My, how things have changed.
What’s new:
1. Apparently, the Ugandan government has been on a standards binge, bearing down on Chinese businessmen for failing to import things of quality. The problem? The measures they use are largely subjective (e.g., pulling at shoes to see if they come apart), and some items they are complaining about are actually made in Uganda.
2. Cissy, my hapless lawyer, got married.
3. The migration of workers from China is palpable. Children no longer shout ‘mzungu,’ but ‘China’ instead. And Ugandans have started to adopt a sensitivity to the Chinese: they nearly all try to speak with a Chinese-inspired accent, which, in typical Ugandan fashion, sounds as ridiculous as it seems.
4. Those meddling European consultants keep trying to improve working conditions in Uganda, but are just fucking it all up. For instance, Uganda’s thinking about a minimum wage. The problem is that it’s just another tax on foreign investment, since Ugandans are the ones who set the market wages to begin with, and are the only ones able to flout regulations with ease.
Europe, America, just leave Africa alone. Clearly, the progress you’ve failed to make in the last 50 years should tell you that you’re not helping anyone.
5. Plastic scrap is now sold at a whopping 1000 shillings a kilo. Who would’ve known it could go so high?
6. Traffic is now everywhere, all the time (we’re up to the UAM series of license plates).
7. Nakumatt may be going down the tubes: I’ve never seen so many closed shops.
8. Puppies! Chicken and Beef procreated, making 8 more. Naturally, I’m calling the one we’re keeping McGangbang, a fusion of chicken and beef.
What hasn’t changed:
1. URA: still bureaucratic as ever.
2. The guys at Surgipharm are still rude.
3. Emirates service still sucks (it figures: Beatrice has gone to Canada).
I survived Uganda and all I got was this lousy…
Michelle Barnes, survivor of Marburg Fever.
When scientists trying to develop a Marburg vaccine at the National Institutes of Health heard about Ms. Barnes, they were eager to take blood samples from her. She agreed. They invited her and Dr. Fujita to Bethesda, Md., last June, to present her case to a standing-room-only crowd of researchers who had never seen a Marburg survivor.
Reason for dying.
I am not the type of man to mess with.
I have trained extensively in Muay Thai kickboxing for the last 15 years under Guru Surachai and Kru Mark Dellagrotte. Before moving to Uganda, where I learned how to streetfight out of necessity, I trained with Renzo Gracie in NYC. I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and am proficient with a variety of killing tools, including stick, machete, and 2×4 (”dos manos” escrima). Oh, did I mention I can handle an AK-47 with relative ease?
I usually keep my martial arts training a secret, since “dangerous” is not something I like being associated with (I do, after all, make balloon animals for kids in my spare time); however, something happened today that’s made me re-evaluate that.
You see, I had a lab meeting today. At this lab meeting, where I drank champagne and had ONE chocolate-covered biscuit, I started to get sick (which sucks, because any lab meeting where champagne is served is worth attending). Naturally, when I left the lab meeting, I decided to go to the UCL toilet to have a bit of alone time… if only to reflect on why I needed to eat that sole biscuit.
After working long days at Fuji Bank, where I was an intern once upon a time, I learned to take catnaps on the toilet, and this evening, post-biscuit and all, seemed like a particularly good time for a momentary rest.
So, I’m in the toilet, paper barrier over seat in place, resting comfortably, when, suddenly, someone crashes against the door in front of me, which annoyed me a bit, momentarily, the way clean laundry taken out and thrown down on a dirty floor annoys its owner. But what could I do, really? I let it go…
A couple of minutes later, someone starts kicking my door. I can see the shadow of his legs moving in the space underneath. It’s a rapid scissor motion, as if he were a miniature Rockette.
I ignore the first barrage, but upon the second, the kicker calls out to me.
“What!” I answer.
“COME OUT, NOW! Right this minute!” he scowls back.
“Here comes the party,” I think to myself.
I pull up my jeans and button the top button around my waist. Belt still undone, I open the door so the yelling can begin.
“What did you chuck over at me?” he growls, repeatedly.
“I didn’t throw anything,” I reply, repeatedly.
I know a fight is brewing, so I start calculating. His face is just far enough in the stall for me to smash it with the open door. (Why he would move in towards a pot full of shit is beyond me.) So I do. And miss.
I miss spectacularly; the deafening slam causes the door to break along with all its metallic trimming, confusing everyone in the crowded bathroom for a few moments — precisely enough time to adjust my jeans above my waist.
With jeans properly buttoned, I open the door… and approach.
By now, he has picked up a metal rod that has broken off from the door, and is standing with knees bent, wild-eyed, threatening to kill me. I stand in front of him, confident, knowing I have been hit by much larger, heavier things.
Then, hilariously, the guy realizes that he can’t possibly win, so he drops the rod and walks out of the bathroom, mumbling something under his breath.
“Incredible. A hapless imbecile and yet, so smart,” I think.
To celebrate Uganda’s lack of foresight in attempting to pass legislation against homosexuals, I would like to make a public announcement: from here on out, if you threaten me or those I care for, you must be prepared for the consequences. I have a skill-set reserved only for specialized military personnel — i.e., people who pay the bills by killing other people. Thus, if you threaten me with a weapon, I will assume I am in a life-threatening situation, where anything goes. So, THINK AHEAD OF TIME. Please. Especially when I’m on the toilet and I’m thinking of wiping my ass on your broken face. (Note: Christian asserts ending a fight this way is gay. Adam and I, however, believe there’s a certain something to wiping your ass on your opponent’s face in victory. We have all agreed to settle upon a final answer whenever someone decides to threaten me in a bathroom again.)
WrongAnswer Box
It’s bad enough that so much of the information found online is bunk, but Question Box takes it to a whole new level: In Uganda, they’ve created a knowledge database because the internet runs too slow there, which will only compound internet inaccuracy and human error.
Weapon of Choice
There are many reasons why I don’t carry a gun when walking. Only two are important: first, guns are heavy, and, second, guns invite thieves who carry guns. I, alternatively, choose to carry an assortment of weapons, depending upon where I need to be and when I need to be there.
The first of these is a Chinese-style knuckle duster, bought for a couple of dollars in Chinatown. It’s cheap and dirty, and breaks open the skin the way you need to when you’re surrounded by five guys in daylight and need to scare them quickly.
Next would be a telescoping baton. After 15 years of Escrima, how can I not be comfortable with this in my hand? It’s my insurance policy during off-hours, in the middle of the night, when no one is around and 12 very angry men want to see how well stones bounce off my head.
The third is pepper spray. I usually only carry this when I know there’s going to be a riot and I might need to find a way through the crowd. It’s also the reason why I don’t deal with knives. I always thought a knife fight was a lose-lose situation — mace offers enough of an advantage against a knife or machete that I no longer deal with the bending and accidental cutting involved with carrying them.
All of this is not to say I don’t carry my appearing cane from time to time. There’s something about a good magic trick that scares the shit out of people that I just can’t get over.
Dear Diary
I’ve been in Uganda exactly one week now. Here’s what I’ve been doing:
Monday (June 15): Slept for 5 hours then worked all night. Threatened to kill someone for starting a fire near a pile of plastic.
Tuesday (June 16): Threatened to cut someone’s hand off with a butcher knife. Initially thought I might be having a fit of rage, being jetlagged and all, you know, the kind of rage that comes when you’re not thinking straight and desperately need a blowjob to calm you down. But six hours later I threatened to cut Peter’s hand off. Turns out it was just that kind of day.
Wednesday: Found out that the thugs that wait for me outside of my factory had died from eating some local herbs they’d stolen. There is a god, after all.
Thursday: Slept, then worked for 20 hours. An askari (security guard) begged me to teach him kung-fu.
Friday: Worked, then drank. Apparently, a whole new club scene opened up in Kampala while I was away.
Saturday: Waited outside my factory gate until 5am to assess how many thieves would come to attack me. Turns out everyone there knows me now and won’t bother me — a terrible thing since they attacked Robert just a few months ago.
Sunday: Saw Robert and had a look at his elephantitis. Jesus.
All in all, a great start to my summer holiday. Kisses.
Ross Bleckner’s BS
Ross Bleckner, painter and now UN goodwill ambassador, recently traveled to Gulu district, Uganda, to teach former child soldiers and abductees how to paint.
Using thousands of dollars’ worth of paint, brushes and paper shipped from New York Central Art Supply in the East Village, Mr. Bleckner, 59, worked with a group of 25 children — former abductees and ex-soldiers — for more than a week at a Roman Catholic aid center. The children made 200 paintings that will be sold at a benefit at the United Nations headquarters next month at which Mr. Bleckner will be appointed goodwill ambassador. Several of the luminous paintings are now on view in the front window of the clothing store Moschino in the meatpacking district, whose company is providing money to support the Gulu project.
Fantastic. Use the suffering of children for commercial gain. What a great way to desensitize the masses to the problems in northern Uganda.
“One of the things we realized about a fine artist, a painter, in this role is that the work that emerges from it really needs no translation, no dubbing like a documentary or music — it’s immediately accessible to anyone who sees it,” said Ms. Monasebian, whose office estimates that human trafficking generates $32 billion a year in profits, third only to drug and arms trafficking.
Wow. . . this is unadulterated ignorance. Artistic work actually does, at times, require explanation. J.D. Salinger, for instance, suggested people nowadays are too dumb to understand his subtext. And art, as it relates to painting, is sometimes confusing to laymen. Take Jackson Pollack. Most people do not “get” his work right away — sometimes never. People tend to say “my kid can do that,” but what they fail to grasp is Pollack’s deep understanding of color: you can’t approximate Pollack’s work because you don’t have the color mastery that he had. This knowledge is not intuitive.
In addition, children’s paintings, too, can be abstruse. Sometimes, especially within therapeutic play contexts, a child might draw things that require professional interpretation (for instance, relative size of self compared to others, relative size of genitalia); moreover, remember Columbine and Virginia Tech? These situations all show that we are poor interpreters of obvious attempts to communicate. It is not immediately accessible.
“What this mission accomplished is what I call microcreativity,” Mr. Bleckner wrote in a catalog of the children’s work. “It is a personal interaction which gives someone the tools to create something that they can be proud of, and which can help them on the arduous path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth.”
What my mission in Uganda accomplishes is what I call EMPLOYMENT and EDUCATION. It’s a personal interaction which gives people the tools to FEED THEIR FAMILIES and BETTER THEIR LIVES — things they can be proud of, which can help them on the relatively easy path to restoring their dignity and sense of self-worth.
I don’t understand this continuing celebration of mediocrity. It’s as if we’re all too easily fooled by flash and sparkle. It’s like we’ve left intellectualism and probity thrashing in the wake as we sail forward for the sake of sailing forward. Where we are going is uncertain.