First Impressions

The following is actually two posts written on different days but because of the limited internet access I have posted together.

2/6/08

So I’m finally posting my first official blog. Internet is much less readily available than previously thought. Although Internet cafés are plentiful in downtown Kampala I have had next to no free time between orientation programs and trying to overcome jetlag. I imagine once I set into a routine and move in with my homestay family I will find a set amount of time a week to spend in communication with home.

For those of you trying to find Kampala on a map now would probably be a good time to note that despite the title of this blog “mykenyaexperience” I am actually in the capital city of Uganda. The program was moved because SIT decided that the situation in Kenya was far more volatile than previously thought. By the looks of it, they seem to have been right.

Uganda is a beautiful country; it is far more luscious than Kenya (at least what I saw of Kenya from the air and while laying over in Nairobi) and was apparently dubbed the “pearl of Africa” by Winston Churchill for its beauty. I had always assumed that accounts of the extreme friendliness of Uganda people was a gross generalization, but all that I’ve come into contact with so far have been without exception inexplicably nice. Strangers will approach you on the street, instantly setting you on your guard, but they seem to genuinely want nothing more than to say hello and find out what brings you to their city. I think that since this is a relatively unfrequented tourist destination, the people have not yet become savvy to the many ways in which they can take advantage of unsuspecting foreigners. They are also just plain nice people.

The attitude of the people creates a feeling of safety I was not expecting. Even street vendors back off once you show that you are uninterested. Though there are armed guards scattered around the city at various street corners, they also share the friendly Uganda spirit. We noted that they were not to be intimidated by as we drove by the Parliament building on our city tour the other day, and saw a group of guards, rifles slung over their shoulders, enjoying their afternoon by gardening in the flower beds in front of the building.

The trip over was very long but was also interesting since we were traveling in a large group. An entire weekend of navigating foreign airports is probably the best icebreaker we could have had. With the exception of missing our final flight from Nairobi to the Ugandan airport at Entebbe the trip went smoothly. However it was still very tiring, we left early Saturday morning and did not arrive in Uganda until after midnight on Sunday, all without a full night’s sleep in between. Sleep depravation also proved to be a fairly effective icebreaker.

All the people in my group seem cool so far. There are 17 students in all, 15 girls myself and one other boy. It strikes me as strange that women are so over represented in study abroad, but I suppose they are also overrepresented in the social sciences upon which this program is based. I have gotten to know the one other boy, Brendan, fairly well, since he is my de facto roommate whenever the group is staying in one place. Though he is very soft spoken, he seems pretty easy going and I imagine that as the only two boys on the trip we will become pretty good friends. All the girls are also very nice, and everyone seems to get along with each other pretty well. Everyone became friends with each other astonishingly quickly.

We have two program directors, Jamal and Odoch, both of whom go by their first names, and are very relaxed. While it is apparent that the teacher student relationship is quite different in Africa, it is hard to imagine that they will be our classroom instructors in the upcoming weeks. Both are from the Kenya program and are therefore often as lost as we are in Uganda. Odoch is originally from the North of Uganda, but has not lived there in over 40 years. Jamal is from Mombassa, and is completely unfamiliar with Uganda. He is very reserved, and seems fairly disappointed that the program was not in Kenya. Despite this, once you talk to him a little bit he both helpful and very entertaining. Odoch is a very interesting person. He always has interesting stories, but tells them in such a way that you don’t understand why they are interesting until the final sentence. His history is something of a mystery, but he seems ambiguously more accomplished than one would first assume. He has apparently played for the national Ugandan cricket team, and has also professionally coached teams. He also seems to have been an important figure in politics at one time. He told us a story about how he was dissatisfied with something the minister of agriculture was doing, so he decided to go have a talk with him to express his displeasure. He did not seem to think this personal relationship with high political figures seemed uncommon for a study abroad professor. It also struck me as strange that he had done so much in such a short lifetime, by the looks of him he could be no older than 55. The group could also not understand why Jamal continually referred to him as “mzee” or old man. We were surprised to learn that he is in fact upwards of 70. We learned this directly after he had hung up the phone with his parents. People here strangely seem to age much slower. We were shocked to learn that our bus driver who looks to be about 27 is actually 43. They swear that Africans eat only the freshest food, and that this helps them to preserve their youth. I don’t know if this is true, but for the moment I think I’m going to try to stay away from any high fructose corn syrup.

There is so much more to write about. So much has happened in just four days of being here. However, even if I said everything, it wouldn’t come close to describing what it is like here. In the interest of preserving my audience I think I’ll drop it off for today and pick up with something a little more specific in my next post. Until then I hope everyone is enjoying the states, or wherever you may be this semester.

2/8/08

Today we had our first two official lectures today. We were joined up with the original SIT Uganda program (I suppose we are still officially the SIT Kenya program). We had met a few of these fellow muzungus (Lugandan term for white) both on the street; we are kind of easy to pick out since muzungus stick out like a sore thumb. We also met a few others at our hotel yesterday where they came to take class since the Makerere University was momentarily on strike. It seems as though everywhere we go we bring bad luck. Luckily, however, the strike seems to have ended and we had our lectures at the University today, and this was the first time we’ve met all the students from the Ugandan program, 29 in all. They have been here a week longer than us, and so every time we’ve met our encounters have chiefly been us asking them questions about the upcoming week, such as what their homestay’s are like and how classes have gone etc. They all pretty nice and helpful but they strangely seem like a much different group than our own. Perhaps this is because they are both a big enough group to effectively have cliques, and they’ve been in the program long enough to begin to break off and do their own thing. Nonetheless they have been friendly and welcoming, and we are trying to plan something with them tonight.

The lectures were very interesting. They were basically to give us a brief history of Uganda and the development problems in the country and Africa in general. Dr. Frank Nabwiso gave the development speech. He is not only a distinguished scholar in East African development but was also a member of the Ugandan parliament from 2001-2006 and a political dissenter who had spent ten years in exile in Kenya during Uganda’s one party system in the 90s. It seems as though African place high value on scholarship, and many cross over from the academic world into politics, something that seems fairly uncommon in US politics and I think should be admired. Anyway his talk was impassioned only slightly polemic, and extremely informative.

My first impressions of the school are that it feels a little bit like Hogwarts. I say that because, like I said, it seems that many of the professors are also important political figures who are very active in the region. Also since until recently Makerere is the oldest and I would assume largest University in East Africa it has an interesting history and many important figures passed through it, including the current alleged President of Kenya, Kibaki. Dr. Nabwiso also mentioned the time when Ede Amin’s (the guy from The Last King of Scotland) son enrolled at the University during the 70s. He was allowed arm himself with pistols, walk around with body guards, and apparently take any female student he pleased, and the University was helpless. This seemed a little bit like what would have happened if Voldemorte had enrolled a son at Hogwarts at some point in the seventh book.

In contrast to a day of classroom lectures, yesterday our assignment was to go out into the city and find our way around. We were broken into groups of two or three and given specific things to find information on, market places, schools, medicine, entertainment, etc. Our group was charged with finding information on how the group could entertain themselves while in Kampala. To this end we searched the city for theatres, clubs, restaurants and anything else of interest. Using what little Lugandan we knew we asked around for places negotiated the taxi system (which is very different from the taxi system in America) and most importantly overcame our fear of crossing the street. While this sounds strange and vaguely Mitch-like, the streets here are far more congested than any I’ve seen in the states, there are apparently no traffic rules, when traffic is especially crowded cars will even go onto the sidewalk, mopeds and motorcycles continually weave in and out of traffic, they drive on the other side of the road, and apparently no one has ever heard of the pedestrian rite of way.

This experience overall served to reinforce my original notion that the people here are extremely friendly and eager to help foreigners. When looking around we asked a group of police officer, who as aforementioned are armed with anything from billy clubs, to tommy guns, shotgun and rifles. Despite this intimidating display, and allegations from the people that the police are notoriously corrupt, an officer from the group smiled at us, applauded our efforts at the native language, and proceeded to tell us in broken English to walk down the street, stop and the nearest traffic circle, and from there to ask someone else. Even though he wasn’t much help, you got to give it to the guy for trying.

That’s all for today, I’ve got to go get ready to go out, hopefully meet up with the kids from the Ugandan program, and get to know some more fellow muzungus.