Lobster in a Bucket

Writing Project

Okay. So basically this is the first in a series of essays that I’ve been thinking about doing for a bit. I don’t know when I’ll get the next one done. Hopefully within a week, we’ll see. This is pretty much me, going through an exercise as a writer. Let me know what I can do better. If you have anything particularly scathing to say, tell me about it at matt at chattablogs.com. Otherwise comments would be fine.

I'm interested in exploring the way transportation and infrastructure affects the perception, even the meaning of a place. So here it goes.

Riding #1- a car
September 2004

We travel in a 1992 dark-blue Toyota Landcruiser. It has four-wheel drive, and four wheels, with a fifth just in case. It’s is my first time making this trip, from Kampala to Bundibugyo, my new home. I have been in the country for less than one week, Africa, less than a month. Kampala, as I leave it, shows off a plethora of vehicle dealers. One, if so inclined, could visit upwards of 30 establishments in search of the right bicycle, motorbike, scooter, or sport-utility vehicle. The stretch of paved tarmac pairs well with the storefronts. The tarmac, reaching on to the horizon is reassuring. The potholes are a brief jarring challenges to our bubble of relative calm amidst a massive confusion of transit.
Sharing the road, we weave amidst innumerable bicycles, motorbikes, pedestrians, cars, trucks, busses, and tractor-trailers. Instead of lanes, we move in eddies. The road is like a river with currents that individual vehicles move along, like so much flotsam. Our driver, Pat has white knuckles, but I wonder why. We can’t move fast, no one, going American speeds, is going to careen into us. Our greatest fear is that one of these bicyclists, loaded down with fresh bananas, is going to topple under our wheel. We will quickly fall into the role of the cruel white oppressors, and our money will be taken from us in a flurry of guilt and police corruption.
White guilt lives here. You’re here not so much afraid for your safety, but that you will find yourself in a situation where the mere fact of your skin will be culpability enough. The traffic of the city begins to thin as the hills turn from the color of soiled concrete to that of grass. As the concrete recedes, the amount of asphalt does too. The random pothole becomes an array of potholes that renders driving not unlike skiing on moguls.
Our pace of travel slows. Ugandans ostensibly drive on the left side of the road. However the asphalt moguls render the concept of sides more fluid. Drivers’ responsibility narrows onto their car. To spare the car, take the route of fewest potholes. Cars weave around each other in a violent, jarring, organic dance. Sometimes opposing vehicles appear to be the same vehicle, merely driving towards a large mirror. The scenery- the countryside- retreats from the foreground as the pothole dance takes the center. Africa is reduced to this one, dysfunctional, jackhammer of a road.
Somehow, the road becomes good again. My vision becomes less for the road, and more for the land. Small shacks float by, laying claim to fields of green crops. The green crops perpetuate the shacks, and life continues in some semblance of a cycle. Uganda, and so also Africa, broadens into vistas of impoverished fecundity. As the trip reaches it’s middle moment, the verdant life of this world descends on our car. It’s called Mubende. Mubende is a town, but it’s more significantly the place where the manic fight to live inflicts itself on the hermetic travelers, in their climate-controlled vehicles.
In Mubende a crowd of hawkers, barkers, and road-side attendants swarm every vehicle that stops. You don’t want to be swarmed. But you need to stop, because this is the good place to get petrol, the life-blood of your travels. The people descend on you, all selling one of about 4 things: chicken, pork, chapattis, or drinks. No one seems to feel funny selling the same thing that 100 other people are selling. The struggle to live is too important to worry about pithy notions like diversification and efficiency.
After Mubende another long stretch of green poverty awaits. The road becomes quite peculiar. The straight, modern road remains. Yet it is hung in a state of suspension, identifiable, but not complete. The crucial finishing coat of rich black tarmac remains unapplied. We cross the road in a looping half-helix over and over again, crossing over the modern world, but never staying for very long. The intersecting dirt road looks more established, more used, than the in utero one.
As the roads reduces to one the terrain changes. The mish-mash of shacks and attached land changes into something ordered. Here, that verdant chaos of Mubende has been cowed. There are plantations beside the nice, well-worn, but well taken care of tarmac. Tea estates and managed pine forests accompany the road, almost as a welcome committee to this new place. It’s called Fort Portal. In the dawn of modern Africa, a British man, a Mr. Portal, saved these inhabitants from their bloodthirsty enemies. To show their appreciation, the Batoro’s town still bears his name, and a statue.
If there is a place in Uganda where the colonial and tribal live in happy harmony, it’s Fort Portal. Elderly British gentlemen are still there with their massive tea estates, but the town hums with bustle. The way of enterprise prospers here from the top down. Everyone is working. The little alleys between and behind businesses are swept clean. The beggars are chased from the whites by concerned citizens. As we pass by the golf course, Africans tee up.
Fort Portal recedes, as we head towards the mountains. These mountains are written of as the Ruwenzoris, or Rwenzoris, or even Rewenzoris, depending on whom you ask. Our destination is on the other side of these mountains. As a last gasp, the tarmac grudgingly breaks to pieces as the potholes take over. But then the potholes give way to plain red dirt, packed with pebbles. We’ve done with the dressings of the modern world. The road elevates into a valley that marks a pass, called Bwamba. We go into this place. On the other side is the particular cranny of the continent that I will call home.
I believe that the whole earth is filled with the glory of God. But not surprisingly the glory doesn’t always seem like a good thing to me. That glory can be overwhelming. The sheer vibrant struggle to live that fills Africa almost to the brim has to reflect God’s glory, but like Moses’s burning bush, threatens to sear my eyes. With too much life to comprehend, I’m forced to reflect on my own limitations. I don’t like that.
Here up on Bwamba pass, God’s glory comes along in more digestible measures: a brief view of the wide open Semaliki, narrow valleys, long drops, small farms carved out of the hillside. The glory here is more available for the tourist inside me. That feels nice. The car maintains a safe distance from the world, allowing for consideration, appreciation, contemplation, but probably not real harmony.
As we come down out of the valley. Nature finally beats our car. The mud, rocks, and sticks prevail over one tire. We need our fifth wheel. As we stop to make repairs, some people come to assist. We signify a business opportunity. They proceed to make themselves as dirty as possible in assisting us in our repairs. By the end, they’ve transformed themselves from normal, well-dressed, young men, to tattered paupers desperately in need of “appreciation.”
Our car, pristine when leaving the city, has been dirtied and bruised by our road and our journey. But I at least on the exterior, look pretty much the same as I did in the morning. Maybe, I’m wearing a fine coat of dust that wasn’t there before. As we arrive to the bush, to my new home in Bundibugyo the preponderance of life is apparent. Domesticated animals get under your feet. Neighbors rush up to greet. As the birds stop singing, the bats start screeching. The noise of the city may have left, but the noise of nature is at least as loud, as least as constant, and at least as invasive.