20 August 2008

20 August 2008 12:00 (midnight) Kampala

I slept most of the way from Amsterdam, with a little chemical support. We got in close to 9 and waited for our four million pounds of luggage along with a rag tag bunch of international students packing guitars and puppets and some vision to save the world through entertainment, which I can almost buy into. Denis picked us up at the airport in his quintessential African Landcruiser with the tall roof racks, all safari ready. Denis Omodi Alyela is 29 years old, working on his second masters degree in some assortment of management and planning topics, and I will say he is pretty much one of the smartest, coolest Ugandans I have met. Granted, I am just getting started, but he's pretty cool. His dad Felix met us at the Kohlping House Hotel, and it was quickly apparent where Denis gets his charisma and intelligence. We sat in the restaurant at the hotel and ate Tilapia until midnight and then after one of the best showers I have ever had (as Felix promised), I am going to learn to sleep under a mosquito net. Wish me luck. You know how I toss and turn. At least I am not on the plane anymore. 

This place is balmy, cool in the dark evening and it smells like a spicy mix of smoke, unbathed bodies and something that I have yet to discover. It is rich and spicy and most definitely weird. There were more pedestrians and bicyclists, scooters and motorcycles, riding on the unlit streets, than I imagine a New York sidewalk would have in the middle of the day. The locals seem to drive as though the lines painted on the road (if there happen to be any) are there more as suggestions than actual objective parameters. Horns and high beams are used with extraordinary finesse and alarming frequency. 

20 August 2008 17:50 

The Kohlping house provided us with a very continental breakfast, complete with white toast, instant coffee and Summer Olympics updates on the BBC. For being such a small island, England sure left her fingerprints all over the globe. Big thumbs up for manifest destiny and redeeming the savage nations!

Kampala is amazing. Big and dirty and full of people who are always busy but seem to be in no hurry. We went to visit a slum with Denis where a nurse named Helen has a clinic that she has run for the last 10 years, and we were swarmed with happy, friendly, adorable children with crusted over scabs and running noses, a veritable first hand advertisement for feed the children. Of course every one of them wants to shake our hands and touch the hem of our garments. I don't think I felt clean until the last day of our trip when we revisited the Kohlping house and I was able to use those wonderful showers again. But how I wished that I had had some bright little trinkets or pieces of candy to give all of them. They were so excited to see us - "munu! munu!" they yelled, as if we were Santa Clause popping through the front door, only I didn't have a bag of presents. They were all so cute. Adorable with their big soft chocolate eyes and round cheeks. Oblivious to the squalor they have always known. Tiny shacks that were so small and dirty most of us wouldn't let our chickens live in them. No running water, no electricity. Nurse Helen runs her clinic without equipment or medication, unless she can scrape enough money together from the meager donations of the patients lined up outside with a broad assortment of communicable, deadly and undiagnosed illnesses. The clinic itself is a two room hut with a few rickety "beds" and or tables that appear to be constructed identically and draped with an assortment of linens and oddly out of place lace tablecloths hanging over the open windows and doors. Helen's only helper, Amos, who is also her oldest son, does as much footwork for her as he can, running for supplies and meds as necessity and money dictates. On one of the beds a woman lies shivering and chilled with malaria, which made me thankful that the mosquito bites that I had already obtained here in spite of my netting were most assuredly inflicted by the 1 out of 10 mosquitos that was not a carrier. I am pretty sure. 

One of the things I've noticed about this place is that almost everybody has some sort of a "shop", selling, in the middle of the slums, everything from brand new knock off Caterpillar boots to cell phone sim cards and deep fried things that look almost good enough to risk the epidemic surprise inside. People actually live, and survive, in these conditions. Of course they die too. Obviously. It's like the worst homes in Northport, only these people really don't have access to soap or the luxury of running water, much less a washer and dryer. In Northport they have those things and just avoid their use voluntarily. 

At this point, I feel much like I did when I left. Clueless, insecure, a little worthless, but definitely curious. The kids at Helen's clinic reminded me that kids are kids, regardless of what the adults in their country have done to screw things up, and if only I had a bag of M&M's I could be a superhero, just like at home. And really, I feel like at the very least I am here to be Carolyn's personal assistant, since I can totally handle remembering where she "filed" the notes from her meeting with Ndjoli this morning, (who, by the way is a very cool Congolese man, even for a pastor!) and next time we fly, I think I'll hold the boarding passes. 

It is a bit odd the way my life and Carolyn's do a few loop-de-loops around each other since 1993 when we did the Music Man together at Woodland's Theater. After she confided to me that Jones wasn't a last name that she had fantasized about and practiced in her high school doodling, I admitted to her that her son Bowe took me on my one and only sort of date in 1994 to the Addy New Life youth Valentine's banquet, after his sister Kemper set us up. I guess you could say we're bonding. It is funny to think I am on the underside of the world with a woman who is now dating the father of my best friend through high school, but that whole life seems so very very far away in years and miles that it is hard to connect all of the dots.  

While as yet I don't picture myself spending extended periods of time here, seeing Helen's clinic today exposed me to the possibility of helping in a tangible way. 2 weeks, A couple thousand dollars, and a little bit of training would go a heck of a long way there. It would get so much accomplished. If I had the resources of just one of the medical units on our fires, that entire slum would be taken care of, at least for a week or two. I doubt any of those kids has ever seen a tube of chapstick.