Kampala Day 2

In Kampala, more so than in Arusha, people seem very excited to see me. Within 20 minutes of walking in the market, at least 7 people have pointed at me and yelled China! or Japan!! or Konichiwa!! Jon (who did peace corp in Uganda for 2 years) said that there are Asian in Uganda, but they usually stick to their own community and rarely go out where the local people are. I tried to explain to Demarco that there are many types of Asians, and not everyone is Chinese. He got confused, and was like, "but you ARE Chinese!" and I tried to explain, "yes, I happen to be Chinese, but Koreans and Vietnamese and various other groups also exist." Not sure how successful it was. I did think it was annoying sometimes, to have people yell into my face, "Ni Hao!", but I reminded myself that they are trying to be friendly. If I was in a good mood, I would pretend to be a rockstar and wave back and people like they were my fans.

We went to go see Mengo Palace, which used to be the home of the King of the Buganda; Buganda is one of four big kindgoms that made Uganda. The Buganda Kingdom dates back to about 800 years. During Obote's rule however, he used the prisons by the palace to torture people. There are three cells in the prison. On the walls of one of them, a man wrote, "Obote, you have killed me, but what about my children?" What is very sad is that you see handprints on the walls outside the bars, and there are messages that children wrote. The children whose parents were missing would come to the prison to look for them, because so many people got put in there.

Interestingly, we also saw posters for a book titled, "Amin DaDa, the other side" (Dada meaning father). Idi Amin was the ruthless dictator who usurped Obote and then, during his reign, killed about 300,000 of his own people. The people selling things told us we should definitely read it. Perhaps Idi Amin is the Mao Tse Tung of Uganda, as in the West hates him, but lots of people in his own country think positively of him? Plenty of Ugandans also openly despise Amin and have very bad memories from his rule.

That night, we ate Ugandan food. Matoke, which is made from plantains, is kind of sour, like Ethiopian injera (the flat spongey bread thing). I did not like it. Kalo, which made me think of a Chinese desert, is made from cassava and plaintain, it is sticky in consistency, like a rice cake. A popular dish is ground nut sauce and meat or beans. I had smoked beef in ground nut sauce, which was delicious. The ground nut sauce tastes like a peanut curry.