Culture

Here’s a story that we can all tell. You’re sat on a train. The conductor enters the carriage from behind you, asking to check tickets. You get yours ready. A few seconds later, you hear a commotion from a few rows back. You subtly pause your ipod so you can hear what’s going on, but pretend to keep reading your book. Somebody’s hasn’t paid, and they’re getting angry. You can only hear one side of the discussion because the conductor is keeping his voice respectfully low. You’re dying to have a look. You consider ‘going to the toilet’ so you can walk past but realise this would look too obvious. The customer is getting more and more irate. You can’t wait for the moment when they get up and walk down the carriage so you can at least see what the back of their head looks like.

Here’s a story I can tell. The police stop a coach rammed full of people going for their Christmas holidays in their village. They tell the conductor it’s overloaded and some people have to get off or they’ll fine him. Everybody stands up to get a look and the bus leans heavily to the left as people push to the windows. The conductor, very irate, returns to the bus and tells anyone without a seat to get off. A handful of people do. But one man refuses – after all, he’s paid. An argument begins. Every single passenger joins in, loudly, in a selection of at least three different languages: Luganda, which they speak in Kampala; Luo, which they speak in Lira, the coach’s destination; and English, which they speak everywhere. Proxy arguments begin in other parts of the coach. The conductor grabs the man’s ankle and tries to physically pull him off (which is how they get goats to comply, by the way). Then the driver, so far the only person not to stick his nose in, realises he has ultimate power and drives off, leaving the furious conductor by the side of the road, waving his arms manically, with only the police officer for company. About 200 yards down the road those who got off get on again.

Friendometer

Our brilliant housekeeper, Galvin, is full of hidden surprises. I have recently discovered that her uncle is a king and that she used to own a restaurant. Worried about my state of mind over Christmas, she kindly invited me to spend it with her family in Lira.

The road north was straight as a rod and passed through endless miles of bush, as if God had rolled a giant bowling ball through his lawn. We passed a fair few cheeky monkeys and a torrential cataract on the Nile, and didn’t get attacked by the LRA, which was all rather nice.

I’ve never been to India, but I suspect if I had, it would’ve looked a lot like Lira. It was a dusty outpost full of decidedly South Asian architecture and vast seas of bicycles. One man was carrying his little piggies to market on the back of his when one snorting charge escaped from the rudimentary wooden cage, sparking half the town into a Charlie Chaplin style chase down the middle of the road. Meanwhile, Galvin sent the shopping home with a complete stranger, keeping the cushion off the back of his bike as a retainer. There weren’t really any other muzungus around and everyone seemed refreshingly honest, two ideas which must surely be linked. It was all a very welcome tonic from Kampala’s mayhem.

Galvin’s home was in a village out of town, meaning I was entering a world of no electricity and a pit latrines. The mud hut that I was given to sleep in was carpeted. It was very comfortable. The dead ancestors were buried in the compound. The women used the concrete tombstones as platforms for washing the dishes. The place was full of millions of cousins, some of whom lived there and some of whom were just visiting. Some of them weren’t even cousins. Who knows who they were. Being English I was embarrassed by the special treatment I was getting. I felt guilty about breaking the foil on a new jar of coffee. Meals seemed to be prepared for me alone, but that made no sense at all. I just did I was told.

At least Christmas dinner we had all together – or as good as, because men sat at the table, while women took their place on the ground. All the rules were reversed. What I considered polite was considered rude, and what I considered rude was considered polite. Unlike at home, where the host will serve you, you were to serve yourself. I was the guest so no-one could go until I had gone. Countless pairs of eyes watched me as I went from pot to pot and got a plateful of food. It was a long few seconds. At home, I wouldn’t dream of starting before everyone had got. The host would be vehemently urging me to begin, but it’s still unlikely that I would. But here, I had to start eating while everyone else waited their turn to serve themselves up. It felt very rude. But it wasn’t. Then I made the mistake of finishing what was on my plate. At home, reserving any element of the meal tends to indicate you didn’t like it, and risks causing offence. But here my clean plate implied that I hadn’t had enough. And perhaps my reluctance to take more implied that I hadn’t enjoyed it – I’m not sure. It was only when Galvin threatened to cry if I didn’t keep eating that I suddenly understood what was going on. I was full to bursting but at risk of causing grave offence. So I had to take more and this time remembered to leave a sturdy amount on the plate. And at the end of the meal people belched ostentatiously. No matter how open-minded you are, your manners – those social rules that you learn from a very young age – run very deep.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

I returned to our house in Kampala late on Friday night, in a daze from hours on the road. I was supposed to find a man called Roland there. I’d met him twice and he’d agreed to guard the house over Christmas. But he wasn’t there. Instead, I was confronted by a figure in a long black coat with the hood up, holding a huge spear that reached above his head. This was it – I’d survived six hours on Uganda’s dicey roads in a bus held together by prayers alone, only to meet Death on the doorstep of my home.

I asked Death to unlock the gates so I could get in, but of course, the key was with the guy who hadn’t shown up. This meant I had to do a Dan Dare and jump the gate, dodging a low-hanging power line as I went. This also meant the guy inside must have done the same thing. There is no greater evidence that our ‘guard’ dog is a chocolate teapot: a total stranger jumped the gate and she just sat there impassively. In fact, I bet she wagged her tail and tried to lick his face.

Once I got on the same side of the fence as the sinister figure, I realised that this wasn’t death himself but a poor imitation. The giveaway was that the coat had ‘SECURITY’ written on the back in big white letters. But the question still remained as to who this kid was and who had talked him into the Grim Reaper act.

Now, you’ll have to forgive me. During my four months in the country, I’ve been involved in sacking four people and in chasing down three separate contractors who ripped us off because for one reason or another we didn’t have a written agreement with them. Add to this the countless boda-boda riders and shopkeepers who have tried to charge me five times the price for something (and that’s not an exaggeration) just to see if they can get away with it. Four months in Uganda has taught me to expect people to do the wrong thing if the opportunity is there. I hope that this is healthy cynicism rather than outright misogyny, and in some ways it served me well here: it came as no surprise to me whatsoever that the guy who was supposed to be guarding wasn’t around. I’d even half expected him to use the knowledge that the house was empty to effect an elaborate break-in, at least to enjoy the facilities for a couple of days. But it came as a huge surprise to me to discover that our neighbour’s guard, not wanting to see our place left vulnerable, had got his cousin to come to Kampala from his village in the north as a stand-in. For all my legislating against being cheated, I need to keep the faith.

Office Hours

What are you talking about? It’s Christmas!

Competition time!

The family Hipps receive a point for pointing out a deliberate mistake: "making everyone go to the www.peas.org.uk/gifts website to try and get a definition of PEAS which up till now most people would have thought were spherical, green and edible."