Settling In and Sights

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When I jumped out of the van at the guest house, many of my companions were already checked in, and had slept through dinner. Groggy and jet-lagged we met and found that we were all curious, eager students (whether enrolled in school or not). I’m almost the oldest, but the leader of the trip is my senior by far more than her two years. The social dynamic of this group, which varies in age by twelve significant years (15 to 27), is going to be distracting for me!

I remember making a mental note that the city reminded me of Tena, Ecuador, a remote city skirting the edge of the Amazon. The smells were the same, alternating gusts of smoke: spicy and musky, then noxious burning trash. The open air markets late into the evening, selling bananas and fruits, but instead of chickens everywhere you turn, Kampala’s other staple are Irish potatoes fill white bags stacked on the red earth. Candles light the market, which illuminate the offerings from within the crates.

The guest house feels like a home, although all the corridors and stairs are quite confusing. We ate once everyone was awake, and I was soothed to find vegetarianism would not be a challenge. We ate roasted, peeled potatoes with sweet tomato sauce, white rice and wilted beet greens, with a simple and delectable pea and carrot stew over everything.

After the small talk, and covering our itinerary, everyone trooped to bed, and I pulled the mosquito net tight around my bed, crawled in, and allowed my one thought to penetrate: “I’m in Africa!” and that was what I woke to, right after giggles from the next room disturbed my sleep. And that’s never a bad way to begin your first full day on a new continent.

That morning we ate the staple breakfast of eggs with onion, tea, and pineapple. We were touring the city, while the rest of the group arrived. Along the drive we all gasped with glee at the traffic patterns and our excellent driver’s ease of negotiating the cars, which appear to operate on the honor code. There are no lights or signs, and many rotaries. Moses, like all the other drivers, understood implicitly the dimensions of his van, and thus the entrance to a rotary would look something like a delicate parking job. Inching forward while the car to your right parallels your progress, when an opening presents itself in moving traffic, nose the van into the main vein of movement, where everyone slows to accept the new vehicle. Because drivers are aware, and not in a huge rush, the system works wonderfully. Although be wary, when I saw slowly, this is a relative term- think about 20 miles per hour (about 30 kmh), with bumper to bumper intimacy, at all intersections.

There are surprisingly few accidents (about ten a week), and those that occur tend to be the fault of those operating the little scooters and mopeds who take advantage of the apparent omniscience of most drivers, and complicate the whole picture I just drew for you (so if you had an image of the rotary, add a moped to all gaps between cars over a half-meter wide, and that should provide the feel of Kampala traffic patterns). Oh, and it was a British colony, so steering wheels are on the right and we drive on the left. That made it all even more exciting.

Our first stop was the Baha’i temple, the mother temple of Africa. A beautiful structure on the top of a manicured hill, the octagonal temple has eight doors, which enter to the open room. All faiths are invited to pray, and the space, both elegant from hard woods and simple in design, asks for silence. So did the guide who gave us the history of the temple and the rules. The air is sucked up to the dome, an acoustic engine that seemed to echo and magnify the sound from my accidental push against a heavy wooden bench. The shriek of wood on stone tile filled the temple, and I felt it was time for me to go.

Our next stop was the King’s Tomb, which also happens to be the largest thatched hut in the world. UNESCO added the site to the World Heritage list in 2001. The Kabaka is the title of the kings in Uganda, or Buganda, the kingdom over which they preside. Around the tomb were houses, where wives live. The estate was bustling as women prepared for a celebration. Nothing special, the tour guide told us, they celebrate often. Given the colonial history and previous leaders, the kings have ended their political dominance, and reign as cultural figureheads. In order to appreciate the relative youth of Uganda as a republic, here’s a summation: Apollo M.O. Obote, as prime minister of the British colony who oversaw the country’s independence in 1962, carried out a coup against the Bugandan King, who served as titular president under British Rule, in 1966, and declared himself both president and prime minister. 

The tomb itself was massive, a great circle supported by fifty-two columns, for the fifty-two clans. The columns are wooden, and covered in the bark of the fig tree, which looks and feels similar to suede. We removed our shoes; the women wrapped themselves in cloth to give the appearance of a skirt, and entered the great room to the smell of dried thatch. A great stink, redolent of, I offer, toasted desert. It took me a while to think of that, and although I’ve never actually smelled a toasted desert, I also had never inhaled air wafting through that much dried thatch, and toasted desert sounded right. It was heady and old; warm even, from over a hundred years of sun exposure.

The floor was covered in woven straw mats, handmade by widowed queens, stacked over worn mats, and we were instructed to sit with our feet facing the door and our knees facing the tomb, a position of deference. There the tour guide continued his history, enumerating the artifacts around the wall of the tomb, and the collection in front of us. We sat a few feet from a raised section of the tomb, a symbolic line dividing the royal territory from the subjects.

Beyond the line were spears, pictures, and medals from European powers bestowed to previous kings. The first oil lamp brought to Africa, given to Zambia by Holland, was on display. Behind the altar of kings’ artifacts, rather near to the tombs, were curtains hung as dividers. Within the rooms formed by the dark, heavy cloths were widows’ sleeping quarters.

The construction of the place was impressive, especially the woodwork (see pictures). The continuation of the throne makes this heritage site fascinating as both a living (albeit impotent) example of the old culture, and a reminder of the ubiquity of the colonial presence.

We exited, talked with workers at the tourist office, and bought some batik paintings. Outside, children who must have escaped preparation duties were clamoring for pictures with us, oh the glee of digital cameras!

What a nice first day it was. But the second day, white water rafting the Nile in Jinja, goes up there on my list of best days ever.