Rebel in a Bubble

Reflections of a Ugandan labourer. Working in Uganda is like being a teenager, in Uganda.   I’ve been a working Ugandan for about four years now, and the things I’ve met make me wonder if I really want to stay here and work here. First, I’ve met the Ugandan colleagues and bosses, who have absolutely no respect for time, or for quality delivery. On my first job, one of my bosses accused me of being too strict. She said, “You can’t come here thinking the ideals you studied in school will be achieved. This is reality, and people don’t always do what they’re supposed to do. Learn to live with it.” I was fresh from university, and many people said I needed a few years and I would be like everybody else, and abandon my impatience with slow paces, and join the clique. It’s been four years now, I still don’t understand why we agree to do one thing in a given time frame, and then take our time to reach there. Nobody cares, you see, as long as something is done, in the end. This is ...

DAY TWO; DELAY As daylight brightened up the sky, we came to a halt. The bus parked behind a row of trucks and though I kept thinking it had to be the border (it was hard to see ahead from where I was seated), I didn’t want to believe so. It was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by only the bush (this much one could tell from any angle of the bus), and the road had one and a half lanes. Half of the other half was filled with mud and stagnant water. As I watched passengers move out, confirming my fears, I almost wished I were still asleep. But as it is, I was awake, and my neighbor was rambling about a thousand reasons why we were where we were, and I had to get out. I got to learn from another passenger that the border was ahead and that we had to hurry as there would be a long queue at the immigration clearing point. We walked. We walked along that abandoned dirt road in the middle of the bush and until now I find it hard to believe that it took us not less than ...