In, out, outer
Yesterday, Her Worship Nabafu, a prosecutor named Simon, and I accompanied His Worship Kataswa on his rounds.
In order to understand what this means, you have to know that Kamuli's is a minor court beneath the chief magistrate at Jinja (who's still not high enough to be called a judge). What might not be obvious is that, although the idea of courts like the ones at Kamuli is to provide easily accessible, low-level services so that you don't have to travel three days by bicycle to bail out your chicken-thief nephew, this isn't sufficient: there's a large stretch of Kamuli's jurisdiction that it is far from convenient to get here from. The truth of this I saw reflected in the odometer of the speeding Toyota I spent an hour in to get to this teeny village court.
By the way, "sixty" is a terrifying number for the speedometer needle to be touching on a one-and-a-half lane, poorly kept-up dirt road, even if it is measuring kilometers in place of miles-per-hour.
His Worship's court for the afternoon was a ten foot by ten foot (if that), mostly darkened room. It did not contain a treasure chest. Apparently the local court (community/tribal, not judicial) usually meets under the tree outside, though they're getting a nice building set up nearby. There was a prison close at hand, with one cell, about twelve by twelve, maybe a little more, containing eight men, one pot to piss in, a few papyrus mats, no chairs, and no beds. Three had been convicted and were serving their sentences; the rest were awaiting trial (which can be a long wait in Uganda, where witnesses not turning up is pretty routine).
They had some complaints.
Dinner was had at a bar, sorta, which mostly seemed to be somebody's two-room house. The placemats were nice, with an embroidered floral pattern. Dinner was a variation on the usual, involving a savory rice and beef dish as a focal point for fish, matoke, a little broth, and a round of beers and sodas. Still not an honest-to-God vegetable in sight (though I have managed to acquire collard greens in recent days. Praise be!). This was sitting at about "above average" fare in my head (the rice and beef dish wasn't something I'd tasted before) until it registered on the way out the door that the entire repast had been prepared over an open fire. And by that, I mean a little wood fire tucked between a trio of rocks with a pot on it. I can give you this description with confidence because the way this factor in figuring the meal's quality registered was through my visual cortex.
Anyone who's ever tried really old-fashioned camp cooking knows the implications.
Electricity, you see, has not reached the more remote villages in Uganda, and apparently neither has propane. There's a project under way to get the lines set up, but at the moment it's not slated for completion until 2011, which, by some wild coincidence, is the year of the next Ugandan presidential election. Funny how that works.
The reason this is blowing me away is that at this time last week I was in Kampala, land of uninterrupted electrical power, easy internet access, high rises, and SUV's. Yes, SUV's. They're not actually used in the backcountry much more than they were in the States. From this, you move out to Jinja, with its dirt roads and low buildings, then to Kamuli, where the power is on about 3/4 of the time, the average home size is maybe two rooms, cows freely roam the streets, and almost everyone who turns up in court self-describes as a "peasant". Then you get out to the villages, and your dinner's being cooked over a fire pit.
Wow.
As a closing note, I've finally solved the mystery of the massive portions: they don't really expect you to eat all of that, as a rule (though the ones in the restaurants try not to overdo it and waste food, while continuing to appear generous, hence my confusion). Uganda truly is a land of plenty in many ways, and wasting food is not the mortal sin here you might have expected if your mom ever told you to "clean your plate; children are starving in Africa."
Well, it's not like this all over the continent, to be sure, but at least I'll no longer feel like I have to stuff myself til my eyeballs burst from my skull.
More later.
In order to understand what this means, you have to know that Kamuli's is a minor court beneath the chief magistrate at Jinja (who's still not high enough to be called a judge). What might not be obvious is that, although the idea of courts like the ones at Kamuli is to provide easily accessible, low-level services so that you don't have to travel three days by bicycle to bail out your chicken-thief nephew, this isn't sufficient: there's a large stretch of Kamuli's jurisdiction that it is far from convenient to get here from. The truth of this I saw reflected in the odometer of the speeding Toyota I spent an hour in to get to this teeny village court.
By the way, "sixty" is a terrifying number for the speedometer needle to be touching on a one-and-a-half lane, poorly kept-up dirt road, even if it is measuring kilometers in place of miles-per-hour.
His Worship's court for the afternoon was a ten foot by ten foot (if that), mostly darkened room. It did not contain a treasure chest. Apparently the local court (community/tribal, not judicial) usually meets under the tree outside, though they're getting a nice building set up nearby. There was a prison close at hand, with one cell, about twelve by twelve, maybe a little more, containing eight men, one pot to piss in, a few papyrus mats, no chairs, and no beds. Three had been convicted and were serving their sentences; the rest were awaiting trial (which can be a long wait in Uganda, where witnesses not turning up is pretty routine).
They had some complaints.
Dinner was had at a bar, sorta, which mostly seemed to be somebody's two-room house. The placemats were nice, with an embroidered floral pattern. Dinner was a variation on the usual, involving a savory rice and beef dish as a focal point for fish, matoke, a little broth, and a round of beers and sodas. Still not an honest-to-God vegetable in sight (though I have managed to acquire collard greens in recent days. Praise be!). This was sitting at about "above average" fare in my head (the rice and beef dish wasn't something I'd tasted before) until it registered on the way out the door that the entire repast had been prepared over an open fire. And by that, I mean a little wood fire tucked between a trio of rocks with a pot on it. I can give you this description with confidence because the way this factor in figuring the meal's quality registered was through my visual cortex.
Anyone who's ever tried really old-fashioned camp cooking knows the implications.
Electricity, you see, has not reached the more remote villages in Uganda, and apparently neither has propane. There's a project under way to get the lines set up, but at the moment it's not slated for completion until 2011, which, by some wild coincidence, is the year of the next Ugandan presidential election. Funny how that works.
The reason this is blowing me away is that at this time last week I was in Kampala, land of uninterrupted electrical power, easy internet access, high rises, and SUV's. Yes, SUV's. They're not actually used in the backcountry much more than they were in the States. From this, you move out to Jinja, with its dirt roads and low buildings, then to Kamuli, where the power is on about 3/4 of the time, the average home size is maybe two rooms, cows freely roam the streets, and almost everyone who turns up in court self-describes as a "peasant". Then you get out to the villages, and your dinner's being cooked over a fire pit.
Wow.
As a closing note, I've finally solved the mystery of the massive portions: they don't really expect you to eat all of that, as a rule (though the ones in the restaurants try not to overdo it and waste food, while continuing to appear generous, hence my confusion). Uganda truly is a land of plenty in many ways, and wasting food is not the mortal sin here you might have expected if your mom ever told you to "clean your plate; children are starving in Africa."
Well, it's not like this all over the continent, to be sure, but at least I'll no longer feel like I have to stuff myself til my eyeballs burst from my skull.
More later.