Jinja Life Jenga

I guess it’s about that time again. Good afternoon family and friends. It’s Friday June20th, in this lovely year of two-thousand and eight and spring is in the air or at least the end of the rainy season. I’m told it’s supposed to start to dry up a bit around the beginning of June and well here we are at the beginning of July and the powers that be have blessed us with one of those San Diego days. The sky is about as blue as could be the breeze is cool like whip and for some reason the guy cutting the lawn is using a weed whacker. One thing we might collectively think of doing is opening a lawn-mower import business for our dear friends in Uganda. There are only two ways of cutting grass in this country and until I see a third this is my story and I’m sticking to it. The first you might have guessed it is with a weed whacker and an orange prison jumpsuit. Minus the four by four, industrial lawn mower and immigrant labor this scene is really not far from any local landscape crew in the states. The guys definitely look like they know their way around grass and stylish shades go hand in hand with “what are you looking at approach to life.” The service industry will always be the service industry no matter where it is. The second and well absurd approach is with a machete bent at the tip close to the same angle as your back will be if you employ this approach more than once a year. People, and when I say people I’m speaking of the vast majority 80%, I would say some where in the neighborhood of once a week grab their “Panga” and start “slashing” (both actual references). There is literally this robotic like drive to work that is utterly pervasive to Ugandan society. Thomas Freidman wrote in The World Is Flat that if the world were like neighborhoods of a city it would look like the following:

Western Europe would be an assisted-living facility, with an aging population lavishly attended to by Turkish nurses. The United States would be a gated community, with a metal detector at the front gate and a lot of people sitting in their front years complaining about how lazy everyone else was, even though out back there was a small opening in the fence for Mexican labor and other energetic immigrants who helped to make the gated community function. Latin America would be the fun part of town, the club district, where the workday doesn’t start until 10pm and everyone sleeps until midmorning …. Freidman unfortunately, like most of us playing arm chair quarterback with any and every issue outside of our boarders gives Africa a tremendously unfair diagnosis. Sinister really, Tom Tom references Africa in more words or less as the dilapidated slums where light never illuminates the streets and hoodlums, (insinuated enough) dark in tone like the night, seek nothing and equally have nothing. As much as I would like to address this statement directly I’ll save that for the day I have a chance to exchange words with Mr. Freidman in a more appropriate venue. For now however, I’ll propose a different take on Africa and more specifically Uganda will be my case study for this little exercise in urban sprawl.

Central Uganda is the neighborhood from Leave it to Beaver, where an inherent and intrinsic respect for morality, family and a hard days work determines an individual’s reputation which still means more than the size of one’s bank account. It’s rude not to greet on the roads with at least a wave of the hand and peoples smiles far out weigh their frowns (though it must be noted no one smiles in photos). The houses are simpler than 50’s style American abode for the most part and the roads reflect the sprawling dirt roads of Arkansas or Mississippi. The life-style is quaint and people live to save and buy rather than buy to live. Houses are built in stages as families actually pay cash as they build. Children are instilled with a deep respect of education and a hard days work through a school system which stifles creative thinking but produces sharp minds non-the-less all at a cost of one semester of housing at any American University. Growth is dynamic despite a repressive government determined to out live itself that provides a true threat to stability in the coming years. However, Ugandans have attained a level of life and sophistication that they would only fight to maintain. This is not spears and drums; this is capital and a white picket fence that is actually an 8 foot concrete wall forming a compound that ensures survival in sanctuary of security that anyone traveling through might feel up until 11 pm or so not knowing their environment. The dress is perennially business casual for even construction workers which again shows the staunch commitment to not thinking outside of the box but also that people really respect their places of work. Finally, what is Uganda well I’m going to go as far as to say it is everything that San Diego dreams to be, pretends to be and can never be because of the superficiality of American society and lack of rain.

Best wishes overcoming the zealous nationalism Mr. Freidman as you say the world is much more flat than we think, ourselves included.

***I must say before I go that there is one stellar young man that I would love to say hello to because well he’s pretty much the coolest boy cousin I have on my dad’s side of the family so BEN BEN! DUDE WHATS UP? Or in Luganda Oli otya sebo? Things are goin great over here you would have a ton of friends because the kids love to play outside after school just like you. Make sure to give everyone a big huge for me and HAPPY BIRTHDAY your getting really really old … like a dinosaur … ok well until next time …. Love cousin Vance