Kampala "Driving"

Martha has referred to the driving in Kampala on a couple of occasions. Driving in the city requires two mental shifts. First, you must learn to drive on the opposite side of the road and shift gears with your left hand. This is an easy mental sift to make. The second one takes a little more time, however. You must stop thinking of driving as a means to get from point A to point B in as short a distance as possible and start to thinking of driving as an obstacle course to overcome, or a race car video game. I would like to illustrate this by using a method used in the “choose your own ending” books I read as a youngster…

Here is the situation. A taxi-bus has pulled over with no turn signal or warning of any kind to let off a passenger. Since there are no bus stops, the bus still covers two-thirds of your lane. The opposite lane is packed with cars, because the number of vehicles in Kampala has grown much more quickly than the number of roads. A boda-boda (moped or motorcycle used as a taxi) is coming toward you, weaving its way your lane and the opposite lane. At this point, what do you do? Do you choose to try and squeeze in between the stopped taxi-bus and the oncoming traffic? Then go to line “A” below. If, however, you choose to stop and wait for the taxi-bus to start back up before proceeding, go to line “B” below.

A. You have chosen well. The fact is that in Kampala you are expected to maintain your forward momentum except in extreme situations. The boda-boda manages to slip by you, even as you push out around the taxi-bus. The finely balanced dance that is Kampala driving is maintained.

B. You cause mild consternation among the drivers following you. The car immediately behind you swerves around and in between the lanes creating a more dangerous situation than before. You quickly learn that when driving in Kampala you should try and maintain forward momentum if at all possible – which it somehow usually is.

Some might refer to Kampala driving as lawless, as complete disorder. But the fact is there are rules, just not the ones you might be accustomed to. We have been given to understand that this is due to the fact that driving lessons or licenses were not required until just recently. I don’t know what is taught in the newly formed driving schools, but if they are preparing people for driving in Kampala, they probably look something like this:

1. Don’t stop your forward momentum if at all possible.
2. Your brights are to be used to flash people and drivers when you are on a collision course with them.
3. Turning your lights on before complete darkness sets in will cause other drivers to think there is something mentally wrong with you. And if you don’t have lights… that’s okay.
4. Turn signals are called “indicators.” And don’t forget that the turn signal is on the right and windshield wipers on the left. Some Americans have trouble remembering that and it’s pretty funny.
5. Even though you probably won’t do anything besides read the newspaper when you get to work, you should drive like mad to get there.
6. Two-lane roads can fit three cars, a motorcycle, and a bicycle easily.
7. Sidewalks, etc. are part of the roads and can be used at will.
8. Try not to breathe while driving. Only one out of a hundred cars would pass an emissions test.

Common things in Kampala to try and avoid hitting:
1. Goats and cows roaming the roads
2. Pedestrians not aware that they can die if they walk out in front of the road unexpectedly
3. Big pot holes and even bigger speed hills (bumps) at completely random locations
4. Taxi-buses that stop without any warning whatsoever.
5. Boda-boda mopeds carrying up to two passengers.
6. Bicycles carrying plywood, large stacks of brooms and buckets, very large wooden trunks, chickens, or several people.

I suppose that if I were Luke Skywalker, I would nonchalantly say, “it’s just like the races at Beggar’s Canyon back home on Tatuine.” In my case, though, I’m mostly just glad that we will be leaving soon for calmer roads in Arua. The interesting thing about this whole driving phenomenon in Kampala is the fact that the Ugandan culture is, by in large, extremely laid back, gentle, generous, and welcoming. I was asked once what kept me coming back to Africa. My reply was short… the people. My experience in Uganda so far has confirmed this sentiment. Indeed, it is a joy to be able to walk along side and serve the Ugandan people.

Buying Items in a Foreign Land

Wow, I had no idea that purchasing items could be so difficult or time consuming. I guess that we take for granted that we slowly pick up things as we move throughout our lives. I will at the very least never, ever take IKEA for granted.

Eric and I have been purchasing items this week for our new home. For those of you that don't know, our house is completely empty except for the desk in Eric's office. Now while I would have been a little overwhelmed doing so much purchasing in the states in stores that I know, purchasing items in Uganda is a whole other thing entirely.

As we are going to be living in a smaller town about 8 hours from Kampala, it was suggested that we do some of our major purchases here as to avoid the high prices in Arua. For us this meant purchasing a fridge, gas oven, washing machine (not like the ones in the states :), table with 6 chairs, two beds, and some appliances and dishes. For someone like me, that doesn't like to make decisions, this was an issue. I struggled! I am happy to say though that as of now, we should be able to eat and sleep in Arua. What else could we need :) We will probably have to hire a truck to take the things to Arua, but I think that one of our coworkers will be able to do this.

Once we are in Arua, we will start talking with carpenters and looking for used things so that we have a couch, dresser, bedside tables, etc. There really are a lot of things in a house. I don't know that I ever fully appreciated this.

One funny thing that happened while we were doing our shopping... there are two supermarket type stores in Kampala. While we were doing some shopping at one of the stores, we noticed that they were cleaning the floors, etc. A floor waxer kept continually trying to run us over. We kept having to move to get out of the worker's way. This went on for quite some time. We then headed up to the checkout. Upon arriving up front, we discovered that all of the registers were closed. Then we looked around and noticed that we were the only customers in the store. Yep, they had closed up shop long before but we had NO IDEA and no one had told us. So here are the silly white people with their shopping cart hoping that someone will check them out. Eventually a very annoyed cashier rang us up. So the moral of the story is: "When someone continually tries to run you over with a floor waxer, it is time to checkout."

I hope that you can all find a way to use this valuable information. :)

HIV/AIDS Workshop

This week Eric and I were a part of an HIV/AIDS workshop for CRWRC partners. The workshop's focus was integrating HIV/AIDS initiatives into already existing programs within the church. As you can imagine, this is a monumental task. If it were easy to combat AIDS and its horrific effects, it would have been done long ago.

Thinking about this issue absolutely breaks my heart. Everyone at the workshop was somehow touched by AIDS. There is no way to avoid it here. I confess that I do not pray about this enough. I think that it can be easy to separate myself from the horrors in the world when they feel like they are too big to comprehend. But yet when I do this, I am also separating myself from Christ's work in the world. I am forgetting about the HOPE that we have. I sometimes want to run and hide from so much pain but yet Christ lived with and loved the most oppressed. Please join me in praying for Christ's work in Africa with those affected and infected by HIV/AIDS. By God's grace there is so much to be done in the world.

Time

I just want to apologize for not being able to post very much on our blog. We have been so incredibly busy. I am guessing that this will be the case until we move to Arua. Once in Arua, we should have internet access whenever we desire. So please, keep checking back and thank you for your comments. Your love and support is such an ecouragement.

The klutz strikes again and again

Okay for those of you that know me and love me (Martha), you might know that I can be a bit of a klutz. Well, add to my natural tendencies a very rough surface to walk on, including large holes as well as many people vying for my attention. Yes, I know; it sounds like a fatal scenario.

On my first day in Kampala, we were changing some money. On the way back to the car, a taxi man was harassing me trying to get me to ride in his van. Next thing I know, my left foot goes into a relatively large hole, and I go down fast. I landed extremely hard on my right knee. Of course, all of the folks around me starting saying, "Oh, sorry, sorry," (I have heard this same response many a time on other African visits as I made a similar fall.). My knee was pretty scraped up but the worse part was that it was my bad right knee. It was quite swollen and sore for a couple of days and now it is faded to a nice shade of yellow and purple. End of story #1.

So a week later, as my right knee was healing, Eric and I were looking at new pickup trucks (yep, we are getting a brand new one as the one that we are currently driving is going to be given to another staff member as they shuffle around older vehicles). Well, I was busy talking with the salesaman about the value of a hand grips by the doors of the truck while you are driving on rough roads, when out of the blue, my left foot rolls off of a little ledge. Next thing I know, I am down on the ground again. I am again met with, "Oh, sorry, sorry." (They have no idea how often this happens.) My left knee, while it didn't hit the ground as hard as my right, is more cut-up including cuts across the top of my left foot and ankle from the roll. So I went around for awhile then with blood trickling down my leg. Sufficed to say... I have the most lovely knees right now. If only there were some kind of contest for this kind of thing :)

Kampala or Bust

For those of you that haven't heard, we arrived safely in Kampala on June 27th, with everything but our blog information. This is why we haven't posted anything until today. Sorry about the delay.

Our first two weeks have been very full. We have spent a lot of time at the office meeting with some of the ten different staff working in Kampala. We are enjoying them all. They seem to be a very intelligent and thoughtful group.

We were also able to take a three day trip up to meet some of Eric's new partners and to see our future home. The trip was an adventure in itself. I will allow Eric to describe driving here but sufficed to say that there are no rules. I have never seen or imagined anything like it. It truly is insane!!!!! Driving on the left hand side of the road is truly the easy part. We will be happy when we are no longer plagued with Kampala traffic.

Our new home is beautiful. It is far nicer than anything we would have expected. The backyard is fantastic. It is a large fenced in area that includes a wonderful garden, an avocado tree (yum!), three guava trees, and some other beautiful trees and flowers. We are looking forward to moving to Arua and starting our life there.

Right now it looks like we will be in Kampala for at least a couple more weeks. We are living with Eric's boss and his family for the time being. They are a wonderful family. It is good to have some time to get to know them.

It would take a lot to catch you up on everything that has happened so now that we have the blog information, we will do a better job at posting more frequently.

Thank you again for all of your love and support as we prepared for this next phase of our lives.