one last boda ride...
on Random Uganda (Uganda), 26/May/2010 07:41, 34 days ago
One last Boda ride.Last monday’s hash was way out past Kireka (home of Uganda’s Nelson Mandela Stadium) on the road out to the Namugonga martyrs shrine (a shrine that commemorates an effort by Kabaka Mwanga to purge his court of Christians—apparently some 30 people were hacked and/or burned in May of 1886 after being giventhe chance to renounce their newly adopted faith). It was Cara’s last night in Kampala (she’s now somewhere down in South Africa in the wind up for the 2010 World Cup—I wish her well). We caught a ride to the hash with Ian in the X5, careening across town in a haphazard route, attempting tobeat ‘the jam.’ Ian was in an affable mood and seemingly oblivious to the jerking around Cara had recently been given at the hands of his HR department. He gave us his take on the motivation behind the massacre of the martyrs. Something about homosexual eunuchs and pedophiles.The hash was held at the Linda Country Club. No tennis courts. No golf course. No driving range. But it did have a pool. Unfortunately the pool was so clouded over that you couldn’t see the bottom. In the shallow end. So, sweaty and dusty and hot as we were after the run, no one mustered the courage to take a dip.It was my first hash, or my first run for that matter, in over a month, so my legs were whining at having to chase down the pack upon our late arrival. But the efin beer (imported from turkey, of all places) chugged hot from the bottle seemed to help anesthetize my thighs at the first beer stop. The run had all the elements of a good hash: Confusing trail markings. Very little tarmac. Lots of amused spectators to point and laugh. One or two rabid dogs. Warm beer and pineapple at the finish.I can’t remember the offenses I committed causing me to be called into the circle to swill beer, but considering the severity of the punishment, I’m sure they were heinous.Given that my days in Kampala are numbered and it is hard to get good matooke in San Francisco, I was looking forward to one last Ugandan buffet dinner (the 7000/= entry fee for the hash entitles you to a‘free’ dinner). Sadly, though, the caterers had forgotten the matooke, and I had to settle for rice and sauce. But, I will have to admit, it was some of the best goat spine I’ve had in a while.Sitting in a plastic chair sipping a Nile as the sweat evaporated from my tee shirt, chatting political gossip with the hashers, most of whom I know only by their ribald or otherwise obscene hash‘handles,’ as a crescent moon burned through the smoky haze of the night sky of a city half a world away from home, it suddenly struck me as the perfect way to spend a Monday evening.And then the hashers drifted away in ones and twos to make their way home across the potholed lunar landscape that is the Kampala road network. I caught a ride toward town with Cara and some of the teachers from the International school, but when they turned onto the‘northern bypass’ (my home slum is south), I got out and waved for a boda boda.J. Maarten Troost, in his epic memoir/travelogue about life on an atoll in Kiribati, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, best describes a phenomenon that happens when you live for an extended period in a place where life is cheap and pestilence and bloodshed are everyday occurrences. Acts of simple self-protection or personal hygiene, like fastening your seat belt or putting on deodorant, fall by the wayside as silly, inconsequential rituals. One of my favorites from the book:“At a funeral, I had a generous helping of chicken curry. In front of me lay the corpse. It was the custom in Kiribati to lay out the body of the deceased for three days before burial. Kiribati is on the equator. I had seconds.”And so, wearing a tee-shirt and running shorts, after a few beers, in a dark and unfamiliar part of town, I hopped on the back of a motorcycle piloted by a wiry, helmetless young man with a slightly manic smile and vaguely exophthalmic eyes. My helmet, as you might expect, was safely sitting on the counter in my office. I put my sunglasses on, to shield my corneas from road grit—heightening the sensation of night flight.I had a general idea of the route we needed to take home: mbuya, bugolobi, cut through the industrial area, and into namuwongo and finally bukasa, so I wasn’t too disturbed as he wheeled into an increasingly complex maze of backroads. I was running the words of a long forgotten Grateful Dead song through my head and reveling in the warm night breezing around me. And we came around a corner directly into the path of a speeding matatu.One of the doctors I work with lost her mother a few weeks ago. On a boda, struck by a matatu.I had just about enough time to contemplate if I’d be able to get off a call for the IHK ambulance before I lost consciousness and someone pried the phone out of my stiffening fingers.But my driver threw the bike to the left, and, although I felt the wind from the mini-van’s rhino bar on my elbow, we avoided the impact by a good several millimeters. Half sideways, we catapulted across the ditch. I braced myself for the sensation of gravel on bare skin. Instead, we crashed through a chapatti stall. Charcoal embers traced red arcs around us a la evel kneivel. Everything went black. I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t breath. I pulled the midnight blue satin that was once a prom dress off my face. I took off my glasses. The bike had come to rest in a roadside dress shop.As my driver frantically kicked at the starter of his stalled bike, people gathered around us, coalescing into a proper mob. Dozens of hands prodded him. With a conscious effort not to lose control of my clenched sphincters, I got off the bike and tested my legs. They worked. I pulled the last of my money from my pocket—a few thousand shillings more than the ride home would have cost me--and handed it to the driver. As I backed out of the circle, one woman kept her cupped hand in my face while shouting at me. It seemed she wanted me to buy the dress.I walked home.