Market off the list

Monday, 6th July. GMT: 3:48 . Kampala Time: 5:48

Market was an experience. Not that I haven’t been to markets before, but none the less, I’m never quite prepared. The goods themselves weren’t extra-ordinary, with few interesting dishes and strange dead animals. The people, however, were very chatty indeed. I couldn’t take a step forward without someone greeting me, grabbing my wrist, giving me a “fist-pump” and trying to shake my hand. The phrase “Hello Mr. Chinese man” was uttered a few more times than I was quite comfortable with, but usually I was correctly identified as a ‘Mzungu’. A white man.

“Hello Mzungu! You want jeans?!”
“Mzungu, you look, you look!”
“Mzungu! You American? Which state you from Mzungu?”
And once
“Mzungu! You are from UK!”

I thought I’d last in the market longer than I did, but the area was so labyrinthine, the channels between the stores so claustrophobic and the multitude of people all so keen to say hello that I had to escape to catch some air. Sadly, having wandered deep into the maze, I no longer knew the way out. Wishing I’d taken my compass bearing on the way in, I dashed through small tunnels of suit shops trying to work out which direction I’d come from. Now near panicked, I found myself in an especially long, especially claustrophobic alley that smelled distinctly of raw sewage. So much like raw sewage in fact, that my stomach started playing up. Holding my hand over my mouth and fruitlessly trying to ignore visions of covering a humble trader in my half-digested lunch, I charged forward. Cries of
“YOU OKAY MZUNGU!” and
“Mr. Chinese Man, why do you run?!” echoed from all sides.


Eventually I emerged into the beautiful, beautiful sunlight right at entrance I’d entered by and the place I’d arranged my “Boda-Boda” (Motorbike Taxi) to pick me up from. I’d fifteen minutes left before my pickup, so I decided to walk up the road opposite to the market. I hadn’t walked 20 meters before I arrived at the very entrance I’d entered by. Again. This fact was somewhat jarring, but I kept going and another 20 meters up the road I arrived at the very entrance I’d entered by. The thought began to dawn on me that all the entrances to the market might look the same and that I had absolutely no idea where I was going to be picked up. I walked up the road asking a couple of stall owners if they recognized me. Luckily when I got back the entrance I’d… initially exited from, I saw someone I’d passed on the way in and, sure enough, my “Boda-Boda” pulled up not long after. Certainly I was nearly pick-pocketed, irrevocably lost and sick on dollars worth of clothes, but I think I had a better day than Alex at the guesthouse. Maybe next time I’ll even buy something!