My Best Day in Uganda, part I

Okay, so I just had the most incredible day. And I came back and wrote it all down so I wouldn’t forget it.

I’m still kind of giddy, so I’m completely incapable of judging whether this is an interesting read or not. And I don’t really care. As I’ve stated before, this blog is for me, to record my thoughts and experiences so I don’t forget them. You have a scroll bar there, use it.

The way Eleanor described the trip, I almost didn’t come. “We’re going to deliver some stuff to these kids. It might be hard to get there, it's on this island,” she said. I pictured a long dusty car ride, followed by unloading boxes onto a ferry. Maybe I’ll stay home and read.

But it was sunny and 60 degrees, and everyone was out wearing their beautiful Sunday getups. So I met Eleanor and Willbroad outside his church at 11:30.

Willbroad is a dentist at Kisoro hospital. He’s tall thin man. I will not comment on his name. He wore a Nike Swim T-shirt, which turned out to be ironic: before we left he went and fetched his personal lifejacket from his apartment. “I am very afraid of water,” he said.

I got more details on the project: Hike to Lake Mutanda, take a canoe to the island, and make spaghetti for an orphan boy. This was starting to sound more interesting...but I had no idea what was in store for me.

The market we stopped at had no spaghetti, so I made a trip into town. Eleanor bought tomatoes and Karimbo (i.e. lard). While I was buying the spaghetti, I saw a little packet of honey for 600 shillings (25 cents) and stuffed that in my pack too.

It was a goddamn rough walk. More than two hours over very hilly countryside. We rose and fell through multiple small villages, always greeted by the chorus of “How are you?” “Give me my money” “Give me my pen” “What is your name”.

I’m always struck by how much you can learn about a child by that simple first interaction. Some of them come at you with open hearts, calling out “how are you?” like they really deeply want to know. Others jump straight to the material requests, standing directly in your path and daring you to go around them. Their eyes rove covetously over the laces in your shoes and the zipper on your backpack. You can see the resentment and anger already starting to boil up in their little chests.

There are other variations of child too. Today we passed a ten year-old boy wearing a spotless electric blue button-down shirt that was ironed to perfection. The shirt was fashionably untucked, and as he greeted us he pushed one side back to stick a hand in the pocket of his snug-fitting jeans. The Fonz, I thought. He yanked up a corner of his mouth in a sly smile as he spoke. “How you?” he said, tipping his head back. Damn, this kid is cooler at ten years old than I’ll ever be.

We reached the edge of Lake Mutanda and Willbroad asked if we had sharpened our voices. “What do you mean?” I asked. Apparently Kabunga (the orphaned boy we’d come to visit) and his siblings lived on the island where all the canoes were. They had no phone, and they didn’t know we were coming.

So there was only one way to let them know we were here: screaming across the water at the top of our lungs. Willbroad suggested we all shout at once. He counted off One, Two, Three, and we all screamed “KABUNGA WEH!” We repeated this over and over for ten minutes and there were still no canoes on the horizon. “What if they’re not there?” I asked. “Eh!” Will replied. “Where will they be?”

As we waited, we chatted with an older man by the lakeside who was braiding papyrus. He had a few beautiful cone-shaped baskets already completed, which Willbroad told us were used by the fishermen to catch mudfish. Apparently mudfish are so plentiful that you just sling one of these cone baskets through the mud, and when the silt drains out you find yourself with a little wriggling thing inside.

The old man reached into a dirty tin can and came out with a fish stuffed in his fist. Dirty brown, the length of a twinkie, with whiskers on its nose, it resembled a mini-catfish.

After shouting a few more times we finally saw a canoe leave the island. When it arrived I discovered it was a hollowed out log with two young boys paddling. One of them ran into the reeds and started plucking spongy leaves. “Seats,” Willbroad said.

I examined the canoe. It seemed to be literally a log with the inside scooped out. The front and back were blunt cylinders. The sides weren’t straight up and down, they curved inward toward the passenger, as a tree trunk would. We three climbed in, and one of the boys paddled us to the island.

It’s hard to describe the beauty of this place. And since it’s the same day all this happened and I’m exhausted, I won’t try too hard. Hopefully the crappy camera phone shots survived the wet boat ride, and my photos will give me a thousand words of credit.

We made it. We were heading for the island. And I have to say, when you’re canoeing through a mountain lake, toward a lush green island with the broad banana leaves flapping in the wind; to your left is the sharp majesty of a tall volcano topped with fluffy clouds; to your right are a series of uninhabited islands, small humps of land like the backs of whales; a coastline of reeds all around; other canoes in the distance, men casting nets, women collecting water; well, the tension just drains from your face and neck and chest, and you hang your arm over the edge of the boat and watch your hand dip in and out of the water as the canoe rocks back and forth with each stroke of the boy’s paddle.

And at that moment, all your gripes with the world seem so small. You can’t even remember what they are.