R&R - Kampala

In so many ways Kampala reminded me of Dar … it was a city, first of all, complete with paved roads and crowds of people and streets lined with busy stores and traffic! The weather was also a bit hot and muggy like Dar, and I could hear Swahili on the street (for this reason (the absence of Swahili), Kigali did not remind me as much of Dar). The daladala (or, to be geo-linguistically correct, matatu) kandas hung out of the side windows in the same way, shouting their destinations out in the same singsong way as their cars careened through traffic or idled curbside while waiting for new passengers. Their cars even looked the same – pretty-well banged up that is and with the colorful paint starting to chip away from the slogans splashed across their rear windows. And like the daladalas in Dar, the slogans all tended to fall into three categories: God (“God is Good,” “His Grace,” “Glory Be to the Lord”), soccer (“Man United,” “Arsenal”), and the amusingly random (“One Missed Call,” “Puff Daddy,” “Never,” “Relax”). The only visible differences were the taxi lights they actually had sitting on the roofs and the “Emergency Door” lettering on all of the back doors. Plus, I saw a few with ads in place of a slogan: “Fly Emirates,” or “JK Investments.” The buildings in both Kampala and Dar (and Kigali for that matter) had a similar look to them – it’s hard to pin down what exactly but there’s something about them that’s distinctly African … or at least distinctly not American or European. Mobile “top-up” signs can be seen on every street corner (and usually at more than a few stores in between those corners) in both cities, along with the ubiquitous produce sellers strolling past with their wares casually balanced on their heads and the street vendors sitting on the sidewalks in the midst of their carefully arranged newspapers, bibles, watches, pens, and wallets. And there were the beggars – cripples, small children, thin women with their tiny babies – they were reminiscent of Dar as well … and just as sobering to see in Kampala as in Dar.

But in other ways, Kampala was quite different. There was much more English (written and spoken) for one thing – almost all of the billboards, store signs, and traffic advisories used English (with fairly good grammar, too!), and I didn’t encounter a single person who didn’t speak some English (and most were conversant, erring on the side of near-fluency). Kampala also seemed cleaner than Dar … although not as meticulously clean as Kigali … just clean in the sense that trash actually ends up in garbage cans at least as often as it ends up on the street or in the gutter. Size-wise, Kampala felt quite a bit bigger than Dar, and it certainly appeared to be wealthier and more developed. (I’m not sure if the wealth is the chicken or the egg in this case, but there were also a lot more wazungu … or perhaps it just seemed that way to me after three practically wazungu-free months in Kibondo!) And one of the most novel differences of all: the 1:1 (or, at a stretch, 1.5:1) seat to bodies ratio on the matatus, buses, and bodabodas … not 3:1 or 5:1 or as-many-as-possible:1 but one person per seat!

I would have loved to have been able to spend more time getting know Kampala and Kigali, but that would have come at the cost of the Murchinson Falls trip … and cities are all well and good, but elephants are even better!