I wrote this in Swedish to have something to show people in Sweden so I would not forget anything of all the strange things I have seen in Uganda.

Aids
In Uganda, many people have got AIDS, about 10 % of the population. The government have done everything it could to educate people to be cautious in sexual relations, but people are unfortunately incautious. People in all income-brackets, rich as well as poor, have it. It is easy to recognize a poor person with AIDS. AIDS medicine is generally named ARV = Anti Retro Virus. It is being paid for by the government. Thus it is free for individuals. Apart from taking ARV, the patient has to eat nourishing food, something that poor people cannot afford. I have visited (and prayed for) a few of them. One man died when I was present. His family was too poor for giving him the food he needed. With help from the church I usually visit we have started giving what we can, but it was too late for him. There are many who need help. The government of Uganda has not got enough money for giving free ARV and free food to those who are sick. Their families are very poor.

Food in Uganda
A frequent carbohydrate rich plant is Matooke, which is a special kind of bananas that should be green, when they harvest them. They are peeled and boiled till they are soft. They have potatoes, but they usually name them "Irish Potato". They also have Sweet Potatoes, Yam, Cassava and Pumpkin. Roasted and salted Pumpkin Seeds taste nice. They have Bread, even Whole Meal Bread.
Oats is expensive and difficult to find. What they have to make porridge from is Millet and Sorghum that does not give the porridge a consistency like oats porridge. They say that they "drink porridge" in Uganda.
There are many kinds of vegetables like for instance Cabbage, Dodo, Tomatoes, Red Onion, Cucumber, Groundnuts, Peas, Soya, Maize, Brown Beans, Carrots and Mushrooms.
There are also many fruits, like for instance Mango, Apples, Papaya, Avocado, Yellowish-green Oranges and Yellow Bananas. They don't have orange Oranges in Uganda. Apples grow only in the West, where there is a little colder.
Meat animals are Cows, Goats, Sheep, Hens and Ducks. Some people eat fried Grasshoppers as well.

The temperature
The temperature in Uganda is usually comfortable for Swedish people. Normally it is between 18 degrees (at night time) and 29 degrees (in warm days during the dry season). Kampala is situated by Lake Victoria which is 1150 m above the Sea level. That makes it not extremely hot in day time. You should however wear a peaked cap or a wide-brimmed hat on if the sun is shining and you are fair-skinned. In the south-western part of Uganda the temperature could reach as low as 10 degrees, since it is situated a little higher than the rest of the country.

Addresses
In a way you can say that they have no addresses in Uganda. Those that still have an address, rent a Post Box at the Post Office in Kampala. If you want to mention you address to someone, you have to state "P. O. Box" + some figures that tells what Post Box you are renting. Those who cannot afford to rent a Post Box, does thus not have an address, since there is no distribution of post. If a company is advertising in the paper about selling, they usually state a street name and some well-known shop in the neighbourhood. Names of small roads certainly exist, but they are not signed, so no one knows the name the road.

Telephones
Usually they do not have fixed telephones in Uganda. Companies in Kampala usually have a fixed telephone. Most adults have a mobile telephone, though. The number of that serves as a kind of personal code number, since authorities ask for it in communication with people.

Electric supply
Since electric supply is not enough for all people, the supporting company, named Umeme, is switching it off from time to time for different places. This they call "load shedding". The power is transmitted with leads on wooden poles. Most people in Uganda don't have electricity, though.

Water supply
The water supply works in a similar way as the electric supply. That is, it is switched off sometimes. Rather often, by the way, so you have to have a water tank if you want to have water continuously. The water is not of drinking water quality so you have to boil and then cool down the water. Those who can not afford a tank get water in 20 litres plastic cans. Running water in the kitchen is considered to be a luxury since you use more water then, so it is common to splash by hand, on what needs to be washed.

Small shops
Along the roads there are small shops with limited assortment. They don't look like shops in Europe, but they usually are rather like ramshackle. If there are any shops close to each other along the road, it is called a village. The residents of that village can be only a few and living quite distantly. Butcher's shops with meat directly from the butcher may be along the road side. They consist of a small wooden shed with a metal sheet roof. Pieces of meat are hanging on meat-hooks in the ceiling. The hygiene and the outer temperature make the meat not remain hygienic. (In Sweden I was a sanitary inspector among many other things earlier). Furniture shops they have as well with beds standing along the roads. The wood in the beds usually are not of any high quality. The furniture is in the nights covered with tarpaulins.

Streets and roads
Making streets and roads is performed like flattening the sand, which is almost everywhere and is called "murrum"(=very fine sand, dirt), and put asphalt on it. The asphalt is called "tarmac", which is a Ugandan/English word which is constructed of tar and mac (= "macadam"). If there is a few centimetres or tens of meters to a stone or the mountain does not change the building technique. Sand is soft and stone is hard. This leads to that when the road is used there will soon be pot holes in streets and roads. Repairing a street or a road is carried out by filling the pot holes with "murrum". Such a repair will only last a few days. The streets and roads are usually in a terrible mess of potholes.
Small roads of sand ("murrum") are very dusty and uneven. It is because they don't have any knowledge in how to build roads, with preparatory work of stones and gravel. Road ditches are usually very deep and steep and do not allow that you by mistake drive into them. There are though, some roads of good quality which are made to order by foreign companies.

Selling in the streets
Where cars stop due to the traffic situation, in and close to Kampala, salesmen of newspapers and other things usually gather. They are mostly a nuisance for the drivers.

Road traffic
Drivers usually don't care about the rule about waiting for a gap in the traffic, when they want to overtake. Instead they overtake whenever they wish, forcing meeting cars to turn to the extreme left.
If you don't have a car you have to take a bus. There is only that the bus in Uganda is a minivan that has a sign saying "Taxi" on it. That does not mean that you may ask the driver to drive to a certain address. A "Taxi" has got a certain travelling route, just like a bus in the rest of the world outside Africa. Though, the driver stops anywhere along the road when anyone wants to come on or get off. Bus stops do not exist, in practice. Those mini buses are privately owned and have no time table. Thus you will probably have to wait for a long time during the low traffic hours, i. e. evenings and nights. Taxi in the usual meaning exist, but are called "Special Hire". Buses in the usual meaning do not exist except as tourist buses and far going buses.
If you do not care about safety you can go with a "Boda-Boda". It is a 250 cc motorbike with a passenger seat and a support for the back behind the driver. There it is possible that two passengers are seated, who cannot care about the safety or traffic security. Motorbike helmets have been introduced not long time ago, but it is usually placed on the handlebars. Passenger helmet is very unusual. Injured drivers and passengers is a usual vision at the State-owned hospital "Mulago Hospital". On the roads you sometimes see "Boda-Boda" that are driven at the right side for the simple reason that it could be difficult to cross the road if there are cars on it. For similar reason they sometimes overtake cars on the left side. (It is left-hand traffic in Uganda.) The term "Boda-Boda" originates from the border between Uganda and Kenya at Busia, where one kilometre is between the shopping centre and the border post at the Ugandan side. Travellers who were left at the bus/taxi - stop by buses or taxis or those who come to Uganda from the Kenya side were driven this distance by enterprising motorbike drivers, who wanted to increase the business by calling "border, border".

The Animal life
Lions, Tigers, Elephants and Crocodiles are not as common in Uganda as people think. It is probably as unusual seeing a wild Lion in Uganda as it is seeing a Wolf or a Moose in Sweden.
At least I have never seen a Wolf, except in a Zoo in Stockholm. There are Animal parks in Uganda as well, where you can go around with a car. They are also collected in Entebbe Zoo, where there are small grey Monkeys as well walking around freely. They are also wild in the forests in Uganda. Pets like dogs, cats and fishes they have in the same way as in Sweden. Dogs are also used as watch dogs. Sometimes you see dogs run over by cars in the traffic. Wild dogs are not unusual in Uganda. They are not of any special race, just yellowish brown with the size of a German Sheepdog (Alsation). Sometimes people unfortunately get attacked by them.

Tribes
A tribe is actually nothing mysterious about. It simply means people who speak the same language. In Uganda there are 32 tribes, big and small. Besides that there are 50 tribes in Kenya and about 500 in the whole Africa. If people don't understand each other with their tribal language, they speak English with each other. Ugandan English has arisen when people who have no contact with British English speaking people are forced to talk English with each other. The biggest tribe is Muganda and their language is Luganda. It is spoken by 18 percents of the population, of which most of them live in and around Kampala. It is also the language that the news in radio and TV is read in. Next biggest is Runyankole, which is spoken by 10 percents. The third biggest is Rukiga, which is spoken by 8 percents. Runyankole and Rukiga are as similar to each other as two Swedish dialects. Only a few words and the pronunciation are a little different. They are spoken by people who come from the south-west. The so-far mentioned languages are all Bantu languages. By the way, all Ugandans are proud of originating from a certain village, even if they don't live there. Not as in Sweden, where many are shifting to the cities to hide their origin, or just mentioning it incidentally. When they are getting married it is usually with one of the same tribe. If it would be that they are from different tribes getting married, it is called "intermarriage". Then the marrying couple have to communicate with each other in English, which most Ugandans master. Probably with the exception of some tribes, who live very primitively, in clay huts with straw roofs. Such a tribe is Karamojong. There are a few more. When someone from a certain village has died and has lived somewhere else, maybe the greater part of his life, he will still be buried in his "home village".

Wedding
Three weeks before getting married, they have a party with several hundred guests, a so called "Okuhingiro", which means that the relatives of the bride groom and the bride are getting acquainted with each other, eat and watch dance and listen to music together. Then also the bride price will be discussed and, hopefully be accepted by the bride's family. It is common that the bride price consists of three, or more, cows. Three weeks later the "Okuhingiro" is followed by the marriage, which first means marriage in the church. Then follows a get-together of similar character as "Okuhingiro".

Bride price (from the Swedish National Encyclopaedia)
Bride price means payment, often in the form of cattle or money, from the husband to a group of relatives of the bride-to-be. Bride price has both legal, economical and symbolic meaning. Legally it aims to legitimate the social status of the marrying couple as husband and wife and to confirm the belonging of the children to the husband's tribe. Economically the bride price is a compensation to the family of the woman for the loss of her labour, that the household of the husband will have at his disposal. Symbolically it is an expression of the meanings and roles of the both sexes in the society.

Religion in Uganda
Many Ugandans are Christians, much more than in Sweden. I have no figures, but it is unusual to find someone who is not a believer in Uganda. There are expressed as a percentage many more Catholics in Uganda than in Sweden. Moreover there are about 5% Muslims. They are rather loud, though. They usually have mosques in different places and loudspeakers for prayer exclamations a few times a day. Moreover there is traditional faith in the ancestors.

Personal names
In Uganda everyone has got, just as in Sweden, two or more names. These are called forename and surname. Those expressions do not mean the same as they do in Sweden, though. The usual is giving a child after birth one forename and one surname, the first one usually an English forename and the second a Ugandan name, sometimes the other way round. Thus you can not from the surname decide if two persons are related to each other, since every child has got his/her own surname. In a family with ten children (not at all unusual in Uganda) there are thus twelve surnames.

Mikael Lillieros