JES

“Where did you get that helmet? It’s a nice helmet.”

“I got it from the mall across from Kiseka Market!”

“Really? Oh wow, how much was it?”

“15.000 shillings.”

“Really, wow! Where did you get it?”

“Uh, um, ah… Um. From the store across from all the stores with the all the lights.”

“Oh, you mean, by the stores with all the lights and by the stores that sells all the electrical equipment?”

“Er, um, ah… No, but by the stores with all the lights and by the man who sells the stickers! Yes, the man who sells the stickers is by the store I bought the helmet from. You can’t miss it. He has it all displayed out in front of his store.”

— – conversation as paraphrased from memory

Am I a Local Now?

I met two ladies at the baggage check-in counter at Nakumatt Oasis, and as I was slinging my backpack over my shoulder and unbuckling the straps on my boda boda helmet, they stopped me and asked me where I got my smashing yellow helmet from.

In surprise, I told them I got my helmet from the mall across from Kiseka Market, and the ladies replied, “Oh?! Really?” Quickly turning to each other, one of the lady said to the other, “Oh, that’s a great looking helmet.” I felt my initial bewilderment turn into splashing burst of happiness, flattered that they liked my taste in helmets. Heck, in that moment, I felt like I had just been initiated into “local status”. I mean, wow, she liked my helmet, the helmet I got here, and they wanted to get one too and were asking me where they could get it! Ah~ the gratifications of bonding with one consumer to another.

As we conversed, I was struck by how different it is to give directions in Kampala than it is in the States. Back at home I would’ve casually said, “Oh yeah, this? Yep, I got it at Sports Chalet. I’m sure you could find it at any one those stores in your town.” But how do you give directions to a store in Kampala? No, no, not at the Nakumatts or in the stores along Jinja Road, but all the stores that exist side by side by each other, with all of its items stacking and swirling into to each other in a dizzy array of colors, textures, and things, things, things! These stores do have store numbers, but they’re not referred to by their store numbers, and it’s not usually the first thing that crosses your mind when you enter a store (Well, as a muzungu, that is, I couldn’t say that’s what a local would say. Hm, I guess that answers it. I’m not quite a local yet.). Granted, some of these shops have business cards and phone numbers, but when you’re out shopping, and unless you’re a frequent customer, it’s not likely that you’ll recall either, especially when there are so many other shop owners and vendors selling the same things.

This is what I enjoy about Kampala. The maze, the labyrinthian journey amongst and in between all the things, all the different people, and smells. Whether I’m in Kamwokya, in downtown Kampala, riding taxis, or weaving through traffic on a boda boda - it’s the narrow channels, the pathways, and the roads to those destinations that fascinates me.

It’s an adventure (for me)! The joy of not knowing where exactly you’re going, but also, the  joy of knowing the shortcuts and the informal pathways of going from point A to point B. It’s a mentality. It’s a lifestyle, and an it’s opportunity founded upon a knowledge of the city.

all aboard! ogende? #taxis #matatus #kamwokya

walking her son to school #kampala #morning

let’s have fun! #games #childhood #kamwokya

sister and brother #toys #childhood #kamwokya

high fashion at the airport.

I want to live a life of a free imagination. I want to work with people around this continent, to make new, exciting things. To make scifi things, and to make stories, and to make pictures. I want this generation of young parents to have their kids see Africans writing their own stories, [pick their own stories], that’s important. I think that’s the most political act that one can have. I want to see a continent where every person’s imagination is not, does not, have to look for being allowed.

— Binyavanga Wainaina

Motivations

Going to Africa as a tourist is so much easier. You don’t have to worry about who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing because you’re slipping into the role that has already been designated to you as a privileged foreigner. Just because you go as a tourist doesn’t mean your heart never feels the creeping darkness of your conscious, but it is much easier to push away the thoughts you’d rather not face, as you let the safari and it’s wilderness wash over you with the cleansing holy water of a world absent of other people but your own.

It’s funny how a trip to Africa could weigh such a sensation of guilt upon you. No one really questions being a tourist in another first world country. But being one in a majority world, well, causes the water of guilt to pour over your bathtub and down the stairs into your living room. It’s as if, being born in a first world country automatically implicates you to all the crimes of your nation’s history and its descendants, causing a fit of terror and worry within your soul. So why question it? Why go there when it’s not really your fault? I mean, what could you do? Change the course of history and change the minds of those people in power?

Granted, not all such thoughts go through the minds of those traveling to help in Africa. In fact, it could be exciting! You get to travel to a foreign place, a place by which by association has mystery, danger, and exoticism mystically shrouding all over it. And the children! Oh, how could you forget the children! It’s never a sin to help children! Children are to be loved and adored, to be given compassion, and saved! Never mind their parents. They don’t have parents. All orphans, skin and bones, oh, they’re children, and they need the love and care from those with charitable, generous, compassionate and beautiful hearts like yours.

But the thing is. The thing is. As much as I could ridicule myself and perhaps question the motivations of a tourist or an aid worker or missionary, the truth is, our motivations are wrapped into an ocean that’s gray. We work, we live our lives, we cry, we persevere, and we dream for a better life, for a little break, a little sun. Sometimes our trips out in the sun takes us to far away places like Africa, and in Africa we go, hoping to learn more about their culture and take trophy photos back to our friends and families to show them how amazing the country is just as much as we comment on how different it is. We will see things that are unfair, unjust, uncomfortable and awkward, and it’s not easy when we think critically about how one nation had been badly affected by our own, but whether you are a tourist or someone who wants “to help the world,” humans that we are, it’s difficult to judge and question that person’s heart and intention to do good while being there.

Granted, I do believe that there is “evil” in the world. When momentary dullness is replaced with the intention to never question, always uphold, and enforce motivations and goals that you know serves nobody’s interest but your own at any cost. Selfishness always extracts and seeks to dominate, to gain control out of fear and out of need for your own protection and well-being. Yes, I’m sure there are many variables that tug and pull at the individual hearts that have existed and exist in this world, but when choices are made, when the future is mapped, history doesn’t look back with sympathetic eyes to try and understand why you did what you did, but history judges us and tells us what we did was right or wrong.

Written histories are subjective. However, through the tussle of time, truths always seem to have a penchant for finally shifting through all the dirt and muck that had sunk in between.

We must be responsible to be accountable for ourselves. They say that before you go to heaven, you will be judged and be made accountable for all of your actions, and even your thoughts! That sounds frightening and condemning even (after all, who’s perfect), but what I think is important to take away from this is not so much the doom and gloom of Judgment Day, but how this narrative emphasizes the importance of our choices and how each of our choices weigh so heavily against the history of time.

I began with Binyavanga Wainaina’s words because I still have a difficult time justifying my presence in Uganda and my intentions. As much as I looked into my heart to see that what I do, I do, out of an interest in stories and storytelling and a heart for the people I meet and work with, I realize that my presence alone makes me complicit to the colonists who had entered upon their lands a couple hundred years ago, telling the locals a better way to do what they do and what dreams they should dream.

But, pardon me. Perhaps I ought to look at myself with a little more grace and see myself as but one little piece trying to make better choices that could ultimately lead to an Africa completely free from our history of toolkits and supplements. So I am not entering so much as making the way for my exit out of Africa. When I do come back, I hope to then come back as a simple, boring tourist, and not as colonialist in disguise as a charitable, kind hearted traveler. Until then, I take, not my words but Binyavanga’s words, and say, I want to come back to Uganda to work with people that would be interested in performing with me, writing with me, and imagining with me an alternate future vision of Africa that is not already imagined by those who continue to drag forward the social and economic chains of a land that was never theirs to own.

sun setting at #jfkairport #ny