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It was a year ago that I left Morocco during the frantic build-up to the Eid - one of the most important celebrations on the Muslim calendar - and ferried my way back to Spain. In Malaga I wandered the Christmas markets and pounded the flagstones with restless feet, overcome by a sudden surge of holiday longing. What was I doing so far from home, sulking into the New Year? In Barcelona I was a riot of emotions, lonely and lost and hopelessly in love with that inspired city. The streets festooned with garland and lights; the bars brimming with cheery holiday crowds; the festival of shopping on the narrow lanes of the Barrio Gòtico. All the familiar rituals of the season had been transplanted thousands of miles from the city I called home; and though there was some reassurance in those old rites, they brought just as much in the way of heartache and yearning.
But I’d learned to take the scattered lows of my life with the countless highs; and if that meant Christmas in a city full of strangers, it sure beat most of the alternatives. So I bought a snazzy pair of socks from H&M and
hooked up with an 18-year-old Latvian girl, telling myself that for all the last-minute melancholia, 2006 hadn’t ended half-bad.
A year later, Christmas in the tropics isn’t nearly so steeped in emotional contradiction, largely because the mood, the climate, the very look of Kampala owes little to the holiday season. There are some festive tunes piping on the stereo at Backpackers and a few wreaths hanging over the aisles at the Uchumi Supermarket, but there’s none of the transformative holiday magic of New York or Barcelona. In the crowded streets downtown, people are busy with the clamor and thrift of their daily lives: muscling each other in the market over secondhand clothes, buying loaves of sliced bread from the backs of minivans. Is there any way to separate the holiday season from any other day of retail madness in this city? Piles of pirated DVDs; stacks of cheap handbags and plastic shoes; billowing undies; sheets and pillowcases and scarves and linens; wallets; watches; pens; lighters; keychains; pictures; posters; old language primers. Men hurry down the street with boxes of Chapa Nyota blue laundry soap and blenders and spare car parts hugged against their chests. They carry sacks of charcoal
and belts and spiffy loafers and Tuf Foam mattresses stacked a dozen high on their heads.
It’s hard to get worked up with Yule tidings in these parts. And besides, this is my third straight Christmas season away from home. I send out some obligatory emails and make some obligatory phone calls; and on Christmas night, I have dinner with Mai and Toon and Kristin, a Canadian volunteer living near Mai in Kabale. But there’s none of that wistful longing for the patter of snow on the windowpane and the piles of presents beneath the tree. If nothing else, I use the holiday as an excuse to splurge on Korean food and blow off work for a few days of drunken
bonhomie. What is Christmas, anyway, but a time to spend with the ones you love - or, at least, like just enough? In close to a year and a half away from home I’ve grown quite comfortable in my solitude, but it’s nice to break the spell now and then - to be reminded of the simple joy in the company of friends.
Having decided to hunker down in the city for a few days before heading east, or west, I’m taking advantage of the glut of good dining. The days pass in an orgy of chapati and curries and naans from the city’s ubiquitous Indian restaurants, and bowls of thick hummus from the Lebanese joint in Garden City - Kampala’s obligatory
mzungu-crowded shopping mall. I stock up on books from Aristoc and find a few decent cups of coffee around town, and if there’s any conclusion I’ve come to as another year winds down, it’s that I can travel half-way around the world and still manage to find a free WiFi signal with my eyes closed.
On New Year’s Eve I meet Mai and Toon and a couple of cute, bubbly Norwegian girls for dinner. We wrap up the year at Nawab, on the roof of Garden City, digging into our
tikkas and
biryanis while the lights of Kampala flicker across the city’s rolling hills. We’ve been boozing since early-evening, and by the time we leave the restaurant at half-past eleven, there’s a long trail of empty Niles and Bells behind us. Outside the Hotel Africana, where one of Kampala’s biggest parties is being held, a line snakes down the street. Most of the crowd is decked out in smart shirts and tight dresses and fancy Friday-night shoes, but the air is of such restless desperation that I suspect they’ve been waiting around since the days of Obote. We flash our tickets and skip to the front of the line, and we make it inside just in time to watch the fireworks bursting over the stage. The crowd
oohs and
aahs with great appreciation; I’ve got my hand on one of the Norwegian’s asses. The new year is off to a very good start indeed.
Afterward we flag down a half-dozen
bodas and careen through the streets to Kyoto, a Japanese restaurant-cum-nightclub on a small hill above the golf course. The crowd is handsome and sloshed, flapping around on the dancefloor and rhythmically pointing to the ceiling and groping each other in dark corners. Somewhere along the line I manage to take a slight spill down the stairs. I try to laugh it off before ordering another drink and hobbling back to the dancefloor, and it’s not until half-past four that I realize I’m in a world of pain. By the time we head outside to grab a taxi I’m hopping on one leg, and at Backpackers I grimace and hobble into bed, welcoming a year that’s gotten off to as much of a stupid start as the one that came before it.
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