My English Hat

I've had a pretty distressing day, having donned my English Hat prematurely, perhaps.  It was planned that today would be a sleep-in, reading, watching sport day.  The anticipation of this almost made it seem that home was so close that I could touch it.  However, it turned into a suffocating 10-hour-sitting-in-the-car day in the centre of Kampala Hellhole.  Honestly, I am too upset and hurt by what happened to go into details here.  It is possibly my final blog of the trip, and I didn't really want to end on this kind of bum note.

But what I can say is that I saw a familiar and distinctive pattern of Ugandan culture play out very clearly in this whole fiasco, and it was all to do with poor time-keeping and an absolute failure to communicate plans clearly to all parties concerned.  I felt an alien discomfort so acute and confusing that I almost fell apart, but managed to bottle it up until I got back a few hours ago and fell onto my bed sobbing.

I think Ugandans tend to function in this ad-hoc manner because they have had to become used to 'The System' taking longer and things cropping up which you hadn't factored into the equation.  Everything is painfully, painfully slow.  As a result, nobody is on time and nothing hits its deadlines.  Nobody apologies for keeping you waiting or, in my case, sitting in the car for 4 hours when they said, "I'm just popping over there on an errand."   Initial plans are, as a result, always vague and non-committal because people are constantly way-laid, and committing to a deadline would only ever result in failure anyway.

Bearing the brunt of this monumentally annoying (and inconsiderate) way of life felt really horrible today.  And I quietly crumbled amid scorching heat and city stench, without even a loo to go to.  I long for my personal dignity again, where I am not inflicted with dust and pollution and noise and waiting.

I am sorry, Uganda.  I wish I hadn't been wearing my English Hat today.  And I wish I had just accepted the nightmare without feeling so desperate about it.  I know there is little point wasting energy being upset because, truly, that's just the Ugandan way and there is absolutely nothing that I could do to help change matters.