I had plans to meet up with my friend Haywood who was leaving Kampala the next day, but ended up with some surprise visitors that needed a place to stay Friday night. My surprise visitors were two Ugandan friends that I play frisbee with, Alex and Gerald, who stay in Makindye, a nearby suburb south of Kampala, who had stayed at my place the previous night after the team had gone to Bubbles for Thursday quiz night, an Irish ex-pat watering hole which is really close to where I live.
We all woke up that morning, with only Alex a bit hungover, to the promise of a full weekend of celebrating the wins of both Uganda A Team Rolex (1st place champs!) & Uganda B Team Boda Boda (2nd place champs! And which I was a co-captain!) at the Easter weekend FEAST tournament in Mombasa, Kenya with a frisbee party Saturday night, and plans for a trip (my third!) to the Baha'i Temple, a street food cooking lesson (my second!) with Line, a student from Denmark writing her Bachelor's thesis, and her friends Louise and Iben, medical residents also from Denmark who just finished up 3 months of delivering babies deep down in the village of Busolwe, and of course, frisbee practice (my... 8,002,753th!) after that, on Sunday.
Alex and Gerald pushed (walked with) me to the top of Kitante Close, a short but steep and windy road off of Yusuf Lule Rd, and when I left them they were on their way to town to make their way back to Makindye. But I knew there was trouble when I started hearing the blasts, gunshots, and sirens from my office, and at around noon, I got a confusing call from Gerald who told me he and Alex were stuck near the Lugogo Shoprite, a huge shopping mall which is just east of town, after getting tear gassed, but that they couldn't stop and take refuge at Cricket Oval, the concrete-enclosed cricket fields where the frisbee team practices on Tuesday and Thursday for free, which is normally open to the public. He told me that they were headed further east, but that he was really worried about Alex, who wasn't feeling well and falling asleep, and asked me if I could find some Panadol (generic pain reliever/fever reducer) and meet them somewhere to bring it to Alex. Obviously, it wasn't safe for me to embark on a wild rescue search for them, but I hoped in the back of my mind that they had found a safe place to stop and rest.
At work, after others had filtered out and gone home for the weekend, my co-worker Jannipher actually came over to my desk as it was getting towards 6pm and told me with a gentle but stern tone that I should probably leave the office and get home before it got dark. I've come to know the nuanced shades of concern about safety in Kampala based on the reaction of my Ugandan co-workers to events leading up to and during the presidential and local elections and the ongoing protests that had just passed the 2-week mark on Thursday, but this was the first time someone had ventured to really let me know they were concerned which I knew was an indication that today was a bit different.
Marika, a student at Kenyon College studying abroad for a semester in Kampala that also plays frisbee, came over for dinner that night; she excitedly agreed to Royal Wedding iterations on E! (randomly 1 of the only channels we get in our apt) and a fresh bowl of Ramen with carrots, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and spinach as she'd been sick for a few days, and I had just returned from Mombasa with lots of Ramen! Ramen is expensive in Kampala, upwards of $.50 (1,000 Ush), and while it was still expensive in Mombasa, it was half the price at only $.25 (20 Ksh).
So what else did I bring back from Mombasa??? Just the essentials: two 250ml bottles of Kenya Safari gin, 20 mangoes fresh off the street (2 ripe and 18 unripe), and 8 packets of Ramen!
We talked together in the kitchen about the day as she minced and I chopped and water boiled, and just as we were about to saute the veggies and drop 2 eggs into the pot of noodles, I got a call from Alex saying he and Gerald were downstairs. I had the foresight to make a double portion of noodles because I knew Alex and Gerald were coming over, and I assumed they hadn't eaten all day judging from Gerald's description, but was really surprised that they came carrying chapatis to make Rolex. Rolex is made by rolling an egg omelette in a chapati, and the omelette is usually made with a minimum of tomato and onion. When Alex comes over, I usually buy all of the ingredients and he makes the Rolex; Alex and Gerald in general don't have much money to spend, that would require having employment opportunities, which most Ugandans in their 20s struggle to find, so 3 out of 4 was really impressive, especially given the circumstances.
Even through their laughter and finishing of the other's broken sentences, the full story of what it was like being in the cross-fire of riots and tear gas (and triggering the recent memory of being in the cross-fire of riots less than 2 years ago) wasn't completely lucid or coherent; Marika and I knew to not press for too many details because it was apparent they were pretty shaken up.
So back to my original question, what do you do on a Friday night when there's riots in Kampala? The answer: Ramen, Rolex, and the Royal Wedding!
Marika and I feasted on Ramen, Alex and Gerald made Rolex, and I grabbed 2 more mugs to make all of us tea, for which Marika and I would drink black, Alex and Gerald would drink with no less than 2 heaping teaspoons of sugar. We all gathered in my living room to watch the competing global event of the day, the Royal Wedding! Marika's study abroad program director was really concerned about the students' safety, so she left a bit earlier, around 9pm, and Alex, Gerald, and I stayed up the rest of the night, with Alex spinning the music off my freshly-burned CD with 100+ new Ugandan songs to listen to (originally intended for the 18+ hour bus ride to and from Mombasa), drinking Kenya Safari gin mixed with pineapple juice, and teaching Alex and Gerald how to play Spit, the two-person card game I learned how to play from my cousins when I was really young, and which I don't think I've played since summer camp!
Since Ugandans don't riot on the weekends, Saturday was spent as planned, saying goodbye to Haywood and sending him off properly, with a mango from Mombasa, a 200ml bottle of Uganda Waragi, and copying 500MB of Ugandan music onto one of his flash drives. I met up with him in Muyenga, which is a neighborhood in south Kampala, and I met his soon-to-be-former roommates Roey and Aneri, the new roommate taking his place Julia, and his friends Desta and Dow-li, both roommates who also live in Muyenga down the street from Roey, Aneri, and Julia. Haywood and I met at Mobile Monday Kampala (MoMoKla) and ended up hanging out a lot in the 3 months he was here. We spent a weekend in April running around Kampala like tourists eating Rolex and Kikomando (pronounced chikomando) and seeing all of the sights together, which included my first trip to the Baha'i Temple, as well as the Uganda Museum, the Kasubi Tombs, and tours of the Kabaka's Parliament and Palace. Along with Madeline aka Mad-dog, a Watson fellow who also played frisbee, that I had become close with, and who had just left for Indonesia a week and a half ago after 3 months, he was another goodbye that made it hard for me to say. I crashed lunch with his friends at Abinet, a small and cheap Ethiopian restaurant in Muyenga that they frequent, and then parted ways to head home and do laundry before the frisbee party that night.
Sunday was also spent as planned, with a poorly bargained boda to and from the Baha'i Temple (it seems to be harder to get a good bargain if the destination is anything remotely for sight-seeing or tourists). The service starts at 10:30am, and only lasts about half an hour, so with the frisbee party going late into the night before, and with only Line a bit hungover, Alex, Line, Louise, Iben and I arrived at the temple around 11:30am, with just a few of the congregation left lingering as we explored, and in which Alex compared Louise and her walking stick to his 127 year old grandfather who lives in Masaka. We spent the rest of the afternoon at my apt after a quick trip to the Kamwokya market to pick up some remaining ingredients. Line, Louise, and Iben learned how to make pancakes (my favorite!), chapati, and 2 kinds of samosas, one with a potato and carrot filling, and the other with a french bean and pea filling. The pancakes and chapatis were especially delicious because Alex mixes lime zest into the pancake dough, and garlic, onions, carrots and green peppers into the chapati dough, both recipes that convinced Louise, and Line and I agreed, that Alex should open up a restaurant. Being the youngest of a mix of siblings and cousins and cooking for everyone (and the rule "if you feeling like eating and you're cooking, you better be cooking for everyone") is lots of practice!
The rain is pouring outside today. I can hear the infrequent squeals of children emanating from the unusually quiet streets of my Kamwokya neighbors, undoubtedly forced inside from the rain, and I'm home sick with a sore throat. I was feeling a bit rundown Saturday afternoon, but didn't really give in to the fact that I was sick until I felt dizzy and light-headed at practice Sunday night. I also think my consumption of dust and pollution surpasses a certain threshold (and perhaps a diet of beans and chapatis, along with plenty of late nights and a lack of sleep), and the result is a cold that wipes me out for a day or two. But when it rains the mosquitoes always come out in full force, which means if I don't use my mosquito net, I'll be covered in mosquito bites tomorrow and attacked tonight!!!
I can't believe it, but I'm down to the last 3 months of my fellowship in Kampala!!! I actually have to decide in the next few days to book my flight at the beginning of August, which seems like one huge detail among lots of other huge details on the horizon in these next 3 months. Stay tuned!
