.: A Fire-Seared Market and a Giant Banana Suit

"Muzungu!" "Sister!" "China!"

No matter which way I turned while walking along the blackened ground of the market deep in the belly of Kampala, I'd feel a sharp tug at my arm and hear myself being addressed in one of these three ways.

"Do I look Chinese to you?" I asked Precious, a friend who had interpreted for me back at children's ministry with the team from Seattle in October. "No," she shook her head, "they are just calling you that to make fun." Ok then. This was definitely not your average tourist-trap market. In fact, unlike at the larger western grocery stores and malls, here not another muzungu could be seen--nor could I imagine seeing one. No, this place was the real deal: chicken crates, strings of gourds, livers and kidneys hanging up in the butchery booths, surges of people pushing in from every direction... And here I found myself standing smack in the middle of it all!

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The day had started out tamely enough.

--Well, maybe not tamely per se, considering that it began with an exhilarating (and prayerful) excursion accompanying Andrea to school by boda-boda, an adventure I've been undertaking most mornings the past couple of weeks. It's a wonderful feeling being out there! I remember the first time I took her to school... On the way back, as I saw my own shadow running along a wall beside the road, the strangeness of the realization occurred to me: Wow, Lord! Who would have thought that one day I'd be here perched on the back of a boda in Africa! ...Or for that matter that I'd even know what a boda boda is.

But aside from that initial thrill of dashing out the door first thing in the morning to hop on the back of a motorbike taxi and escape away down the rutty red mud hill into the world beyond, the day began quietly enough. In fact, the rest of the morning found me assisting in the peaceful (more or less) Baby House classroom setting, listening to stories, singing Christmas songs, gluing glitter onto pipe cleaner hearts... It was there, as I sat at a small table to oversee play dough-squishing, that a silent set of footsteps approached the classroom door...

"You're here!" I jumped up to meet Precious, whom I hadn't seen since meeting her during outreach in October. We soon set off along with her little brother, hiking down the hill, walking through the local Seguku market with it's piles of tilapia fish and fresh-cut banana leaves for sale, and hailing a taxi at the main road. Before long I stood back on the streets of downtown Kampala, experiencing the indescribably weird sensation of walking forward in a single-file crowd through a narrow passageway between two oncoming taxis. It's like being on a treadmill--but sort of opposite.

The first markets we went to consisted of umbrella-canopied vending stations each completely filled with piles of second hand clothing. A network of walkways ran among the various stations and rows and clusters of tables. We occasionally stopped at tables to rummage through clothes. I'd stand there, sometimes half-cuddling whichever stranger happened to be shopping beside me, and shake my head smilingly as sellers standing at or on the tables held up one item after another which they pulled from the pile.

Notice how black the ground is, rather than the typical red?

If that hadn't been interesting enough, the next market we went to really made an impression on me. Upon entering the area, it seemed to be very much like the last market: we passed along the people-filled pathway network between piles of clothes and shoes and bags just like before. Only this time, the ground over which we stepped was completely black. "It's burned," explained my guide, "it only happened last week." Wow. Glancing up at the charcoal skeleton of what had been the framework of a vending station looming overhead, I could see she was right.

Precious buys a shopping bag to hold mangoes and passionfruits
we purchased; behind her are several baskets of tiny dried fish

Pressing in further, we left the open, burnt area and entered an absolute labyrinth of merchandise-lined tunnels running deep into what I assumed to be the heart of the market. A canopy of orange and blue tarps filtered out the sunlight above, while a veritable jungle of clothes and bags hung down like vines from a vast wooden framework to meet the piles of fruit, beans and second hand clothes which sprang up from the ground. Surges of people pulsated through the passageways in-between, walled with wire cages of live chickens on one side and strings of dried gourds hanging down along the other.
Rapid-fire calls of merchants, indiscernible to English ears, filled the air. So did the smells of live poultry, roasting ground nuts and dried fish, depending on which vendors you happened to be walking past at a given moment. It was fantastic. This is how life IS in so many places for so many millions of people, I realized, although I found this hard to wrap my mind around despite being there, standing in the middle of it.

Eye spy: pile of livers, hanging hooves,
hind piece with white tail still attached

Having emerged back onto the open streets, we traveled on foot to stock up at a larger supermarket before taxiing to Precious's home.
A few questions arose in my mind as we walked the broad streets and crowded market pathways: Is it a normal thing that man-on-the-street-number-one is holding man-on-the-street-number-two in a headlock? Where is the grinning-man-at-the-market trying to drag the grimacing-merchant-lady to? And what sort of scene on the ground are all those people standing around and staring at?

"A fight," Precious answered the unspoken question for me. "What kind of fight?" I pressed as I followed at her heels alongside the lines of taxis and bodas filling the curb. She turned and demonstrated with her fists. Oh. "They do it for money," she explained.

Dried goods and their prices in shillings

Before long we landed back at a taxi exiting a downtown park. This time we traveled to Precious's village. We hopped out and walked a series of dusty alleyways, ducking under the occasional clothesline as we went, to a blue concrete doorway set among a little compound of houses. Slipping through past the curtain, I entered a square room with two beds, some shelves, and about four chairs lined up against the wall. Another lady from church, who stays there as well, greeted me kindly, and for the next little while we enjoyed excellent conversation together over a hot rice-and-bean dinner. When it came time to go, Precious and I spent the taxi ride back singing Lugandan songs in the front seat all the way back to Seguku! What better way to end a Tuesday than that?

Balloon guitar sing-along at Precious's home

The view going down a set of concrete stairs into the taxi park

Ok, now for the promised banana story:

Wednesday's account, a day mainly spent in the Baby House doing class and painting on the wall, I'll tell mostly in pictures...

Preschool class ended when an ensemble of huge boxes filled with donated clothes came in to the Baby House!
For the rest of the morning the house fairly fluttered with people of various sizes rummaging through clothes, chasing new toys and dishes across the rooms, holding up sleepers for inspection, trying on new hats...

Gloves....

Basketball jerseys...

...And of all things a giant banana costume!
Of all the things I could have expected to pull out of those boxes, this was the last thing I would have thought to imagine. But you never know what to expect here...