Sunday in Namuwongo

It was a perfect Sunday afternoon in Kampala. A cloudless sky, the hot sun, a cool breeze, and empty streets as all of the city’s inhabitants were in church, made for an ideal boda ride through the hilly capital city (A boda boda is a small motorcycle). Empty city streets are a rarity in East African cities. In fact, I can’t recall a single day when the streets of Nairobi were anything other than total chaos. During the week, traffic in Kampala attempts to rival Nairobi and though it seriously fails to do so, it is still quite hectic trying to get from one place to another. Riding on a Boda boda cuts travel time drastically as they are easy to locate (if you are white they locate you in a matter of seconds) and they wind in and out of traffic with skill, though much too bravely. Usually, after a boda ride, I jump off, pay the driver…and then I start breathing again. Sunday is another story. Yesterday the streets were empty and even though I was the passenger, I felt in control. With the breeze in my hair and against the greenery of downtown Kampala I felt a rare sense of relaxation.

As you drive out of the city center and into Namuwongo the quality of the road drastically decreases from not so great to…it’s being worked on to…is this a road? Homes go from fenced in with trees to alternating between permanent structures and mud huts with tin or thatched roofs. It is a luxury to have one room to share with 10 people. Even though the vast majority of Namuwongo’s inhabitants are praying and praising a gracious God in their day-long church services, there are still hundreds of people who fill the dusty streets and pathways. Women carrying jerry cans of water from the communal taps to the large basins that the family then shares or walking slowly and skillfully by with enormous baskets of bananas atop their heads. Old men are in their shops updating their ledger books, counting change. Younger men sit idle near their bodas waiting for the post-church rush, which will begin hours later. People of all ages…sitting, resting, praying, waiting for something, waiting for nothing, a lot of waiting. I wonder what their prayers are for. Children. Children everywhere.

Children running through the streets chasing the tires that they roll around to entertain themselves, running through the remaining embers from burning trash, through polluted puddles and sewage. Children standing in circles laughing with each other, screaming at each other, children carrying bundles of sticks, bags of charcoal, random recycled objects, water, or whatever else their guardians have asked them for. Children carrying younger children around on their backs, children raising children, children that are not doing the errands assigned to them by adults, because they do not have anyone looking after them. Children who are forced to grow up way too quickly. Namuwongo’s streets are filled with children, most of whom are still smiling, unknowing that there is any life different than this.

I, the Mzungu, who by uncontrollable chance was born into a different life and different colored skin, which determines far too much, drive by and try not to let myself think too much. I know my tendency to become overwhelmed by the unjust realities of life, to let it consume me and become unproductive. I cannot let my feeling of uselessness – what can I possibly do? – render me useless.

I am used to Namuwongo now. The more time you spend in a place the more you are able to get past the exterior circumstance and gain insight into the way that people live. Poverty is an external reality, which undoubtably has severe impacts on a human life, but it does not define a person or a community. Namuwongo thrives with life. As I drive through now I am now privileged to be able to recognize the subtleties that make up life in Namuwongo, that forcefully persist beneath the external realities of poverty and injustice. I still see the disparity, but I feel how much more there is, and on this particular Sunday, under the cloudless sky, my sense of relaxation is able to persist and I feel just as much at home on these streets as I do in the empty streets of the green and wealthy neighborhood where most of the foreigners live. For that I am truly thankful.