48 Hours

I am about 48 hours and counting back in Kampala. The only word that seems to suffice to describe my re-entry is surreal. Although everything is still so familiar to me, I somehow feel outside again.

I’ve already had many lovely reunions with old friends over Indian/Italian feasts with Ugandan beer (even champagne!), getting up to speed on the latest gossip and look forward to seeing many more familiar faces. On my first night, I was walking along nonchalantly when I was stopped by a young man: “Kelly! You are lost!” I knew his face and we chatted for several minutes as I tried to place him. It wasn’t until I walked away when it dawned on me – that was my old aerobics instructor!

So here I am in a Kampala hotel on a Sunday morning with reporting on Live 8 on my television as I try to reacquaint myself with where I am. It has been less than 3 months since I have left, yet I can already see so many changes. There are those basic physical changes – like the new computerized customs at Entebbe airport, the new stone mile markers from Entebbe to Kampala, or the continuation of construction of a huge Kampala mosque that was initiated under Idi Amin, but is now being funded by one Quadaffi of Libya. The other changes are somehow more difficult to put in words…

This trip to Uganda is unlike any trip to Africa before. After putting in my happy years of grunt work and study, this is the first time that I am coming to Africa as an actual professional (I was in Rwanda for master’s research and had a fellowship last year for Uganda). It sounds straightforward enough, but it changes the dynamics of my living. For one, it is quite novel for me to be put up in a big hotel and to have a “driver”. I was at first amused to be staying in the Hotel Equatoria, as just under a year ago, I would attempt to sneak into their pool when I would stay in a much shabbier guesthouse across the street when down in Kampala from Gulu (and of course I never quite managed to “blend in” and always resigned to pay the proper dues). But the novelty of my fancy hotel is quickly rubbing off, as I feel somehow detached from the city, and I look forward to settling in to my next home: a guesthouse in Lira, where I will have two Kenyan colleague flat mates. Not to mention that the Do Not Disturb notice, plus the chain lock do not keep somebody from storming into my room – just now I watched as a man undid the chain, despite my protest (dressed only in a wrap), claiming he needed to fill up his bucket. And fill his bucket he did.

I will be spending a few more days down in Kampala, meeting with the partners and donors for the project I will be coordinating in Lira, but will be heading up country later this week. Although I have only just arrived, I am trying to soak up all those Kampala luxuries before I head to what will be a more basic existence in Lira.

Ah Uganda…It is the little things about life here that make me so happy. A boda boda (motorcycle taxi) ride through the town at sunset, the amazingly revealing conversations with those around me, the way the city is already bustling before sunrise…Here we go again.