Swamp
Confessions of an Academic Pseudo-Giraffe
17.8.07
14.8.07
A few pictures from Serengeti.
And one from the Ssese Islands on Lake Victoria. The sun is setting.
09:12
And one from the Ssese Islands on Lake Victoria. The sun is setting.
09:12
3.8.07
The Great Flood
It's been so long since the last post that I needed something genuinely overwhelming to break the silence. I'm in Uganda again, on my two-month summer break, and the weather has recently been extraordinary, to say the least. Kampala is the kind of city that's sometimes capable of containing several sharply different climate zones - it rains on one hill but not on the next - but I was still surprised to learn that some city slums such as Kawempe and Bwaise suffered from considerable floods on Tuesday. A few kilometres away, in Muyenga, we merely had light rain for most of the day.
This morning, however, was something entirely different. Coming to the city centre, I've never so strongly wished I'd had the sense to take the camera with me in the car. The heavy rain started around six o'clock, just before the sun rose in hiding. The mere noise was immediately so loud that there was no point in trying to continue sleeping. Of course, hard rains are not uncommon here, but this time there was that extra severity to the pounding on the roof and the waves on the tarmac that you sensed it wasn't just an average bout. We got in the car around 7.40, thinking that either the traffic jams will be horrible or we might find the streets empty, most people having been scared away by the rain.
The latter was definitely closer to the truth - we never had to stop the car on our way through Namuwongo. This area has recently got proper, deep ditches. Driving by, we saw the red water gushing from everywhere through various openings into these and across roads in tidal waves of great volume. Once again - and this is something I first observed during the first Ugandan rainstorm I experienced three years ago - the surfaces of the landscape seemed to have come alive. There was little solid to fix your gaze on. This is what distinguishes normal storms from these ones. The quantitatively descriptive cliche that always comes to mind is "biblical proportions".
When I drove across the railway down to the Industrial Area, I saw that most cars ahead of us were turning back at the 7th Street junction. No wonder 8th Street, which is located at a higher level by at least ten metres, seemed jammed when we passed that junction. The reason for this cautiousness was that 7 St. was completely flooded. This is the eternal problem of KCC; they can never have this area, a former wetland like most low places in the city, properly drained. We saw some saloon cars brave the lake ahead of us and ventured ahead in our RAV4, which at least has some more space under the car than a Corolla. For more than a kilometre, there was no tarmac visible. The cars waded along at walking pace. The waves, caused by both wind and the wakes of vehicles, licked the hoods and jumped against the windscreens. The red lake was about a foot deep in most places. It made it impossible to see where the road actually was, so I bumped into the curb a couple of times while overtaking the slowest metal fish. There seemed to be a few involuntarily parked cars.
Can't imagine what has happened to the people of Kawempe or Bwaise today. It's 9.30 now, and I think the rain is still continuing.
Few cars had made it to the downtown roundabouts from our direction. Some streets were almost deserted. Local people do tend to observe the weather before they get going. When I arrived at the empty internet place, the receptionist (who's worked here since 2004) asked me how on earth I got here. 08:50
This morning, however, was something entirely different. Coming to the city centre, I've never so strongly wished I'd had the sense to take the camera with me in the car. The heavy rain started around six o'clock, just before the sun rose in hiding. The mere noise was immediately so loud that there was no point in trying to continue sleeping. Of course, hard rains are not uncommon here, but this time there was that extra severity to the pounding on the roof and the waves on the tarmac that you sensed it wasn't just an average bout. We got in the car around 7.40, thinking that either the traffic jams will be horrible or we might find the streets empty, most people having been scared away by the rain.
The latter was definitely closer to the truth - we never had to stop the car on our way through Namuwongo. This area has recently got proper, deep ditches. Driving by, we saw the red water gushing from everywhere through various openings into these and across roads in tidal waves of great volume. Once again - and this is something I first observed during the first Ugandan rainstorm I experienced three years ago - the surfaces of the landscape seemed to have come alive. There was little solid to fix your gaze on. This is what distinguishes normal storms from these ones. The quantitatively descriptive cliche that always comes to mind is "biblical proportions".
When I drove across the railway down to the Industrial Area, I saw that most cars ahead of us were turning back at the 7th Street junction. No wonder 8th Street, which is located at a higher level by at least ten metres, seemed jammed when we passed that junction. The reason for this cautiousness was that 7 St. was completely flooded. This is the eternal problem of KCC; they can never have this area, a former wetland like most low places in the city, properly drained. We saw some saloon cars brave the lake ahead of us and ventured ahead in our RAV4, which at least has some more space under the car than a Corolla. For more than a kilometre, there was no tarmac visible. The cars waded along at walking pace. The waves, caused by both wind and the wakes of vehicles, licked the hoods and jumped against the windscreens. The red lake was about a foot deep in most places. It made it impossible to see where the road actually was, so I bumped into the curb a couple of times while overtaking the slowest metal fish. There seemed to be a few involuntarily parked cars.
Can't imagine what has happened to the people of Kawempe or Bwaise today. It's 9.30 now, and I think the rain is still continuing.
Few cars had made it to the downtown roundabouts from our direction. Some streets were almost deserted. Local people do tend to observe the weather before they get going. When I arrived at the empty internet place, the receptionist (who's worked here since 2004) asked me how on earth I got here. 08:50
