Life in my Ugandan neighborhood in a suburb of Kampala is forever changing and for me from a small town in the Pacific Northwest where things were pretty well constant. The water always worked, the power was on 363 days of the year except for the exceptional wind or snowstorm. Water was always there and I have almost forgotten what it is like to have running hot water.   

In the West one could rely on the phone, the internet working at a reasonable speed, even for dial-up, there was gasoline available, the natural gas lines functioned well and even you needed propane gas it was never a problem, there was availability everywhere.

 Here the order of the day is what many of us in the West would refer to as chaos.  The things we take for granted and rarely think about, are the things you wake up with here.

Imagine twelve weeks without running water because of the property owner refusing to pay 40 dollars for a water bill.  Imagine having to be on the lookout for the man or woman from the Umeme Electrical company so that you could speak to him or her and keep them from not taking down the electrical connection because the landlord has not paid the bill and then discovering that someone has been siphoning power from the apartments one lives at for years with an underground line from our main house.  Having to pay 18-dollar bribe to keep the power on for a week over the holidays and making sure that the jerry cans have enough water in them in order to take a shower and have water for coffee, cooking and washing the dishes.

Imagine cooking daily with a charcoal cooker because Shell Oil has no supplies of propane gas.  Imagine the price of gasoline going up to two dollars a liter (8 dollars a gallon) when the price of oil has fallen drastically.  Imagine driving into five Service Stations and not getting one liter of gasoline and if you are lucky to get it, you might have to an pay extra 20 dollars for a jerry can of 20 liters. 

Imagine this, it is Christmas and you would think that the spirit of giving  would be all around. Stores would have specials as they do in the west, lower prices in order to attract people to buy more. 

Here in Uganda it was the opposite, meat went up by 30%, and chicken increased by 40%, rice, maize flour, plantain bananas all went up by about the same percentage.  Even soft drinks, clearly labeled and pre-priced went up from 600 shillings to 900 shillings 18 cents more.

Imagine arriving at your favorite public bus station to find out that the price of going to your destination is now five times as much as normal. 

Imagine sitting outside exchanging pleasantries with a neighbor when the committee of new landlords arrive (six of them) and announce that the rent per month will double from 80 dollars per month to a 160 and not only that, they with a smile announced that they wanted 480 USD immediately, hmm, welcome to chaos.  The neighbors, quiet determination, inner resolve…their answer, “I will shift places.” 

Life is definitely predictably unpredictable here. You cannot count on stability; one has to learn to thrive on chaos.  The rules of engagement change daily, sometimes hourly and most Ugandans are not like me living on social security deposit into my bank account from the US Government, they live on one to 3 dollars a day and yet in spite of everything they are some of the happiest people in East Africa according to a recent survey.

Imagine that…maybe just maybe, the African, the Ugandan mindset is quite a bit different from a western mindset.  The worrying thoughts that beset me and roam around in my head are foreign to the Ugandan. 

The African looks at today, they live in the moment, they adjust quietly without that inner rage you sometimes find in the west.  The African lives in spite of all hell breaking loose. They are masters in the art of survival; they learn to live without water, power, meat, gasoline, propane and with an increase in prices.  There is this stoic inner determination that in spite of it all, there is this, “I will dance even at my own funeral”, and they do…

From Kampala - Uganda…still learning…jon