The last time I landed in Entebbe, they herded us like goats into lines to submit forms declaring that we did not have ebola.
"This is very serious!" they cautioned us, as if to justify how much more inefficient their immigration services had become as a result of the crisis.
And then they sprayed us with hand sanitiser and let us go.
-----------------
Uganda always reminds me of Rwanda: the hills upon which the cities are built, the militarised state...
"What do you think about when you think of Uganda?" my colleague asked me.
"Idi Amin."
He laughed, "but that was so long ago!"
"And greenness and bananas." I compensated.
"We are a democracy now."
"What is the ratio between the ruling party and the opposition?"
"About 70:30?"
"Wow, that's a big difference."
"Yeah but the Vice-President is running this time. I think he has a good chance of winning."
"Is he really independent?"
"Well, come to think of it, he hasn't officially denounced the party."
"Do you think maybe he could just be alternating like Putin and Medvedev?"
"Maybe. I wouldn't put it past them."
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Second hand things
But I also collect the stories behind them and with each item, I am always surprised by the experience.
This is how my house came together:
1. The sofa and dining table
A woman seemed to be selling her whole house on OLX. Almost everything a house would consist of was for sale. But I liked her sofa most and the matching dining table. Both, dark brown wood and dark brown suede or something similar to suede (you never know these days). We agreed on a price for both and I came with a truck. Are you leaving the country? No, I'm getting married. Wow! That's great! Congratulations!
"He wasn't going to marry me, you know. After a year of living together, he said he didn't feel the need to get married. Why? I asked him, because you get all the wifey benefits? And so I moved out! I bought all this furniture and restarted my life. A little while later, he proposed. And now I'm moving back in and selling all of this."
And so she sold me both for half the price she bought them for. "I want to pass on some of my good luck," she said.
2. The coffee table
I liked the table.
As it looked small enough to fit in my car, I organised a time to go and pick it up.
She showed me the things she was selling, the things that were already sold and the things she was leaving behind. "I've pretty much sold everything I wanted to," she started. "We're going back with just two suitcases each... aren't we?" She looked at her daughter. A five year old with big hair and big eyes, swinging her legs from the stool that she sat on as she watched us transact.
"We're excited to go, aren't we?"
"Yes!" She exclaimed with all the ignorance of what it would mean.
"My marriage is not working. I couldn't find work here. It just got too much. So now we're going back. I'll go back to my old job. If I didn't have her, maybe I'd be travelling elsewhere. But she has to go to school you know!" she joked and I laughed. They looked like a cute pair.
"I'm afraid, you know. I didn't think I would be doing this."
And so I assured her, as much as a stranger can, standing halfway between the door and the living room until we had run out of as much of the casual conversation you can have at eight in the morning before someone goes to work.
And then we picked up the coffee table - a piece of wrought iron and wood that was the entry point for her to seek confidence in a stranger and we carried it down the stairs and set it down in my backseat. And then we hugged like we knew each other and parted ways.
3. The carpet
It was an explosion of blue - my favourite colour and even if I thought it might not go with my brown-coloured living and dining room, I just had to see it.
"I lost my job," she says. "If you know of anyone looking for someone in communications, please let me know?"
"Sure." I said and gave her my card.
"I'm just volunteering here until I find something," she continued.
I wished her all the best in finding work again.
The carpet she just sold me would last her at least a week or two in unemployment, I think.
4. The bed
It was a wedding present. They were moving to a smaller place closer to work and needed a smaller bed.
"Are you married?" His wife asks me.
"No. Not yet. No I'm not."
"When you get married call me. I'll give you more books," she said as she handed me two books about beauty and marriage.
They talked about the fleeting nature of beauty, counselled women about getting married before the expiry date of their beauty and about keeping beautiful for their husbands.
Beauty also depends on money, the book reads, so prosper so that you can invest in making your wife beautiful!
She still calls me to ask me whether I am any closer to getting married and my answer is always the same, "No, not yet. But I will when I do."
5. The curtains
He had found a job elsewhere and so they were packing up and going. "I have gotten so many calls," his wife tells me, referring to the responses to her ads, "it's so hard to keep track."
"Yeah, I can imagine. You have good stuff."
"Thanks. I realised that people aren't so interested in high fashion. Just, well built things." She fingers the curtains. "They're so thick we didn't see the need to line them."
"Yeah, I can see."
"Only the pair in the baby's room is lined so he can sleep some more."
"Yeah! That's very good."
"So which ones do you want?"
"I think all the beige ones."
"Ok I'll take them down for you. You'll need to wash them though."
"Sure, no problem."
"So, are you new here?"
"No I'm just moving out."
"Ahh, I see."
And then it came out of me, "I didn't think I would be doing this alone. I thought maybe I'd have a roommate or move in with someone, I...."
And there it was, in the slip of the tongue, I had made her awkward. I had imposed my fears on a stranger. She stood looking at me compassionately, unsure of what to say.
After a moment, I gathered myself together and organised for a time to come again to pay and pick up the curtains and said goodbye. She watched me go, unaware that I had panicked when I had first hired a truck and felt my heart drop as it pulled into the compound.
Because it was only then that I realised that my transition of moving out was a reflection of the status of my career and my economic situation: of what I was able to afford to move into and of what I was able to buy - a summary of my worth, in a way.
So perhaps this is was why these sellers felt the need to impart the history behind their furniture pieces - because they were testimonies of the circumstances under which they were letting go of bigger things and because in those moments, we were each others' only witnesses.
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