FEB 18th: Office of The Obutaka and Makerere University

Today, the need to learn Luganda became deeply apparent, when I visited the headquarters of the king of Buganda (the Bataka) at a palatial building called Bulange. A wonderful old man greeted me at the door (the parliament was in session) and we told him we were there to seek an audience with the Omutaka (the chief of clan heads).

I choked out a few phrases, but mostly bowed and nodded and said lots of ‘thank yous’. Though he was very kind, I felt silly to be on this involved cultural experience without really knowing the language. After Vianney briefed him on the project, he asked in English “And what is your clan?"

OK.. I should have seen this coming, but I was unprepared. I stammered out that my mom’s county in England is represented by a red rose, and that some animals I identify with are the buck and butterfly… but it wasn’t very convincing. No matter, he sent us up to the Omutaka’s office. We went up a regal set of stairs, then a few flights of not-so-regal ones, to a small office where a young secretary was reading the paper at her computer. Vianney explained our mission and she gave us the personal number of Omutaka Nakirembeka, who told him to call back Wednesday to make an appointment on Thursday morning. Unsatisfying as that sounded, it was all we could do, and we headed back downstairs.

On our way out, the old man who greeted us asked me to choose a clan and said he would give me a name. That time, I said an antelope "Ngabi".... but he had a hard time coming up with a name - so he said maybe he would give me a name next time. This was not the first time I would be asked to answer this question.

We hopped on a boda-boda that we had hired for the whole day and began the trek up to Makerere University, where the mission was to check out their bookstore for relevant titles. The campus has been the site of a series of recent riots (seems par for the course in the developing world) - but luckily, it was nice and quiet, except for the nesting maribou storks making a riot in the large trees scattered on campus.

We had a nice, traditional lunch - these include LOTS of starch (sweet potatoes, matoke (mashed raw plantains steamed in banana leaves), rice, taro root and sweet potato. Funny, one afternoon, we stopped in town to get some pizzas and Vianney said it wasn't "REAL food" - which I discovered meant that it didn't contain at least half a plateful of starch. Anyhow, I bought a number of great books and headed home, passing the market.

Funny, though I was in Africa a limited time, much of it was spent both shopping and cooking. But there's a much better day to talk about that experience, so I'll leave it for another posting.