Uganda Dispatch 3 - The Foreigner

I like the word dispatch, you may have noticed.  It sets images rolling of me at a dusty outpost, tapping away on the old wire, morsing my messages out to the world.  It's not true of course.  I'm sitting in a living room, on a pretty comfortable easy chair.  In front of me is a new TV and a new DVD player.  Instead of the telegraph I'm pecking away at the keys of a Toshiba laptop, which is plugged into a wirless phone that gives us Internet access.  It is dusty, though, when it's not raining.  And the floor is concrete, much like the outpost might be.  I don't really know.  I've never been to an outpost.

Last time I was out of the country the longest I spent in one place was three weeks.  Tonight is my 21st night in Uganda and I'm still an utter stranger to the place.  It's foreignness is complete.  Communication is tough.  Last night I wrote that even kindnesses are often lost in the faded transliterations of common words.  Conversation, unless you have spare hours, must be terse and pointed.  Niceties take much longer to send across the divide, and are rarely offered by locals that just wish you spoke their language.

Day in and day out I meet the eyes of men and women who have no intention, no hope, of understanding me - nor I them.  There is mutual distance.  Distance that I, for one, resent, at least on a bad day.  Yesterday was one of those.  You can read a bit more about it at jamestravels.com.

But today was good.  Even when, 20 yards out the door this morning, I was splashed by a truck careening into one of the ubiquitous red puddles left by last night's downpour.  Fifteen minutes later the red soil was dried like blood on my legs.  But the sky was huge and beautiful, the sun was warm, the shade cool, and people were returning my smiles.

That's all it takes for me, here.  Just smile back Uganda.

That seems like a good place to cut - tolerably interesting, superbly crafted - but I have to tell you about something.  The white SUVs.  Rumor has it that more than 1,000 NGOs work in Uganda, most of them in the north.  And the center of that presence is Gulu (which, by the way, is where I live).  Every NGO, it seems, is required by some clandestine international tribunal of auto/oil companies to own at least one white Toyota Land Cruiser, often many more.  And if they are serious, the Land Cruiser has a big black air-intake tube rising from the the hood - you know, in case of flooding - like a big automotive snorkel.  And if they are REALLY serious, they have a flag flying from the antenna - or one of their antennae.  That's another mark of seriousness, multiple antennae.

The ones with flags we call Development Conquistadors, except for the Norwegian Refugee Council, who we call the Vikings.  They go cavorting about, often in groups of very serious white Land Cruisers, doing embassy knows what back and forth on the red, dusty roads.  I think it's an NGO competition.  See who can spray the most dust at pedestrians (like us), especially when they've just gotten out of the shower.  Sticks better that way.  Easier to score.

This would all be fine, except that they drive like they are constantly being chased by the LRA.  I don't know, maybe it's practice.  All these white SUVs bouncing down unpaved roads, swerving around pedestrians, bicycles, each other.  Their side mirrors should be registered deadly weapons.  And the worst is Save the Children.  I expect, on going to their website, to find a new motto: Save the children, kill the pedestrians.  They are followed closely by the UN and World Vision, with the Vikings making up for what they lack in recklessness with sheer SUV overkill.  One of their Land Cruisers says "TURBO" on the side.  And it has a flag.  They are very, very serious.