Week 4: Daily Life

Location: Kampala
After a month of staying in Kampala, I have developed something of a routine that is much different from the routine that shapes my life at home. This entry will be devoted to describing my typical day in Kampala.

I wake up much earlier here than I do at home. I do not tend to awaken early, but in Kampala, it is much more difficult to sleep in late, because it becomes rather hot, and because sooner or later, the many bird varietals that screech or whistle loudly make it difficult to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. We have our first class, Luganda, at nine, and usually I attend that class without first taking breakfast. This gives me something to look forward to come ten o’clock, when I can purchase a pot of African tea (similar to chai) and a mandazi (a type of donut without a hole that they have here) for 1,200 Ugandan shillings, or about 60 cents. Ida, who prepares most of the food, is very kind, and she is one of the few people with whom I feel comfortable practicing my Luganda. After breakfast, we either have our lecture on contemporary Ugandan issues, or we go to Makerere Institute of Public Health on the Mulago campus to attend our public health lecture.

After our morning classes I generally devote the remainder of my day to working on my independent project. I often walk down to Wandageya, the market a few hundred meters down from our apartments, where I have a plate of pilau (seasoned rice with meat and gravy), and where I can sit outside and figure out what to do that day, and where I can contact all the people that I need to meet with that day. From Wandageya, I usually take a matatu – 14 passenger vans that are sort of a hybrid between buses and taxis – to the city center. Matatus take some getting used to, because they have routes that they follow roughly, but they are generally unmarked, so you need to somehow determine where they are going, and you need to know where to get off, because stops are generally fairly random. They are definitely an interesting and refreshing way to travel though, especially when you are sharing your space with 13 other passengers, a large sack of green bananas, and several live chickens.

Until now, the work for my project has generally consisted of meeting with people to discuss how they will be involved in the project. I meet with Hip Hop artists to discuss my project with them and how they will be involved, with musicians who I will work with to develop instrumentals, with recording studio owners to find an appropriate studio to use, and with community members who have been somehow affected by HIV/AIDS, who will contribute to the content of the album. Needless to say, a great deal of time must be devoted to transport: Matatus, though cheap, are very slow. The traffic here almost never dissipates, and matatus, unlike bodas, cannot weave between cars and trucks, so there is a great deal of sitting and waiting. This is tedious but usually bearable, though it takes some getting used to the street children who, seeing a foreigner, come up to the windows and reach in asking for money.

I finish in the later evening, and I usually go back to Wandageya for supper. The many takeaways are by far the least expensive places to eat, and I have come to enjoy the rice with fish or meat stew or groundnut sauce that is inexpensive and widely available. Supper can be washed down with a Bell or Nile Special lager (often served warm), or with a spicy Stoney – tangawazi (ginger) beer. A short (often too short) amount of time after supper is devoted to studying, and for a late night snack, we will often walk back to Wandageya to buy rollex (derived from rolled eggs) on the street. This is a salty and satisfying snack of a chapatti and Spanish omelette rolled together and served in a small cellophane bag.

I take a cold shower and go to sleep under my mosquito net, and I somehow still wake up with bites on my arms and ankles.