It's so hot...
on Random Uganda (Uganda), 08/Feb/2010 07:30, 34 days ago
4 FebruaryIt has been hot this week.I can hear you chuckling to yourself.‘Doh. You’re in Africa.’But even my Ugandan colleagues are complaining about the heat. They sit in their offices and fan themselves, still looking cool and crisp in a shirt and a tie and polyblend slacks, while I’m standing in a puddle of sweat and my rumpled cotton aloha shirt is clinging to my chest. Complaining about the weather, it would seem, is a universal pastime. For months we’ve been whinging about how long and wet the rainy season has been (as you, back home, have been complaining about howcold, or damp, or snowy it has been), and, now that the rains have relented, we can only complain about the heat.Generally any complaint about the heat (or the rain, or the recent unpredictability of the seasons) will be followed by a gentle jibe about how the excesses of the developed world (me) is ruining the lives of the people in the developing world (them). And it is pretty hard to put up much of a defense. Even though I walk and take shared minivan transport for the bulk of my travel here (okay, the occasional bota bota… but I don’t have my own official white Land Rover with NGO insignia and driver), I think just the number of intercontinental flights I have made in the past year alone means that I am still, even here, perched on an untenable carbon footprint. And, of course, that footprint over the course ofmy 48 years… well… It would be pretty mean of me to point out that the goal of just about every man, woman or child I have met here in Uganda is to have a carbon footprint exactly this size or larger, so I just nod my head and mumble what passes for apology and commiseration.Foam rubber mattresses don’t breathe. Just in case you were wondering. So for us mzungus over a certain age and body mass this means waking up in a pool of sweat about 3 or 4 in the morning and gaining appreciation for the morning sounds—the sounds that come even before the roosters and the call to prayer from the Kibuli mosque: the clicking and cawing of the night birds (Roger assures me that some birds sing at night—despite the training I received in my youth from a Daniel Boone episode—Fess Parker is explaining to a soldier how to signal by using a bird call. The soldier asks how he will know if it is the signal or just a bird. Mingo (Ed Ames) gives the soldier a withering look, ‘birds don’t sing at night…’), the gecko hunting on my screens (and occasionally on my mosquito net), the dogs prowling and yowling on the perimeter…And so I drag myself from sodden sheets and wander around the house waiting for it to get light. I have some granola and head off down Kuta road toward the hospital. The other morning I heard singing, chanting, and the thumping of feet and sticks. I thought it a bit early for the church. Especially with not one hallelujah. Around the corner came a group of Tiger Security recruits (I’m assuming this since the man drilling them was wearing the paramilitary uniform and insignia of the Tiger Guard, and if they were full fledged guards, they would be hard at work behind the gates in kampala) jogging barefoot in formation carrying fenceposts. They were stripped to the waste and smeared in mud. They must have been running up from the Namuwongo swamp, as most of the mud in our neighborhood dried up weeks ago. The instructor barked a command and they all made their best menacing warrior face and raised their sticks overhead—ready to bash me 20 times over as they flowed around me on both sides. The kid at the back of the company gave me a sheepish smile and a nod.The toilet turkey is back. (I saw a young boy kick him on thanksgiving day near a row of pit toilets on my way to work) He had been missing upon my return in January, so I had assumed he had wound up on someone’s Christmas platter. But the other morning he was there, tail feathers fully arrayed, patrolling the latrines.The toilet turkey’s neighbors squat in the courtyard washing themselves with clothes and small buckets of water. I can only imagine how hot it gets inside the plastered brick huts with the metal roofs.I cross the street and nod to Patrick at the hospital gate. Moses and Setchay(sp) are standing by the ambulances.Moses looks to the sky and nods.‘It’s going to be hot today.’