not quite home but somehow they are all as a part of who I am as Winnipeg is.

I woke up this morning to the caw-caw of birds and the sound of pavement being swept by a straw broom. Despite my exhaustion I only slept four hours. That, I’ve found over the years, is an odd byproduct of jetlag and lengthy travel – being tired but not being able to sleep. It’s just about 9am here in Kampala and I’m sitting in Matt’s apartment with a freshly cracked beer and craving a cheeseburger.

I am going to use these next few days to accomplish a few things.

1. Probably most importantly, get my luggage back. I’m not going to get very far without it.

2. Finish my responsibilities from my university life in Canada – one politics exam, one paper on conflict and culture, one letter of recommendation for a professor seeking tenure, and half of an article for a peace journal newsletter. The most trying part of this most likely be finding a solid enough internet connection to successfully send Word files.

3. Rekindle old connections and meet old friends and coworkers.

4. Spend as much time as I can with Matt. It’s become apparent that after all the two of us have been through, both working in the remote fishing lodge industry in northern Manitoba and here in East Africa, he is my closest friend. I would take a bullet for him without batting an eye and recent circumstances in his life have left him, as I would imagine such happenings would leave any person, feeling lost and unsure about what life is about. I sincerely hope that over the course of the next few weeks we will both be able to come to at least a basic understanding of why, in the general sense, we are here.

5. Develop a game plan for the next four weeks. It will most likely be some time before I make my way back to East Africa and I want to take in as much as I can here. Initially, I imagine this will involve a few good weekends out in Kampala, some hands on work with Uganda Hands for Hope in the Namuwongo Slum, and some travel in the region – potentially to Gulu in northern Uganda and south to Rwanda.

There is also the question of how I want to document the next month in terms of writing, video, and photographs. I purchased a camcorder before I left Canada as well as a number of disposable cameras I plan on giving to a select few people in Namuwongo, should they agree, in an effort to document their daily experiences from their own eyes. Last time around I created a promotional video for Hands and I wonder if an updated version of such could be done again. I have a few ideas, including creating a series of shorter videos that could be posted to YouTube, both on the programs facilitated by Hands and on whatever adventures ensue in the coming weeks. There is also the question of journaling (always something I plan to do when I travel but rarely carry out throughout the duration of a trip) and the prospect of developing a feature article for the student newspaper at University of Winnipeg.

Today I am going to try and knock off as much of my school work as possible. We’re meeting up with some people tonight, and probably for the next three or four nights, so I would like to get as caught up as I can before things get busy. I think I can get everything but the take home exam done today, although the conflict paper I might hang on to for a day or two so I can reread and edit. I might make my way down to Bubbles, an Irish pub and expat hangout, this afternoon to use their internet.

I need a shower.

Peace and love from Kampala,

James

The penny drops - Looking at the education process

I was reminded today of the importance of the education process and the possibility it has to uniquely shape individual lives.

To close a course on conflict and culture my professor asked the class, as a closing ritual (ritual being one of the key topics we covered during the term), to bring one half page designed in such a way through words, drawings, pictures, or symbols on a theme the class developed earlier in the week: Breaking Barriers Through Change. How you wanted to represent the topic was up to student.

Today, the class spent an hour, our chairs arranged in a circle, presenting our designs and explaining what they meant. It was evident that for many of us the class had struck a certain chord and had changed our perceptions of the world around us. It was a borderline emotional experience and an incredible testament to the professor's ability to facilitate a class to the point where it takes on a life of its own. The half pages were taken from us at the end of class and will be returned tomorrow, compiled as booklets for everybody to take home.

It was not typical way to close a university course.

"I'm not going to talk very much," the professor said. "It's more important at this point that you do."

Those who are accustomed to the usual class setting where the dissemination of knowledge from one mouth to many notebooks is the norm may feel uncomfortable with something like that and might call it unprofessional.

I call it unconventional, but innovative.

I have less notes from this class than from any other I've ever taken but yet I feel like I have learned much more. There are concepts here that I will take with me for the rest of my life. It is hard to argue that there is far more merit in genuinely gained knowledge than in a three-inch binder full of hastily scribbled notes.

Also, this is a class where I know everybody's name and at least a little bit about them. This occurred through class discussion and in-class group work assignments. There a few other classes I have where I can say I've been able to meet everybody in the room. Here I have 25 acquaintances I didn't have before.

The point here is that we need to rethink how we educate ourselves. Too much time is spent talking about grades, papers, and exams, and excuses for why you got a B instead an A. Not enough time is spent actually learning from each other, teaching each other, and genuinely grasping concepts and ideas that you did not have a handle on before.

Earlier in the semester the class talked about "The moment when the penny drops", that "Aha!" moment where you find get it. These are moments of revelation and excitement. They can be daunting as you quickly realize what you believed for so long needs to be changed and that you are entering new mental, emotional, and academic territory.

In short, today ended up being a general discussion of those moments and by the end of the hour there may as well have been a pile of pennies in the middle of the room.

University needs these moments of sharing, community, and reflection. University needs these classes that educate you in such a way that you can take what you studied in class and apply it to the world outside. University needs these kinds of professors who can breathe life in a classroom and elicit knowledge, not simply divulge it, allowing their students to genuinely understand.

University should be about breaking barriers.

I believe the barriers we need to be breaking are of our own construction and the changes we should be experiencing must come from within ourselves. If, by the end of the semester, there isn't a pile of pennies on the floor, you may have to ask yourself, What are we really doing here in the first place?