Kampala

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A week has passed, and the strange rash I picked up there has since faded, so now seems like the perfect to talk about the shining city of Kampala. I am a relative amateur when it comes to crazy poor city traveling. I've not been to Mumbai or Mexico City or Rio or Lagos. And Kampala isn't much of a mega-city anyways, with a population of only a few million. The important things about Kampala are (1) it's the biggest city, by far, in Uganda, (2) it hasn't had much of a stable decade in maybe a century, (3) it's relatively poor, and (4) quite crazy. This photo doesn't do the place or it's traffic justice. There are no traffic lights anywhere. Most days, the streets jam. Boda-bodas, which are little motorbike taxis, while officially banned from the city center, swarm the entire city, it's sidewalks, and spaces in between cars like flies. I read in a newspaper article that three boda-boda drivers die every day. This is not a huge city, so that means there's some sort of boda-boda driver dixie cup dispenser in a nearby slum that quickly replaces the 1,000 boda-boda drivers who die every year. And I haven't even mentioned the exhaust. It is a sea, a mustard gas sea of exhaust that fills the city on most days.

I wrote to a friend that it's a bit like I imagine 19th century London, but with modern cultural detritus everywhere and a distinctly 21st century metabolism. A businessman with an iPhone and an SUV on one side of the street, dying beggar children on the other.