Did I leave one expat bubble for another?

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The Ugandan wet season rain pours down in sheets as we huddle under an awning outside the main post office on Kampala Road but the sun still shines. I am here to send a few packages overseas, to test the competence of Posta Uganda. It is my first day in Kampala, my first day in East Africa after a month on the Dark Continent. Shoulder to shoulder we stand while scanning the sides where small vendors have set up bizarre stands selling nothing but "Success in your Exams" greeting cards (whose covers feature white couples pre-porn shag in 80s jean cut-offs and wife beaters.) No, thanks. Well.. on second thought... Looking out into the streets, I see hectic traffic blaring with boda-bodas weaving their way in and out. The street overflows with busy people and a capital city vibrancy unlike anything I have yet seen in the cautious sauntering in South Africa or the small-town slowness of Mozambique and Swaziland.

I tap the girl standing in front of me on the shoulder. Oli otya , will the rain continue like this all afternoon? Is it worth waiting for or should I just suck it up and get soaked? "It goes on and off, you will see. In Uganda when it rains like this we say the leopards are making babies." Introductions proceed and we quickly make friends as the rain continues. She wears a professional looking shirt, a nice brown skirt to the knees, and purple heels with a camel brown blazer, and her name is Sue. Sue is Ugandan, 25, and wears her hair in short, thin dreadlocks. Having lived 3 years in Stockholm, her immediate family is now scattered around Kampala, Stockholm, and London. Her smile is as wide as Julia Roberts' and she laughs unabashedly. When the rain lets up 15 minutes later, she offers me a lift as she is parked just down the road. We get to her car and she has a ciggie. She tells me she works in media and having just quit her job is currently searching for another. With a drag she tells me she worked for an Indian but that she dislikes Indians. "They are very racist!" A short ride turns into a long one as traffic piles up. A few laughs turn into an invitation for a venture out into the famous Kampala nightlife tomorrow.


Uganda is an Africa you want to know. This is the Africa that you see at the beginning of the staple Africa movies before shit goes down. You know, think Constant Gardener, Blood Diamond, Last King of Scotland in the happy halves. Kampala as a city is pungent and steamy, hectic and dirty. Reggae and African beats blare through the streets of central Kampala as you whiz through on the back of a boda taxi. People bustle about, not generous with leaving any free room on the walkways. Your senses are invaded with collections of colors and prints, shouting and laughter, smells of grilled meats and puffs of pollution from the dilapidated truck in front of you. The rolling roads take you on a live rollercoaster up and down the hills that the city is built on. Plenty of street signs greet you at every turn, and as you round this corner of semi-modern buildings you are greeted by a row of wooden huts and an even longer row of metata bus taxis returning back to Kampala from all corners of Uganda. On the ride back to the hostel, you see the small city center is surrounded by lush tropical greenery, goats and cows dawdling on the side, and kids running amuk. You pass large churches as well as mosques, and loud markets set the foreground for the awesome views over the Kampala suburbs.

At the end of a day in Uganda, you see a lot of the camel-brown red color so associated with the African earth. It covers the soles of your feet, it coats the insides of your ears. It fills the sink when you soap your hands, it tints the white shirt you wear. It even comes out of your eyes when you rub hard enough.

Kids and grownups alike wave at you in passing, when you walk in the streets you get a second glance but not a zoo-like staring. Uganda is famous in Africa for being one of the safest capital cities, and it shows. Ugandans are amazingly friendly people. Once you open your mouth to them, they almost won't stop talking. They are used to foreigners and speak good English, and often are not shy to inquire of you and your family, your country, your views of Uganda. Perhaps I was being naive, but I was half expecting to be able to see some sort of remnant damage from Idi Amin's reign... needless to say it is hard to believe anything so terrorizing ever took place in a country like Uganda.


Sue picks me up the next night and we head to Fat Boys, a bar where cool Ugandans and expats meet and greet and down their beers. I meet a few of her friends, a collection of a few American and British journalists, some people from the media, film, and advertising worlds. One American journalist I meet has lived a year in Kenya, a year in Eritrea, and has recently now moved to Uganda. I sit and soak up everything the journalists have to tell about past stories down to the intricacies of creating campaigns for African consumption. I pitch African SMS campaigns to a Saatchi advertising manager. I learn African dance moves from British Africans that are far more talented and bendy than I am.

Fat Boys turns into Iguanas turns into Bubbles O'Leary, the ending place of apparently all Mzungus (Luganda slang for "white guy") in Kampala on Wednesday nights. Bubbles is packed to the max of expats and trendy Ugandans. After a couple hours of endless introductions I begin to feel like I am back in sorority rush. After a couple more hours of expat chatter I begin to feel like I am back in an African version of Hong Kong. I even end up with a job offer in creatives for Saatchi & Saatchi in Kampala. Eventually though I need to escape.

The night could have passed Kampala off as another typical expat community until the last hour. Sue drives me home and we wind-down and recount all the characters that just whirled by. We talk about my travels and the US, and about all the places that she wants to visit. I notice bit by bit though that Sue seems extremely proud to be immersed in the Mzungu expat scene. She repeatedly tells me about how many friends she has from how many countries, and how everybody loves this or that about her. She tells me specifically about her shopping and her clothes, certain standards of different aspects. She details life in the Mzungu world almost boastfully and doesn't speak much of her Ugandan influence. I wonder if this is done for my benefit because she thinks this is interesting to me, or if it is because at some level Sue sees the Mzungu world to be superior to that of the local Ugandan. It is somewhat disillusioning of a country when you meet a local that doesn't seem to be as impressed with their own country as you are. I like Sue though and don't want to think too much about it although unfortunately I suspect the latter.

One thing leads to another, and next we start telling each other about our families. When she tells me her father had recently passed, I express to her my condolences and ask what he passed of. Sue tells me he died of AIDS. Sue returned to Kampala from Stockholm to stay with her father in the last months. She also tells me about her two aunts that died of AIDS. One entire family, untested, passed leaving a small 6-yr old. Not until the rest of the family died did they test the child; turns out he was HIV positive. I freak out a bit and tell Sue that I hope she gets tested very often and urges her siblings to as well. She laughs and says that she does of course. I obviously wonder whether her or her siblings are HIV positive but don't have the balls to ask the question straight. She eventually offers with a smile and a rub of my arm that both her and her siblings tested HIV negative. Sitting in her car at the end of a night out together, I am relieved beyond words more than expected for her when I hear this.

It's funny. My first few days here in Kampala really remind me of the same foreign hustle and bustle of Hong Kong, only granted perhaps on Hong Kong Island this comparison to Expat Africa is total overkill, but lets take a more modest shot of expat life say on Kowloon. Flurries of accented laughter, rounds of drinks cheaper than imaginable in our home countries, the blanket of feeling like nothing else in the world matters and that the world of real responsibility and control is far, far away. On the surface, familiarity had almost tricked me into the expat comforts of just another beautiful African city, I was almost settling back into that warm bubble of security. Here and there though, I try to constantly remind myself in the back of my mind that I am somewhere still unlike anywhere I have known before and have much more to understand and so much more to adapt to.

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