Munnakampala

At the first dinner with our local liaison, she told us:

"If there are riots, do not go towards the riot, run away from the riot;

if you are in a building during a riot, stay in the building;

if you are in the street, run away from the riot;

if you are in the middle of a riot, try to find an opening and run away from the riot,

because there will be tear gas, and we have so much tear gas here in this country."

Although many locals seemed to be slightly, silently on edge about the long-reigning Prime Minister Museveni, we encountered no riots, and we fell in love with Kampala by foot.  Museveni is about to change the Constitution for a second time to allow himself to continue in power; he's been the only person in leadership since the war.  I'm writing this from the Entebbe airport, built back in the time of Idi Amin, which might give a clue as to how much of government funds under Museveni are going elsewhere besides public projects.  It is said that he sells so many infrastructure projects to Chinese companies because he gets a cut of the money.  I've been glad for all the Chinese businesspeople, because we actually had a lovely, final dinner with our Belgian friends at a Cantonese restaurant.

The last Saturday morning in Uganda, we walked to Makerere University to play squash.  In the afternoon we attended a rugby match where Uganda’s national team (the Cranes) got trounced by Namibia’s.  On this continent, Namibia is supposedly second only to South Africa in rugby.  Their team was all white (Uganda’s was all black); I learned Namibia belonged to South Africa until 1990 and is one of the least densely populated countries in the world.  Before the match, a helicopter landed in the middle of the pitch to deliver the speaker of parliament.  If anyone didn't feel like standing for the national anthem at the beginning, it was also acceptable just to raise your hand.  We were sitting very close to all the action and right next to the rowdy crowd.  It was very fun to join in the dancing and chanting and observe vuvuzelas in their natural habitat.  The team is sponsored by the local beer, Nile, and they were handing out plenty of free bottles.  I loved observing a new sport I was unfamiliar with, and the players definitely had the largest thighs of any athlete I'd ever seen.

Martha, Emma, and I spent Sunday in Entebbe.  We walked around a bit but spent most of the day in the botanical gardens.  We had lunch on a beach of Lake Victoria.