It's been three weeks since I arrive at Pakuba Safari Lodge and five days from now Kenneth and I will depart, stepping into a Toyota marked "Tourist Van" and challenging the traffic demons while Wilfred drives us eastward four hours, passing Kampala, and depositing me at Entebbe, Uganda's only international airport. My late afternoon flight on Qatar Airways will retrace my route: six hours north to Doha, Qatar (and if you have a clear idea of where that is, you're far ahead of where I was last month!), two hours changing planes, and then a 14 hour nonstop marathon to Dulles, just outside Washington, DC. I should be home a couple hours after that.
Today I want simply to sketch some people and impressions of Uganda, a country I knew almost nothing about before my arrival. Like many Americans, I had heard of Uganda only fleetingly and in negative contexts. The first association is usually with Idi Amin, who was both a skilled leader and a buffoon. Known as the "Butcher of Uganda" and for thinking he was also King of Scotland, he ruled with an iron hand from 1971 to 1979 before being driven from power and hiding in Saudi Arabia until his death. When I mentioned to American friends I was going to Uganda, they typically mentioned his name when expressing their incredulity that I would want to work here. So let me note in passing that 1979 was a very long time ago: Jimmy Carter was our President and I was about to start studying egret siblicide. My hair contained melanin...
The other association Americans have for Uganda was the electrifying and successful raid by Israeli commandos on an Air France jet full of hostages at the Entebbe Airport. This wasn't about Uganda: it was about Palestine. And it was an even longer time ago: July 4, 1976. The day of America's bicentennial with tall ships plying the Hudson River past Manhattan. Gerald Ford as President. By coincidence, my 29th birthday with my dissertation defense imminent.
My point is simple: Americans know almost nothing about Uganda and what we think we know is negative and long past its shelf life. Shoebills drew me here (and I'll return to take care of that business), but the people are well worth getting to know.
I headed this post with my best photo of the month. I was sitting in the shadows of a tiny shop in Pakwach, the city/town just across the Nile from our tourist lodge accommodation. We come to Pakwach every few days so I can extract a million Ugandan shillings (the limit...about $330.00 US) to pay for boat fuel, rangers' pay, etc. I was parked in the cool shade of a shop run by an affable and outgoing woman named Annie (see below) while Kenneth was getting a shave. I could pretend to be consulting my cell phone when I was really taking candid (read: sneaky) photographs of the town's characters. The elegant woman with a platter of bananas balanced on her head simply materialized in front of me to do business with Annie's son. Her posture, like nearly everyone in Uganda, was regal. The platter might have been an Easter bonnet for the ease with which she bore it: she conducted her small bit of business and glided along her way. The magical moment passed. But tell me: where could one experience this in America?
All the Ugandans I have met are friendly and curious about the world beyond their purview. As I sit in Annie's shop taking pictures, I am happily consuming a pint of excellent strawberry yogurt. The viscosity is somewhat challenging to coax upward through the plastic straw's narrow lumen, so I am absorbed with effort and thinking about the banana woman. Ten minutes into my labors, Annie materializes and hands me a wad of bills. What's this? "Your change," she replies, and returns to her position behind the desk. It seems I paid for the yogurt with a FIFTY thousand shilling note, rather than a FIVE (as I'd assumed). There are no commas in the bill markings, so 5000 & 50000 look very similar to my tourist eyes. No Ugandan would have made this mistake (the bills are different sizes and colors), but what do I know? I'm the absent-minded professor...
Many years ago in another country that shall go unnamed, I paid for a taxi ride with a 200,000 unit note that I mistook for a twenty. That cabbie was very friendly, welcoming me to his country in my language, smiling and happy. He came out with a $140 US tip. Upon learning of this later (the 'sucker light' flashed on for me far too late), my hosts were chagrined. I felt like an idiot.
That cabbie was not like Annie. She brought me change.
Posing with Annie (I'm the one in blue....)
Now it is evening and I am back in the Pakuba Lodge's lobby. A friend has sent me the link to a song I should learn: Don Williams's 1976 "Say It Again." I play the Youtube version a couple times, thinking through the guitar chord structure, imagining a harmonica break, and absent-mindedly starting to sing a harmony part as Don sings lead. Teopista, the young woman attending the front desk, hears "us" from across the room and wanders over. This particular youtube presents the lyrics. Shyly, Teopista joins in singing. Moments later, Rodgers (another staff member) completes our trio: we are backup up Don. I snap a selfie of the moment.
Gladys Knight had the Pips; Don Williams had the Pakuba Trio...
These are some of the things that Uganda now represents for me. The fantastic national park and its animals, of course. The crushing dilemma of the rangers enforcing the law against starving fishermen (see below)...of course. But no whiff of Idi Amin or the Raid on Entebbe. This is a new country for me. And it's a collage of very, very old dramas. People struggling to get along in the world as they know it. Not my world, exactly, but not an increasingly important addition to my world.
I did not find what I came to Uganda to find, yet I am well satisfied with what the weeks have brought me. I have often told my students that serendipity is a big key in biological research. In 1979 I set out to study why birds are monogamous, but found that the study subjects -- great egrets -- were siblicidal. So I studied that. In field research, I tell students, "Take what the field gives you." The same seems to be true of life.
I close this piece with a searing photograph of the last fisherman our rangers confronted. I shall try to fetch this image to mind the next time I find myself wallowing in self pity when something trivial in my Rich American Life seems to be massively disappointing. This guy goes out every day in a "boat" that would not pass US Coast Guard muster for seaworthiness. He tries to catch fish for his family. In the process, he sneaks over the invisible boundary of Murchison Falls National Park, where there are more fish. Th rangers told him to move. He probably did so only until the rangers' boat had left...
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POST SCRIPT: I asked Mugecis if he had learned the fates of the two fishermen arrested in the delta. He had. The magistrate let them go. Everyone in our boat was happy to hear this. "The quality of mercy is not strained..."
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