500 Shades of Uganda

My first journal entry read: ‘Uganda is a beautiful (if disorganized) country.Everything is an amazing green – essentially a gigantic jungle’. Driving through Kampala, cars, bicycles and ‘boda bodas’ (two-wheeled bicycles or motorcycle taxis) come at you from every direction. Roundabouts do not seem to have a set route, and if they do, it is impossible to tell what it is from the haphazard manner in which things happen.

As we move from the capital, the incessant honking of the city is replaced by the somewhat preferable bleating of goats and clucking of chickens. The sun shines down on us in the mornings and changes in the blink of an eye to torrential downpour in the afternoons. No running water, limited electricity, and only intermittent Internet connections mark the beginning of a new lifestyle. People live in tune with the earth. When it rains they sleep, and when the sun is out, they use it to dry their clothes. Water comes straight from a borehole in the earth, and all waste decomposes back into the ground. Large rocks in the courtyard are used as pumice stones; plants, spices and excrement are used as manure and pesticides. Lacking ‘toys’, children play with anything and everything they can get their hands on: a jerry can cut in half may serve as an excellent sledge to be pulled along in, while an old plastic bottle may keep a child’s imagination going for hours. One is reminded of the very basics of human needs, and the superficiality of our western standards.

Fiery red dust roads filled with potholes contrast with the deep blue of the sky, and the intense green of the foliage celebrates Uganda’s enchanting rural landscape. Not one end of Uganda resembles another. Some regions are as flat as Norfolk, while others are as mountainous as Switzerland. Smells linger alluringly on the air until the rain returns as a blessing to wash away the old with the new.