Nigel in Rwanda

What happens when you get four English people and an Italian and throw them all into Uganda? Answer: a safe and well-tended garden of fun that explodes occasionally with the glorious clamour of fireworks. I’ve got so blithely carried away down the river of delight at having such a glut of visitors that I’ve not got anywhere near writing anything funny in a blog, so here are some of the choicest prime cuts from the (now slaughtered) Cow of Exciting Times.

Shortly after the staggered arrivals of Suzanna, Danilo and Raj (Charlotte was to join us later), we bussed it to Uganda’s most southwesterly corner, a long trip made worse by our having to tolerate Tina Turner repeatedly asking us what love had to do, had to do with it. Once there, we were rowed in a hollowed-out eucalyptus trunk to one of the myriad islands on a tranquil lake surrounded by terraced hillsides, where we spent most of the time eating and playing stupid and infuriating card games that I repeatedly lost.



After that we bopped across the border into nearby Rwanda and saw why they nicknamed it ‘le pays de milles collines’ as our minibus weaved in and out of a thousand very beautiful hills on its way to Kigali, the capital.



Rwanda was utterly decimated by a genocide that took place on the streets and in the villages a mere fifteen years ago, just as I was reaching the conclusion of my primary education. Considering that, it was incredible to see how clean and organised Kigali was, where they give you a ticket on the minibus taxis and the boda bodas have uniforms and a spare helmet for the passenger.



Kigali made Uganda’s urban offerings look utterly amateur in comparison. As Germany and Japan can testify, destruction breeds rebuilding, and rebuilding breeds economic growth.

That’s not to say the genocide has been forgotten, although a visitor passing through as we were might not feel the true depth of the scar. I was given a harrowing reminder of how present the tragedy was at the genocide museum – not because I read the stories, or saw the photos, but because a Rwandan visitor suddenly began to howl with anguish, when some part of the exhibition brought unbearable memories coursing to the surface. Museums present a shined and shaped version of the past, but this was horribly real.

Walking around Kigali, I reflected that it wasn’t the scale of the tragedy that was incomprehensible so much as the barbarity of it – ordinary people running through the streets macheteing friends and neighbours to death. And then to get from there to a safe, friendly and organised civil society in the space of a decade and a half… it makes you have to leave sentences hanging and get a reproachful green squiggly line from Bill Gates’ flawless grammar checker.

Friendometer

Back in Kampala, Charlotte joined the crew, and the Easter weekend became an opportunity for Kampala to flaunt its only redeeming feature – a thriving nightlife. The most noteworthy outcome of the back-to-back partying was when my two young, single, female visitors hooked up with my two young, single, male colleagues, a beautiful double union which caught me totally off guard.



Close Encounters of the African Kind

Much against everyone’s advice, we took ourselves to some music festival at Kampala’s old concrete stadium, which is nestled snugly at the centre of Kampala’s least salubrious area. We had repeatedly been told that the event wasn’t intended for the likes of us, with the barman even going so far as to comment that it was for ‘third class people’ – citizens so far down the pecking order that he clearly felt the need to invent a new and unprecedented category for them. We were having a great time nonetheless, but when a drunken mob stormed the beer tent and made off with half the beer, things started to hot up. Some security guy who knows what to look out for detected that we were about to be subjected to a similar ambush, and with admirable tenacity escorted the only muzungus in a crowd of thousands safely out of harm’s way. We continued to enjoy the music from the back until Andrew, my new and estimable co-muzungu at PEAS, spotted that we had been subtly surrounded by about ten guys and needed to move quickly if we valued our personal effects and physiological integrity.


The only thing that could outdo an encounter as close as those two was if a man wearing ladies’ trousers and fluffy boots came dancing up to me and offered me his services for a whisker over two dollars, which strangely enough was exactly what happened next. It’s about the first time in Uganda I was offered a fair price first time round, but that's supply and demand for you.



Office Hours

Back at the office, as I lamented the departure of the last of my good friends, I was perusing the newspaper personal ads to see about making some more and I came across this:

Single lady wants a financially stable, impotent man for company.

Perhaps she has not yet realised that you can’t get something for nothing…

Competition Time

One evening, the chameleon and the shoebill stork met down the pub. Clocking the geriatric gait of the chameleon as he approached the bar, and realising how much more elegantly he walked, the shoebill stork started bragging loudly to the barman about his perceived superiority. As he talked, his grandiose beak oscillated imposingly, prompting the barman (who was a rhino) to chip in that although he would never be so barbarous, the big bird could if he wanted swallow the chameleon whole. The conceited shoebill chuckled appreciatively at this interjection, and proceeded to conclude his lengthy address by casually observing how few people knew about him but how much they’d love him if they did. All this big talk upset the humble chameleon, who in his vexation started changing colour manically. It was an amusing spectacle, but underneath, the shoebill stork was deeply affected by this rare and idiosyncratic skill. Up to that point he had been unaware that his quiet reptilian companion possessed such an incredible talent. Despite the big bird's efforts to hide it, the barman correctly interpreted the shoebill’s sudden silence as profound envy. He decided to settle the question in a fair an democratic manner, by putting it to vote.

And that’s where you come in – the competition between the shoebill and the chameleon. Who is more special? Cast your votes now!