a kampala thanksgiving
on Random Uganda (Uganda), 01/Dec/2009 06:28, 34 days ago
November 26thThanksgiving in Uganda.The rainy season continues. As I’ve said, I prefer the mud to the dust (‘cuz the dust doesn’t get into your lungs), but the 4am thunder storms that have ruined my sleep for the past week are getting a little old. And the back roads that I walk to work on are getting slowly washed downhill. Some less slowly than others. Occasionally a truck will pull up at the bottom of the washout (on Bukasa road, where the mud hits the pavement) and a group of young men will get out and shovel the silt into the bed where it will get mixed with yard clippings, household waste and the odd brick. The truck will then drive up one of the dirt roads and find a particularly nasty hole or rut to shovel their road fill mixture into. They will gently pat the unstable mass with their instruments or their flip flops and move on to the next highway repair job… two storms later, the disposable diaper that was the lone structural element of the road patch will be back down on Bukasa road.This morning, on my walk to work, as I made my usual corner-cut up through the housing development (2 ragged lines of rust roofed shacks surrounding a mud courtyard and a row of pit latrines) on the corner of Bukasa and St. Barnabas roads, a large turkey with its tail feathers fully arrayed walked around one of the latrines and blocked my path. (I know it sounds like I’m probably invading the privacy of the 20 or 30 people who live on this sloping scrap of earth roughly the size of your living room, but I have been assured that the path that winds by the latrines is a public right of way). Usually I see chickens and goats and half naked children on this section of my commute, but, in the 3-4 months that I have crossed this yard, I have never seen a turkey. I stood there looking at the turkey. He looked at me. The tail feathers grew ever so slightly more erect. Was it a sign? Was I really supposed to be at home peeling sweet potatoes instead of goingto work? Was someone trying to tell me that my excuse (our oven only works on broil, our refrigerator just died, and, for some reason, our hot water taps have run dry) for skipping the traditional American exercise in excess is a lame one?A small bareassed and barefooted toddler runs over, kicks the turkey in its tail feathers, and runs off squealing before the turkey can mount a defense.No matter where you are, it sucks to be a turkey on thanksgiving.So instead of stuffing a turkey, I went off to give a lecture on oxygenation, ventilation and airway management.For dinner we went to the New York kitchen restaurant. Conveniently located in the parking garage of the Garden City shopping center—with outdoor seating in parking stalls B1-6. I figured that since, surprisingly enough, I hadn’t been invited to thanksgiving at the American embassy (and I don’t belong to the American Recreation Assoc.), it would be my best chance of getting some turkey with stuffing and overly-thickened brown gravy. No such luck. I had a chicken chef’s salad instead. The volunteer sitting next to me, a Norwegian who writes news stories for Mama FM radio (an NGO nonprofit thingy that gets disadvantaged women on the air), kept looking at my dinner. Finally she said, ‘you’re eating a salad?’Yes, I had to admit, I was. I guess I’ve gotten slightly away from the peel it, boil it or throw it away doctrine.After dinner we went bowling.