erin.

It is five hours from Kampala to Tororo. On long journeys, the matatus adhere to their fourteen-passenger capacity though with children, chickens and luggage there isn’t much of a difference. The air clears as we leave Kampala, and the stress of the city gives way to fields of maize, sugar cane and coffee. Every so often we pass through a town, the smooth cement facades of the center brightly painted with advertisements for juicy fruit, Bull detergent, cell phone companies. Women sit by the side of the road selling roasted bananas and quanqog, charcoal and bricks. Children herd goats twice their size, laughing.

Up until Jinja the road is decent – gravelly, and the matatu often skids, but adequately wide and consistently flat. Beyond Jinja, the road narrows considerably and as larger vehicles have right of way, we drive mostly on the shoulder at an angle that makes one think seriously of death. The road is pockmarked with craters, and our straight path becomes a roller coaster of back and forth as the matutu, whose shocks wore out long ago, swerves to avoid potholes, kicking up a red dust that settles thick on the skin. Too often the vehicles approaching in the other direction compete with our stretch of smooth tarmac, veering away two seconds too late for any comfort. We matatu passengers are reduced to bobble head dolls – to borrow Erin’s comparison – tossed about to the strains of Celine Dion. I am beginning to think that African standards of beauty – “you are so fat!” is the highest of compliments – were developed to protect the body from death by matutu ride…

–by the lovely Clara, who visited Jan ‘08

One needs six pairs of eyes to negotiate the streets of Kampala. One to eye the ground and be sure not to break an ankle on the worn, uneven strips of red clay that serve not as sidewalks but as displays for vendors hawking designer bags, plastic containers, shoes and ground nuts (not peanuts, Erin assures us, despite their suspicious similarities). Four pairs – forward, left, right, and yes, the back of your head – to avoid the very real possibility of death by transportation, and not just cars, but also bicycles and boda-bodas, matatus, towering buses and trucks filled with people. For the girl who struggles even to cross Thayer at Soldier’s Arch when class lets out, Kampala is a daunting proposition and I cling to Erin with my only pair of eyes as she slips effortlessly between engines and bodies – both perspiring slightly in the heat of the afternoon sun – on our epic journey to cross the street.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side! floats through my mind and I marvel that ever there was a time when I laughed at the then banal response.

The sixth pair – and truly one needs six just for this – is to see. The woman carrying a child in each arm while balancing a basket of golden mangos on her head; the boy on his bicycle piled with pineapples and a TV set; the man carrying not two, but nine foam mattresses on his head. Women sit and have their toes painted bright colors while their husbands’ shoes are polished. Children – vendors-in-training – balance pieces of cardboard staked with plastic bags of cheap vodka, matches, glitzy watches, lace panties, handkerchiefs, airtime. The sidewalks are crowded by phone booths, brightly painted with the price of a phone call to Nairobi or London and everything shimmers as if by magic in the smog-smeared air. There are so many people. So many people and such unimaginable chaos and I have the distinct feeling that even if sat on the same corner for a year, I would not be able to decipher the rules that to govern laughter here.

-by the lovely Clara, who visited Jan ‘08