My last 14 hours in Entebbe. My destination
today is the Botanical Garden. On my way to the gardens, I can’t help but stop
by the textile vendors and purchase multiple pieces. Loose pants for
restorative yoga sessions for myself and my dear friend Jeannie; and a dress for my
daughter.
Beautiful textile may be found in these simple stalls in Entebbe
Botanical garden is an oasis away from all the dust and crowd. I bump into a group of African youth, guided by two young white men, a bit older than the group, perhaps volunteers from Europe, who are teaching the youth how to play a team game. I watch them for a while making a mental note of how sweet their bonding is; they trusting their white guides and the guides loving and caring for their students. Why can’t this happen all over the world? Why is all the racism alive in pockets of communities and societies? It’s all about fear, mostly unjustified, exaggerated, coupled with narcissism and locking hearts into our own bubbles...
In the rainforest section of the Gardens, I look like a mini-truck with all my gadgets!
Close up of a giant termite hill
How difficult would it be to give a Kalashnikov to him and recruit him into militia, down the road, when he is and will remain a nobody all his life with what life dealt to him? My friend told me that Kalashnikov is the most precious commodity in Africa, especially in war-torn countries. Kalashnikov is what keeps them alive, what gives them power, what allows them have connections, food, and sex. It is an unbelievable framework of survival. How much of this is their own doing, how much is the West’s intervention to keep wars and arms sales going? It’s a blur... My friend told me that his veteran African friends, who are all human rights fighters are divided in whether this can be resolved in the short run or not. I try to share positive thoughts and wishes for my human fellows on this continent, but there is a knot in my gut not knowing what good this can do for them.
From the rainforest section of the Garden: Symbiosis or parasitic relationship is not clear to me...
I order fried potatoes, apparently called Irish potatoes here, Keith will tell me that if you order potatoes here, you most likely will get sweet potatoes. Just as I relax waiting for my fries to arrive, Keith, the British tenant of my hostess Clair appears on his bike! What a serendipity. He orders a beer and a sprite mixing the two into what he calls “Shandi”. First time, I am trying this, but it tastes pretty good! After our potatoes arrive, we now share both the food and the drink, we move to a picnic table to hear each other better. Keith is over 80, pretty fit; the key to this combination is using his feet or his bike for transportation most of the time and eating healthy. When I tell him, I notice a totally different life style in Africa, he tells me when you know the ways to handle the ins and outs of day to day operations in Uganda, nothing is a problem. He doesn’t use a credit card here for fear of identity and card theft. He only uses cash and cash transferred to his Ugandan bank account via exclusively UK lines of connection.
One of the tables around the make-shift bar on the beach, we enjoy at the Garden
He speaks some Lugandan to get by and to suggest to Ugandans that he knows this culture to divert them from exploiting him. He tells me stories about how people that he knows ask for financial support, such as paying for their child’s educational expenses. Since he raises funds and supports only the students that his foundation takes care of, he feels comfortable to say No to such people, but is not surprised when such requests arise. The more we chat, the more it becomes clear that he in fact is a right wing old aged Westerner: He voted for Brexit. When he starts explaining why, I am appalled, I had never heard such brutal honesty from anybody, who doesn't care a bit about political correctness:
The above-the-ground roots of many trees in the Garden has this interesting appearance
Keith believes, European free flow of populations bring to UK "Pakistanis, Afghanis, and Africans, who are lazy. They don’t work. Most of them are on welfare. Even if they work, they do so in their own under-the-table community economy and don’t pay taxes.” I tell him Trump and his circle claim the exact same thing for Mexicans. He exclaims “Oh, Trump is a racist!”. I ask him how is it that Brexitists are not racist when Trump is. He changes the subject. He believes the only way to fix African problems is to bring back British to administer, manage, and rule Africa without corruption! He makes sexist comments as well about Africans. Is that enough to see this man as a hidden racist, sexist colonialist? How can I feel compassion for him?
Africans enjoy themselves in Lake Victoria that we Westerners are recommended not to touch due to fear for Billharziasis
Announcements like this cover all electric posts in Entebbe
Botanical garden is an oasis away from all the dust and crowd. I bump into a group of African youth, guided by two young white men, a bit older than the group, perhaps volunteers from Europe, who are teaching the youth how to play a team game. I watch them for a while making a mental note of how sweet their bonding is; they trusting their white guides and the guides loving and caring for their students. Why can’t this happen all over the world? Why is all the racism alive in pockets of communities and societies? It’s all about fear, mostly unjustified, exaggerated, coupled with narcissism and locking hearts into our own bubbles...
The sign to the Botanical Garden is too humble, but the Garden itself is spectacular...
I make my way to the waterfront to find a spot to meditate. On the way, I bump into a South African bi-racial appearing young woman, who has a hired choffeaur driving her on the dirt roads with stops at sites of interest. The driver is local, clearly. I wonder what she does to be able to afford such luxury commodity. We visit the rainforest section of the park together, she offers to take a picture of me against the backdrop. As I continue my exploration in the rain forest, I discover couples who have retreated to the solitude of the forest to make out. I respectfully leave them alone recalling my time at that age…
I make my way to the waterfront to find a spot to meditate. On the way, I bump into a South African bi-racial appearing young woman, who has a hired choffeaur driving her on the dirt roads with stops at sites of interest. The driver is local, clearly. I wonder what she does to be able to afford such luxury commodity. We visit the rainforest section of the park together, she offers to take a picture of me against the backdrop. As I continue my exploration in the rain forest, I discover couples who have retreated to the solitude of the forest to make out. I respectfully leave them alone recalling my time at that age…
On the way to the beach I come across interesting structures around tree trunks. They look like fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, almost. They are of various sizes, pierced into numerous mini-caves and tunnels on its surface. When I ask a young man, who is also watching the group playing the game, he tells me that an ant builds those structures. An internet search merely gives me information that they are called giant termite hills, no more. In fact, I see a large black ant that looks like a carpenter ant that comes out of one of the tunnels, which quickly disappears back into the same. Apparently, a 3-foot high hill as the local young man tells me takes 50 years or more to create. He didn't know what the purpose of these hills were other than clearly housing thousands and thousands of ants. Do they harm the trees that they are built around? Do they live in a symbiotic relationship? No information on the internet, either.
One of many giant termite hills I observe in the Garden
Finally, I am on the beach. I am pleasantly
surprised that there are several mini-bars and picnic tables on the beach to
which these bars serve drinks. As I situate myself on the bar at the very end
of the beach, I notice that one of the guys selling local food items is a boy,
who looks like 10-12 years at the most. Skinny, not too tall. I ask him his name, it is James. He is 14 years old. He has never gone to school, too
expensive, he doesn’t know how to read and write. He actually works at the bar
and gets paid 80,000 Uganda Schillings per month. A 2x2 inch bag of
peanuts that I purchase from another boy costs 1000 Uganda Schillings, then I can put it in context! He makes enough money
to buy 80 such snack bags by working the entire month.
How difficult would it be to give a Kalashnikov to him and recruit him into militia, down the road, when he is and will remain a nobody all his life with what life dealt to him? My friend told me that Kalashnikov is the most precious commodity in Africa, especially in war-torn countries. Kalashnikov is what keeps them alive, what gives them power, what allows them have connections, food, and sex. It is an unbelievable framework of survival. How much of this is their own doing, how much is the West’s intervention to keep wars and arms sales going? It’s a blur... My friend told me that his veteran African friends, who are all human rights fighters are divided in whether this can be resolved in the short run or not. I try to share positive thoughts and wishes for my human fellows on this continent, but there is a knot in my gut not knowing what good this can do for them.
From the rainforest section of the Garden: Symbiosis or parasitic relationship is not clear to me...
I order fried potatoes, apparently called Irish potatoes here, Keith will tell me that if you order potatoes here, you most likely will get sweet potatoes. Just as I relax waiting for my fries to arrive, Keith, the British tenant of my hostess Clair appears on his bike! What a serendipity. He orders a beer and a sprite mixing the two into what he calls “Shandi”. First time, I am trying this, but it tastes pretty good! After our potatoes arrive, we now share both the food and the drink, we move to a picnic table to hear each other better. Keith is over 80, pretty fit; the key to this combination is using his feet or his bike for transportation most of the time and eating healthy. When I tell him, I notice a totally different life style in Africa, he tells me when you know the ways to handle the ins and outs of day to day operations in Uganda, nothing is a problem. He doesn’t use a credit card here for fear of identity and card theft. He only uses cash and cash transferred to his Ugandan bank account via exclusively UK lines of connection.
He speaks some Lugandan to get by and to suggest to Ugandans that he knows this culture to divert them from exploiting him. He tells me stories about how people that he knows ask for financial support, such as paying for their child’s educational expenses. Since he raises funds and supports only the students that his foundation takes care of, he feels comfortable to say No to such people, but is not surprised when such requests arise. The more we chat, the more it becomes clear that he in fact is a right wing old aged Westerner: He voted for Brexit. When he starts explaining why, I am appalled, I had never heard such brutal honesty from anybody, who doesn't care a bit about political correctness:
Keith believes, European free flow of populations bring to UK "Pakistanis, Afghanis, and Africans, who are lazy. They don’t work. Most of them are on welfare. Even if they work, they do so in their own under-the-table community economy and don’t pay taxes.” I tell him Trump and his circle claim the exact same thing for Mexicans. He exclaims “Oh, Trump is a racist!”. I ask him how is it that Brexitists are not racist when Trump is. He changes the subject. He believes the only way to fix African problems is to bring back British to administer, manage, and rule Africa without corruption! He makes sexist comments as well about Africans. Is that enough to see this man as a hidden racist, sexist colonialist? How can I feel compassion for him?
I feel like I have had enough of him and
courteously ask for leave to finish my tour of the gardens. As I walk
away, I can't harbor positive feelings toward him. Somehow I
can’t trust people with a discriminationist, racist, and exploitative politics
to have a big enough heart. I don't even know how he can do the kind of altruistic work he claims he does.
Just as I had never trusted a colleague of mine from the US, who is a
theoretician of republican even libertarian politics in his “caring interest”
in visiting developing countries to get connected with people of other lands…
At 2:45 am, Ismail arrives in his van to take
me to the airport. Claire is up to say good bye to me. Ali is at the door. I
bet this is a very similar picture from centuries ago, when the white woman is
ready to go, all Africans in her service to be up and about with great respect.
It turns my stomach, I wonder how much of this respect and care is due to the
natural human connection, how much due to intergenerational transmission of colonialism-imposed duty, and how much of it is capitalism-imposed? I give each of
them a warm hug with a moment of hugging meditation, telling each of them to
find peace and joy in life. I hope they do, I hope they recover from the
historical trauma that inundated Africa for centuries and still is. I hope we
in the west manage to pressure our governments to such an extent that they
cannot continue exploiting Africa and supporting wars in Africa with their arms
sales. Everybody in the US, France, UK, Sweden, Germany, among other countries
is responsible for that. I will meditate on that for some time to come.
 |
| I hope blacks and whites do integrate all over the world to enjoy life and friendship on this beautiful earth soon. |
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