Back in a few…

Off tomorrow for three days in eastern Uganda and at the Kenyan border, so things will be dark here until mid-week. Have a good one, all.

From the Bureau of Self-Promotion (or B.S. for short)

Published recently in the Canadian Medical Association Journal;

“Camps, cholera and cattle raids“

“Delivering health care on US $19 per capita“

“Mapping infectious diseases in Africa“

Long a shining light, the roots of Kenya’s troubles run deep

Through much of the talk about post-election violence in Kenya, conversation and debate inevitably returns to the shock and surprise felt by so many that a country like Kenya– long held up as an example of stability and economic development in an otherwise turbulent region– has descended into chaos so quickly.

The question, then, is perhaps not how a country went from stable and successful to chaotic and economically shattered so quickly. Instead, it is a question of how so many failed to see behind the veneer to reveal the government behavior, tribal differences and the chasm that separates the rich from the poor in so many countries in this part of the world– and to see how quickly, as a result, the stability could, or would, evaporate.

Last week, the New York Times ran an op/ed piece written by Aidan Hartley, a former correspondent with Reuters who wrote a fantastic book called The Zanzibar Chest about his (and his family’s) experience in the region. He retired from journalism when he was barely 30 years old, having already seen too much. He now lives on a farm in western Kenya, where much of the current instability is at its worst.

Here is what he, as someone who was born in Kenya and feels a strong connection to the region, had to say:

“Still, and despite all the talk of another Rwanda, I think Kenya will pull back from the brink. This is mainly thanks to the basic decency of ordinary Kenyans — whose priorities are to work hard, educate their children, fear God and enjoy a few Tusker beers.

Nobody wants to believe Kenya is a typical African basket case. Nor is anybody banking on the swift intervention of the world community: not from Washington, with its string of disastrous foreign policies, or the African Union, which has had unmitigated diplomatic failures in Darfur and Somalia. Kenyans know only they themselves can prevent fresh chaos. Despite all the claims and counterclaims among the candidates, ordinary citizens also know the entire class of Kenyan political leaders is to blame. The African saying that “when elephants fight, the grass suffers” applies tragically. Kenyan politicians are paid more money than many of their counterparts in the West — though they rarely bother to turn up at Parliament.

Kenyan democracy has failed because ordinary people were encouraged to believe that the process in and of itself could bring change. So Kenya’s leaders — and often international observers — interpret democracy simply in terms of the ceremony of multiparty elections. Polls bestow legitimacy on politicians to pillage for five years until the next depressing cycle begins.

In the campaign rallies I attended, I saw no debate about policies, despite the country’s immense health, education, crime and poverty problems. The Big Men arrived by helicopter to address the voters in slums and forest clearings. When they spoke English for the Western news media’s benefit, they talked of human rights and democracy. But when they switched to local languages, it was pure venom and ethnic chauvinism. Praise-singers kowtowed to the candidates, who dozed, talked on their mobile phones and then waddled back to their helicopters, which blew dust into the faces of the poor on takeoff.“

The existence of this simmering problem in Kenya came full circle recently as I was reading a magazine piece written by a correspondent who was leaving Africa after nearly two years spent covering, mostly, the eastern part of the continent (the piece picks up as he reviews notes he jotted down on the trip back from a tour of Tanzania):

”Crime out of hand. Met A.I.D. man who is mending from attack in Dar es Salaam. Outside hotel, beaten by lead pipe. Kept yelling to attacker to take his wallet. Shattered elbow. One of most difficult operations. He said he was stupid to go out after dark. Said expatriates are warned to stay inside or in groups. Tanzanians made mess of surgery. He finally put together right by Chinese surgeon in Nairobi.”

I am interested in that last jotting about Nairobi. It suggests that things are ”put right” in Kenya. That is an image Kenya projects internationally, based deservedly on an impressive and progressive past, but, to many of us who have lived there, the image has developed cracks. For its part, the Government appears to be doing more to conceal the cracks than to seal them, and this may be because of the annual summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity, which took place there this month. Though I don’t want to sound cynical – I am not cynical – I find the cost of this backslapping affair outweighs its good.

Every year, a different African country spends more money than it can afford to play host to the other African heads of state at the O.A.U. summit. Last year, it was Sierra Leone. The year before, it was Liberia. This year, it is Kenya, and Kenya is spending $10 million and, like the earlier host countries, expending every effort to wipe away any vestige of unrest, to show unity, progress and stability – in short, to put on a pretty face.

The Government has shut down Nairobi University indefinitely, sending home 5,567 undergraduates and about 1,000 postgraduates. The students have been ordered to report to their local police chief or district commissioner every Friday and Monday until further notice. This, the Government apparently believed, would insure there would be no protest demonstrations during the O.A.U. sessions. Further, the Government has threatened to shut down the capital’s leading newspaper, The Daily Nation, for its ”rebellious attitude,” and, just to show its seriousness, the Government last month briefly locked up the editor in chief and five subordinates without charges.

The Nation, a fairly vigorous publication at times, was warned in April that it had got out of line with the Administration of President Daniel arap Moi. An editorial had urged the Government to reconsider its decision to ban a political candidate, Oginga Odinga, from running for Parliament. Odinga was a Vice President in the early days of independence, but he ran afoul of then President Jomo Kenyatta and left office in 1966. The paper was forced to apologize on its front page, saying that it regretted the ”unfortunate impression” that it was ”not in step with the party and the Government.”

A month later, The Nation evidently gave the impression it had got out of step again. The 560 doctors employed in Government hospitals in Nairobi were on strike for higher pay. The paper printed a statement from the country’s one political party, the Kenya African National Union, condemning the strike. Most party statements are signed by one officeholder or another, and since this one was not, The Nation called the statement ”anonymous.” President Moi exploded.

”KANU is the ruling party,” the President said. ”It is the Government and therefore my voice. How then can the publishers of The Nation imagine the views of the party are anonymous?”

The editor in chief, Joe Rodrigues, three senior editors and two reporters were jailed and questioned by the Central Intelligence Division. Rodrigues was let go the following day, and the others were released three days later. The paper again apologized on page 1. The managing editor, Joe Kadhi, spoke to a Kenyan journalist friend about the rank conditions of his cell, the common criminals and drunks he was thrown in with, adding: ”It was terrible. I have never known such torture in all my life.” But the newspaper did not say anything against the Government, nor did it publish any accounts by employees about their incarceration or interrogation.

The Government also has ordered a ”crackdown” on ”all agitators and anarchists” in the country. University lecturers who are thought to lean toward Marxism have had their passports impounded. Labor leaders have come under intense official scrutiny. On the surface, it appears, all will look harmonious when the heads of state hit town.

But I ramble. The other night, a mathematics professor at Nairobi University said he found the present situation in Kenya ”chilling. I feel it in the pit of my stomach.” He said he feared that after all the bright years, Kenya was headed the way of many black African countries – that is to say, down.”

When was the above article written? 1981.

In the shadow of the sun (apologies to Kapuscinski)

Under the burning glare of the equatorial sun, the cool confines underneath the canopy of a large tree can become a community’s everything— its classroom, its business centre, its boardroom, its only comfortable spot to rest.

Here, in this picture, is a community meeting taking place in northern Uganda last August. Residents of this trading centre had gathered to learn from their Member of Parliament what they could do to get electricity brought to the region. They are among the 90-plus percent of rural Ugandans currently without access to electricity.

This meeting, like every other of its kind during our trip, took place under the shade of a large tree that grew in the centre of the village. Each village had one thing in common. Whether it was a mango tree, a shea tree, or otherwise, each village had a large, shady tree in its centre under which all important business was conducted.

In this part of the world, shade cannot be taken for granted. On a particularly warm day, the darkened areas under the leafy canopy of a tree can be busy with vendors or, more likely, crowded with people lounging in the coolness that is otherwise elusive under the glare of the overhead sun.

Driving along an isolated dirt road, it is in the shade of a large tree that you are likely to find a woman roasting corn who, in selling you a cob of delicious corn for less than 10 cents, will keep you fed until you get to the next town. Likewise, in these isolated areas where the schools have been closed because of violence (or they are simply too far away), one can find a community leader, often a woman, teaching a handful of children under the shade of a large tree.

Here in Kampala, the lifestyle is different but respect for shade is exactly the same. A café I visit from time to time has tables outside that the staff there are constantly shuffling around, following the day’s shade to ensure customers are not directly exposed to the sun.

Once, when the other tables were full, I sat down at a table that was in sunlight. The server rushed over laughing as she could understand why someone would possibly want to sit in the sun.

Likewise, at a restaurant I met friends at for lunch last week, a server all-but-refused to serve us until we moved to a table that was completely shaded.

It being the hot season, the areas under trees have been particularly busy of late. So much of life here is spent waiting. Waiting for busses to fill, waiting for appointments to come, waiting for work that might come today, tomorrow, next week. Much of that time is spent in the shade. Homes are often not well-ventilated and a day spent exposed to the sun for hours on end is an unpleasant day indeed. So the only, and most comfortable, option remaining is to pass that time with back against bark, eyes closed, waiting.

The sights, smells and sounds that begin each day

The sounds that I fell asleep to (buzzing of mosquitoes I missed on my nightly hunt, chirping of crickets outside and scurrying of the odd cockroach that slipped under my door) have long disappeared by the time I wake up in the morning.

Instead, I awake to the sounds of a hundred birds and a smattering of chickens outside my bedroom window. The number of birds here still astounds me. All of the guidebooks say Uganda is a mecca of sorts for bird-watchers and one of my roommates in August was in heaven over the variety of species here.

Some are cute, like the tiny white bird that I often pass on my way out of the house. Others have a nice song, like the dark black ones with a white neck. Others still are comical, like the maribou stork. There are at least 30 storks that nest in the immediate vicinity of my house. These birds are nearly as tall as humans, with baggy necks that nearly touch the ground. They are, without a doubt, the ugliest bird I have ever laid eyes on.

But regardless of song and appearances, they all play a role in waking me up each morning. Sometimes the mosque, with its calls to prayer, or the born-again church, with the sounds of hundreds of people singing beautiful songs, beat them to it. Needless to say, alarm clocks are of little use here.

I leave my room to get ready for the day, and hear the two women who work here at the house, Edith and Debra, speaking in Luganda over their morning tea. I stop in to say hi to them on my way out the door. The path to our gate is crowded by flowers on both sides that attract several kinds of butterflies. Amidst a shining sun, this walk through nice flowers, with skittish butterflies and the songs of birds flying overhead, is the best possible way to start a day.

Outside the gate, I walk down to the road below where the boda-boda drivers wait for customers. Joseph waits for me there, along with four or five boda drivers who also work there. I greet them all, especially the youngest one, Godfrey, who cannot speak English and as a result is shy with Westerners. He laughs every morning when, after greeting the others in English, I say good morning (“Wasuze otya”) to him in Luganda.

This area is a gathering point of sorts for people on campus. Some gather around the newspaper vendor to read that day’s headlines. Others are buying mobile phone airtime from the kiosks. Often, several maribou storks are interspersed with the people, gathering sticks and grasses for their nests.

I hop on Joseph’s motorcycle and we head off, with him telling me his thoughts on that morning’s headlines. One lesson I learned from an experienced reporter at an earlier newspaper job was that the best way to get a feel for a new place is to go get your hair cut at a barber shop. For a reporter landing in an unfamiliar place and having to put a story together on a tight deadline, a barber, as well as a taxi driver, can be an invaluable source of local knowledge and insight. My boda driver has been that for me throughout my time here. I bounce ideas off him, I ask him about things that confuse me. Likewise, he vents to me about things he feels should be done differently. These conversations occupy most of our trips to and from work each day.

We pass by women bent at the waist sweeping the streets and sidewalks with their straw brooms. Just off the road, men swing pangas (a type of machete), cutting the grass with swings that require a ferocious effort.

Here, the poorer workers base their work on their possessions. Someone owns a panga, so they cut grass for a small fee. Someone else owns a broom, so they get work from the city to sweep the streets. Others own a pickaxe or a hoe so they do street works and gardening. Those with a wooden wheelbarrow transport goods to and from the market. Boda drivers, too, are like this. They have a motorcycle, so they drive people around the city for a fee. This environment partly explains why thieves, if they are caught, are beaten to a bloody pulp by mobs. Take a man’s panga and you’ve taken his ability to eat. Take a woman’s broom or plastic tub and you may very well have taken away her ability to feed her children.

Leaving campus, despite its bustle of students and abundant bird life, is like leaving a cone of silence. When we turn onto the main road into town we enter a world of traffic jams, careening motorcycles and dashing pedestrians who participate in a daily blood sport on the roads of Kampala.

The atmosphere is chaotic, and our motorcycle winds its way between cars with inches to spare and weaves around newspaper vendors who run between the cars looking for customers.

The matatus (taxi vans) add to the chaos. They break every rule in the book to get through traffic, cut off cars and nearly run over pedestrians to get customers. The men who operate the side doors leans out the window soliciting passengers. “Wandegeya, Wandegeya!” screams one, as others (“Kampala Road, Kampala Road!” “Nakawa, Nakawa!”) hope to get the attention of someone looking for a ride.

Further along, we often pass by burning garbage. The landscape here is peppered with black stains—the leftovers of the local form of garbage disposal. There is no government system of garbage removal here and the 5,000 shillings that private companies charge to take it away can be the equivalent of two or three-days’ income for the city’s poorer residents. So the only option left is to burn it. The smell, even now, makes you turn away and cringe as you pass it by. And that says something, given that I have almost no sense of smell. But the stinging smell of burning garbage is not one I have been able to escape.

We then turn onto another, usually less busy road, that passes by the city’s golf course. Here, Joseph usually opens up the motorcycle and we fly along. I lean out a little further to enjoy the breeze, feeling like a dog who just had the window opened for him in a moving car. It is these rides that I will miss when it comes time to move somewhere else.

We eventually stop at the traffic light—one of only four or five in this whole city of nearly two million. Unlike the other lights, these ones are usually working. (The traffic lights near my house are rarely working, making for a dangerous guessing game as cars take turns darting through the intersection amidst the constant flow of motorcycles). The motorcycles all filter to the front of the traffic line and the boda drivers chat to each other waiting for the light to turn green. Inevitably, one or two cars turning from the other direction will dart through the intersection after their light turns red. Joseph usually yells and scolds these drivers, as he does with most vehicles we pass that don’t obey traffic laws (which means nearly every car during the trip).

Later on in the ride, we get to a roundabout that is usually backed up with traffic. We, along with the other bodas, hop the sidewalk and pass by the stopped cars, crossing the railway and taking a sharp left for the last leg of my trip to work. Here, men on bicycles and women carrying fruits and vegetables on their heads are walking to a nearby market where they sell goods throughout the day. Others sit in the shade, waiting for work of some kind.

After climbing the last hill, I get off the bike, pay Joseph and let him know when I’ll expect to need a ride later in the day.

“Have good day, Joseph.”

“Same to you, see you tonight.”

Bits and pieces, this and that

The Kenya situation, from a Ugandan perspective, has been in a bit of a holding pattern of late. There are still people coming over the border from Kenya, about 6,000 now. Uganda has said that if, in a few weeks, the refugees are not able to return safely, then semi-permanent camps will be built further away from the border for their protection. Given that such a move more or less accepts that the instability will drag on, it would be a sad move to be made on both sides.

Today, the World Food Programme is doing a food distribution for the refugees. It’s another reminder of how bizarre it is to contemplate Kenyan refugees being given aid in Uganda– it is a notion that would have seemed unthinkable only a few weeks ago.

Some people have been swinging by this site because it’s been listed in a few different places as being among the blogs tracking the situation in Kenya. There has been (and will be, hopefully) updates about the situation from the Uganda side of the border. But for a much more detailed take on Kenya, from inside Kenya, go to the Web site of a friend of mine, here.

I haven’t had a chance to complete a proper account of the Zanzibar trip, which will happen in due time. But in the meantime,here’s a bit from one of my fellow friends on the trip, Brandon, who works in Zambia.

Otherwise all is well ’round these parts. A Canadian journalist friend, Katie, arrived Friday. We’ve been having a great time so far, and no my excitement from having her around doesn’t revolve entirely around the fact that she arrived in Uganda with a big bag of chocolate-covered almonds for me. Nope, not at all.

Hip to be square

I thought I was doing alright with keeping up on pop culture. Especially through keeping an eye on Internet news sites, and conversations and e-mails with those back home, I figured I had a pretty good handle on what’s been going on pop culture-wise since I left home.

Apparently not so much. Earlier today I read an article online about negotiations to follow-through with the Golden Globe Awards despite the TV writers’ strike. The article listed the movies nominated in major categories.

I did not recognize the name of a single one of the movies.

I suppose it goes to show that even though I swing by news sites to keep a finger on what’s going on, I’m really out of touch with new movies, TV shows, music and books.

In retrospect, it makes sense. I can’t remember the last time I turned on a TV here (not counting watching a TV briefly in Zanzibar to get an update on the Kenya post-election situation). I’ve watched a couple movies at the cinema in Kampala, but otherwise I’m completely out of the loop.

Just today I was having lunch with a friend and we were talking about how active the social life is here and wondering why that is the case. When in Kampala and not traveling, the pattern each day is the same. You work all day and then around 6 or 7 p.m. friends begin finishing up work and calling each other to figure where to meet for the evening. So today, a friend and I were trying to figure out why the social life here is so different.

Perhaps it’s because our basic responsibilities centre around work, so when we’re not working we might as well be social. But we also figured it’s because we don’t have access, or don’t want access, to the things that, back home, could whittle away an evening. With one exception, no one in our group of friends has TV (except a couple local channels you can pick up with rabbit ears), few watch movies, and given the frequency of power outages there are only so many things you can do in a darkened house to pass the time. So you might as well hang out with friends in the dark.
In the end, it means I don’t know which movie should win “Best Drama” this year, or which book deserves to be #1 on the best sellers’ list. I also have nothing to say on whether this season’s TV shows are better than the last.

And that’s fine by me.

Life on the Ugandan-Kenyan border

Early Sunday morning (so early that in my half-asleep stupor, I packed a pillow but not a crucial camera cord), I joined another reporter in heading to the Uganda-Kenya border to check out the refugee situation there. We got back late Monday night, having spent the two days interviewing refugees and local officials. The refugees are in a wide-range of conditions. Some are okay health-wise, others have deep wounds from pangas and machetes. Most have lost their homes and businesses in the violence. I have posted some pictures with this piece. A warning that a couple of them are fairly graphic. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but instead hope to give a clear picture of what it’s like on the ground. If you would rather not view pictures depicting the outcome of a panga attack please skip over those two photos.

Here in Uganda there is a widespread sense of disbelief over what is
happening in Kenya. Since the era of independence more than 40 years ago, Kenya has been the stable neighbour for not just Uganda but much of East Africa.

Uganda’s history has been pockmarked with coups, military leaders, civil wars and tribal clashes that have, at various times, sent Ugandan refugees fleeing into Kenya.

Today, thousands (the last report said 5,000 but it is higher now) of
Kenyan refugees have fled into eastern Uganda, seeking to escape the violence.

On our trip to the border, the conditions of those coming into the country revealed the extent of the violence in western Kenya.

Some had been hacked with pangas and machetes, and had
the deep, bone-revealing wounds to prove it. Others were limping or bandaged from having been stoned. Most I met at an impromptu refugee camp had lost their homes and businesses.

And that’s what makes this class of refugees unique. Today they are
typical refugees, with little more than the clothes on their backs.
But barely a week ago most of them owned homes and businesses.

“Two weeks ago we were business people, but today we are typical
refugees. We have nothing,” one refugee, who owned a dairy a week ago, told me. He said his house and business have since been destroyed.

“They even took my clothes,” he said.

Here is that man, Danson Nganga, with his three-day old son, Isaac, who is wife gave birth to after the couple arrived at the refugee camp.

This status as business owners is why, they say, they were targeted.
In western Kenya, the Kikuyu form the bulk of the business-owning
class. They moved west from central Kenya, into lands dominated those from the Teso and Luo tribes. The Kikuyu owned businesses, ran hotels and were generally better off than the rest of the western population.

Over the years this led to a previously-hidden hostility that exploded when last month’s election results were announced.

Ugandans have so far been welcoming to the refugees. Many of the
relief workers in eastern Uganda say they are happy to return the
hospitality that, over the years, Kenyans often offered to fleeing
Ugandans.

“Ugandans have been refugees and it was Kenya who sheltered us,” said one Ugandan relief worker I spoke with. “So when Kenyans began coming across it was a form of payback.”

Some of the refugees at the camp in Malaba, where we were, displayed injuries from the violence they fled. One, named Stephen, had a piece of gauze held on his arm by a short length of rope. He slid the gauze down his arm to reveal a gash so deep that the bone was clearly visible.

Here is Stephen. These are the two pictures that are fairly graphic, so skip them if necessary:

While we were at the camp, a young woman arrived from the border with a white shawl covering her shoulders. Upon removing the shawl, she revealed a gaping hole sustained in a machete attack. The attack had happened a week ago and she had spent the week fleeing violence. Upon arriving at the camp, she received medical attention for the first time since being injured.

Here in the capital, Kampala, people are far enough away from the
border that they rely on media reports for updates on the situation.
But the election and violent aftermath have had a tangible effect on
the region.

I mentioned in the last post that I returned to Uganda on Jan. 2 to find that gas prices had quadrupled to Shs 10,000 a litre (equivalent of about $6 a litre). Luckily, gas prices have now gone down to 3,500-4,000 shillings a litre, though many stations are still dry. But many drivers have still left their vehicles at home, unable to afford the cost of driving and unwilling to spend hours waiting in line for fuel.

When the worst of the shortage hit, Uganda worked out an agreement with Kenya that Kenya would provide armed guards to escort supply trucks to the border so they could reach Uganda. Once the crisis has passed, many here hope leaders will have learned a lesson that a more reliable system of supply, and reserves, needs to be established to avoid this from happening again.

Back on the border, there is hope that things will get better. The two Kenyan leaders have agreed to meet and most we spoke with said a deal between the two would end the violence. Despite all they’ve been through in the last couple weeks, everyone we spoke with said they would be able to return home when peace is established. They also said they would not hold grudges against those who attacked them even though many of them are neighbours. They do, however, face the problem of having to start from scratch with no capital. Maybe, once this is all over, the government will provide aid to help them re-start. The violence did, after all, begin because of political wrangling.

Keeping an eye on the neighbour

The line between the ”vacation world” and “real world” is often a distinct one. You cross it in stepping off a plane, closing the trunk of an over-packed car or coming home to find a mailbox full of bills.

But that divide was more blurred during our Zanzibar trip by the election in Kenya. Amongst our group, one came from Kenya and two others, including myself, were flying through Kenya. And so we all, especially the friend from Kenya, were eager for news as the election came and went. The fact that it took three days for officials to count the votes meant the result, and threat of violence depending on the outcome, loomed over our otherwise pleasant days of lying on the beach and touring the area.

Finally, when we moved to the island’s largest town, Stone Town, we had access to a television and the Internet. We stood in the breakfast room of the guest house we were staying at and watched footage of massive riots and read stories online tracking the mounting death total (now at over 300, with an estimated 100,000 displaced across the country).

In the months leading up to the election, the opposition leader was ahead in all but a few polls  and as the votes began coming in, he was in the lead. But at the last second the incumbent president, Kibaki, was declared the winner by the slimmest of margins. Since then, there have been many reports of vote-rigging, including one region where 25,000 more votes were counted than there were voters.

It is unsettling to watch all this violence happening in a country that is often seen as East Africa’s stabilizing influence. It is certainly the region’s strongest economy and is generally better developed and more wealthy than its neighbours. This includes Uganda, as during my trip to Kenya I was shocked at the everyday differences between infrastructure in the two countries.

The violence that followed the election outcome goes beyond fighting between government and opposition voters. Supporters for the two sides roughly follow the lines of two of the country’s major tribes and so there is now fear that those leading the riots could begin forgetting the reason they’re staging an uprising—the election results—and begin simply targeting anyone of a rival tribe.

So as our friend agonized over whether to fly back on her scheduled return date or stay longer in the hopes the violence would dissipate (she ended up flying back on schedule and got home safely), we all wondered what this meant and how it might play out.

Flying out of Zanzibar on Wednesday, my plane was to land in Nairobi before connecting to Uganda. Rounding the corner approaching the airport in Zanzibar, I was greeted with crowds of people lined up in the scorching mid-day heat. A flight scheduled to leave for Nairobi that morning had been canceled so there were dozens of people (including one of the friends in our group) who were not happy about the airline’s proposed solution: that they be flown to Nairobi that night and put up at a hotel in the city’s downtown. In other words, have them driven right into the thick of the city’s riots. I was happy to hear yesterday morning that my friend got home safely.

Luckily, my flight left more or less on time, and I caught the connection to Uganda. But the layover in Nairobi was long enough to get a sense of the atmosphere in the airport. It was jammed full of people who chose to sleep there instead of the city’s hotels. I spoke with one family on my plane who were booked into a hotel in Nairobi, but planned instead to sleep at the airport because they didn’t want to risk the violence.

As our plane took off for Uganda, I looked down at Nairobi below me to see a city on fire. All across the city, plumes of smoke rose in places where violence was fresh. Later, I mentioned this to a friend who lives in Nairobi and her response was that the street in front of her apartment was on fire at that very moment.

In all the talk about the violence I had not thought of how it would affect things in Uganda. But that changed the moment I walked out of the airport in Entebbe. While negotiating with the taxi drivers that flock the departures exit, they had a grave look on their faces. The main one I was bartering with said, “Sir, we need to discuss the price. Because of fuel prices we are now charging 100,000 shillings (about $60) for the trip to Kampala.”

I almost laughed. That’s more than double the usual price, and I figured there was no way gas prices (normally about $1.40 a litre) could have risen that much in the time I was gone. So I said there was no way I would pay that price, figuring it was just another ploy. Taxi drivers here will use every excuse in the book to justify asking for more money.

“No my friend, fuel is now 10,000 shillings a litre (normally about 2,440 shillings a litre) because no fuel is coming into the country from Kenya.”

Sure enough, on the drive into Kampala most of the gas stations were closed, or charging 10,000 shillings a litre. It is part of life as a land-locked country that the supply route from the coast, in this case Mombasa, is so vital. Not a single commodity has arrived at or left the port there since the election and that port supplies most of East Africa.

Putting the Kenya violence aside for a moment, think about what that fuel price means for the average Ugandan. Fuel prices here are higher than North America at the best of times, but they are now at the equivalent of about $6 per litre. Think of the uproar in North America when gas spikes by, say, 20 cents a litre. How would people react there if prices were suddenly $6 a litre?

Here is a situation where gas is at that price in a country where the average household income is $300 a year. Granted, those with cars are part of a higher income class but that rising cost of fuel affects commodity prices as well and suddenly rising fuel prices are not something to complain about over a morning coffee and muffin as they are in North America. Instead, they are something that stops lifestyles in their tracks. Or, people find another way. The roads are now bustling with pedestrians because public transportation has become too expensive, but people still need to work.

This morning I was talking with my boda-boda motorcycle driver about the Kenya situation on the way to work. “There in Kenya, the two major tribes are fighting,” he said. “We here in Uganda pray to God that the fighting does not come to Uganda because we have 32 tribes.”

He then proceeded to count off nearly every one of them while explaining which ones would be fighting against each other if rioting broke out. At first I tried to keep track of which tribes had issues with each other but it quickly became too confusing to sort out. It illustrates just how easily this type of fighting can explode and how powerless people like my boda-boda driver feel—that if the rioting comes to Uganda, the fighting can become a lightning rod for decades-old tribal differences that today are not apparent in the everyday street life.

But it is, hopefully, an unlikely scenario. This is a country that harbours its internal differences but also is aware of how damaging tribal fighting can be given the decades worth of destruction caused by the Idi Amin years in the 1970s.

This afternoon I sat working in a café, watching the news and listening to the BBC for news on the Kenya situation. Having just finished reading an article written for the Toronto Star by a friend of mine in Kenya that outlined concerns about the ethnic lines separating the two fighting sides, I watched a man in a Kenya slum being beaten to death on TV.

These next few weeks will be interesting.

I was going to keep writing, but Zanzibar wouldn’t let me

Things have been a bit dark around here lately. I just got back last night from a holiday in Zanzibar. Lengthy account of the trip to follow… Happy New Year!