Entry nine - Natondome

I first visited Uganda four years ago, in the summer of 2002. I was looking for an excuse to travel to Africa, and found a volunteer organization called Crossroads Africa, which claimed to have been the model on which the Peace Corps was built. They send college students in groups to volunteer in a few places across the continent. Along with about a dozen others, I helped construct a building for a local NGO (non-governmental organisation) in Natondome, a village near Mbale in the east of the country. The NGO, the Foundation for the Development of Needy Communities (FDNC), was founded and is run by Sam Watulatsu. We stayed with his mother, Mai Jessica, for two months. Although our presence was very much appreciated, our activities were limited to carrying water from the well to the construction site and mixing cement for the construction workers who actually knew what they were doing.

Two years ago, I returned with my father as part of a trip around Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. In 2002, the building that we worked on was the only structure on FDNC's property, which Sam planned to turn it into a health clinic. Two years ago there was another building, which along with the other one housed a health clinic and vocational school for about 500 students. The first group that I visited with was apparently the second batch of Western volunteers hosted by FDNC. Since then, they have worked with around a hundred foreigners from numerous organisations. The real host has been Mai Jessica whose house is located next to school and clinic. ['Mai' is an honorific title meaning 'mother'.] This summer, one of her guests paid for her to visit the US, where she traveled around visiting some of the people who she hosted in Natondome, including myself.

Last weekend I visited again and found many changes. There are now six buildings, housing a clinic, a new primary school for children with disabilities, and a vocational school with classes in carpentry, masonry, tailoring, computers and agriculture. FDNC also supports a brass band made up of students from the vocational school. They recently were honored with an award that sent them to England to perform at a competition apparently attended by the Queen, and there are plans to perform soon in Germany. All in all, it is a fairly impressive organisation. (Their website is listed under the links on the right.)

Parents and students from Kisakye Isaac Memorial School for Disabled Chilren. (Mai Jessica is second from the left.)

Sam lives in Mbale town with his wife Irene and their two children, Samson and Blessings. Mai is a retired schoolteacher who now runs a micro-finance bank in the village and directs the school for disabled children with FDNC. She has taken care of a number of kids who have helped with chores in exchange for school fees. One of them is Moses, who was recently accepted at the Law Development Centre in Kampala (directly next to Makerere). Another is Rita, who is taking tailoring classes at the school. There are too many people to mention working at the school or with FDNC, not to mention other neighbours, friends, etc. There is currently a long-term volunteer from California living and working on the FDNC site while another one had recently arrived during my last visit.

The visit was fun, and I will certainly make many more in the next two years. I saw the Brass Band perform at one of Mbale's top-end hotels, where they recently started performing every week. The band also performs at weddings, after which Sam occasionally parades them spontaneously through town. This week they had to compete with the Manchester United versus Arsenal soccer match, but it seemed to go well anyway. [More on Ugandans' fascination with English premier league football in another entry.] After spending last Friday night in Mbale town with Sam, I went to Natondome on Saturday and left on Sunday afternoon. I saw all the changes to the FDNC site, met with a bunch of old friends, and enjoyed some great Ugandan home cooking. Someone from my group four years ago also happened to be passing through for a couple of days, which allowed us to talk about old times and marvel at the changes in the village. Our Friday night entertainment involved a beat-boxing competition with Moses and Rita as the resident volunteer played Rapper's Delight and Hip-Hop Hooray from his iPod.

View of the main road in Natondome

Natondome is a small but spread out village of about 7,000 people located about four miles from Mbale town. There is a main dirt road at its centre with a few shops, two schools (one primary, one secondary) and a large rock hill. Before Amin's expulsion of Asian-Ugandans, there used to be a quarry. Now people work individually chiseling away at it in order to sell gravel to people doing construction. I was told that it yields about 10,000 Ush (about 5 dollars) for a week or more of work. The town has grown slightly in the past four years. I was told that a natural disaster (I forget if it was a mudslide, flood, ?) forced many people living on Mount Wanale to move, and some of came to Natondome. There is a new church and a new bar, but otherwise things look similar. Aside from (but often including) teachers, shopkeepers and a few others, everyone in the village is a farmer. Matooke, sugarcane, cabbage, beans, potatoes, and numerous other crops are grown depending on the season. I do not know how much most people consume themselves and how much they sell to traders from town, but most people do a bit of both.

Mbale is located in the east of the country at the foot of Mt. Elgon. It is a fertile area growing matooke, rice, coffee, etc. and has a relatively high population density. The region is called Bugisu, at the centre of which is Mount Wanale (Bagisu are the people, their language is Lugisu, and the area is called Bugisu - they are also sometimes called Bamasaaba). In the history of the founding of Uganda, the east and north of the country were the most resistant to centralised rule. The area was "conquered" for Buganda, through whom the British asserted their authority, by Semei Kakungulu. Kakungulu was also responsible for "subduing" much of Western and Eastern Uganda. After attempting to establish himself as a semi-autonomous in many of the areas which he had conquered and each time being expelled by the British, he wound up in Mbale, discarded by the colonial government, whose authority he had been instrumental in establishing. Partly in protest to the British, he and his followers converted to Judaism, and their descendents continue to practice (I am told that they were recently recognised by the powers-that-be in Israel as "official" Jews). I hope to visit their community next week with a reporter who lives in my residence.

View of Mt. Wanale from Natondome

The majority of Bagisu (like Ugandans generally) are Christians, mostly Protestant. While Anglicanism is still the dominant denomination, other evangelical churches are growing rapidly. There are also many Catholics and Muslims. Every two years, there is a Bugisu cultural festival, which marks the opening of 'circumcision season', and is attended by tens of thousands of people or more. [Male circumcision (usually in mid to late teens) anchors Bagisu identity, and I have had to offend a few people by insisting that they not show me their circumcision pictures.] Sam is one of the organizers of the cultural festival, and though I arrived too late to attend this year, he said that it went very well - the best organized that he has seen.

There are about 700,000 people in Mbale (Bugisu) district, 55,000 of whom live in Mbale town. Mbale is fairly small but surprisingly lively, especially on the weekend. It is home to Nurali's restaurant, one of the better value-for-money Indian restaurants I have seen in Uganda. Next door is Club Oasis, the local bar/nightclub and the slightly more rough-and-tumble Mountain View Bar. There are the usual assortment of grocery stores and fast-food restaurants - though the only place in town to buy decent bread has shut down. There isn't a whole lot to do in Mbale, but it has a nice setting at the bottom of Mt. Wanale and is far more relaxed than Kampala.

Entry eight - Some hypocritical criticism of bazungu in Uganda

I moved into a new residence three weeks ago called "the edge". It is located in the center of campus between the faculty of arts building and the vice-chancellor's residence. The compound consists of a house and a couple of smaller buildings with a total of 10 rooms, 8 for guests and 2 for the managers (owners?) Peregrine and Edith. It caters to foreigners, most of who are here short-term (i.e. for a couple months or less). At the moment, (aside from myself, and the two Ugandan managers), there are two Canadians, two Tanzanians, two Americans, a Nigerian, and a German. It is comfortable and much, much cheaper than my former residence. The only drawback of the 'international atmosphere' is that it doesn't have a Ugandan social setting. My other option is the post-graduate residence, which houses graduate students only. Its main drawback, other than that I would have to move yet again, is (from what I hear) the lack of hot water. After a couple of cold showers while the hot water heater wasn't working at my old residence, this has become more of a priority. However, I am comfortable here for at least the next month.

In Toronto and New York I often found it difficult to avoid the hypocrisy of complaining about college kids and twenty-something hipsters taking over Kensington Market, Parkdale, Harlem or Bed-Stuy. Although I didn't live in any of those neighbourhoods, I had plenty of friends who did, and we often complained about "gentrification" and the decline of the neighbourhood-feel that attracted us to these areas. Needless to say, we were part of the problem we were groaning about and thus had little moral ground to stand on. My gripes regarding urban renewal in Kampala are slightly different, and thus carry another kind of dishonesty [more about this in another entry]. However, I am often annoyed by the attitudes of many (not all) bazungu in Uganda [see entry seven]. Although I try to avoid the attitudes that I complain about, I inevitably feel slightly hypocritical complaining about them. This is because the things that I am about to decry are manifestations of a 'mzungu discourse' that is very difficult to avoid. As a result, I am undoubtedly guilty of much of what I am going to condemn. However, as with the gentrification of Cabbagetown or the East Village, I am not going to let a little hypocrisy get in the way of a good old-fashioned rant.

First, every mzungu in Uganda is here for a reason. Almost none were born in Uganda or wound up in the country by chance. Everybody has paid their airfare to get here to do something. There are the tourists who hit the major tourist areas and mostly remain secluded in their hotels. There are the 'travelers' who rarely stay anywhere long enough to know what's going on. Among long-term residents and expats, there are the missionaries and other crusaders seeking to spread their message. There are aid workers of various sorts, some of whom are very knowledgeable and professional, and others who simply have a vague desire to 'help' others. There are business people out solely to turn a profit. There are the academics and researchers who are a bizarre breed in any setting. And there are the other assorted shady characters whose mission is unclear, and thus suspicious.

Many bazungu feel uncomfortable or afraid to go anywhere or attend any event that is not "mzungu-safe" as some of them say. While there are certainly some places that I wouldn't visit (nor would most Ugandans), there is nothing wrong or scary about going to a restaurant, concert, bar, shop, etc. with entirely Ugandan clientele. I have noticed others' discomfort in everywhere from seedy bars to ultra-posh restaurants, indicating that it has little to do with safety and more to do with social awkwardness. While many situations do create undeniable social, cultural or economic awkwardness, I think that much of this discomfort among bazungu that I have seen results from how they understand where they are.

The most common and perhaps most annoying perspective of many Westerners is that things in Uganda and Africa in general aren't normal. For example, yesterday when I mentioned to someone from my residence that I had gotten some brown bread, she informed me that it was "no good" because "it's not really brown bread". Four years ago, I heard a well-intentioned American tell his host that her neighbour's name was in fact Est-er not Est-ah. Indeed "brown bread" in Uganda does not resemble North American brown bread, and someone in America who spells her name E-s-t-h-e-r would likely pronounce it Est-er. However, these were not statements of difference or even expressions of preference. The people in these examples assumed that what they were most familiar with was the "correct" version and that Ugandan brown bread and standard Ugandan pronunciation were simply "wrong".

Similarly, I have heard many bazungu complain about how things in Africa simply "don't work". Some put a positive spin on this by declaring that it is amazing how people manage to cope in an environment where nothing seems to go smoothly. Indeed, many of the facilities and pieces of infrastructure that most Westerners take for granted do not function the way that they are officially supposed to. Broken traffic lights, potholed roads, and police 'corruption' - not to mention widespread poverty - are all supposed to be signs that Ugandan society is a "failure", or that it is far away from being "where it should be". This view is shared by many foreigners and Ugandans alike, and there are many reasonable justifications for this - e.g. it probably would be nicer if the traffic lights worked, roads were smooth, the police operated differently and people were less poor. Unlike the difference between American and Ugandan brown bread, the differences between American and Ugandan GDP and life expectancy are not neutral matters of preference or style; they are issues of life and death.

Of course, I do not object to the idea that things can or should change for the better. However, by thinking of things in terms of being "broken" or "not working", one understands them as being a wrong or abnormal version of something else. In order to understand why and how things work, and not dismiss them in a fervour of moral judgment, one naturally needs to start with things as they are, not as they "should be". Still, it seems that many foreigners are content to wonder how certain things can be so "wrong", without really wanting an explanation. (In African Studies we call this "Afro-pessimism". It competes with "cultural nationalism" - the premise that everything African is beyond criticism - for the most annoying understanding of 'Africa'.) Some Westerners have a miserable time here because they seem to understand everything around them as a failed version of what they are used to at home. However, the most rewarding experiences that I think most people have, come by accepting Ugandan society as normative, not as an undeveloped version of America or an exotic backwater.

The strongest objection to this view is that unpaved roads and corrupt police (by the way, I am not making any accusations against the Ugandan police department) are indeed problems for anyone who must live with them. Shouldn't we therefore understand them as 'problems' in need of 'fixing'? Perhaps a better model would be 'situations' that we would like to 'change', which requires some understanding of what the situation is, not simply what it is not. If you want to function in any society, you have to come to grips with how things are and live within their limits, even as you might be trying to change them. Otherwise, everything will appear as chaos, and dismissing something as incomprehensible chaos says more about one's ignorance and lack of curiosity than about what one is dismissing.

Entry seven - Food Overview

Kampala lies in the heart of the "banana belt" of southern Uganda. I have heard that there are over a dozen species of bananas in the world, and Uganda has at least three or four: bananas as Chiquita-buyers know them (which are called "ripes" in Uganda); a smaller version of these; plantains; and a slightly sweet type of plantain known as matooke (ma-toe-kay). Matooke, which look like unripened green bananas, is the staple crop of southern Uganda.

Compared with the national cuisines of its neighbours, Kenya and Tanzania, Ugandan food is generally pretty bland. Dishes usually consist of some combination of matooke, posho (corn meal), beans, rice, dodo (a very bitter kind of greens in salty water), chicken, goat or fish. These can be tasty and filling. However, needless to say, I try to add some variety every once in awhile. Eating options in Kampala vary enormously for eating out, and for cooking for oneself.

The area just outside of campus, Wandegeya, is a fast-food lover's heaven. With 24-hour places such as "Burger Corner" and "Chicken Tonight" all over the neighbourhood, it is always possible to spend a couple of dollars on chips (French Fries to North Americans - Freedom Fries to maniacs), a burger, roasted chicken, goat, fish, etc. (My current favourite is goat muchomo.) They do have some decent food, but the primary ingredient involved in grease, and a steady diet of it can be decidedly unhealthy and tiring.

Healthier and slightly cheaper options include restaurants and cafeterias selling "local food". Selection is usually limited, but it is good relief from fast food. In the main market downtown, you can also buy very cheap meals with matooke that is actually steamed (as it is supposed to be) instead of boiled. Many restaurants simply peel and boil matooke, which drains much of flavour and nutrients. The proper method of preparing it is to peel a hefty quantity, mash it together and wrap it in banana leaves. This bundle is then steamed over a charcoal fire for quite a long time. Add some beans, rice and groundnut sauce, and it makes an excellent meal.

There are also restaurants of varying quality and cost. There are enough well-to-do Ugandans for there to be plenty of places to drop 50 dollars or more for dinner. Below these are restaurants with mainly foreign clientele such as the French restaurant where I went a few nights ago with some people from my residence. It's not quite on par with another place that might be the Peter Luger's of Kampala, but Le Petit Bistro isn't bad. Even a Texan who went with us claimed that the steak was "slightly different from the stuff in Texas, but still damn damn good." I haven't explored many restaurants in Kampala, but they include Ugandan, Indian, Ethiopian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, French, Italian, etc. There are also a fair number of cafes, bakeries and ice cream parlours around town.

Eating in involves trips to the market and/or supermarket. Grocery stores and supermarkets have the usual variety of bottled water, condiments, sugar, salt, tea, pasta, cooking oil, etc. Imported goods are often slightly more expensive than in Europe or America while those made in Uganda or East Africa are more reasonable. However, the market is the best place to shop. Today I spent a total of 5,200 shillings (less than three US dollars) on 12 tomatoes, 4 green peppers, 12 small onions, a head of garlic, two avocados, two eggplants, 8 potatoes, 10 oranges, and enough beans for two or three meals. If you're polite, the seller usually throws in one or two extra of the smaller vegetables.

Contrary to logic, Ugandan oranges and tangerines are green or yellow - though imported orange oranges are available in some stores. The Ugandan variety are mostly used for making juice, as are passion fruits. Pineapples, papayas and mangos have much more flavour than those in North America, almost to the point of being unrecognizable. Even my fairly undiscerning palate can tell the difference between the fruit and vegetables at home (that were usually picked too early and shipped thousands of miles) and what I have eaten here, which is obviously all fresh.

Entry six - Mzungu

A striking difference between Dar es Salaam (the commercial capital of Tanzania) and Kampala for a Western visitor is the lack of "touts" (as the guidebooks call them) in Kampala. "Touts" (also known as papasi or ticks) are salesmen, hustlers and conmen who follow around newly arrived Westerners trying to sell everything from safaris to marijuana. Although the rapid growth of Uganda's tourism industry may change this, a tourist can wander around Kampala without much harassment. Instead, a white visitor can expect special attention mostly from children who frequently chant "Mzungu, how are you? Mzungu, how are you?" (It is more a chorus than a question.)

Mzungu is a word used throughout East Africa to refer broadly to Westerners. However, both its literal definition and popular uses illustrate its geographical, racial, cultural, historical and economic connotations. From what I have read, it is the noun form of the Kiswahili verb Kuzungua, meaning to wander aimlessly, and was originally used to refer to early European explorers. It thus contains a degree of mockery, which varies drastically depending on context.

First, mzungu is a racial classification. It refers to all people of European descent, including life-long residents of East Africa, while other foreigners, such as people from East Asia, are not included. However, it is not purely a 'racial' marker, at least as far as 'race' is understood in North America. African-Americans are included, occasionally differentiated as wazungu waafrikano, while light-skinned Africans, such as albinos, are not. The cultural aspect of the designation became clearer when a friend told me that, to use his phrase, "Westernized Africans" are often referred to, albeit disparagingly, as wazungu. The third aspect of this identity is class. When I asked a friend about what mzungu meant during my visit in 2002, he responded, "If my friend buys me an expensive meal, I can say that he is my mzungu."

As intriguing as the word's connotations appear, they have their obvious problems. Wealth and modernity are equated with 'whiteness' and 'Westernness', which are themselves conflated. As a result, "Africanness", which has been constructed historically as the inverse of Western, is equated with poverty and 'traditionalism'. Mzungu thus makes explicit the static differentiation between African and European identities, which is itself a familiar assumption in North America.

This does not reflect the reality of people's lived experiences, as illustrated by a couple of examples. First, most wazungu I have met in East Africa like African music, particularly what is labeled "traditional music". Though often performed at certain events, this type of music does not have nearly the amount of popularity among East Africans as does "Western" dance music, whether made by Africans, Europeans, Americans or Indians. Second, in areas such Kololo in Kampala or Msasani in Dar es Salaam, one can see the grandious wealth of many East Africans, far exceeding that of myself or almost anyone I know.

This illustrates two further points. One is that what many of us think of as "Western culture" is not confined to any geographical area known as "the West", or any people known as "Westerners". Likewise, what we often identify as "African culture" may be more familiar to someone in Canada than to someone in Uganda. This does not mean that people have "lost" their "true" culture or identity; rather it means that our understanding of their culture is hopelessly out of step with how they live it. An accurate representation of Western culture should include African drumming, while a similar assessment of African culture(s) should recognize that hip-hop and hamburgers are as legimately African as kora music or kola nuts (both West African, by the way).

The second point is that the view of Africa as a symbol of poverty out of place in "our" modern world is based not on reality, but on a preconceived idea of 'Africa' as 'our' opposite. Labels such as Africa, Asia or the Mid-East are so broad that they do not refer to anything real. Instead, as generalizations, they help us map out the world according to a series of predetermined ideas and images, which grossly distort our understanding of what any specific place is actually like. In order to conjure up the most foreign, incomprehensible image possible, everyone from Joseph Conrad to the The Economist usually picks Africa. However, Africa has always been and continues to be as much a part of the international economy and global culture as anywhere else. (The Congo River was an international religious and economic hub for four hundred years before Conrad wrote about it in Heart of Darkness, and The Economist's "Lost Continent" is as much a part of the world economy as East Asia or other apparently more economically successful areas.) Not to mention that not everyone in Africa is poor. As a Nigerian doctor living in my new residence wondered yesterday, "How can some guy who's sitting in a rat-infested trailer park in Texas or a crumbling project in New York City think that he is lucky not to be living in Kololo [an elite section of Kampala]?" The logic of the mzungu label (fusing being White, Western, modern and wealthy into one category), both mocks and reinforces this image, which is not always an accurate one in practice.

Entry five - Owino market and transportation

The assistant director of MISR, Patrick Mulindwa, has acted as my contact person in the absence of Nakanyike Musisi, the UofT professor who is also the executive director of MISR. In addition to helping me negotiate the web of school bureaucracy, he has introduced me to some of the people I will need to know at Makerere, shown me around campus and given some important, and amusing, tips on life in Kampala and at Makerere. Stanley, who is around my age, works in Patrick's office along with Gertrude, who is giving me lessons in Luganda.

Last week I went to Owino market with Stanley. Although I have been there before and enjoy the chaotic atmosphere, Patrick warned me about the some tricks that hawkers and pickpockets have supposedly used there. He described how one creative merchant sold several torn sport jackets to unsuspecting customers by carefully concealing the damaged areas. He also claimed to have seen thieves prick a man in the leg with a pin so that as he bent over to examine his wound they could reach for his money in his back pocket. The moral of these stories, he said, was that "people in the market don't care about anything except money and how to get it from you."

While bargaining is tough and there are undoubtedly a few pickpockets around, I don't think that these stories accurately reflect what Owino is like. It is certainly true that getting money is why everyone except the customers is in the market. However, rather than politely telling you that corporation X is giving you a ten-dollar surcharge for this transaction, sellers in the market extract these profits through the much more complicated, and challenging, strategies of personal interaction. Although there are 'standard' prices for most items (or at least prices below which a seller will not go), I noticed that neither Stanley nor anyone else I talked with about it spoke in terms of "the price". Instead they spoke of how much the seller thinks s/he can get from you, which does seem like a more honest way of thinking about economic interactions.

By speaking of "the price" we normalize what is in fact a contested issue. If 'the free market' functions by companies charging as much for their products as they think that consumers will pay, then the idea of a standard price (e.g. everyone knows that a can of Coke costs 1 dollar) does us "consumers" a disservice. It costs Coca-Cola less than a nickel to produce a can of Coke, but they have established a relationship in which they can get a dollar for it. Likewise, in Owino market, sellers try to establish a relationship in which their customers will pay 15,000 shillings for a shirt. (1,830 Ugandan shillings [Ush] = 1 US dollar) Since they do not have the same power that Coca-Cola has, they usually end up getting four or five thousand. This variation in cost corresponds with the microcosmic 'market forces' of the relationship between the seller and buyer. Understanding how much one pays for something in terms of "how much they can get from you" rather than "the price" was very helpful when shopping in Owino and is probably applicable to anywhere. Marx's quotation seems appropriate: "Money is a relationship between people masquerading as a relationship between things."

I let Stanley determine when was appropriate to buy something - which made for a longer trip than I expected. According to his advice, I didn't look interested in anything - since showing interest apparently gives the seller more bargaining leverage. After almost an hour of browsing and going through a similar routine with each seller in the shirt section, we found that I should expect to pay 5,000 Ush for a long-sleeve shirt and 4,000 for a short-sleeved one. In the end I got a couple of shirts and a few t-shirts, whose prices were less negotiable, at 1,000. Although I hadn't intended on getting them, I got a pair of shoes for 20,000.

Owino is a sprawling place that is easy to get lost in if you don't know its layout. It is located near the old stadium and taxi parks in a busy part of town. Clothes, shoes, electronics, cooking equipment, toys, live animals, and numerous other items each have their own section. In each one, the slightest hesitation usually leads to someone grabbing your arm with a "Yes my friend…" and an invitation to buy something quickly. There are numerous paths and alleyways throughout, each of which seems only to lead further and further into the market. Each stall has its own tin roof, but there is nothing covering the entire complex, except in a few sections.

After our excursion, we took a taxi back to the campus. I should say something about public transport. The main method of transportation is by 'taxi', which are 14-seat minibuses that cover nearly all of Kampala. Others cover most of the country as well. A trip within the city is usually around 500 Ush (30 cents). They all start in either of the main taxi parks near the market and stadium. At first glance as one walks downhill toward these taxi parks, they appear utterly chaotic. However, they are in fact highly organized and regulated, as each destination has its own location, while gatekeepers monitor and tax all vehicles entering and exiting. Throughout the parks, hawkers sell small items ranging from chewing gum to religious posters to women's underwear. Each taxi has a driver and a conductor who advertises the destination and collects fares. On shorter trips in areas outside of Kampala, conductors often cram as many people as will fit (up to 30). However, within Kampala and on long-distance journeys, the maximum capacity is 14 passengers - though the conductor pushes himself in as well. (Buses also go between major cities, but I have never used them).

Within Kampala there are two other forms of transport, boda-bodas and special hires. Special hires are like American taxis (though the cars are generally in much poorer condition). Drivers apparently keep as little fuel as possible in their tanks so that car thieves won't get far. However, as I found out once four years ago, they often don't keep enough to get to a gas station, meaning a slightly longer trip than expected. Both taxis and boda-bodas congregate around stores, restaurants and major buildings - though they do not ride around town looking for customers. Bodas are bicycle-taxis, which can be either motorized scooters or regular bikes. You sit on a cushion on the back and hold on as the driver weaves through traffic. I was told that they have been outlawed downtown after 11 p.m. due to numerous accidents.

Driving in Uganda is aggressive - to put it mildly. Bigger vehicles get the right of way, though all vehicles muscle their way into traffic in order to get anywhere. Rush hour in Kampala is much like it is in any other major city from what I have seen. Moving across town can take a couple hours if you don't take shortcuts, which are often jammed with cars themselves. Driving is on the left, and dividers are being put up on a few main roads in town in order to enforce this. Vehicles do not yield for pedestrians, or for anything else except for bigger more aggressive cars occasionally. Bodas weave their way through gaps in traffic that look too small for even the smallest of pedestrians. While accidents do occur more frequently than in North America, there are far fewer than one would expect, likely due to the amount of skill involved in getting on the road in the first place. I have no plans to do any driving in Uganda.