Service with a frown

Friday, 6^th August, Kampala Time: 6:33

If there’s one thing that Kampalans have mastered, it's the art of obviously not giving a flying hoot. From the humble restaurant waiter to the district police chief’s deputy, each one has perfected a set of mannerisms which clearly say “Not only do I not care about you as a person, not only do I resent your presence and wish you had chosen to bother someone else, I am interacting with you purely because I am being paid to and, only then, because I haven not yet concocted a palpable excuse to ignore you and go somewhere else”. This atmosphere of complete indifference is so perfectly executed that I’ve started to quite admire it. When it's not getting in the way of important business, it's semi-amusing, it isn’t malicious, and it's completely honest. Many a time, during my dark teenage past as an inept purveyor of service to customers, I’ve wished that I could simply ignore a rude or pushy patron. Instead, one’s contract forces one to grit one’s teeth, pull a crocodile smile and think of England. Or, if exposed to the typically British distain for shop clerks, think of some other country entirely. Many Ugandans simply do not attempt to be nice to their customers, and it's something I’m beginning to respect.

There are times, however, when the Ugandan “service with a frown” is less than helpful. One such situation is when you’ve had your wallet stolen. Sadly, the aforementioned “catastrophe number two”, due to a combination of bad luck and profound stupidity, involved the disappearance of my wallet, along with a couple of hundred pounds. I’d just taken out extra funds to last me to the end of my trip and the wallet theft happened at the exact worst time. A sizable portion of today, as well as yesterday, was spent in the Kampala police station dealing with ‘bureaucracy’. Yesterday I went in, reported the theft, and wrote down exactly what was in the wallet. I was told to return after 11 the today to pick up my report. Today I returned at 12 noon to pick up my report. I was told to return at 3 p.m. to pick up my report. I sat in the sizzling heat, slowly burning for an hour and had a nice chat with the head of a police division, who probably wanted to extract money from me. I gave him my e-mail none the less, he was a very genial fellow and is welcome to try!

I went back in at 1:30 to check how things were going. The unhelpful man behind the desk glowered at me.

“What time is it now, sir” he asked.

“It’s half one”, I raised my eyebrows, anticipating the next sentence.

“And what time did we ask you to come” he concluded.

“Three”, the stupid Mzungu replied.

So, after some more waiting, this time with Alex, I headed upstairs at three. This time the unhelpful man had been replaced with an equally unhelpful woman. “We cannot write a report”, she told me, “The district where your incident happened belongs to the Owena police station”. As I was standing in a police station responsible for crime in the whole country, this reply did not quite cut the mustard. I pleaded for a while. Eventually she got fed up with my pleading and sent me to a room with unhelpful man number one and some species of police chief. I asked the unhelpful man number one why they could not write up a report for me at the central police station. He told me it was because they had to finish a report with the words “the scene of the crime has been visited, and the event has been confirmed”. I asked him why we could not visit the scene of the crime (just down the road) and confirm the event. He told me that it was too far away. I asked him whether this particular report could be ended without the words “the scene of the crime has been visited, and the event has been confirmed”. He said that this was impossible. I asked him whether he could just write that the scene of the crime had been visited and the event had been confirmed. He explained this with a very helpful analogy:

“When you get a grade in school, sir, do you get it without doing a test?”

I had to admit the truth of this. Very few of my grades in school have ever been given without taking a test. One thing that was being tested, however, was my patience.

“I HAVE TO LEAVE TOMORROW AND I NEED A REPORT TODAY, PLEASE TELL ME HOW I CAN GET ONE, TODAY”.

At this point the nondescript police chief joined the foray. He said something to the unhelpful man, who scowled. The words “This is Africa!” were spoken and “get him a form”. The unhelpful man turned away, with a petulant look of defeat. A woman came in and started screaming to the police chief about a land dispute. After about ten minutes, I asked the sulking man if he was going to help me get a report. “Well I’m not…” he replied with bad grace. The police chief waved the screaming woman out and ushered me into another room. Here I was left with a group of gossiping women. The gossip switched between English and Lugandan very rapidly, but I picked up enough to know that someone had done something outrageous! I was quite flushed, so they told me to calm down. They seemed very concerned about why I had decided to visit Uganda, and told me that there were better countries to go too. I told them that the Ugandans were very honest and, while shop keepers in India charged tourists 5 times what they charged locals, the Ugandans only charged double. This remark was well received and, after finishing a late lunch, they wrote up my report and sent me on my merry way.