First meeting with Africa - Expectations vs. Reality

 As of this writing, I have survived my very first two weeks in Africa - Kampala, the capitol of Uganda, to be more specific (for those of us lacking in geography skills). Before arriving, I had heard two things about Uganda: 1) The former military dictator Idi Amin, and (2) Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army. Now, I've also learned that Uganda is very religious and on the same note very homophombic. (This is probably the time to mention that this blog is meant to be slightly satirical/cyncial/critical - however you want to put it - , and not necessarily politically correct, so no need to be offended!). With a few generalizations and stereotypes in hand, I'll walk you through my first encounter with the African culture, enjoy!  

 One of the first things that come to my mind when thinking back on the past two weeks - which have been very hectic, as always when you move to a new place - are all the prejudices we carry with us in the back of our head when meeting new people, and trying to fit in.

As most people know (maybe with the exception of one Karen Smith), Africa was colonized by the Europeans, and thus English is widely spoken in East-African countries (e.g. Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania), in addition to the many local languages, of course. English is the offical language in Uganda along with Swahili, though Luganda is the native language of most Ugandans, and most people don't actually speak Swahili (just to complicate things further). The level of English obviously varies depending on where you are and who you're speaking with, whereas people in the cities are more prone to speak better English than people in the rural villages.

Back to the point: One of the first couple of days I experienced and episode that illustrates our preconceived notions in meetings with new people. We were a group of people haggling over the fare for the boda-boda (a motorbike taxi - one of the local means of transportation), when my friend asks one of the Ugandans in the group to explain something to the boda driver in Luganda. The boda driver, seemingly a bit offended, retorts: "I can understand what you're saying". Despite my friend's embarrassment, this was of course a minor incident with no harm done other than creating an awkward situation, nevertheless it shows that the expectations we have to other people might not always coincide with the reality. We assumed the boda driver's level of English was lower than it actually was, just as we have many other assumptions about people or cultures we have never been exposed to.

So, now we've (hopefully) settled African is not a language - although you can get a long way with Swahili -, and that everyone in Africa does not, in fact, speak Swedish (Regina George).  However, that is only half the truth, because although Ugandans do speak English, they have some peculiar phrases that any American or British person would struggle to understand at first. Here's a list of what I've picked up so far:

1) "Me, I... ", meaning something along the lines of "Personally, I...", but used on a daily basis. Ex. "Me, I want coffee".

2) "First, you come" (keep your mind out of the gutter for this one), meaning something like "Yes, I'll help you, but please come over here first".

3) "You sure?" (preferrably pronounced as the word "shore"), just meaning "really?". This one caused some confusion in the beginning, when I tried to convince some Ugandans that yes, I was indeed sure that Norway has a lot of snow right now (how could they not believe me??).

4) "Eh", this is an expression which literally can mean 50 different thing, depending on your intonation. "Eh!" can mean "watch it!", or "eh?", meaning "what?", or "eh...", which is more like "huh...".

5) "Yesterday, but one". This one is my favorite, so I'll let you guess what it means. Any suggestions?


That's it for now! Stay tuned for more insightful and thought-provoking posts...

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