I felt the bump. Once. Twice. Maybe three times. I even looked around, irritated and my mind vaguely thinking about someone trying to pick my pocket. But downtown Kampala at dusk, sticking close to my BLB (big little brother) and I didn’t feel unsafe. Even so, something made me feel my bag, run my fingers across the only external pocket, the place I keep my phone so I don’t have to dig for it.
It was open. Phone? Gone.
I saw a young boy with a phone in his hand walk in the opposite direction. His head was down. He didn’t run but he never looked up.
I hesitated for a moment, reached for BLB to explain and then hurried across the street with my eyes glued to that bobbing head. stupid I know. Insanely stupid. Only, more than money or anything else, my phone – with all my numbers, my phone the basic umbilical to my life here- essential.
I skipped two steps at a time and reached out to tap him. He must have been following me with his peripheral vision. He didn’t run. Didn’t try to deny it was mine. simply said, “it’s yours, you dropped it,” handed it to me and kept walking.
Apparently the potential mob justice that would have followed a scene is less than pleasant. Instead I was caught off guard and he evaporated into the throng of people. Later, I figured out he’d stolen 10,000shilings as well…but five bucks is a small exchange for my phone.
Even so, my hands shook for hours. Not out of fear so much as…I’m not sure. BLB perplexed at my inability to let it all go, chocked it up to adrenalin. And he’s right. My adrenalin – with no fight or flight to speak of – had nothing to do but quake my hands.
Adrenalin aside, my hands were moving much as my mind was. it has been an intense few months. Challenging. Sad. Frustrating. I was craving my holiday in dar before the pickpocketing incident, but after…after I was desperate for it. Desperate to get some distance – and with it, perspective – that would reacquaint me with expecting other than the worst.
It is slow in coming…the negative assumptions still run free in my mind. When my flight landed and the visa was $100 instead of the $50 I anticipated, when the visa line was throng of people standing idly by in the stagnant heat, when the first ATM machine refused to give me money, when stalled traffic parked us next to two trucks of manure.
And then the driver made a turn and suddenly I was staring at the indigo of the Indian ocean. I expected to smell it first but instead I inhaled the tropical fragrance of frangipanis in full bloom, the white flowers in contrast to the fuchsia bougainvillea scant of scent but demanding attention with their flagrant display of color. And then a gate opened and the car rolled into a narrow yard with a beautiful home nestled in between the fence and I met Doc and Carpenter.
just like that my holiday was here the plane ride and pickpocket receded and even work, though not absent, began to recede.
Friends of a friend, conversation drifted. Our various countries of travel, work, beaches, food…and food conversation blended into a sumptuous meal of mixed green salad with grilled shrimp and boiled stone crabs. More conversation before they escorted me to my holiday home.
Since then things have been quiet. Food and dvds. reading languidly in the pool.
Searching out food (still getting my bearings) is evening I asked directions at the little store at the end of the street. The shop owner couldn’t really help but he directed me to abdul who offered to drive me at no cost. His little brothers…maybe 8 and 10 give or take a year…scrambled into the suv and immediately stood to stick their heads out of the moon roof.
We drove for a while, abdul’s English either limited or his shyness prevailing. But we found a spot. And true to his word, true to the rebuilding of my faith in people, he simply smiled and waved as I continued my search for food on foot.
the body of an accident
They were staring.
Crowding and staring.
When J was finally able to move from where he stood vigil over his cousin’s body, his view obstructed by a set of swinging doors and multiple rows of beds with people languishing in various degrees of care or lack thereof, he was crowded and people stared. Unseeing – or maybe just unable to care about such trivialities – he sat under the shade of a tree beside the male ward, staring ahead.
At first he was alone. But one by one, and then in groups, people began to encircle him, hovering over him in ever closer proximity. No words, no comfort, just invasive stares that waited expectantly for some form of entertainment. They stared as we tried to coax him to drink water. As TeaQueen (TQ) washed blood from her hands. As we hugged, her shaking from the trauma of watching her friend fly into the air and land on the windshield of the car his motorcycle boda hit at top speed.
“they were grabbing at him and shaking him and reaching into his pockets,” she recounted, a blue helmet dangling from her hand instead of the white one she normally carried. someone stole that one during the confusion. Amid the screaming and blood.
Inside the ward, the walls a prison gray despite the windows lining them, H’s head rested on a blue plastic mattress in a pool of blood. His mother unfolded a thin sheet and pulled it over his body, his clear IV drip connected to his arm. I watched his torso move in and out with such profound effort, his legs shaking uncontrollably from the shock.
At home, in America, there would be no family work. In such severe circumstances family, let alone friends, would most likely not be permitted to watch as his injuries were attended to. But here, here TQ searched out the nurse assigned to tending to H’s head, staring her down in a failed attempt to shame her into moving faster, T talked to doctors, and I worked on finding an ambulance to carry H to Kampala.
This isn’t America.
Unable to treat his wounds the hospital was also unable to transport him; the ambulance was in some other undetermined place. Instead we bargained with the county council for theirs, paid for 45 liters of petrol and the driver’s fee before H could be on his way.
About the time the ambulance arrived at Iganga’s hospital it had just been decided to stitch up his head in an effort to stop the bleeding. And by the time that was complete a crowd had swelled around the ambulance, pushing closer, blocking the path and ambulance entrance. Crowding and staring, staring and crowding.
TQ pushed through the crowd at first; murmured angrily to herself. But the crowd remained unmoved, watching as if it were television, as if lives weren’t at stake. TQ’s voice grew louder. found a target; a woman blocking the way, craning her neck for a better view. “why do you stand here? Why are you blocking the way? there is nothing to see you should move. Move.” Her voice, forced politeness, but the edges were barbed in agitation. Kampala is three hours away and, in the absence of medical tests, we had no way of knowing the severity of H’s wounds.
Dropped off at Jinja hospital, the boda driver died.
H was admitted to ICU.
…and we wait.
Uganda is becoming a place of death and injury for me.