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Swamp

Confessions of an Academic Pseudo-Giraffe
26.9.05  
Kampala, Monday morning
This has been such a typical morning. From the very beginning, all the elements were there.

Tuisku woke me up at six thirty by meowing loudly behind the front door. I left him to enjoy his delicious liver breakfast and returned to the bedroom for a precious additional half an hour of sleep. He soon joined us there, curling himself comfortably by our feet.

The ride downtown via the Namuwongo route (the other one is unusable after the schools began) took about 25 minutes. Traffic is pretty bad at that hour anywhere; the distance is little more than six kilometres. Newspaper salesmen waving on the side, matatus jumping the queue, death-defying cyclists zigzagging in the roundabout, accelerating, breaking for potholes, accelerating again...

I walked ten minutes from Kaija's office to Kimathi Avenue, past the Parliament and Police Station and the Foreign Ministry; past street vendors and a few odd beggars and groups of children in bright-colored uniforms. They have built a fancy parking lot on the previously vacant lot by the internet cafe. I've never seen any cars there. Progress, I suppose.

I know how it will feel after I get up and go out, for I've done it dozens of times, at almost exactly this time of the day. Behind the corner, hot dust from the red earth will have added its familiar tinge to the atmosphere. The sun will have risen close to its zenith, the boda bodas will be around to offer rides, the odd latecomes will desperately seek parking by the Ministry and end up improvising to the extent of blocking a few other cars from moving. That's how it works.

Normally, I would do some shopping at Garden City and take a boda home, the warm wind blowing through my goatee. But this time I have some business in the travel office. So, perhaps, not such a typical morning after all.
15.9.05  

A hornbill couple in an avocado tree in our garden.
10.9.05  

The racegoats, fiercely fighting for front position at the back curve.
It seems I have been tagged with this thing.
1. Number of books I own: Together with Kaija, perhaps around four or five hundred, more than half of which are originally hers. Never been much of a collector.

2. Last book I bought: The MLA Style Manual

3. Last book I completed: Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland

4. Ten books, essays, or stories that mean a lot to me (I’m resisting an almost intolerable urge to add 50 more plus commentary and to include my own work in progress):
- Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat”
- Herge, The Adventures of Tintin (whole series)
- Don DeLillo, White Noise
- Nykysuomen sanakirja (The Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish, five volumes)
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
- Henry D. Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government”
- Mauno Saari, Juoksemisen salaisuudet (The Secrets of Running)
- Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude
- H. C. Andersen, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
- Art Spiegelman: Maus

5. Currently reading:
- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
- Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
- several articles on baseball

6. Tag? Yes, I know this is supposed to be the point. Not having a blogroll, I am a bad blogger. I would actually like to send this back to blogosphere with book replaced by album and only question 4 remaining. Here’s one of my several possible answers for that one:
- Led Zeppelin: Physical Graffiti
- Nirvana: Nevermind
- YUP: Homo sapiens
- Kent: Isola
- Metallica: Master of Puppets
- Rainbow: Rising
- CMX: Aura
- Timo Rautiainen & Trio Niskalaukaus: Rajaportti
- Black Sabbath: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
- Weezer: Pinkerton
6.9.05  
Goat traffic

Here we are again in Uganda. Nothing’s changed much, except the fact that this time no painstaking adaptation was needed; I just came home. So I have had a few days to re-familiarize myself with the sounds of urban wildlife, mosquito nets and traffic jams, my heavyweight desk and the presence of Tuisku asleep on it.

The day after I arrived, we attended the biggest society event of the year, the annual Royal Ascot (sic) Goat Races in Munyonyo. Kaija’s valuable connection in the (Indian) business realm, Zakir, arranged us tickets to the biggest sponsor tent, where all food was free. So were the drinks, which inevitably lead to a fair amount of collective drunkenness. Despite most of the guests being locals, the upper-class arrangement of the whole thing made it impossible to completely shake off a certain post-imperialist undertone.

The goats, nevertheless, were rather hilarious. Not naturally inclined to race each other, they generally jog along as a tight pack and stop to graze whenever they feel like it. There was a guy whose only (but very demanding) job was to keep the goats moving. Kaija won eight thousand shillings (less than four euros) in one race when her goat passed the calmly grazing former leader two metres before the finishing line. The goats’ apparent reluctance to win has an interesting effect on betting principles: there aren’t any.

There were eight races in all, ten “competitors” in each. I’m still not sure whether they used the same goats in several races, just with different names. But the organizers, sponsors and owners certainly use their imagination in the way they exploit the British horse race tradition. The tongue-in-cheek spirit of the whole event was well captured in the race program. Let me reproduce a few examples.

Goat Name ---------------- Out Of (Dam) --------------- By (Sire)

Desperate to Win -------- Fear of Consumption ------ Heartless Owners
Form: Poor performance recently, needs to do well today or could be in a stew.

Run ------------------------- Steam ------------------------ Friday
Form: Weighed in on target today and is one to watch out for on the finish line.

Wonder Goat ------------- Nowhere ---------------------- Surprise
Form: Surprise entry out of retirement.

On the way back, we experienced the most absolute traffic jam of our lives so far: little more than ten kilometres took about three and a half hours. Kampala traffic jams are always worse than they should be because of non-existing queueing discipline. Waiting for one’s rightful turn is simply not in fashion. Instead, everyone aims at jamming as many cars as possible in as little space as possible. An extra queue will always appear in a space two metres wide, and at the next bottleneck those cars will try to squeeze into the original queue. Some of these maneuvers will always fail, and everyone loses time because of inpatient idiots blocking the traffic. It may be a cultural thing, and there may be a hidden logic to it, but sometimes locals just literally drive an ignorant mzungu crazy.

Old Ones
helmikuuta 2004
maaliskuuta 2004
huhtikuuta 2004
toukokuuta 2004
kesäkuuta 2004
heinäkuuta 2004
elokuuta 2004
syyskuuta 2004
lokakuuta 2004
marraskuuta 2004
joulukuuta 2004
tammikuuta 2005
helmikuuta 2005
maaliskuuta 2005
huhtikuuta 2005
toukokuuta 2005
kesäkuuta 2005
heinäkuuta 2005
elokuuta 2005
syyskuuta 2005
lokakuuta 2005
marraskuuta 2005
joulukuuta 2005
tammikuuta 2006
helmikuuta 2006
maaliskuuta 2006
huhtikuuta 2006
toukokuuta 2006
kesäkuuta 2006
elokuuta 2006
syyskuuta 2006
lokakuuta 2006
joulukuuta 2006
tammikuuta 2007
helmikuuta 2007
huhtikuuta 2007
elokuuta 2007

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