Kampala in Pictures

 

Heading Out:

Saturday, September 28

 

This morning after teaching preschool (which went much more smoothly today--thank you to whoever was praying. Yes, you!), the Guthries, Mrs. Pysar (a Bible School professor who flew in with us), the Alberta Students and I all piled into Mr. Guthrie's land cruiser to take on the City of Kampala.

 

 

We went to three malls while we were there to shop, stock up and see more of the city.

Malls here are considerably different from those in Canada. For one thing, there are no doors. No snow blows in, or cold of any kind for that matter, so certain corridors and courtyards have no walls at all. You just turn a corner in the mall and suddenly find yourself “outside,”  in an area half exposed to the open air.

One mall's inner courtyard

 

Sodas at the Grocery Store
(The yellow ones are pineapple.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 For another thing, when you enter the parking lot of a shopping plaza here your car must first be searched by a guard. They’ll look in the window or open the door and talk to you, much like the guards at a border crossing. Sometimes they scan the undercarriage of your vehicle with a metal detector to make sure nothing is attached underneath. You also may find yourself being scanned and your bags being searched on the way into a large store as though at an airport.  

Street Scenes

Driving through the city, you can tell which taxi vans are Islamic
and which are Christian by what titles are painted on the widows.

The food courts here are also quite different from those in North America. There, you walk up to a place, order food, pay for it, and take it to a table. Here in Uganda, as soon as you walk into a food court you find yourself surrounded by a crowd of representatives from different restaurants to present you with a menu. You pick the dish you want, tell the attendant and let them bring it to you. They then come again with the bill later, like at a regular restaurant.


The food court, partially open to the world outside,
overlooked a golf course where this crane was roaming.
I'm pretty sure I've seen similar birds in zoos before...

Maize Flour for Sale
(Used to make posho, a Ugandan staple)

A sign encountered upon entering a new mall

Pricewise, 2,500 Ugandan shillings are worth about $1.00 Canadian. So the whole day's purchases for me, including a huge lunch, a Ugandan Birds field guide and a scoop of mango ice cream only cost about $10 CAN.

You can imagine that walking through the store takes a good deal of thinking here, as you must translate the several-digit figures you see on all the merchandise to dollar equivalents!



You'll notice that the billboards here are the size of small apartment buildings!