UGANDA: THE PEARL OF BICHUPULI!

After a week in Kampala, I felt an urgent need to flee, an urgency to move on. The tragic events in Rwanda were evolving at lightning speed. My numbered, budgeted days were running out, and Kampala was terribly expensive. But James had not returned from a trip to Rwanda, where he was also going to secure me passage and make arrangements for me.

I felt trapped behind the high reed enclosure. In idleness, the heat and dust were overwhelming, you actually tested the dust in your saliva. And there was nothing to do in Kampala: the only cinema was a weekly outdoor projection of blood-and-guts movies (Rambo types) at a club for American marines ofcourse. The museum was a dusty little joke of tiny clay models under glass cases, the local theatre is not even worth mentioning. The bookshops sold third or forth hand cheap thrillers by James Hardly Chase and vernacular translations of the bible. The hypnotic music in the local discotheques was deafening, one had to scream to order drinks or engage in the semblance of conversation. How irritating to have people scream and sputter into your ear all night. The other accepted thing was to lounge outside one of Kampala's popular bars known as Kafunda in places like Kabaragara seeping lukewarm beer while chewing leathery roasted meat directly off the skewer. If you were not careful on the pili pili(hot pepper), you soon saw the pretty banyarwanda waitresses, or the geckos hanging motionlessly on the cieling through the prisme of teary, beery eyes.

In Uganda, the well-to-do lived sequestered lives. Behind their high concrete walls, they were under siege. They lived in a concrete bubble, occasionally emerging in their air conditioned Japanese four wheel drive cars to go to the air conditioned office, to the air conditioned bar at an international hotel. Their lives were at once barren and repetitive. They were like foreigners in their own country.

They looked to Europe for inspiration. They worshiped their foreign registered cars, punctuated their afternoons with a cup of tea, dressed like Englishmen without the attributes of the dreadful English weather. They professed reverence for their country but despised their village relatives for superstition and countryside manners, and sent their English speaking children overseas for studies. Uganda has remained very provincial ever since independence, it produces almost nothing and imports almost everything with proceeds from coffee, tea and cotton grown by the very peasantry so despise by the elite.

At the Rhino pub in the Kampala Sheraton hotel, I was constantly reminded by a dark suited successful businessman I went to school with, of how in the span of eight years, Uganda had gone from being a war torn country to an economic success with a 7% growth rate that some major European countries could be jealous of. And of how it was safer at night on Kampala streets than in New York or Chicago. Meanwhile other people advised me against driving into certain areas after dark, especially into my childhood neighbourhoods like Ndeeba or Kibuye. The armed policeman escorting a loaded lorry was a common sight in Kampala. And most people knew someone whose home had been robbed by armed men. Almost everyday brought spectacular news of highway robbers posing as policemen to rob motorists.

In Uganda law and order was an approximation of something else, like the false sense of security created by high concrete walls around houses, the fake English blazer, the milky gruel which passes for tea, the shoddy reproduction furniture, acrylic fibre imitation carpets, and English style boarding schools. Even Uganda's lauded economic boom was an approximation arrived at by "Magendo"(trafficking), cutting corners through tax evasion and smuggling. Crime was exalted. One of Uganda's most successful businessmen was wanted by British police for drug trafficking and Kampala's mayor at the time would later serve a jail sentence in the USA for trying to cash forged checks. In Kampala there were more than one lauded rags to riches stories as result of bank fraud or drug smuggling. And the gilt-edged youth in Kampala had a dubious tendency of idolising the mafia. Such that in their vocabulary any rich and powerful man was called a Capo (mafia boss). Uganda whose promotional tag is a quaint quotation by Winston Churchhill: "the pearl of Africa", could have been changed to "the pearl of bichupuli" (bichupuli means forged checks in luganda).

Everything was a deception. The Japanese cars masquerading as new, were in reality second hand reconditioned cars, some still bearing Japanese ideogram signs on their doors. To the man from outside, the numerous cars bearing foreign registration, could have seemed like an invasion of foreign tourists on vacation or foreigner on a business trips to Kampala, but in reality they were Ugandans evading local registration fees and customs duty. You never knew what some people did for a living in Kampala. Appearing prosperous, you bumped into them wherever you went. All dressed up with nowhere to go, they loitered from office to office, shop to shop, home to home, hanging around. At first you thought they were simply visting friends, until the day one discretly took you aside and cadged you for five dollars or offered to help you prolong your almost expired visa for a little more. At the airport the subdued passengers from Dubai were not simple shoppers returning from a weekend shopping trip abroad, they were smugglers carrying suitcasefuls of clothes, cosmetics and jewelery. These were the goods that found their way into the well stocked Kampala shops.

The pair of sandals I wanted to buy could not be sold to me because their 'owner' or 'seller' had stepped out of the shop for a few minutes. I would have to wait till he came back. There were at least five other 'sellers' in the shop. Couldn't someone else sell them to me on his behalf? No. No one knew his asking price. Approximative shopkeeping by people who did not seem to know why they were doing what they did.

Underpaid clerks supplemented their incomes by indulging in graft as I was to learn. I had almost run out of money, so I attempted to withdraw some money at the Barclays bank using my credit card. But as I had half expected, something went wrong. The sum I was asking for was more than the authorised maximum of 200 US dollars, said the fat woman teller with a shiny nose. The main office in London had to be telexed for authorisation. The telex which cost 20 dollars, was at the customer's expense, and the reply was to come after two hours. After two hours of escape to the airconditioned oasis of an international hotel, I was told by the shiny nosed teller that my request had been refused. Just like that. London had said no, but had it really? Had she actually telexed London or had she just pocketed the 20 dollars. There was neither copy, nor receipt of the telex. I walked straight out of the bank, uncertain of keeping my cool.