Confessions of an Academic Pseudo-Giraffe
Mä ensin näin vain meren sinisen
ja koralliin löi aallot jylisten
…
Kuumankostean
minä tunsin Mombasan
ja meren, taivaan Afrikan.
Our trip to Mombasa ended yesterday with an uneventful two-leg return flight via Nairobi. The flights in the other direction on Friday (and Saturday, as it turned out) did not go quite as smoothly because of technical problems. We left Entebbe more than an hour late and had no chance of catching the intended flight to Mombasa in Nairobi. So Kenya Airways put us up in Hotel Intercontinental, where we had time for a few hours of sleep before rushing back to the airport at six in the morning.
As reputed, the air in Mombasa is very hot and humid. Regardless of what you do or don’t wear, it always feels like you’re wearing way too much. Exit the hotel room, and there’s a giant, invisible cow breathing straight at your face. Every time. Or maybe a camel, like the ones walking back and forth along the beach, only bigger. On the white beach itself, there’s a slight hot breeze, but for most of the day that’s no place to go unless one enjoys being harassed by a herd of guys who wish to sell anything at all and won’t take no for an answer. The only time I stepped on the beach after the initial test was while walking to and from the boat during our snorkelling expedition on Sunday. The Whitesands Hotel is a real luxury affair with four or five restaurants, bars, and swimming pools. ”Half board” has a specific meaning there: it seems to refer to the routine of spending only half of each day eating. We escaped Monday’s dinner buffet by choosing a cruise on an old fashioned dhow – a dinner cruise that is, which means we stuffed ourselves anyhow.
Compared to Uganda, Kenya feels like a big country. It has a much larger educated urban population and a much bigger tourist industry and general infrastructure. The traffic culture is less primitive, people have slightly bigger egos and fewer restraints, and the western influence is more easily visible in small things. The accents are often easier for an ear unaccustomed to Bantu phonetics. Still, it felt good to be back home (for that’s what it is starting to feel like despite my journey back to Finland in May) in Uganda, away from the swarms of mzungu tourists and big-bellied, newly-rich locals. There’s a certain charm in using wrinkled notes instead of credit cards, in travelling on a boda boda instead of an air-conditioned minibus, and in sipping Amarula on the rocks in domestic candlelight instead of downing fancy cocktails at the poolside bar.
And no, there is no U.S. military fleet on Lake Victoria. Kaija specifically asked.
Off to the airport in ten minutes. Mombasa calls. I'll post fresh news and hopefully pictures after Easter. 15:38
St. Patrick's Day in Kampala: three hundred people drinking Guinness in an Irish pub by the Equator. There's something very comfortable about having so many people unknowingly celebrate your birthday. 07:54
A few weeks ago there was an alarming rumour spreading like fire among the Northern European residents of Kampala: according to a reliable source, rye bread had been sighted in the Lugogo outlet of Shoprite. Scandinavian families had been seen hauling shopping carts filled with the precious dark stuff. The surprise level of the news was comparable to hearing that the Nile had just stopped flowing.
In this country, you learn to act fast, since proven demand is never a guarantee of future supply. We got a message on the availability of this unexpected treasure late Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning we were on our way at nine. Luckily, there were a few loaves left. The white spongy bread one has to content with in most of the world’s countries is just about tolerable in the short run, but sometimes you just need to sink your teeth into something of a bit more substance.
The following two stories appeared on the front page of The New Vision on Friday, March 4. It continues to amaze me how different journalism here is when compared with any First World country.
Man Eats Rat for District: Museveni stunned by Tororo Iteso
An etesot of Molo sub-county in Tororo district stunned crowds including President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday when he ate a rat to demonstrate the community’s desire to get a separate district.
John Ojimi Omoding of Kapangor parish picked a dead rat from his pocket, put it in his mouth and moved closer to Museveni. “If the Jopadhola claim that they are the indigenous residents of this area, let one of them also pick and eat a rat,” Ojimi told Museveni.
[…]
Museveni said he had been informed that the people in the area were Jopadhola. The crowd protested, saying they were Iteso. Three people, including Omoding, pulled dead rats out of a black polythene bag to demonstrate that they were not Jopadhola.
Omoding said the people in Molo [in Finnish, this place name would mean ‘pecker’] and other sub-counties in Tororo district were predominantly Iteso, contrary to claims by the Jopadhola that the land belonged to them.
[…]
The President had on Tuesday declined to the demands for a district status by Tororo county after the Iteso and the Jopadhola disagreed over which tribe dominated the county.
[…]
Ojimi said they could prove the ownership of the disputed sub-counties by eating what their ancestors used to eat.
(accompanied by pictures of two people holding their rats and one biting his)
Passport Machine Breaks Down
The production of passports has been halted, following the breakdown of the printing system a week ago.
A source in the immigration department said, “There has been no production of passports for one week and the problem might persist for a long time. We have been kept in the dark since there is no official communication to that effect.”
However, another source from the strongroom where passports are printed, said there was a rumour that the spare parts had been sent for from the United Kingdom to have the problem rectified.
“This is just a rumour because no one has come up to tell us the truth,” the source said.
The breakdown follows the transfer of Kato Kahwa, whom staff members said was the only person who underwent technical training in Belarus on how to handle the system.
The source said Kato [Finnish again: ‘dearth, destitution’, common root with ‘disappear’!] was transferred to Entebbe immigration branch.
[…]
The Permanent Secretary Ministry of Internal Affairs, S.P. Kagoda, confirmed the breakdown on phone saying, “It is true but I have no comment about it. But you can come and see for yourself the same way you carried out your investigations."
Kagoda said he was in a meeting and warned that The New Vision must be as brief as possible on the issue.
This past Sunday evening, we drove downtown for dinner in Finnish company. After the tasty Indian meal, we found that someone had kindly removed the side mirrors from our car. I suppose the demand for spare parts is rather high. This was the first time in Uganda that we suffered a theft without being given a theoretical chance to negotiate the extent of the losses in advance. Poor bastards… and I mean this quite literally. Knowing the basics of this culture, I’d say the thief almost certainly lives below the poverty line, quite possibly a child born to a "co-wife".
So yesterday Kaija phoned an acquaintance who works in the car part business. He seemed to have experience on this kind of thing: "The mirrors must be on the Thief's Market now. Let me go there and nick them back for you. Leave it to me". We're waiting to see what happens.
