A Day in Uganda

I often travel by taxi to a neighboring town ~40 kilometers away to shop.  The prices in Nakasongola are outrageous.  (One of the main reasons is the merchants travel to Luwero to purchase items for resale in Nakasongola.)  For example, I use a lot of bleach for cleaning floors, walls (the lizards leave droppings that sometimes adhere to the walls), dishes, and my bathing area, as well as laundry.  The largest size bleach commonly sold in Ugandan villages cost 5,500 Ugandan schillings (UGS) in Nakasongola and only 3,600 UGS in Luwero.  Although the   taxi trip costs 5,000 UGS each way, if I consolidate my needs and make one trip a week then it pays.  Recently I traveled to Luwero and the trip seemed to represent in microcosm many of the challenges and dilemmas faced by Uganda. 

The taxi pulled up to a stop and began to board passengers.  From inside the taxi I observed the following scene.  (I wish I could have taken a picture.)  A woman had a sleeping infant strapped to her back.  She was dressed in an evening dress.  Yes, I did say an evening dress.  In the villages, Ugandan women dress in long skirts or dresses that are well below the knee.  Indeed most commonly, the garment is at or just above the ankle.  Most often the clothing is purchased from vendors who sell second hand clothing sourced from the US and Europe.  Western evening dresses are just the ticket for Ugandan village women.  It is common to see a woman walking in an evening dress down a muddy and potholed street in one of the villages.  Get closer and you can see the ‘gown’ is tattered, with seams repaired in thread of a different color, missing decorations and perhaps hanging threads and the woman is dressed in flip-flops.  (To be fair on special occasions the women may be dressed in very stylish fashion with high heels and look like they belong in the pages of a fashion magazine.  I do not know how they prevent their heels slipping into the mud.)        

The woman was operating a small food stand.  A second and somewhat older child sat on the ground playing.  The woman was wielding a single bladed axe as she split a piece of wood to feed the ‘campfire’ she was using to cook the food she was selling.  She was selling beans with chapatti.  Chapatti is a kind of flatbread.  She was one of four chapatti vendors in a row on that side of the street and there were two others on the opposite side of the street and even more down the block.

A woman burdened with too many children.  Where was the husband or father of the children while this woman tried to do it all?  How can over six vendors of the same undifferentiated item in a village of <6,000 possibly each earn enough money to provide substantial support to a family?  With virtually no manufacturing sector, few extractible natural resources (except recently negotiated oil leases) how will this economy provide enough jobs for a population that is growing 3.58% per year?  (Uganda has the third highest population growth rate in the world.)

• The average Ugandan family has six children.  In private, women say there are too many children.  They are hesitant to make such a statement when men are present.  Women that insist on condom use are spurned and if she is a wife, she risks a   beating(s) by her husband.  A woman that uses the pill without the permission of her husband will be beaten or even abandoned.  Abandonment in Uganda means the wife must leave the marital home. 

Domestic and gender abuse is a big problem in Uganda.  Recently, I saw a man and woman fighting as I passed by in a taxi.  A small group had gathered to watch the fight and it was occurring in front of a residence.  I only saw one blow before the taxi passed but I did see the woman on the way to the ground.  A woman that fights back risks death.  Even in an abusive relationship, the woman may have no allies.  In the event she tries to leave the abusive husband, she may find her family insisting that she remain in the marriage.  Traditionally the groom pays the brides family a bride price to have their permission for marriage.  In the event the husband decides to give the woman back then the woman’s family must return the bride price.  If the family does not have the money to return the price and the husband is unwilling to compromise then the bride’s family will side with the husband and force the woman to stay in an abusive relationship. 

I boarded the taxi and sat in the back row next to a woman holding a baby in her arms.  The woman might have weighed 70 pounds.  She had patchy short hair and protruding eyes.  Her pallor was poor and I noticed skin peeling from her hands.  I am not a diagnostician but she looked like she had HIV/AIDS.  The baby had the orange hair commonly associated with malnutrition/starvation and was silent through the entire trip. 

• Uganda has the third highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world and malnutrition is common.  The land is fertile and one can generally get carbohydrate calories, however protein and trace elements can be in short supply resulting in an increased incidence of goiter, short stature, and mental retardation.  Without the intervention of the US in providing antiretroviral drugs there would be a lot more AIDS related deaths in Uganda.  What happens if at some point the US Congress decides it can no longer afford to pay for the drugs because our taxes and deficits are too high? 

Taxis carry freight as well as passengers.  In this case, stored under the back row of seats were several 100 kg sacks of cassava flour.  Indeed my feet were propped on top of one of the sacks.  (Thank God, for the weight I have lost because the 270 pound-Howard would not have fit in the last row.)  Tied to the top of the taxi were about 30 live chickens.  The taxi was full and so the driver was moving with dispatch along the road.  He hit a bump in the road, propelling the rear of the taxi into the air, and catapulting one of the chickens out of its restraint and off the taxi.  The woman with AIDS was the only one that noticed the chicken leaving the vehicle.  She cried out to the driver to stop but her voice was too weak to be heard by anyone other than her other seatmate.  The seatmate yelled to the driver to stop and then the owner of the chicken joined in the chorus and the driver finally stopped and turned around to go back.  He reached the scene and there by the side of the road the chicken was grazing in the field.  The conductor dismounted from the vehicle and began to chase the chicken across the field.  Fortunately, he was a farm boy and knew how to catch a chicken.  The owner brought the chicken into the cabin with us and we were off again.  Everyone in the cabin had a funny quip to make about chickens and about the driver.  Even though I could not understand all that was said, the humor was obvious.

Taxis are licensed to carry 14 passengers plus a driver and a conductor.  Our   taxi was loaded with 16 passengers when it approached a police traffic stop.  The taxi slowed but the police officer was on his cell phone and waved the taxi through.  About 20 kilometers later, we approached another traffic stop.  He ordered the taxi to stop.  The driver immediately left the cab of the vehicle conversed with the officer and shortly later returned to the cab and took off.  From where I was sitting, I could not see what transpired but my Ugandan friends have opinions.  Corruption is a big problem in Uganda and charges of corruption are sometimes used as a political tool which makes it even more difficult to understand when it has actually occurred and when is it just political theater.  As a guest in this beautiful country, I have no opinion.

I arrived in Luwero, met a fellow volunteer, did my shopping, had a beer, and went to the tax park (a staging area for taxis) to board a taxi to Nakasongola.  A conductor asked me where I was going, I replied Nakasongola and he said board my taxi, as that is where we are going.  He even forced a passenger in the front seat to move over so I could sit in the front due to my height.  He also quoted the mizungu price of 5,000UGS.  The trip back was uneventful until the taxi stopped at a junction.  One road led to Nakasongola and the other to Saasira.  The driver and conductor decided they were going to Saasira and that I would have to get off and take a boda (motorcycle) to Nakasongola town.  Moreover, they demanded I pay the fare on the boda.  I demonstrated a little American anger and the driver decided he had had enough of this mizungu and made arrangements for an oncoming taxi to take me to Nakasongola for no additional charge to me. 

There it is, a day in Uganda.       

A former colleague sent the following link to me.  It is a video representation of human mortality over the last two hundred years.  I leave you to draw your own conclusions about its usefulness.  If you feel the conclusions are valid, how might they be used to advantage.  I am interested in your thoughts.  

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/ visualizing-mortality-history/