Of Jaywalkers and Bananas

Among the rural banana groves ten miles into the hills behind Masaka, Uganda 25 august 2012.  As much in the middle of nowhere as I can imagine, and yet every 500 yards a little house or two, an occasional “store” out front selling tomatoes and melons.  Banana groves everywhere.  I can see how this little country smaller than the state of Oregon can hold 34 million people.  Their lifestyles and consumption are so meager and tied to the amazingly fertile soil, that it is largely sustainable.  With a 3.2% growth rate, it won’t remain so for long: in 22 years the pop. will have doubled.  Imminent scarcity is just around the corner and everybody senses it; the competition to get ahead makes the hustle & bustle of urban life perfectly miserable.  Get rich or die tryin’ seems to be the common sentiment, esp. among the tweens and up.  We drove throughout Kampala today, a city of about four million (but who knows since there is virtually no building codes throughout the dozens of slums) and just remarked how if everybody actually obeyed the traffic “laws” the city would move much more quickly.  Instead, everybody cuts everybody else off, parks anywhere, throws trash everywhere, which after a good rain clogs the sewers, causing flooding.  Come on, people, make some connections.  Wrapped Inside this external shell of Darwinian sensibility is a creamy milk chocolate center, a soft candy middle made of human kindness, compassion and love.  Africa is a great paradox of violence and survival skills within a long-lasting culture of charity.  Lately, this charity has turned inward, to a widespread expectation that the rich world will solve Africa’s problems, that foreign aid will come with no strings attached, or what strings are attached in the Structural Adjustment Programs can be easily massaged into another “success story”, and with a little spit and polish on whatever was funded, more funding will come; all is needed is to send a few posters to Europe or America of the underprivileged children who can’t go to school but for the help of the IMF, the World Bank, or the USAID: famine, if properly promoted, is good for African politicians.

Anyway, among those amazing and eerily beautiful banana groves in the rural mountains near Masaka a new  Kkobe Clan sub-chief induction ceremony was planned, and since Ssimbwa knows I love to study culture, he allowed me to tag along.  Masaka is 130km south of Kampala.  In the states it would take less than an hour; it took us two and a half.  Mechanics, especially suspension/shocks/brakes experts must be millionaires here.  So many pot holes I asked Ssimbwa if there had been a recent war here.  Mortar shell landings you could get lost in passed for potholes to be negotiated as casually as we would a jaywalker.  Don’t get me started on jaywalkers in town.  The Rexburg police could fund the taj mahal with the fines incurred from those not using the crosswalks, since they don’t exist.  The jaywalkers’ taj mahal would then become the mayor’s house if we kept to the model I see here.

Present were around 1500  members of the clan in a week of mourning and celebration as the new head of a house within the clan died and his eldest son, one of 50, took his place.

I’ve attended a few ceremonies as Ssimbwa’s “mascot”—a brideprice ceremony; a funeral; a birth; several leadership meetings; a meeting with the PM for the Kingdom of Buganda.  But this one was fantastic, but only near the end. Most of the day was spent watching the new clan leader speak to his muslim underlings; we Christians sat across the road and looked on, checked our phones, read the papers or merely chatted with our neighbors.  Just when I thought I was being summoned to leave I was asked to join a dinner ceremony with the other clan chiefs.  We were escorted into a banana grove. I don’t know if you you’ve ever been in a banana grove. Maybe it was just the light; maybe just my euphoria at getting out of my sweaty chair and going into the shaded tent, a tarpaulin covering banana leaved fencing with dried grass as the floor.  The orange hue of the tarp made the food look particularly surreal. The whole event was surreal and I found myself teetering on the verge of a cliff: do I eat the greyish beef I saw boiling in pots big enough to bathe in in a filmy broth?  Was I merely washing my hands ceremonially in larvae infested canal water, knowing that no utensils would be provided?  I knew when I saw the volume of food being served—rice being scooped by plates onto my plate, that this was starting to feel like a frat party hell night, or a rerun of Fear Factor.  I knew that what I began to unconsciously ingest would more than likely come up on the way back along the rutted red clay road to Masaka.  Masaka, an appropriate sound when vomiting at 80 clicks/minute.  What put me over the top was the presentation: old ladies in their finest sateen dresses, as bright as a birthday, on their knees putting plate after plate in front of us “men’ also on our knees (except me and Ssimbwa—I suppose they thought an American professor would not stoop so low. And what was served so eloquently and understated was the staple of Uganda.   Matoke is an east African specialty and is the reason this part of Africa is so overpopulated: starchy and highly caloric green bananas—the kind the baboons go wild for—steamed within a tightly wrapped layer of banana leaves and left over a boiling cauldron for hours and hours.  It is culinary art, especially when they serve it to you in custom wrapped banana leaves which makes for a beautiful presentation, at least to we outsiders.  The banana seems to be more a part of east African culture than our Idaho corollary: the potato. Whereas the potato is a means to an end for farmers, the banana for farmers here is the staff of life; it's a ceremonial as well as quotidien product.  They make huts out the leaves, etc..  The trees grow so abundantly that hunger is virtually unknown in Uganda, despite the huge population.  After 50 meals of matoke, it no longer becomes culinary art; it becomes chewy yellow tasteless goo on cheap plastic eaten with worrisomely dirty fingers that have shaken every hand in Uganda.  But I’m not there yet in my sojourn.

I cleaned my plate and licked my fingers, for fear of offending. I even ate the spinal sinewy stuff coming off the beef.  It stayed down, thus far.  Dare I tempt fate and try the roasted grasshoppers?

And to think, I forgot to pack a camera thinking my phone would suffice until Kat & the kids came.

The anxiety about housing has been quite high.  The university where I’ll be teaching agreed to “safe and comfortable” housing.  We dropped by on my first day to their selection: a two bedroom duplex too small for us.  I put Ssimbwa on the task of finding us a decent place to live and he did, but it’s more expensive and the university is balking at the extra price, since I’m only teaching one class and only for two months at that, so I understand their concerns. Maybe I can talk another university into letting me teach in exchange for chipping in on the nicer place.  Nicer is a relative term. It’s nicer than a termite mound, but not quite as good as what I had hoped. It’s at least private and, ostensibly, secure.  The neighborhood could use some sprucing up, though.  Africa is not unlike medieval Europe in that a palace can exist just next to a slum.  Ssimbwa’s place, where I’m staying now, is a bit of the latter, but just over a wall is a place that looks like it belongs on a Kauai golf course: immaculate, palatial, clean and secure. 

Someone is making money around here.  Africa is home to seven of the top ten fastest growing economies.

Ssimbwa wants to take us to an abattoir tomorrow.  I have meetings with the Mutesa I faculty and there is another administrator for the state trying to talk me into teaching another section, not on history or Then to Hoima where there are numerous refugee camps from the violence in western DRC. My faculty colleagues are all over this one, especially Jeremy Lamoreaux of Political Science.  A refugee camp near Eastern Congo is like cat nip to a political scientist studying corruption and violence.Our business professor is a bit more reserved about the trip.  I just hope I can score a camera at some point.  Ssimbwa's home is the repository for all of the things the humanitarian missionaries leave behind.  He has an entire room just of empty luggage.  I found two nice Nikon Coolpix, one with no battery and both with no chargers.  Not sure if they work & I should invest in a charger, or just bite the bullet & pony up 200,000 shillings for a decent camera just so you readers won't think I'm making this stuff up and not living in Phoenix for the semester.

More on the way.  Hey, maybe in Hoima (where the refugee camps are located) I can use some of my dilapidated French.