Cruising Kampala and Feasting by Flashlight

Trying to shop for clothes in Canada is bad enough, but trying to find clothes among the congestion of people and merchandise in the belly of a central Kampala merchant plaza...now that's downright terrifying!

A Fruit Market

A Shopping Centre Scene

Dewinging Grasshoppers

(For the whole story, plus lots more pictures of market hopping in Kampala and the tale of a very unusual dinner, please click "Read More.")

The walking team: Edith, Emma (behind the camera),
Jordan, Alyssa and Yours Truly

It’s not so much the getting there that’s scary: the adventure of stepping off a taxi and taking to the busy streets, the task of following the person ahead of you through the bustling traffic and bobbing crowds, or even the ordeal of crossing the street. Of course all that might have contributed to a general sense of functioning on adrenaline during our trip to town this afternoon, but the real part that scared me was the clothing centre.

Having navigated the downtown streets near the taxi parks, we turned off at a stairway and dove into one of the many crowded, labyrinth-like shopping plazas that tunnel into the high buildings here. Immediately we found ourselves overwhelmed by clothes everywhere.

They hung on racks, on mannequins and on islands positioned about the floor, yes, but they also papered the walls, hung from the ceiling, trailed off of stairway ledges, and generally filled up or flowed down from every inch of surface area available! The entire volume of the maze-like plaza seemed to explode with colour and patterns from different sellers, and what little walking space the clothing cacophony left over overflowed with people. How are you supposed to actually calm down, focus and PICK something here? We questioned. Furthermore, dressing rooms didn't exist, so trying anything on meant slipping it over your street clothes right in the middle of the crowd!

We originally had been planning this trip to town for Monday,
but had to postpone due to threats of riots brewing in the city.
 Most of the trouble is being handled, but there were still
lots of police and military vehicles around Kampala's
 police headquarters. The cannon on the riot control vehicle
pictured here is ready to shoot clouds of tear gas at a moment's notice.
And the plow on front? One can only imagine what that might be for!

We escaped from there without buying a thing, despite the facts that clothing here is both beautiful and inexpensive and on my “stuff-I-need-to-get-at-some-point” list. (Almost half the shirts I brought over here are getting wrecked in the washing machine, so clothes shopping is STILL on the “to-do” list if I can get over my phobia of Ugandan shopping malls.)

Carrying a Load

Tripping along the street at the heels of our fearless guide Edith, we continued towards our next stop at the craft market. We stayed there for some time, tucked away from the business of downtown streets and traffic, but by 4:00 PM were back on the road again. I mean that literally. Navigating the streets here involves a lot of squeezing through narrow channels between taxis walled on either side, ducking under mirrors and weaving between moving bumpers. You can feel the closeness of taxi exhaust breathing against your ankles. Try not to collide with pedestrians or merchants sitting on the curbs—and watch out for that boda coming!

Stopping at a Craft Market

You have to pause in the middle of the street and between lanes to wait for gaps in the lanes ahead, and always check as you pass in front of a taxi that no bodas flying up the street behind it are coming as you step out. Edith actually took Alyssa and I by the hands as we crossed one particularly "downtownish" street!

Turning a few corners, we crossed one more smaller, quieter street and entered a produce market sectioned off in the middle of the city. The pathways through the market were like narrow, well-populated channels walled with tables, baskets, people and piles of fruit on either side, canopied by a jungle of overhead umbrellas. I stopped to buy a supply of fresh passion fruit before we walked on past a huge pile of compost being shoveled at in the heart of the market, traveled through a permanently sheltered selling section, and eventually emerged back out on the street.

Islamic Prayers Beginning
(As seen through the window at the end of a corridor
in one shopping centre)

One final stop at a grocery store later found us back on a taxi, munching on the banana bread and the bag of "Daddies" (cookie-like fried bits of cereal) that we bought. Reaching home, I had only enough time to download pictures from the day and write these first couple of paragraphs before we headed down to the Bible School for a dinner event.









It was a sort of a farewell party for the third and fourth year students who won’t be coming back next quarter. We sat in a circle of desks in the third year classroom, sipped sweet black tea, and listened to a program of addresses and introductions by different students—including ourselves. When everyone had finished their meal of pork, bread, cookies (complements of Mrs. Guthrie) and bright red—almost purple—sausages, the room suddenly went completely dark. Power-out, everybody! Thus, the rest of the speeches, joking and laughter took place entirely by the glow of people’s “torches” and electronics. I just sat back, sipped tea, and enjoyed the intrigue of the moment. Ah, memories…

NEWS UPDATE: Friday afternoon I’ll be leaving on a four-day weekend ministry trip with the Guthries and their team to a village waaay down in the southwest, near the Congo. Meanwhile God bless, have a wonderful weekend, thank you for your prayers and I’ll meet you back here next week to share about the excursion!