All of the Lights

It’s a great Kanye song, and the only similarity between that song and today was “All of the lights”…went out.  So it sounded really fun originally when I heard that the electricity goes out frequently in Uganda - it would give you time to just be there, and not rely on any sort of technology really. One intern said that her village lost power for almost 5 days, and said it was pretty rough, but it seemed like it would be just like camping. Well, my computer finally needed to be charged again, so naturally when I went to go plug it in, the electricity was out. When crews work on the main electricity line here, they often schedule the planned outages for the weekends. We were going out for the day so I just left it to charge whenever the power did come back. We went into Kampala and visited a nice hotel with a big pool, and ate at a restaurant that caters to westerners particularly. On the way back, Jenna and I hailed our first taxi by ourselves and managed to end up at the right stop. When we walked up the hill through the slum, kids were a lot more outgoing in saying hi to us, I think maybe because it was just two mzungus rather then a whole group. The kids just look at you with these big eyes, and are so cute. It is kind of humbling though to watch them run around in bare feet through the trash and the dirt just laughing and getting excited by saying hi to us. Today, I saw for the first time how far the slum goes on – just hundreds of shanties all lined up in so many rows. They follow the curve of the hill, and little roads go through every section. The ground is a beautiful red dirt, but the smell is very overwhelming. Very few people have hot water here in Uganda, and I am starting to actually enjoy the cold showers. I can tolerate the heat after living in Arizona for two years, but the humidity just makes you want to shower right away. In fact, when I stepped off the plane onto the stairway, even at 10:00 pm at night, the heavy tropical still hits you like a brick wall. Well after we got back at about 6pm, the electricity was still out, but the shower was still open. After a nice refreshing shower, I hung out with Jenna until her taxi came to take her to the village she is staying in for the majority of her stay. After she left, the house was pretty much empty – there were two other AIESECers there, but they were busy. It started to get really dark. It’s really disconcerting how dark it gets so early here. It is difficult to read outside past 7 pm. Being on the equator means we really do get 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness everyday. I realize that I am soon going to be sitting in the dark by myself. I grabbed my wind-up flash light/radio I brought with me, and sat there madly charging it up by turning the hand crank. After a minute or so, there seemed to be plenty of power so I doused myself in bug spray and crawled under my little mosquito net. I turned the radio on and started to scan through the channels. All of the ones that had talking were preachers a preachin’, and the music was pop African stuff. Nothing quite seemed like a good station to leave it on, so I grabbed my Ipod and lay on the bed just listening to music and realizing that I was likely going to be going to bed by 8 pm. It was weirdly terrifying. I had books, I had photos to upload to the computer, a journal to write for my internship credits, yet you can’t do any of those things when the power is out and your computer is dead. After I had finally come to terms with the fact that I would be in the dark for the rest of the night, a light came on in the kitchen. My saga was over, and I was slightly disappointed now that I couldn’t prove to myself that I can handle just being in the dark with little to do. Realistically though, it’s going to happen again, and I hope that I will be ready to just suck it up and enjoy the dark. So many people just a few feet away live their entire lives with no electricity. Growing up with it, I know that it’s not ridiculous to be shocked when there is no electricity all of a sudden, but getting a chance to live at least a little in other people’s shoes is definitely something. I don’t know what exactly, but I like it.  

I’m finding that I really like Kampala – there is a lot of stuff to see and do, but most of all, it has been a really good transition hanging out with local AIESECers and the other interns. The village is going to be very different, and I am expecting it to be quite overwhelming.