African Insights – July 2008

Life in Kampala – Uganda -What life is like in a typical Kampala Neighborhood

The Neighborhood - A Courtyard where I lived

It is 5:30 am in the morning, a mother rises early in the morning lighting a candle, and the power is out once again.  From the nearby Mosque, there is the call to prayer; people begin to stir around Momma Axum’s place.  The Somali woman comes outside of her home joined by her daughter Jasmine bowing down toward Mecca, while Junior, a student at a university looks out his small window thinking of how he would spend the day. 

The little courtyard in the slum comes alive…Mom, the resident elder woman starts her charcoal stove and heats water which she puts into a flask so her husband Hajj can have his Chai (Tea) later on. Now she is making porridge from millet, something to fill the stomach on a damp morning in Kampala.

In his makeshift bed little Axum arises, removes his worn out and faded blanket; morning has come and he is hungry as always…last night he went to bed with an empty, there was just enough for one meal during the day.  On his bed, a ball that has been given to him…he hugs it.  He is one of the only boys in the neighborhood that has one while the others kick plastic bottles.

His mother dresses him within the small house that is just a few seconds near her parents place…Momma Axum prays under her breath as she dresses her son…to have enough for just this day in their lives.  Her radio is tuned to listen to morning devotions in Luganda from a local preacher. 

More people are coming out of their one-room homes…Momma Joy, also referred to as Mukole with her baby named Joy who is just 9 months old.  The little girl has a tuft of thick hair on her head…big eyes looking out into the world…mother has Joy tied to her bag with a blanket, bending over as she prepares breakfast for her husband who runs a small second-hand clothing stall at Owino market, her small radio is playing gospel music performed by Ugandan singers.  She sings along, life in Kampala is unique…tossing together Muslims and Christians, all getting along, sharing the daily pains of living and the humor that flies freely and often the food that one might have.

It is 6:30 by now, little Axum is drinking his thick millet porridge quite eagerly and wanting some chai (tea with mild and sugar), others are getting up, people are moving with small cans and basins to the shower area getting ready for the day…the pit latrine door swings open and closes, slowly daylight moves in and people are putting their first load of wash on the lines that crisscrosses the red clay courtyard.

As you look upward you can see the clouds of rain approaching, the winds are increasing and the dust that is there is moving visibly in the air…the first drops of rain are coming down and soon it simply buckets of rain…everyone runs under the makeshift porches if they have one…moving the charcoal stoves closer to the walls of the house…coming out with tubs to collect the rain water…since it is free and you save 200 shillings that you do not have to pay for water from the tap.  The rains have formed small creeks that run through their well formed ruts toward the shower area…the red clay mixed in with the water creates an angry stream that takes with it some of the matoke peelings (plantain bananas), small water bottles, match boxes all swept away, Axum throws in a stick to see it too be swept away, but soon it is all over and the sun slowly dries up the courtyard once again and the chatter of women can be heard against the background of Luganda Music coming over the radio…it is local Queen of Singer, Juliana singing a song about “Mukwano” meaning friendship…at the same time on another radio you can hear President Museveni once again proclaiming his campaign slogan of 2006 “Prosperity,” someone simply laughs mumbling something about reality of life in Uganda.

This is the real Uganda, a place, a state of being that is common to most of the 30 million that call this country their home…Kampala is 2 ½ million in size, 60% of its people live in slums.  Living on less than 3 dollars a day, meaning that most families eat only one meal a day, and mostly it is without meat.  Unemployment can run as high as 70%.  Jobs are tough to get and if do not know someone at the place where you are applying, simply forget it. 

Momma Axum works in shoe shop in town owned by an Indian woman and receives 50,000 shillings a month, about $30.00 a month.  A chicken here is 10,000 shillings ($6); a kilo of beef runs 4500 shillings ($3).  The diet consists of beans boiled and spiced with Royco (contains lots of MSG made by Unilever and a staple of the East African Kitchen), one also uses onions which are quite potent here, garlic, lots of Munyo (salt – Hypertension is on the increase in East Africa as is Diabetes due to the excessive use of sukari or sugar in English), tomatoes, cilantro.  Beans are served with posho, maize flour that is a staple all over Africa, though called different names such as ugali in Kenya.  Posho and beans, along with everything else has increased dramatically during the last few months making life even tougher for the average family here…and families here are quite large.  The average Ugandan woman has over six children, the first four children can attend Uganda Primary Education for free, but such a school has a ratio of one teacher to 100 pupils or more. Pupils have to pay to sit up close where they can hear, bring their own brooms to clean the classrooms, toilet paper and everything else we might take for granted in the west.

Shilati is another child that lives with her grandparents here in the courtyard, she is a school just a hundred meters distance…though Shilati is Muslim she attends Saint Andrew’s Primary School.  A private school located right in the slum, school fees are 80,000 a term ($50 3 times a year), there the other things such as shoes, books, uniform, and at times lunches that can run 60 cents each.  Shilati has lost both parents to aids and is 7 years old; you can hear her class reciting numbers and letters in school from the courtyard and the younger ones singing.  After school it is all work for the young girl, she shops for vegetables, charcoal for the day, cooks, washes her one uniform so it dries for the next day and rarely plays.

It is now noon in the courtyard, word has reached Mom that one of her sons has been arrested by the police who swept through the slum looking for idle men sitting around not working.  He is at the Kabelagala police station and Hajj his father is gathering some funds from friends and neighbors to bail out his son.  Hajj is more fortunate than others; he owns the buildings in the courtyard and gets monthly rent from six tenants who live there. A Boda Boda (motorcycle taxi) arrives and Hajj goes off to the police station while Jackie awakens next door.  She arrived home late…or early, however you choose it…it was 4 am when she unlocked her locks to her dwelling.  She usually sleeps most of the day, going out at night…her first act is lighting a Ganja Stick (Marijuana – cheap 200 to 500 shillings a stick to smoke 10 to 30 cents each (it is smoked often to make one forget the problems of the day and the hunger).  As she puffs on her weed, Mom knocks on the metal door, she enters greeting her politely Wazuse Otya Nno…How was your night she replies gendi – ok…she sits down on the bed beside her and slowly begins to talk about how tough life was and that there was the problem with paying school fees for her son Shafiki who was in secondary school and how he needed her to pay rent so that she could pay school fees.  Jackie sighs; she had no customers last night, she herself needed to get money together to pay for her son’s school fees.  Her stomach pained her once again as it did every day, she had avoided taking a blood test, but somehow knew that she probably had AIDS, she had been losing weight, skin was breaking out, but what was she going to do, how was she going to live, who would support her son, she did not even know the father?  How, how was she going to do it?  In her mind, the only place where she could find comfort was the church nearby.  Jackie might be a prostitute but every Sunday she attended church, she had two Bibles, one in Luganda and one in English, she read them every day, prayed, but for her without an education, without skills besides her body, what was she going to do? 

Yesuf skips toward his home…he was born in Somalia, fled to Kenya and with his mother Farida, and his sisters Jasmine and Habiba, they came to Uganda claiming they had relatives here as they crossed the border at Busia into Uganda and have been living with Hajj all that time.  Farida sells Kangas (wraps with Swahili writings on them and pictures) and second hand skirts just up on the road. The children are exceptional at school and are the mother’s hope that they will go far in life, further than her.  Their father was shot as he was walking home from the small store that he owned in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Yesuf wants lunch, awaiting him are some freshly cooked beans that the mother prepared before she went to work.  Yesuf cares about enough volume to fill his belly…since there are nights when he goes to sleep hungry.  Yesuf loves English Premier Football (soccer) and supports the team Arsenal no matter what.  He himself plays football with an old one that has no air in it and is filled with holes…but a ball is better than no ball.  He wants to be a doctor, go back to his mother country and help his people who have been caught up in an ongoing war.

It is thee o’ clock in the afternoon now and Junior returns from University, he has not had any food all day, and as he walks into the small courtyard the smell of cooking meets him and he is even hungrier than he has been...Jeanne who with her sister lives next to him greets him…and Mom asks him if he has eaten, he replies no and she silently prepares him a huge plate of Matoke covered with g-nut sauce (ground peanut sauce).  He eats eagerly, thinking of his father’s home near Mount Elgon in the east of Uganda, where there was never lack of food, always an abundance, but he had come to Kampala in order to learn, he was taken mass-communications as a major, but made money by organizing robberies at night.  He would visit people and note in his mind what they had, where it was, and where they kept the key.  At times, he brought wax and made a copy of the keys or key.  Then he would come with his friends at three or four in the morning and take the things that were there, anything of value would be taken.  TV’s, computers, DVD players, and watches were the best and they brought him some money to live on and pay his 50,000-shillings (30 dollar) rent.  He was only one in the courtyard that did not believe in God, he simply cared about having enough and did not care how we would get it, he would even steal from his neighbors, and his conscience had been burned of anything that was decent.

Jeanne and Gloria who lived next door, were originally from Rwanda, but fled their mother country while they were young with their parents in order avoid being killed by the Interhamwe Hutu Militia that killed over 800,00 in those fateful days from April to July of 1994. 

Life in Uganda was safer for them; they had even found jobs selling cell phone airtime for MTN, Zain and UTL. Between the two of them, they made about 100,000 shillings a month, enough to pay the rent and eat a meal a day, but they were safe.

It is now five in the evening here, the sun is out strong, the laundry is being taken down to be ironed, hopefully the power stays on today.  (load shedding is common in Uganda and the low income areas suffer the most, power goes out every day for a few hours, sometimes as long as 12, many people steal power, often at the risk of their lives).  Hajj returns from the police station without his son, his son will have to appear in front of the magistrate in a few days, his crime.  He had not job, Hajj mumbles something about InshAllah, the will of God and sits on the stool outside of his house, talking to his neighbors and laughing. He is 48 years old, he has known good times and bad, he has lived through the times of president Milton Obote, Idi Amin, Milton Obote’s second regime and now Yuweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.  He is still hoping that the Buganda Kingdom will secede from Uganda and become an independent state and reclaim the glory of the past…but it does not seem that way at all. 

Hajj has one wife and it has always been that way, he loves mom, he worries about his eight children, three have died, two of malaria and one of aids.  Hajj makes a living by renting out some of his property; he also tries to act as a real estate agent finding rentals for a small fee, all enough to have a three-room house, a flush toilet insides and food each day, but today he worries about his son.  He closes his eyes to pray, slowly rocking backward and forward, he is soon interrupted by his grand son Axum, who with outstretched hand stands in front of him, asking “Pako Sente,” (give me money).  Grandfather reaches into his pockets and fishes out two 100 shilling coins, Axum races off to a little shop where he buys some Mandazis (donuts) and goes off playing with some friends down by the well.  People drink from it, not realizing that the pit latrines surrounding it drain into it and pollute it. (In many slums 60% of the people have no access to any latrines, many use black plastic bags and throw them onto the roofs which are referred to as flying toilets, water on the other hand costs money, 20 cents for twenty liters, meaning that most people do not use soap and water, nor wash the produce they cook, that is one of the reason most food here is boiled until it is mush…childhood diseases take the lives of many needlessly).

Momma Axum returns home from her job at the shoe shop, she has had no food since the porridge of tea in the morning, she has been on a taxi (a minibus carrying 14 passengers, the mainstay of transportation in Kampala) for over an hour and she is simply tired, her son Axum greets her.  Her mother welcomes her back and some matoke and beans await her, she changes her clothes, puts a scarf on her head and sits down on a stool in front of her mother’s house.  She is 28 years old, the father of her son, left her and she does not know where he is, but there is however no running away for Mom Axum, she knows that her son needs her.  She is feeling the fever tonight (malaria), pains in her joints, her temperature is up and her stomach feels funny, but there is no money for medicine or going for a test, you simply suffer. She eats her food quietly, exchanging pleasantries with others in the courtyard.  Axum climbs into her lap as she finishes eating; she rubs her hands over his arms and legs and feels the bumps that are there, little pimple like things.  The doctor told her that it syphilis (supposedly gotten from his father) and that it would take 28,00 shillings to treat with 10 injections…he was born like that, the doctor told her, she worried as she applied calamine lotion on his itchy body.

Evening has come, darkness comes around 7 pm every night in Uganda, and night it was, the power had come back in the afternoon, but promptly at seven it went off again, most likely not to come back until 10pm. 

It is dark and candles are lit inside and outside of the small homes, the Somali girls prepare the evening meal, Shilati washes her school clothes and does the dishes for grandmother.  Axum wants a chapatti and Junior and Shafiki are listening to Capital One Radio Station as the night sets.

Momma Joy’s husband returns from Owino Market at nine, his wife with little Joy on her back has been preparing the dinner for him…he is angry tonight, they are both born again, but the frustrations of life invade their peace…he shouts at her and tells her to go back to the village from where she came from and leave the baby here, he has been seeing another woman since Momma joy became pregnant (according to a Ugandan Bishop of the Church of Uganda 86% of Ugandan married men have extra curricular activities regarding women).  Momma Joy goes to bed that night, saddened, praying out to her Lord to bring a miracle into her life. Her husband meanwhile is watching a movie in English with a Ugandan video jock translating it into Luganda.

The courtyard slowly empties, people move indoors, the power has come back on and it is past 10.  Jackie gets up for the second time this day, she asks Momma Axum to make her some hot water, she lays out her clothes for the evening, all things to make her look appealing to men, the water is ready and she bathes and comes back in applying make-up and cheap imitation perfume to her body, she puts on a mini-skirt all the while praying for a customer that night.  At eleven she walks up toward the bars, she has no money for a bod-boda motorcycle, so she walks once again the path up the bars…she knows she is a mosquito girl, that bites with her aids infection, but what choices does she have…who will help her?…She is simply a prostitute.

Meanwhile Junior is plotting in his small house; Shafiki with unsavory friends has joined him.  They are going to steal Jackie’s things that were given to her by a British boyfriend.  There is the TV, a gas cooker, a DVD player and maybe she left some money and her watch behind.

The courtyard is empty, just one light is on…Junior goes to work, the copied key works, the doors open, Jackie’s place is emptied of things.

Momma Axum blows out her candle after reading her bible, Momma Joy cries herself to sleep, Jeanne and her sister think of mom and dad that are now back in Rwanda and Hajj prays for a good day to come…while Jackie sits and waits for a customer with money.  It is simply another day in Uganda….jon

If you want to assist little Axum, his name and person are real, you can do so. Next February he is supposed to start school, in the meantime he needs some medical check-ups and assistance.  Just write to me.