The sights and scents of home

Saturday September 16th 2006

The regal African man ahead of me in the transit queue at Nairobi airport, en route to Kampala from Johannesburg, was insistent. In vain did the airline clerk assure him that, according to the computer, his luggage had been safely transferred. He was not interested in what "that machine" said; he wanted to know that the transfer had "physically" taken place.

I never did find out if the impasse was resolved to his satisfaction, but I was grateful to him for reflecting my ambivalence about "machines" and opening my heart once more to the Africa that was my first and probably only real home.

After two weeks in South Africa - despite its achingly gorgeous landscape and the welcome of family and friends - I was beginning to wonder if much of this attachment remained. Although there have been many inspiring changes in the country's social and political life, I felt that the legacy of apartheid lingered too strongly. One vignette summed it up: an acquaintance ushered us into her garden, in which were a dog, and a black man tending the flowers. "His name is Freddie," she said, pointing to the dog.

Uganda, on the other hand, delighted me. The scent of lilies brought by friends, the velvet night that swung down like a curtain on a surreal drive past the wrinkled silver face of Lake Victoria. Without streetlights (a luxury Uganda can't, in most places, afford) driving became increasingly lethal as we approached Kampala, where overcrowded taxis - vans and "boda-boda" scooters - competed for road space with astonishingly relaxed pedestrians.

Concepts of personal space and private possessions differ from those in countries like Europe and North America. Even a handshake is not the crisp, firm squeeze of northern climes - here it is something between holding and shaking hands, lingering and unembarrassed. Ugandans generally live, travel, work and die in community with others. Single-person households, especially as a matter of choice, are rare. My hostess, having had six children of her own (most now grown up), usually houses from two to five Aids orphans at any one time, plus others for whom she pays the school fees.

Daily life in Kampala proved full of surprises. The internet cafe made reference to this on its mouse pads, which bore a message about possible power and network failures: "Understand the situation in our country's technology, that disappointments can come."

More graphically, as we approached the petrol station one day, a friend's son exclaimed, "Hey, what happened to the roof here? I saw it yesterday!" The pumps stood exposed, surrounded by metal posts holding up nothing but sky. When asked about the roof, the attendant said only, "The wind took it." I pictured the roof, no doubt corrugated metal, flapping skywards across the chaotic street, competing with the marabou.

My rose-coloured glasses did not blind me to the many challenges Uganda faces: poverty, corruption, a population profoundly affected by HIV/Aids and a nightmarish guerrilla conflict in the north. Many women say they can be treated as little more than property. However, the government (which has provided 18 years of peace in most regions of a country once devastated by civil war) has been trying, with varying degrees of success, to tackle these problems.

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