Kampala, Uganda has many faces. The steep, hilly streets (and even the road all the way to Entebbe) are all lined with multitudes of small, unique shops overflowing with gentle people with a gracious greeting. The drivers are a different breed, however, where it's "each man for himself".
Most residents live in tiny shacks crowded together, with goats, chickens, and cows wandering the pathway (see rooftop view below). Their mode of transportation is usually walking,
but there are also bodas (motorcycle taxis) carrying everything from a mom with child to mattresses, bananas, chickens, a door or whatever needed. Multitudes of them swarm around your vehicle on both sides. Or, as many as 14 (or many more) people can crowd into one of the white vans (matatus) that careen around the crowded streets at unbelievable speed.
On the other end of the scale are diplomats and government officials, traveling by police escort with sirens blaring, and all other vehicles are forced to quickly pull over to the side. Periodically, one will see a tank for spraying tear gas into rioting crowds, as the officials did last week after the murder of a cleric.
One wakes and goes to sleep to a sing-song chant from the mosque and to neighborhood dogs barking, and both compose the background noise numerous times during the day.
Yesterday I volunteered at a ministry for pregnant women in the slums with a friend, Jalina, a nurse. The prayer requests of the precious woman crowded in beside me on a hard bench - "please heal my baby; please, Lord, I need a job; please heal my HIV". They come from all over Uganda to the tiny one-room shacks in the slums, in hopes of finding a job and a better life. Their babies are called "Hope", "Precious", and "Blessing", and the mothers have a shy smile of thanks.
And we complain about our tiny problems. Lord, open our eyes.
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