May has come and nearly gone. I've had a productive month of correcting portfolios, reading novels I've been meaning to get to, ascertaining what improvements can be made for next year and fielding student applications for teaching certificate programs this summer. Most of the students are going off to do 'teaching pratice,' a de facto practicum program for six weeks of summer internship before they begin their final year of schooling.

The writing center never really got off the ground here. Having to re-adjust my goals with the practicalities and restrictions here on the ground. In theory, the idea is well-received but no one really wants to champion it to the people - whomever they may be - that can actually get it up and running. Without a stable resource center where students can access materials and tutors on a daily or even weekly basis, the thing has no shot. I'm going to have to re-think ways to integrate the idea into an actual institution on campus. Things here do not change quickly.

I'm nursing what has become a week long stomach shall-we-say...issue, the likes of which has kept me sidelined from my usual routine of tai-bo, underwater basket weaving, and North Korean shadow boxing. Really a drag.,.,.

I summoned the energy to meet my dutch friend out for a night of it last night, in the name of sport. Barcelona and Manchester United were playing in Champions League Final on the telly, which is big news in Africa. Soccer rules. Bars import projectors, screens, televisions, and furniture to accomodate the influx of clientele, and last night was no different.

I met another Dutch guy and German-Israeli at the bar before kickoff and actually felt like part of a crew as we sat enthralled with the mesmerizing passing, keep-away, and blinding speed of the Catalan side.

This morning my stomach is in knots again, we're four hours and 52 minutes into the six hour Catholic choir practice echoing through the hibiscus and mango trees, and Dan is on outfit number three of the morning.

Our final exam is slated for next week, a three hour journey into the realm of creative writing, supposed to test students' abilities to conjure their own personal stories into dramatic plays, poems, or short stories. That has been the focus of the semester, as I shared the class with another faculty member of the Literature Department. There is some talent amidst the rubble of my constant edits and red ink, but I am having a hard time staying positive on the whole. I keep telling myself "It's not their fault...nobody taught them this before...it's not their fault" as I read and mark up paper after paper. I do lament the fact most of the students this semester are graduating in a month and nearly all of them have consistent structural and lexical deficiencies in their writing, academic or otherwise. They aren't exposed to enough literature, they don't read enough, they have never been forced to expand vocabularies, and never been allowed - in many cases - to tap into their creativity in an academic setting. They have been lectured at for half a decade or more; practical applications of the skills they are supposedly learning are often omitted during class. And as future teachers, many of them are destined to repeat the same methods in their own classrooms. This has severely put them behind the eight ball. It's frustrating. I contend a few students will flourish, continue writing, and succeed, but most would not survive a freshman Comp and Lit class in a western university.

Kampala meanwhile seems to be back to normal. No riots or protests or major arrests this month. Soldiers are still visible throughout the city, in trucks, on foot and in large campsites outside our university, but there has been little need for them.

The rainy season really never came this spring. It has rained periodically but not like last fall.

Inflation is certainly become a major thorn in people's sides. I have seen prices for daily goods go up by 200 % in many cases since I arrived. 1.5 liters of water was 45-50 cents last September. Now it's nearly a dollar. Juice, bread, eggs, rice, beef, petrol are all on the rise. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to bought the same thing and been quoted a higher price a week later. And these are at supermarkets and shopping malls. It's not me getting worked over. We'll see where this takes us comes 2012.

Finally, I have struggled with transportation a lot the past few weeks. I can sense my testiness increase on the back of boda boda. My back-seat driving, annoyance, fear, and disdain for the whole process has grown incrementally throughout the year. I just don't have many other options. Once in a while I'll take a matatu (fourteen seat taxi-van) but their frequent stops, size, and comfort are demoralizing. A ten minute trip on a boda boda might take upwards of an hour on a matatu if traffic is bad.

Ah well, at least it's sunny...

Maybe it's just me...

But Ugandans are becoming increasingly more perplexing.

Examples? Examples you ask?

Sure....

ATM Etiquette

Here's my philosophy while using an ATM: if there's a line behind you, do what you need to go, do it quickly, make sure you accomplish your task, then leave others to the same, quickly.

Ugandans have a different strategy in mind. It - in theory - works something like this: saunter up to the machine as if a teacher has just asked you to give a speech on a subject you know nothing about, insert first card which never works, get denied, try six more times to withdraw from the same card, turn around and look dispassionately at the queue waiting mindlessly behind you as you retrieve first card, try again, get denied, finally decide to use another card, withdraw cash, pause and consider if you need more cash, decide you do, use the same card, withdraw additional cash, finally decide to retrieve card, wait for receipt, do not exit the console upon obtaining receipt, instead spend twenty to forty-five seconds reading the minutia written on the receipt while the queue continues to wait for you to get out of the way, re-enter the line directly in front of me (this always happens just to me), continue to read the receipt as if it contained the unedited version of the Warren Report, repeat process.

My problem with this: the popular etiquette just described only bothers me. A queue of six to eighteen people could be standing in line and never once complain about the length of time the person in front of the machine is spending. Never.

Another irksome feature of this procedure - besides the fact the machine sometimes eats cards or shuts down in the middle of a transaction - is that personal space is absolutely disregarded. In the midst of a ten minute wait I'll inevitably have two men literally breathing on the back of my neck. "Do you mind?" I'll ask. They'll smile, say hello, try to shake my hand, I'll shake my head in complete and utter amazement, turn around, inch away from them precisely as they inch closer to me.

Pedestrians

There are approximately zero crosswalks in Kampala. This leads to a game of virtual Frogger, as men, women, children, women with children, children with younger children, cattle, children with cattle, and domesticated animals with cattle cross busy intersections and highways at a snail's pace, as bodas and SUVs motor towards them at upwards of 60 miles per hour. People will pause in the middle of roads, averting death by inches, jump in front of semis, hoping cars will yield, direct traffic, languidly trot between police tanks, and then casually jaunt to the other side of the road as a vehicle's exhaust powders their face with acrid smoke. It is absolutely insane the chances these people take...and get away with. Insane in the membrane.

Staring

One of my favorite past times between dawn and dusk is sitting on my patio and counting how many times people stare at me as they make the twenty four strides between my gate and the front hedge of the compound. Seven is the record. The first glance I don't count, it's the double-take, eyes bulging-out-of-their-sockets glare that begins the count. Ugandans walk to and fro so slowly that the record is in perilous jeopardy. Just today a nun looked at me six times, pausing at one point as she pretended to think, before continuing ahead and out of sight. Whatever packs of students have been discussing becomes back page news the minute the 'mzungu, 11 o'clock' is spotted out of the corner of one's eyes. Sometimes, when feeling particularly prickly, I stare back, stand up and stare back, or ask them what they're looking at. I'm not proud of it.

African Time Redux

I lecture my students on punctuality, the importance of it in business and in life and the consequences of not keeping time. They still come to my office late, turn in papers late, hold meetings late, or don't come at all. Common excuses: malaria, rain, a combination of malaria and rain, being 'upcountry', not finding a taxi, not finding a boda, getting lost on a boda, assuming the meeting time is not punctual, assuming the meeting time is not serious, assuming the meeting is not serious, assuming I was not serious when I lectured them on punctuality....

Plagiarism

In my syllabus, as part of my first-day speech, throughout the semester, I discussed the perils of plagiarism and its insidious duplicity. The students seem to be adherent, for the most part. But today, after shirking my class for the first eleven weeks, I received the final short story from a student we'll call Judy. The assignment: write an original short story of your choosing. An original short story. I guess I didn't stress this enough in class. Judy's original work was entitled: Hansel and Gretl. Her story follows two children lost in a forest where they happen upon an old woman who wants to fatten them up before swallowing them. Luckily, the boy, called Hansel, leaves crumbs on his way so a woodsman finds the siblings before it's too late. My comments at the end of her paper: Nice story. I loved it...when I read it 1983. See me after class.

Techniques for Communication

A Ugandan's most popular method for reaching another human being: flashing them. Don't be alarmed. This doesn't entail a mustached man in a raincoat or a webcam owned by someone named Mother Love Bone. Rather, it's the practice of dialing someone's number, waiting for them to answer, then hanging up. The message: Call me back. I don't have enough 'air time' to complete our conversation. But you must, right? Because you're you, and I'm me. Whenever I do this to them, they incredulously flash me back. It's a fun game which - like many other things - leads to nothing getting done. A week later, when we finally do meet face to face, the person always inquires as to the state of my cell phone. Is it damaged, were you upcountry, were you on a boda boda, you just hung up out of the blue. So strange.

This doesn't occur just with students. It occurs with my boss, his boss, his boss, her boss, members of parliament and, presumably, the president. On election night, when I was invited to sit in on a popular news radio broadcast, the co-hosts ran out of airtime and decided to flash candidates to initiate on-air interviews. Then the candidates began flashing the co-hosts. It was a game of mouse versus mouse. When the producer noticed me sitting idly in the back of the studio, he whispered something in Luganda to another producer. Before I knew it, they were asking me to use my phone to call one of the ministers up for re-election. Glad I could help, guys. You want me to spring for a couple pizzas too?