So You Say You Want to Move to Uganda, Huh?

We have now settled enough to the point where I can begin this long-promised blog of our amazing adventure living in Uganda.  We hope you follow along with us as we explore this beautiful country, and hopefully, a few other nooks and crannies of Africa.  I wanted to do this away from the prying eyes of corporate social media (not naming names, but the company is one that rhymes with Mace-nook), but we do welcome your “likes” and “comments.”  But unlike that other website, we will also accept “dislikes” and reserve the right to “un-friend” you if I deem it necessary.  We will also go as far as to take suggestions and answer your questions, but be warned that our responses may take some time because everything moves slowly here.  Everything.  It took me 3 days to write this paragraph.

First impressions of the Ugandan People

Ugandans pride themselves on being the “friendliest” country in Africa and from our first observations, we find this to be quite true.  Everyone we have met has gone out of their way to be helpful, from the people who met us at our arriving flight, to the security guards at our house (more on that momentarily), to people you meet on the street and ask for directions, although some of them are only happy to help out at a price.  On the other hand, there is a complete lack of zoning laws, very poor traffic management (I think there are 10 stoplights in the entire city), too much air pollution (caused by traffic jams, charcoal-based open fires for cooking, and burning leaves), and a lot of graft and corruption being reported in the newspapers - The Daily Monitor, New Vision, and the local tabloid Red Pepper.  One of my favorite corruption stories so far is about a famous Ugandan general, and self-avowed anti-corruption crusader, who has housed his private art company in the wing of a government art gallery for 17 years without paying for rent.  He owes about $700,000 in back rent – a phenomenal sum for anyone in this country where the average income is about $150/ month.  Of course, he claims he has done nothing wrong.

Our house and day-to-day life

Our neighborhood is filled with fancy houses, but interspersed with folks with less means.  Again, there don’t seem to be any zoning laws or real estate companies colluding to keep certain types of people out of certain neighborhoods, so everyone just lives right next to each other (we’ll get to the neighborhood cows in a second).  We have a very spacious house with three bedrooms, a huge kitchen, dining room, living room, two studies (I intend to study a lot), and five bathrooms.  Yes, five.  This is not to say that our bathrooms are anywhere close to what we are used to.  Uganda uses many of the architectural elements common in the developing world – lots of tile because the airborne pollution is more easily wiped away, tiny sinks and toilets because water is scarce, and showers with no shower curtains or glass, so the water just goes everywhere.  Electricity is also a huge problem in sub-Saharan Africa.  Power outages and spikes are common.  The first weekend we were here our power went out three or four times a day.  Each time that happened our guard would walk over to the giant generator and kick it on, and the power would come back.  Then, weekend two, the generator wouldn’t turn on, and we didn’t have power for several hours.  And yesterday, the generator was on for most of the day.   

One of the innovations we’ve noticed here is that each outlet and appliance has a second switch, so there’s an effort to eliminate the “vampire power” problem.  But that means when you want to plug your cell phone in, you have to plug it in, and also turn on the switch on the outlet.  And, if you’re using an American appliance, you have three switches – the outlet switch, the transformer switch that kicks the power down from 220v to 110v, then the switch on the hair dryer.  C’est la vie.  All told, we’re way better off than most Ugandans, who have very little access to electricity and generators, so can’t complain too much.

With the interruptions in electricity, I know the most inquisitive of you are wondering how we are able to watch football.  I will admit this has proven difficult – the massive difference in time change usually forces me to either stay up very late or get up very early in the morning.  To date, the Hawkeyes have not really proven worthy to make this sacrifice and the jury is still out on the Chiefs. We do have a small television and a satellite dish the size of Texas that receives a total of 8 channels from the good folks at the Armed Forces Network-Europe.  And the service is interrupted anytime there’s a thunderstorm in the area, which is most of the time during the current rainy season. 

Internet access from home is tricky as well.  Instead of having the unlimited ability to gorge ourselves on gigabytes of data with multiple downloads of Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Bubble Guppies, and of course, Dora the Explorer, we now pay per gigabyte – almost $4 each.  Skyping also sucks up the gigabytes, so we will have to limit that as well (sorry grandparents).

Crime is a big problem in Uganda, but certainly less of a worry than in other countries in Africa (don’t worry, grandparents).  Most of our friends at the Embassy have never experienced any personal crime in Uganda, but there have been enough events of theft among the diplomatic community that we all live in walled compounds.  Walls are extremely common in most of the world but ours are topped with concertina wire and patrolled by a 24-hour guard service.  That said, our neighborhood seems quite sleepy, and our guards spend most days and nights reading the Bible or the day-old papers we purchase at the store for less than $1.

Laura’s been going to work every day, and for those of you who read international news, it’s been quite eventful recently.  Tepper has started at a day care named Kissyfur (yes, probably copyright infringement on that lovable cartoon bear from the 1980s).  I hope to start work soon, but have kept busy getting the family situated, so in the meantime it’s been good that I’ve had this time.  And do not worry about me – once we are fully settled and if my security clearance is still not approved, it is a quick drive to the nearest golf course, Uganda Golf Club.  Stella is starting her own company exporting Ugandan African crafts, and importing cheap plastic products to undercut the domestic plastic market, which is exceptionally overpriced.  For example, we purchased a plastic bin in which to bathe the girls (tub was broken for the first few days).  It measures 24x16x8.  Price of $35.  Staples sells the same one for about $5.  Plastic kitchen garbage cans cost nearly $50.  And when she’s not working on becoming a conglomerate mogul, she really enjoys spending time with her Ugandan nanny, Ms. Hellen.

Oh, and then there’s traffic.  First of all, people drive pretty slowly here (again, everything is slow here), so it's not like you have to make driving decisions at breakneck speed.  This is a good thing because the Ugandan’s drive on the left side of the road – a lasting vestige of the country’s British colonial past and one I wish they’d do away with.  Driving is possibly the most intense thing we will do here and I think I would rather go toe-to-toe with a rhinoceros.  Our car is a right-hand drive car with a manual transmission and I'm having a recurring problem getting into the wrong side of the car when I’m getting ready to drive.  It’s always reminding me of this scene in Caddyshack where Judge Smails tells Ty to put the steering wheel back on the correct side:

It’s most embarrassing because the Ugandans are watching you anyway because our diplomatic license plates are pretty conspicuous.

If driving on the left side of the road weren’t a big enough task, throw in about a billion little moped/motorcycles called boda bodas that act as taxis and drive with as much predictability as mosquito’s flight pattern.  They weave in and out of traffic – often going down the wrong side of the road to beat traffic jams – without regard to their own safety or that of their passengers.  It is not uncommon to see infants sitting between the driver in the front and an adult or larger child in the back.  Add to that the half-a-billion mutatus – small vans with inspirational religious messages or financial advice painted on their rear windows.  These operate as Kampala’s informal bus system with dedicated, yet still informal, stops along the major roads.  But like DC cabs, they aren’t hesitant to suddenly cross three lanes of traffic to pick up a fare between stops.   

The infamous mutatu- this guy has a lot of luggage. I don't know if they charge extra for that.

The ever-dangerous boda boda with its typical number of passengers

As such, given the utter madness that is the roads, we have yet to do much walking around since we moved here.  Some of our neighbors take nightly walks in the neighborhood – one diplomatic family we know even brought a jogging stroller with them.  We are still terrified to get out on these roads, even though the one we live on is really very quiet in comparison to most others.

We haven’t been that adventurous with food either, but only because we haven’t had much of an opportunity.  Though the Ugandan staples are mostly plantains, fish, and millet, food here is very westernized – the fancy flagship restaurant at the local mall is a KFC.  The Indian and Chinese food is very good, due in no small part to the number of Indian and Chinese people that live here.  The local beer is pretty decent, but the only bourbon in the country is Jack Daniels.  Fruits and vegetables are plentiful and shopping for them you see things you wouldn’t see in our local Safeway – coconuts, baby bananas, passion fruit, avocados the size of your head, and lots of mangoes.  Tepper told me the other day that Uganda has “great mangoes and gorillas.”  She is such the international connoisseur and wildlife expert.

Flora and Fauna

We have a very big yard lined with giant palm trees, rose bushes, smaller palms, lemon trees, an avocado tree, a couple of guava trees, and some tree that provides a good cure for malaria if you boil the leaves.  Everything is very nicely manicured – even the lawn is almost like the fairway on a golf course, which is nice.  The danger is the falling palm fronds. These are rather large and I found one that hit the ground causing an 8-inch hole in the lawn.

Avocados on the Ol' Avocado tree. Should be ripe in about a month

Panoramic view of the back porch and previously unkempt backyard of our house.

We are also are much more satisfied with our household vermin in Uganda than was the case in Washington.  Gone are the giant cockroaches and instead we have geckos.  There are some Madagascar hissing cockroaches here and there, but they’re really more like big, slow beetles than cockroaches.  We also have extremely large snails in our yard, and a few slugs/ snails have found their way into the master bedroom, but for the most part we just have tiny ants in the kitchen – which is TOTALLY FINE.  Welcome to our house, tiny ants!  This photo of one of our gecko tenants named Larry, who seems to be larger that most of his friends and suffers from some sort of albinism:

Larry - He can't sell car insurance, but he does a fantastic job with mosquito eradication

The birds here are truly amazing.  We don’t have a good bird book yet, but the crows here look and sound just like crows in North America except they have beautiful white collars.  There are giant cranes all over town with bright red necks, and hawks fly all over Kampala every day.  

I think this is a direct descendant of a pterodactyl looking for a small child to swipe

Everyone – including the diplomatic community – have chickens.  Tepper heard a rooster on our second or third day here, and said “is that Stella?”   Funny enough, because we have no daylight savings here, it’s strangely dark at 6:30 here on the Equator, so roosters do in fact, wake us up.  We are still deciding on whether or not to have chickens.  Not sure how the dog will feel about sharing his yard.

There are goats and chickens just outside the walls of the U.S. Embassy, and two days ago while riding the shuttle home, Laura saw cows munching on grass just a few houses down from us.  There are also the occasional goat and sheep riding boda bodas – my lone regret so far is that I’ve not been fast enough on the draw with my cell phone camera yet to get a good photo.  I promise such a photo in the future.

Of course, this doesn’t include any of the animals you can see on safari, which we hope to go on at some point.  Depending on where you go in the country, you will see different animals.  Tepper’s aforementioned gorillas are in the mountains to the southwest of Kampala – about a 9 hour drive away.  The lions, elephants, and the rest of the African Big 5 are to the east toward Kenya, which is anywhere from 3-9 hours away, depending on both traffic and which national park you are heading towards.  Apparently there is a good place to see rhinos nearby, so hopefully we'll do that soon.

Uganda PT

Ugandans love to jog.  Despite the crazy traffic and pollution, every day of the week, any time of day, you will see Ugandans running.  Especially in our neighborhood, which is one of the few “flat” neighborhoods in the city of Seven Hills.  If you ask your Ugandan colleagues why everyone is out running, there seems to be some sort of viral health story going around about running lowering your blood pressure.  Why is everyone so worried about high blood pressure, you ask?  I'm really not sure since everyone is so laid back and moves so slowly.  We do think the number of runners out and about is a good thing in that hopefully a critical mass of people will insist on sidewalks, closed sewers (the current rain water run-off solution is a series of steep, open trenches along the side of the road into which one is at great risk of driving their car), and improved traffic management.  There are also road races every month or so, Laura plans on getting two half marathons in before the year is out.

Ugandan Style

Ugandans, at least in Kampala, are incredibly fashionable, and the women have beautifully dramatic hairstyles.  For a developing country, everyone dresses very well and have clean clothes – even folks out doing manual labor on the side of the road.  The colors and styles of the clothing are a swirl of prints and references to fashion all over the world.  I saw one of the shirts and immediately decided I needed one, but my in-house fashion consultants don’t think I can pull it off.  I've also seen a lot of Washington Nationals attire for some reason.  I'm still looking for someone wearing the t-shirts printed by sports teams in anticipation of a championship, but then end up losing, i.e. a 2014 Denver Broncos Super Bowl Champions shirt.  And people really do carry things on their heads.  The most amazing we’ve seen so far has been a woman carrying a plastic bin filled with eggs – no hands.  Kids who carry things on their heads seem to have some major padding, but the adults use minimal support systems to carry their loads.  My neck hurts thinking about it.

The Kids

The Gruesome Twosome - All dolled up and plenty of places to go. And yes, Tepper's face is dirty

We know most people don’t care about Laura and me and just want to know about Tepper and Stella, so here's their update:  Stella has two baby teeth, is sitting up unassisted, and has started to make attempts at clapping, though she may just be hitting herself for fun.  Tepper is becoming more curious about the potty, and has finally demonstrated a proper jump with both feet off the ground.  She’s fascinated with pirates, but her Halloween costume might be a princess.  She is also obsessed with ballet dancing, wanting to dance around the house or perform for the security guards as I play her requested classical music.  Tepper's also into singing Kiss songs, specifically Rock and Roll All Night.  I'm assuming she's learning about this type of music at daycare. We are anxiously waiting for her to adopt some accented English, but since Stella spends more time with Ms. Hellen, Stella might be the first who is fluent in Luganda.

Hurricane

Despite all expectations, our dog Cane arrived here with very little fanfare.  Some of you know the trials and tribulations of getting him over here, and I won’t go into the details about how he could have been on our plane but Delta Airlines, which has a summer pet embargo, didn’t tell us that he could fly on their codeshare partner KLM with us.  Nor will I discuss the fact that it was harder to get the paperwork to get him out of the United States than the paperwork for his entry into Uganda.  I will also not prattle on about FedEx losing said paperwork as it was sent from Richmond back to us in D.C.  Furthermore, I won’t speak to the point that Laura and Stella had to drive to Richmond the morning of our departure to get the dog’s paperwork straightened out.  At this time, I’d like to give a big, big shout-out and thank you to Laura’s cousins Mike and Chris Engel for helping us deal with all of that insanity.  There’s a fancy meal at KFC and a case of Tusker beer waiting for you here.

Back to the dog’s travels - He did not bark at all the entire time from being off-loaded from the plane to being dropped off at our house, and he has made fast friends with the guard staff.  It’s almost as though someone swapped dogs during his layover in a posh Heathrow Airport pet hotel, but then we smell his breath and all doubts of his identity are erased.  Lest you think he’s lost all his moxie, he did bark at the one guard he hadn’t formally met.  So, the people he knows, he’s fine with – if you’re a stranger, not so much.  But that’s not such a bad thing in a country where everyone lives with concertina wire-topped 9-foot walls around their compounds.

For a dog that has not had an opportunity to run off-leash in approximately 6 years, living at this house in Kampala is as close as it comes to heaven.  He gets to walk around the backyard all day long, lie in the grass, chase birds that dare to fly near him, and the weather is never too cold or too hot.  This is going to be a great last few years for him, and we’re glad we brought him – despite all efforts to try and pass him off to any responsible human being we came in contact with.

I think I'll stop here for now. I apologize for the length of this post, but as it is our first, there was a lot to convey.  So before I bore everyone to death, I will end with this last anecdote of the interesting journey on which we are embarking.  This morning a large palm frond weighing at least 100 lbs. fell directly onto the elevated pipes leading from our water tower to the house this morning.  You can imagine that the pipes did not absorb this punishment well.  I never thought I’d ever complain about the $%*?! palm trees…

Again, we welcome your questions and comments, but you can keep your smart-alec remarks to yourself (I’m talking about you, my siblings).

Tunaalabagana Mukwano gwange, which is See You Later, Friends in Luganda.  I didn't make it up and Stella wasn't playing with the keyboard.