Road outside our hotel with Mt. Elgon in background
Mbale was an interesting trip – it was great to get out of Kampala and see some of the rest of the country, even if there was very little time to really see the town or the countryside because we were, of course, working. Hence what I saw was limited to the view from the window of our car, or from the bus that my colleague Sharon and I took to get back home. Even still it was fascinating – I hate to use the term “real” Africa (the urban being just as “real” as the rural and home to far more people), but Mbale and the long road from Kampala conform to the image of Africa in the West. There were red roads and green fields, laughing children, women with bundles on their heads, poverty, chickens, cows, goats, and yes, grass-roofed huts.
This was all a bit of a contrast to Kampala – a cosmopolitan and sophisticated city with every modern convenience. Everyone has a mobile phone, internet access is everywhere (and although its slower than home, its not as bad as I had expected), and I couldn't tell you how many flat screen tvs I've come across. Everyone is glued to the British Premiership, a fan of either Man Utd, Chelsea or Arsenal, and crowds gather in bars and outside shop fronts to watch the games screened live on satellite from South Africa. The girls who work in the guesthouse are glued to Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, American Idol and, hilariously for me, Latin American telenovelas with names like “La Tormenta”, gloriously melodramatic and dubbed in bad English. Kampala's nightlife is hopping and four wheel drives are ubiquitously gridlocked in the horrendous traffic, driven not just by the ex-pats – muzungus, white people – or their drivers, but by locals.
All of this is camouflage. I've seen the shanty towns and the slums from the window of Margaret's car, and the children selling Chinese-made rubbish at traffic lights, and the marabou storks rummaging in the litter. When we left at 6.00AM to go to Mbale, I was shocked at the crowds of people already out on foot on the roads, but as the others explained to me, those who live hand to mouth on daily labourers' wages start working as soon as it gets light in order to make their day as long and their earnings as substantial as possible. But its so easy to forget all this when you live in Muyenga – which I could easily compare as an equivalent to Foxrock or Dalkey in Dublin – and work and meet with Ugandans who have university degrees and masters, often from abroad, and successful businesses and careers. I've been to two or three houses which would rightly be regarded as mansions in Dublin. I've been chauffeured around by private drivers, and have come to think of armed guards at the door as normal. And Muyenga isn't even the high-end area of Kampala; no embassies here.
Mbale was not like that, and it was refreshing. There was an affluent side to it – we hung out in the evenings at a swishy country-club style hotel with excellent food and a swim-up bar – but it was not the norm. The streets were heaving at all hours but there were very few cars, and rather than the hoards of boda bodas which buzz eternally around Kampala, bicycles with a padded seat over the back wheel were the most common form of public transport. Everyone else was walking. Street markets were not limited to certain places and corners as they are in the city, but lined all the roads and streets, and most of the shops – narrow, dark and concrete - spilled outside and did their business on the pavement. Men were gathered in groups almost everywhere, either bored or shiftily looking out for an opportunity. Women were working. Children were running around. Goats and chickens wandered around the main streets. In some places the road was almost choked with pedestrian traffic, and was usually unpaved. Everything was happening all at once.
Bicycle taxi stage. Next to the guy in yellow in the centre is a hanging hunk of cow - a normal Ugandan butchers
Everyone was hawking everything, nowhere more so than at the bus park, where a slow procession of men, women and children circled the bus and our windows in unwinding repetition. They sold everything: food (chapatti, samosa, mandazi (doughnuts), grilled chicken, bananas), newspapers, mobile phone credit (this was quite a handy one, I thought), books (most of the book sellers had only one or two sad, lost books each - if you looked but didn't like what they showed you, they would return a few minutes later with a different selection), and then all kinds of random rubbish which had no place on a bus. I saw nail clippers, combs, hair accessories, cheap kitchen accessories, razors, plastic jewellery, bars of soap, and all manner of plastic Chinese-made tack, which men carted around on their backs on huge wooden display cases which towered over their heads, so that they would reverse up to the windows of the bus for potential customers to have a look.
We drove down country roads a few times on our way to various places. Every road off the main street is a country road. As the bush generally begins directly behind the row of buildings which line the road, most of the streets of Mbale felt like a street scene erected on a film set, with nothing at all behind the front, falsified walls. The country roads are busy, but not with cars. People are coming and going, to and fro, all taking their time. Its true what they say, even in Kampala – no one, and I mean no one, is in a hurry in Africa. I walk as slowly as it feels physically possible for me to walk, and I'm still overtaking everyone before me.
Human traffic (guy on mobile phone on the right!)
There were children everywhere. This is the case in Kampala too, but in Mbale there are presumably less children in school, and nowhere else for them to go but their homes and the roads. The children in school wear immaculately clean, brightly-colour uniforms and both boys and girls have their heads shaved (this is in fact a requirement of school uniforms here. We thought we had it bad not being allowed to wear jewellery!). The children not in school are generally grubby and happy, playing outside together. “Hi muzungu”, they call after me cheerfully. “Muzungu how are you?” The very smallest ones wriggle and dance with excitement and squeal “Muzungu! Muzungu! Muzungu!!!”
Three children hanging out in the grounds of a local college, quietly looking after themselves
These guys were lined up playing on their fallen tree, and started waving when we drove past, so we stopped and waved back
Kids who presumably should have been in school play outside an abandoned house while a maid from the hotel next door serves lunch on trays from a restaurant across the street
The house had not been finished but was full of women doing laundry and possibly families squatting
People are tending the small plots of land outside their homes where they grow frilly green rows of cassava, potatoes and banana trees (which supply both the sweet bananas we eat and the unripe, larger ones like plantain which are steamed to make matoke, as common here as spuds are at home). The plants grow on raised mounds of earth so that the gardens look something like egg cartons. Chickens are pecking at the growing plants for bugs. The houses are tiny, sometimes shacks, sometimes tin-roofed, but in truth no one is ragged or dirty – clothes are bright, colourful and neat, and no one takes a blind bit of notice of our four wheel drive bumping past on the way to somewhere else. No excitement, no resentment, just getting on with it.
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