First Morning Impressions 11/20/06

Through the cracked open bamboo gate of our ex-pat filled hostel, I see cars pushing along the rainy road, people riding bicycles, walking with wheel barrels or standing under umbrellas to stay dry during this rainy morning of Uganda's rainy season. The mud parking lot that stretches out between me and the fence is packed red clay, the same hue of all the dirty cars. But everything around me is fantastically green, thriving, smelling of life.

On the road last night from Entebe Airport to Kampala the story was of another kind. Twenty minutes into our drive, the wild stream of cars slowed then stopped. Denis, our new acquaintance and Taxi driver, looked over at me and said, "oh what's this?...an accident." We crawled along with the rest of the traffic rubber necking its way around the scene. The crowd near the mangled vehicles was frenetic. On the ground a man laid bloody and dead, arms splayed left and right, his face and body spotted in bright red. "Oh he is way dead," chuckledDenis, not in a mean way, just in a Ugandan way. I have never seen a body crushed under a car before, but the loss of life seemed ordinary to our driver. "He was probably drinking. They come to Entebe on their motorcycles, get drunk and ride home." The explanation didn't make it easier to understand the crumpled steel of the van meshed with flesh and motorcycle metal.

The road wound on toward the capital, light after light sliding across our misted wind shield. We sped past motor scooters and countless walkers making their way in the dark along the small shoulder of the busy road. It felt dangerous to drive so fast with unlit bicycles and pedestrians so close by. And it is. We made our way through a sobriety check point, manned by police with Ak-47's slung over their shoulders.They tow the car and jail the driver if he is found to be drunk here. But the attempts at deterrence did not prevent the other death we saw further up the road, a teenage boy presumably hit my a passing car,"knocked" as Denis called it. His family, or the people I imagined to be his family, was gathered over him. The responsible vehicle was nowhere in sight and neither were the police. Loss of life must be familiar on that road. "People don't value life here'" admitted Denis in a sad tone. But the deaths on the road from the airport didn't seem to affect him either.

I have only been here a day, not even 24 hours, and yet I can tell that this is a place where the grotesque and the lovely, the horrific and the wonderful coexist. How else can I explain the warm feelings I have this morning surrounded by smiling people in the rain. Or the obvious vibrancy of the natural world here coupled with the life stealing road from Entebe.