Obama-land

Despite the delay, I want to tell the story of our experiences here in Uganda during the presidential election earlier this month. As many of our friends and family know, for a very long time Danny and I had eagerly anticipated the election with high hopes. And so we found ourselves with a handful of fellow ex-patriot Americans at 3am on election night (7pm EST) huddled around a small television waiting for the polls to close and results to start to come.

As a preface to the rest of this blog, I ask anyone reading to name the president of Uganda, and, for bonus points, state the year of the last Ugandan presidential election. Difficult, eh? Of course many of us (including myself until 4 months ago) don’t know the answer to these questions because Ugandan politics has little effect on our lives. The same cannot be said for the impact of the election of the president of the United States to people in Uganda, thus the race was followed intensely from this tiny equatorial, developing nation in East Africa.

The reasons for the interest in the election varied, but there was one commonality: people here loved Barack Obama. There was the boda boda (a motorcycle taxi) driver who Danny uses daily and spent every trip debating politics in an incredibly sophisticated manner. There were my colleagues in the hospital, who harbored perhaps a more common, educated skepticism of the Bush administration and knew the latest election updates before I did (right down to who won the previous evening’s debate, or how much Palin’s wardrobe cost). There were those who equated the possible election of McCain with a continuation of the war- the war where their loved ones (Ugandans) have been recruited and trained to serve as poorly paid “security forces” for private American interests located in Iraq. And then there were those who knew little about politics, but simply saw the election of a man with East African heritage and dark skin to perhaps the most powerful and important position in the world as a symbol of hope, and a promise for better things to come.

Our election night party in Mbarara was a mellow affair, and centered around CNN coverage which luckily was shown on the one and only available channel. The only interruption in CNN coverage occurred in true Ugandan fashion when for 30 minutes the local TV station decided to show footage of people in Kampala at an election night party who themselves were watching CNN (yes, we watched people watching CNN for 25 minutes- seriously). But the coverage returned, and so we huddled around the television in the wee hours of the morning as McCain conceded and Obama was elected president.

Now I’ll admit that I was delighted at the result, but was not prepared for next couple of days… It began as I walked into the hospital, where friends and colleagues were filled with emotional and heart-felt congratulations. As I walked through town, in lieu of the usual “how are you muzungu?” (common greeting to a white person), I instead had shouts of “Obama!!” directed at me from inside shops, from across the street and even from boda boda stands. If I smiled and gave a thumbs-up, an excited chorus of cheers and handshakes would follow. The buzz continued for many days, with such demonstrations as free large Obama posters inside the daily newspaper (we’re definitely bringing one home…). It seemed that East Africa itself had actually won the presidency of the United States.

And, at the end of the day, I admit to really enjoying telling people that I now come from Obama-land.

Golfing Uganda Style

There is a "golf course" right next to our house and I have been meaning to play it for months now. Last Saturday two friends, Josh and JJ and I finally decided to go golfing Uganda Style.

It's a 9-hole course that is ridiculously cheap(about $2.50USD), but the balls are 4x more expensive than the greens fees and since we are all huge cheapos, we bought one box for the three of us(for those who don't know, that's one ball each). They don't provide rental clubs or bags, but they have a pile of clubs that people have left over the years free to use. All we could find in working order was a 3-iron, 6-iron, 8-iron, 3-wood, and a wooden driver. The putter was bent in half, but we found a fringe iron that worked fine. The manager assured us that we would not be able to find our own way around the course and so hooked us up with a 12 year old local kid, named Joseph, as our caddie. Joseph was a slick dude as he right away called over one of his friends and handed him all the clubs to carry(all 6 that is).

When we got to the first tee we already had six more caddies, which it turns out we really needed. It started drizzling but we teed off anyways. On my second shot with the driver, because my first shot only went 20yds, the wooden head broke off and went flying further than my ball and then it started dumping rain. We were just about to head to the clubhouse when it let up so we ventured on with our 3 balls, 6 clubs and 8 caddies. The next few holes were fine except that whoever set up the course had either never done it before or secretly hated golfers because you constantly have to hit across other fairways directly over the heads of other golfers while other peoples balls are landing around you. You also have to hit across roads about 7 times. I now refer to hole #4 as the bat-hole because the tee box is underneath a tree that is home to about 6000 bats and they never stop squeaking during your backswing...who knew bats were so rude? I almost had to quit on hole #5 because the three of us, our 8 caddies, and several locals walking around could not find my ball, but luckily Josh found another ball in the grass after a 15min search. We ran out of luck, however, on the 8th hole when Josh lost his ball on his second shot and had to disqualify himself from our super competitive Ugandan Skins Game at 100 shillings per hole. JJ and I battled on and I was sure to win a triple skin on the 8th when JJ sunk an impossible 30ft putt that bounced 9 different directions on the uneven grass on its way to the hole. Inconceivable!

We finished up with the 9th hole, paid our caddies and made definite plans to play every week. Golfing Uganda Style was another unique experience that I will not soon forget. Oh yeah, and then I got malaria later that night and thought I was going to die for about two days.....all better now.