In America, Everything is for Sale - How Uganda is Different

On Saturday J and I went to Garden City in search of supplies to carry home the art we purchased here. We purchased vellum at Aristoc to place between the canvases when we roll them up and we needed a tube to place them in, which we thought we might find at the FedEx stand at Uchumi. Two employees sat behind the FedEx counter with a triangular sort of tube standing upright between them.

“Hey, can we buy that tube?” we asked.
“The what?”
“The tube. Right there.” We pointed.
“You want this tube?”
“Yes, can we buy that, please?”
“You cannot buy it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s for shipping.”
“But we just want to buy it off you.”
“It’s only for shipping.”
“We can’t buy it?”
“You’ll have to go to Serena offices and ask.”
“We can buy a tube from the Serena office?”
Big shrug.
“But if we had something to ship in that tube, we could have it?”
“You have something to ship?”
“Yes, but it’s at home. Can we take the tube home and pack it up and then bring it back?” Which was obviously a total lie, except that they believed us.
“Of course. Here you go.” And they handed us the tube. For free.

We wanted to give them money, we really did.

Boda Drivers Beware

With less than one week left in Uganda, I find myself with the overwhelming urge to gently nudge any number of the boda drivers I pass on the road with the bumper of my car. I want to gently nudge them and watch them tumble into a ditch – gently – on the side of the road. I don’t want bloodshed or injuries of any kind; I just want to show them who’s who. Put them in their place – namely, next to their crappy bikes on the ground.

Why do I find them so infuriating? Is it because they appear to show such ownership of the road when their bikes can barely top 25 km/hr? Because they are so unpredictable, with their tendency to signal a turn across oncoming traffic after they’re already halfway through the intersection? Because I feel I often put my life in danger trying to pass them, only to come to a halt in an inexplicable jam a few kilometers on and have them pass me so easily, zooming off into the sunset while I’m stuck behind some twat who can’t figure which lane to be in to turn left (or, somehow more disconcertingly, which lane to turn right)?

And yet I find the winter parkas the boda drivers wear so endearing. Odd.

This isn’t road rage, exactly. The urge to play bumper cars sits quite calmly with me. It just seems like it would be so easy. The boda drivers are just there, in vast numbers, asking for it, with ridiculous things piled behind them – Nile perch the size of deer, mattresses, stacks of chairs, metal containers of milk, jumbles of children without helmets. So maybe it’s a good thing someone is coming to buy our car this afternoon.

Sunday

It’s funny. I woke up early Sunday morning and went out onto the porch of our little cottage at Ndali Lodge where we spent the weekend (more on that later) to read while I waited for our absurdly good coffee to be delivered at 8:00 AM. That morning I finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (I finished it weeping, no weeping – again, more on that later) only to find J and myself later in the day on an epic and depressing road adventure of our own. It was the day of the road.

After arriving at Ndali on Friday afternoon, Saturday we passed by the car and saw that we had a flat tire. We put on the spare (and when I say “we” I mean the four lovely men who work at Ndali) and on Sunday morning J and I drove into Fort Portal on our way back to Kampala to patch up the tire. They found the nail and fixed the puncture and put the tire back on the car. Good to go.

Two hours later we were on the side of the road with the same flat tire. We put the spare back on and drove forty kilometers to Mubende. Here they found a second nail – had it been there all along or was it a brand new nail? – and we were told we needed a new tube inside the tire. An hour later we were back on the road and moving right along.

We felt confident about the car and let me tell you why. Last week J took the car in to get fully serviced in anticipation of selling our car in the next couple of weeks. Among other things we fixed the passenger side door handle so you no longer need to roll down the window and open the door from the outside to let yourself out; we reattached the speaker wires on the driver’s side; we had the radiator sealed so it no longer leaked fluid and overheated.

So when we ended up on the side of the road – again – with the front of the car smoking just outside of Mityana and only about 50 kilometers from Kampala, it was a bit of a surprise. The sealant on the radiator had busted open and the radiator was as dry as a bone. We sat on the ground and waited for the car to cool off. (We had some cooling off to do ourselves.) Eight hours later (it should have taken five hours, tops) we arrived back home to two whacked-out cats who were not altogether pleased with us for leaving them alone inside for two days.

Now, who wants to buy our car?

Shoddy, Shoddy

Last night J and I went out for Thai food at the Metropole Hotel on Acacia Avenue. We planned on eating on their deck, under the stars, overlooking the golf course, only to find upon arrival that the deck was under construction. How, after having been open less than six months, do they already need to completely redo their deck?

The Other Kind of Africa Day

V and S flew home to Idaho yesterday and J and I sat around watching Friday Night Lights (the TV show, not the movie) having no idea what else to do with ourselves now that the house was empty again. This morning I dusted off my desk and now Sarge is napping next to the computer, resting her head on half the keyboard, occasionally opening one eye when I reach for the delete or return keys and disturb her nap. How easily we fall back into our routines—and how much more gratefully so after a long break. What had once become commonplace, almost boring, now seems delightful again. One day I am watching a family of lions dozing in the shade of a tree, the next I am back at my desk writing a novel (this might not sound like heaven to everyone, but it is to me). It’s enough to make a girl feel downright content.

An Africa Day

I have posts, I do. The Internet at Kabira is down. Bubbles' gate was closed and supposedly there's another entrance, but I couldn't find it. Now I'm at Protea and my pictures won't post, I assume because the connection here is so bad. Tomorrow I'm heading to Murchison Falls with V and S. Probably won't be able to post again until next week.

Am I making excuses? Hell, yes, I'm making excuses. If I'm going to have an Africa Day, so are you.

Africa: Where Clothes Come to Die

These are the buckets in which Joan washes our clothes:


This is the clothesline on which our clothes dry:


After eight months in Uganda, we have holes in everything (the discoloration is a mystery to me as Joan does not use any bleaching products when she washes; notice also the distortion in the neckline, many of my crewnecks have become V-necks):


Shoes are no exception, though obviously the holes in our shoes have nothing to do with the buckets and the clotheslines. But we did quickly learn never to leave canvas shoes outside. Don't ask me what eats the canvas, but something does:


These were so beat up, J left them in Egypt:


On the bright side, it seems that our bags will be significantly lighter when we return from Uganda. More room for salad tongs and animals made of wire and beads!

Eulogy for Pants
In late 2001, when I was preparing to leave Boston and move to New York, for the first time in my life I paid over $100 for a pair of jeans. They were a pair of Sevens, when Sevens were still new and the fact that a pair of jeans could make someone’s ass look that good was a phenomenon.

I had my friend B. with me. B. is the person you want with you when you are buying a pair of jeans, or any article of clothing really. B. was born with fashion magic embedded in her little stubby fingertips. When you try something on in the store, she can tell if it’s something you’ll want to wear every day for the rest of your life or if you’ll wear if once and then regret ever buying it. It’s one of her many gifts.

B. sent me into the dressing room with a stack of jeans and when I came out in the black Sevens, I cried, “They’re too tight!” and B. said, “They’ll stretch!” and I said, “I think I need a bigger size,” and B. said, “Don’t do it.” And because I trust B. with my fashion life, I took her advice. She was right. (She’s always right.) They were the perfect pair of jeans for three years.

Then they stretched a little too much and they became Sunday jeans. Soft and comfortable, they were more soothing than a VitaWater and bagel sandwich when I had a hangover on a Sunday morning.

A few months before leaving New York to move here, small holes developed in the crotch. It seems the pants wanted only to live in New York. I sewed the holes shut and continued to wear them. After each washing here, the holes slowly grew larger, burst their amateur darning, and morphed into a monster shredding (recently patched):



It was the spring of 2002, a few months after I arrived in New York, and I took my measly publishing paycheck to a consignment store called Tokyo 7 in the East Village, which sold only lightly worn designer clothing. There I bought my first pair of Marc Jacobs pants for $50. They fit like a dream, had a nice texture to the fabric, were just a little bit short in the leg, which I liked. They looked amazing with flats.

There were no hints of rebellion. One day the crotch simply opened up. I search for a way to fix them, but the tear was not a simple rip along the seam, but had started there and exploded into a complete disintegration of crotch:


So, is it me? Is it my crotch?

Or is it Africa with its lack of washing machines?

Or is it the pants companies, purposefully distressing the fabric in the crotch so it wears out in two to three years, forcing customers to return to them over and over?

Who do I blame, third world Africa or corporate America? I suppose that’s going to depend on my mood.

Or am I just asking too much of my pants?

Interrogated

Last week I met a friend at Efendy’s for dinner. Efendy’s is a Turkish restaurant located in Centenary Park, an area devoted to five or six restaurants across an expanse of greenery. As I pulled into the drive, I was stopped, for the first time, by a guard.

Me: Is everything okay?
Guard: Everything is okay, maybe.
Pause.
Me: Okay.
Guard: Where are you going?
Me: Efendy’s.
Guard: Are you carrying any firearms?
Me: (laughter, then realizing he is being serious) Oh, no firearms.
Guard: Now everything is okay.

The system does not exactly seem foolproof, does it?

Response

In the Letters section of the Daily Monitor, the paper includes SMS feedback to specific questions. Yesterday the question was, “What’s your view on gays and lesbians’ demand for their rights?” I thought I would share a few of my favorite responses, so you could get the tenor for what people are saying in these parts:

“Human Rights Watch should know that nobody can have rights do wrong! Homosexuality is worse than Osama and nuclear combined together, all able bodies should fight that witchcraft.”

Come again? The real tragedy here is this person’s lack of command of the English language. Education breeds understanding, no?

“There should be specific anti-homo law, like the anti-terrorism law and also set up a gay crack unit to prohibit the media from giving them publicity.”

Um, dude, there is a specific anti-homosexuality law. This is a big reason why the gay community has no rights in this country. Which is why you’re being asked to respond to this question.

“It’s a shame to legalise such. That behind thing is very dirty.”

And now my blog is very dirty.

“These gays and lesbians all over the world are unbelievable. In science we learn that same charges/poles repel as unlike ones attract. So?”

So…No, I’m still lost.

After reading the paper, I picked up Vanity Fair from July of this year, the special issue dedicated to Africa, which a friend recently lent us. And now I’m going to include a quote from that issue, from the Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa:

“I come from a situation where for a very long time people were discriminated against, made to suffer for something about which they could do nothing—their ethnicity. We were made to suffer because we were not white. Then, for a very long time in our church, we didn’t ordain women, and we were penalizing a huge section of humanity for something about which they could do nothing—their gender. And I’m glad that now the church has changed all that. I’m glad that apartheid has ended. I could not for any part of me be able to keep quiet, because people were being penalized, ostracized, treated as if they were less than human, because of something they could do nothing to change—their sexual orientation. For me, I can’t imagine the Lord that I worship, this Jesus Christ, actually concurring with the persecution of a minority that is already being persecuted…I think God is weeping. He is weeping that we should be spending so much energy, time, resources on this subject at a time when the world is aching.”

Why the Red Pepper Sucks

Saturday morning J and I stopped by the side of the road to buy the newspapers from a guy. We asked for the Daily Monitor and the New Vision. He was out of the New Vision, but brought over a Red Pepper and, for amusement, we took that instead. (Newspapers are less than a dollar and cost the same on weekends as they do during the week.) I had read the Red Pepper only once before. It’s a gossip rag, total garbage, but the one other time I had read it, I remember being impressed with its treatment of women. They seemed more comfortable with modern female roles than most other media.

I’m not sure where that came from. The Red Pepper is basically pornography. A columnist called the Hyena describes incidents in which he “shafts” women because they just can't stay away from him - it's all clearly fiction. Which is whatever, as far as I’m concerned. It is what it is. The worst part about the Red Pepper is its treatment of the GLBT community.

A few weekends ago I was talking to a friend who told me the Red Pepper had published a list of homosexuals in Kampala, most of which suffered much abuse and many of which also left town. I remember my friend adding that it was only a matter of time before they did it again.

Well, they’ve done it again. In Saturday’s paper we noticed an ad for Sunday’s paper, which promised to out the 500 homosexuals living in Kampala, their full names and addresses, where they work and what cars they drive. We bought the paper again on Sunday; the list included some 50 names with the promise to continue it next Sunday.

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda and many people really believe it’s a sin. There has been a lot of controversy over it recently (you can read about some of it here) which I suppose is what prompted the Red Pepper’s repeat performance. What really seemed to irk the paper was the image of a party of homosexuals sitting around patting themselves on the backs for evading the media. A war between the press and the gay community in which the gay community thought they were winning. So this is why the Red Pepper is really going to show them. The paper also portray gays as modern day vampires—insanely rich, intelligent, beautiful, well-dressed, love to party, and constantly trying to lure non-gays into their clutches. Like anyone can be turned gay.

The whole thing is beyond absurd. A few choice snippets so you all can see how sick the Pepper is:

Under the heading “Characteristics of a Gay Man:”
“—They rarely get drunk for they are always watching for their prey
“—If they spot a sexy looking man who is not a gay they will make sure he becomes one of them
“—They watch beauty contests simply to learn how to walk.”

But this is my favorite
“—If you get used to hanging with them you can tell that you are gay. They are sexy, smart, sharp, handsome, loaded, and stylish; they know all the designers in the world.”

Well, then, I must be gay. Who knew?

The Garbage Saga Continues

Some of you may recall my run-in with Bin-It, one of the local trash collection agencies in town, and how I eventually gave up on them in favor of Simon, a man who works on the grounds of our apartment complex. Simon picks up the trash every day, or at least every day we have trash to put out. We leave it right in front of our apartment and it’s rarely there longer than 30 minutes before Simon sees it and takes it away for us. It has been a very convenient arrangement.

A few weeks ago a man came banging on our gate one Saturday afternoon. He told us he would like to arrange to pick up our trash. We told him we had a guy and we didn’t need his services. He told us his company had all the legal rights to central Kampala and using anyone else was illegal.

“It’s illegal for us to use Simon?”
“That’s right.”
“We’ve been living here for four months, where have you guys been?”
“I have been by, often, but no one is ever home.”
“I work from home,” I said, “I’m here every day. You’ve never come by.”
“I am here now and you must fill out a contract.”
“We’ve paid our other guy through the end of the month. Why don’t you come by in a few weeks when we’re ready to start using you?”

The guy seemed to fall for this and he went away; we figured we’d see him a few months later and we could maybe use the same trick again. But he came back right on schedule. Simon seemed to take the news alright. With our new service, we must use the trash bags they give us and they only come twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. They give us one trash bag at a time.

Last Friday, we loaded our trash bag and put it out back of the apartment. Monday and the garbage was still there. J called and yelled at them. The guy came by in the afternoon and apologized. There was a new guy working the grounds and he didn’t know which house was ours. He had a gray bag with him, which I assumed to be ours as he said he had picked up out back. A few minutes later I walked up to the car to head out for a few hours and there was our trash bag from Friday.

They’d picked up the wrong bag. Where the hell they got this other bag, I have no idea. It’s beyond inept.

Oh, Simon, how I miss you.

The Goat Races

The web site wasn’t lying. The Goat Races was a total scene.

Saturday morning proved unpromising weather. A low haze had been hovering over the city since the night before and it was muggy and felt like rain. It also smelled bad. But by the time we arrived at the Speke Resort—sans sunblock because we’re really stupid—the sun was shining over the lake and we were sweating before we reached the racetrack.




It’s a rare occasion to dress up in Uganda. Even at the nicest restaurants you can wear pretty much whatever you want. But there was a best dressed contest at the Goat Races and people went all out. If I were a judge, I would have voted for the Casino Simba dancers to win.



But seriously, the categories included Best Dressed Male, Female, Couple, Child, and Best Hat.






The races ran shockingly on schedule. The track was a furlong and about 10 goats ran in each race. A barrier pushed the goats around the track when they proved reluctant to run on their own, which was most of the time. The goats had names like The Viking, Glavanized Sheet, and Cell Phone.



It was a fantastic place to people watch, eat some Turkish food, and drinks lots and lots of beer while getting entirely sunburned.

Pulled Over

I’ve just made it through the worst of the potholes on Prince Charles Drive in first gear. I shift into second, up a small hill, into third gear as the last of the potholes passes underneath the car’s carriage, and I’m about to really open the old Escudo up in anticipation of the good, long stretch of pothole-free pavement all the way to the bottom of the hill and the turn onto Kololo Hill Road. But then there are three police trucks on the crest of the hill and one of the policemen standing on the side of the road is waving for me to pull over.

It’s my first stop by a policeman! (J has been pulled over four times—more on that in a future post.) Will he ask for a bribe? I’m tingly with anticipation.

“Hi,” I say.
“Fine, thanks,” he says.
I have yet to figure out a response to this so I just sit there.
“Routine check,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
Again, I sit there. It’s unclear what is expected of me. In the past this has simply meant they look in all our windows.
“May I see a photocopy of your driver’s license?” he says.

No one carries the original. It would just get stolen.

He studies my international driver’s license and looks unconvinced of its validity. My game plan is to be cheerful so I continue to smile.

“Safe journey,” he says and hands back the photocopy.
“Thanks,” I say and am almost disappointed that he has not asked for a bribe. Not that I would have given him one, but I am slightly offended that he didn’t even ask. However, unlike some of the other experiences, this appears to be a legitimate operation. The vehicles are all clearly marked as police vehicles. The officer wears a uniform with a name tag. There is not a rifle in sight.

Before I finish replacing my license in its envelope, the officer says, “Wait! Not yet,” and looks in the way back where I have three jugs of water I have not yet carried into the house from an earlier excursion to the grocery store. Can these be considered dangerous? Is he going to take my water into custody?

But no, he says, “Safe journey,” again and sends me on my way. I barely get the car into fourth before it's time to go back up the hill.

Monday

The water is back on after 36 hours without. It is so satisfying to flush the toilet. Sarge has pooped in the tub instead of her litter box. Again. J takes a turn cleaning it up and I am immensely happy. Oh, Monday, happy waste disposal day. I drive J to work before the jam. At home, I sit at the computer and attempt to write but Bea requires attention. She sits at my feet whining, she walks on the desk and knocks piles of books and magazines and papers over, she itches her chin on the edge of my laptop and whines some more. We walk outside looking for Sarge, but once we find her Bea is still not satisfied. She looks at me and whines. I take her into the empty room and she chases the laser pointer until we are both tired of it. I put an empty cardboard box in the middle of the floor. Thankfully Bea and Sarge never tire of an empty cardboard box. At the mall, the bookstore is closed until noon for restocking so I sit in Aroma Café drinking coffee and reading Blood Meridian. I buy groceries and still it is only 11:45. A group of Scottish tourists/aid workers in light blue polo shirts with Uganda 07 printed on the back seems to be following me around. After the café and the grocery store, they also wait outside the bookstore. I have decided that Helen of Troy might make an appearance in my novel, so once inside I search for anything by Homer or some sort of compendium of Greek mythology, but all I find is a coffee table book of World Mythology; the entry on Troy is one column long. Thank god for the Internet. It’s raining so Joan has hung the laundry in the bathroom to dry. There is a pile of dead and dying caterpillars in the yard. Again, I sit down at the computer but by this point Joan is finished for the day so I drive her to the taxi stand. It starts raining again and I have no umbrella for her and she tells me the boda driver is going to charge her more money so I give her more money because I am a sucker. At Kabira the parking lot is blessedly empty; the school is on break for five weeks. I roll up my pants and splash through the mud. The bartenders greet me with smiles; I come here every day.

Scandal

A pastor was arrested at the airport in Entebbe for trying to bring one of these machines into the country. He wore it under his clothes and used it to send an electric charge through parish members so they think they have been struck by God, or something.

The Larva Room

AKA my writing room. I was too embarrassed to write about this before, thinking you might pass some sort of judgment on my housekeeping abilities, or worse, Jo.’s, but the truth is my office has bugs, not just bugs, but pre-bugs.

Shortly after I returned from my trip to the States last month, I went into my office one morning to get back to work on the novel after a three week break. I opened the curtains. I plugged in my computer (the battery now lasts about five minutes before dying), and, as usually happens when I first sit down to write, I stared off into space. Or rather, I looked around the room, thinking about one thing or another, until my eyes settled on the base of the curtain where I saw something gray clinging to the fabric. Was it a hairball of cat fur? I got up from my seat to take a closer look.

Oh, how I wish it had been a hairball. Instead I found a cocoon.

I opened the curtain a little wider. There was another cocoon. And another. Six on one half of the curtain, two on the other.

I was utterly skeeved out. As one friend noted, don’t they just open up into pretty butterflies? Okay, yes, but eight hairy cocoons holding dark slimy budding creatures inside my little sanctuary are not pretty creatures. It means my room is dirty. And moist. Because don’t cocoons like dark, dirty, moist places?

I texted J in a panic. In his response he seemed infinitely more calm than I thought he had the right to be; he told me to get out the bug spray, the rubber gloves, and a whole lot of paper towel. Which, feeling only slightly absurd, I did.

I check the curtains daily. The cocoons have not returned—at least not on the fabric. I found a small one this morning on the runner track the curtains hang from. I know you’d all like to see pictures, but it’s just too gross for me to document. I’m embarrassed by the cocoons.

The other morning while I was brushing my teeth, J called me out of the bathroom. “Do you want to see something gross?” Obviously I don’t want to see something gross, but it’s impossible to turn this question down. As soon as I said, “No,” I was running out of the bathroom before J could destroy whatever it was and I lost my chance to see. I found him studying something on the wall of—where else—my office. There were small little specks of bug clustered in the middle of the wall. At first I took them for the tiny little ants that we occasionally see on our deck devouring a dead cockroach (our apartment is awesome, really), and so I asked, “What are they eating?”

“They’re not ants,” J answered. “They’re larvae.”



And indeed they weren’t moving and eating like the little ants do, they were little tiny larvae that would soon erupt into I don’t want to know what.



The rest of the walls were clear, but when I came home later that afternoon, two more larvae spots had sprung to life on the opposite wall.

Now the whole room requires a routine check for living things of any kind. I just hope my writing flourishes so well in that room.

The Worst Lunch

N.’s friend, S., arrived a few weeks ago to work here for the summer with N. and J. We used the opportunity to go out for Ugandan food, as I had only had it once but still hadn’t tried matooke, a dish made from mashed plantains eaten at most every Ugandan meal. We went to Ekitoobero, a much more formal restaurant than most Ugandan food establishments, but, well, easy.

We arrived at 12:20 on a Wednesday. The waitress came over to take our drink order.
Us: I think we’re ready to order our food, too, whenever you’re ready.
Waitress: I can’t take your order for another twenty minutes.
Us: Why not?
Waitress: The food is not ready yet.
Us: The food won’t be ready for twenty minutes? Or you can’t take our order for twenty minutes?
Waitress: The food is not ready yet.
Us: It’s 12:30. When do you normally start serving lunch?
Waitress: The food is not ready yet.
Us: But can’t you take our order now and then bring us the food in twenty minutes when it’s ready.
A shrug indicated her consent. We were pretty sure we would not be eating for a very long time.

We ordered. And we waited. The sun came out. We finished our drinks. We waited. It grew quite hot. The table was outside on an incline and I could not get comfortable since I felt like I was falling backwards and there was no back to the bench we were on to lean against. There was no sign of our waitress. It was past 1:00. We continued to wait. We searched for our waitress, but there was no sign of anyone who worked there.

Finally the food arrived around 1:30. The way it works is, you order your starches and then you order your “sauce,” which can be chicken, beef, goat, fish, or beans. They don’t scrimp on the starches. I ordered matooke, sweet potato, and chipati (a fried, flat bread) for my starches, and chicken for my sauce. We also order g-nut (groundnut, like peanut) sauce for the table for some flavoring since the matooke is quite bland. There was an enormous amount of food on the table, but I essentially ate only my starches with g-nut sauce (not terrible really, but not great either) because I could only wrest one measly piece of chicken off the bone.

The waitress cleared the plates and brought us dishes of pineapple and watermelon. A nice touch, we thought. The bill came. The total was unbelievable. More than what dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in the city cost us the night before. They’d charged us for the fruit – nice indeed. They’d overcharged us for our meals. We argued with the waitress and eventually got the bill reduced. But the one other time I’d had Ugandan food and had essentially the same amount of food, it had cost about 1000 shillings per person. This time it cost about 30,000 shillings per person.

We left lunch two hours after we arrived, sunburned, irritable, and a lot poorer than we expected to be. We learned the hard way not to take the easy way out at Ekitoobera.

While I Was Away

J didn’t want to worry me, so he didn’t tell me until we were in the car on the way home from the airport last Wednesday that our car got broken into while I was away. He had parked it in the parking lot at his office, where there were no guards, a problem they have since fixed. Our window levers, sideview mirrors, and anything else not bolted down were taken.

So J got everything bolted down. And had our license plate number etched into every conceivable scrap of metal that could be removed.

Notice the metal thing holding our sideview mirror in and the plate number etched on the bottom.



Here you can see these plastic covers are bolted down. (The etching should be just visible, too.)



Also, J had new locks installed. This is like a bicycle lock and, so I’m told, harder to break into.



For some reason, the thieves decided not to take our crappy stereo or our fuzzy dice with the American flag on them that N. gave to us.



Or, I suppose, the car itself.

It’s funny, because normally I’m the bad luck charm when it comes to things being stolen. I always imagined I would be the one this would happen to.

Spiderman, Interrupted

Sunday night we skipped the free film festival movies and opted instead to pay to see Spiderman 3 in the mall movie theater. Really really disappointing. Like, cover your eyes embarrassing. But I bet this has never happened to you: 45 minutes into the movie, the power went out. When we lived in J.’s house in the Bukoto neighborhood, the power went out often, at least every other day. It would often be out all night. But, since moving into our new place down the street from the U.S. Ambassador’s house, our power has only gone out once. I’ve gotten used to having power all the time.

You’d think the movie theater would have a generator.

We sat in darkness for about ten minutes before we decided to go out to the lobby and see what the deal was, if the movie was starting or we could get our money back and go home. In the lobby we found lots of other people from the audience milling about, but not anybody who actually worked at the theater. Did we forfeit our collective Ush33,000 and call it a night? Or wait it out? Or track someone from the theater down?

Before a decision could be made, the power came back on, we went back inside, and finished watching an unwatchable movie. I almost wish we had left when we had the chance.

No Use Crying Over 5,000 Shillings

Wednesday morning P. took me to Ggaba Road where many of the furniture makers have set up shop. I was looking for my writing table. I wanted a slab of wood on four legs, nothing elaborate, nothing fancy. At our first stop they had a six-foot long, light-colored table. Simple, clean, sturdy. We negotiated a price. I hadn’t planned on buying chairs with it because I thought I would get an office chair with an adjustable seat and lumbar support, but I decided to see how much two chairs would be with the table. I thought the price was too high so I told the guy, who was a kid really, maybe 17-years-old, that I would just take the table. Then P. suggested I take a look at the bookcases. Transport being extra, it would be a shame to decide later that we wanted a bookcase and have to pay the transport fee all over again. So I decided what kind of deal I could get on the table, two chairs, AND a bookcase.

P. and I agreed on a price, which P. then brought to the kid. Much arguing ensued. P. and the kid took the price to an older woman sitting in the back. She would not budge either. More arguing ensued. It amounted to a difference of Ush5,000 (about $3). I was about to give in. What was Ush5,000 to me? But then P. turned and told me we were going next door. He felt they were being unreasonable.

I was elated by this move. When my old job sent me to the Stanford Publishing Institute two summers ago, we had a session on negotiating taught by a professor from the Business School. I can’t say I have much experiencing negotiating, which in publishing falls more to the editors and agents than it did to me in my capacity in Marketing. Here I finally have a chance to put the skills learned at this Stanford negotiating session to the test. P. and I had maximum price and we were willing to walk away. I felt very proud.

We went next door (and when I say next door, keep in mind that there are no buildings and that everything is outside) where they had identical furniture. P. and I started bargaining for the same set of furniture: a table, two chairs, and a bookcase. We arrived at the exact same impasse of a USh5,000 difference between what they wanted us to pay and what we wanted to pay. I didn’t see how I could now pay this vendor the extra 5,000 when I wouldn’t pay the other vendor the same amount. I began to get uncomfortable. I couldn’t give in. We would have to walk away again.

And then, finally, the guy said okay. He would come down on the price. I repeated the amount. He shook his head, yes. I shook his hand and again repeated the price. Everyone smiled. I paid the man.

I walked over to where P. was arranging transport with the man with the pick-up truck. “Madam!” the man I had just given my money to called over to me. I walked back over. “You have not given me enough,” he said.

“That’s the amount we agreed upon,” I said.

“No, we have miscalculated. You must give us another 5,000.” He took out his cell phone and started entering in the price of each piece of furniture into the calculator function. He showed me the screen.

“Yes,” I said, “but you said you would give me a discount. We agreed on the amount.”

“We miscalculated. See?” He showed me the cell phone again. “We miscalculated. It is another 5,000.”

I called P. over. Another heated argument. It was never about the Ush5,000. It was the principle of the thing—the fact that he was trying to go back on his word, yes. But there also seems to be a tacit agreement that white ex-pats pay more than Ugandans. It’s always part of the negotiation process, trying to figure out how much a Ugandan would pay and then seeing how close we can get to that. Having P. there helps us get a better deal, definitely. But I still had the feeling these guys saw a white lady and thought they could milk me. Except that the first vendor had let me walk away with very little argument, so maybe I was wrong.

I don’t know what P. said, but soon enough we were able to walk away without paying anything more. We loaded the truck and left.

When we got back to the apartment, the driver and another guy unloaded the furniture. Transport was Ush12,000 and I planned on tipping each of the two guys Ush1,000-2,000. But I only had a 20,000 note. I had a 10,000 but no change. I scoured the apartment but couldn’t come up with anything. P. had no small change either. There was nothing else to do: I gave the two guys the 20,000—about 5,000 too much.

Pics of the new furniture tk shortly. Promise.