The Culture of Jinja

Sunday June 27, 2010

Jinja is very populated, having about 120,000 residents.  The center of town is a city compared to my hometown Ashford.  Yet Jinja is considered rural, being much greener, laid back, and peaceful than the hectic city life in Kampala.  I am enjoying Jinja more than I could have ever imagined.  The atmosphere is very welcoming.  I try and use what little Lugandan I know to try and speak to locals and within moments of speaking we laugh and joke as if we are old friends.  The disconnection that people have from one another in American society is heartbreaking.  People speak and laugh from their souls here in Africa.  There is so much enjoyment in everyday interaction, and the locals seem quite impressed with our attempts at using the native tongue.  At home, walking the streets of any city or town, people keep to themselves and are only concerned about themselves.  In Africa, people have so little, and live off of bare essentials or less, yet they are the happiest people I ever have met in my life. 

 

It saddens me to think of the enormous amount of ignorance in American culture.  Leaving home, people would speak to me as if we are going off to live in the bush.  The cities and towns are extremely civilized and even westernized in many aspects here in Uganda.  Although, when you get to the outskirts of towns and into more rural areas, the majority of the residents live in clay huts, and shacks made out of slabs of metal and wood.  What people in America must understand is that there is extreme poverty in Uganda due to corruption and embezzlement within the government.  It is not the peoples fault that the government takes millions that are meant to go towards schools in one town, puts it in a bank account, builds interest on it, and only puts the interest towards the school.  The millions then go towards mansions bought in other countries by the leaders of this nation.  The corruption is so bad that it has even seeped down to local levels.  We have witnessed it first hand, such as people trying to get money out of us for taking photographs or prices being tripled because we are foreign.  There no set prices on anything.  In most cases, after severe bargaining, we are able to cut our costs by 50% or more.

 

To go into greater detail about the condition of the economy, let me compare costs between Uganda and America.  The other day I was bargaining for a few bracelets in a local shop just to get a taste at it.  The set price for one bracelet was 4,000 shillings, which is equivalent to $2.  Two dollars for a bracelet is pretty cheap in my mind, but in the Ugandan economy, the seller had actually doubled the price of the item.  I ended up bargaining for 3 bracelets which I paid 6,000 shillings for; $3 in American.  I went from 1 bracelet for 2 dollars to 3 bracelets for 3 dollars.  And the merchant still made an incredible profit.  Take a second to let those numbers and figures set in.  YEAH, thats what I thought.  Shocked, aren't you? 

 

The good news is, the middle class is rising in Uganda, and having the country in the recent spotlight has brought foreigners and is boosting the economy.  The next year is huge for Uganda as well, with the upcoming election.  President Museveni, who took power by a military coup in 1987, has run the country and brought the deep seeded corruption (financially) to Uganda as well.  Although he has been able to bring peace to the country after the evil presidency of Idi Amin (besides Gulu in the North until recently), his hand picked officials have profited off of embezzlement.  The election in the next year could mean many changes for Uganda.  Until then, we will just have to wait and see what happens. 

 

The structure of Jinja itself is quite simple.  The center of town is made up of streets that branch off of Main Street.  It is relatively small and is made up of banks, restaurants, supermarkets, local market stands and arts and crafts shops.  Our lovely host, the Tourist Center, is also located in Jinja center.  Once you leave the center of town, there are only 4 roads in Jinja.  One of those roads goes to Kampala, the other to Kenya, and the others go towards 2 other districts in Uganda.  Once you get out of the town center is when you touch upon the more rural areas of the country.