Working it…and Representing

So the jet lag has not been so bad. No real tricks, but if I can get shut-eye within the “zone of acceptable sleep times” from 9pm to 9:30ish am, I do it. Hadn’t gotten much sleep the first night, from 1:30-5 and from 8:00 to 9:30. Not long but, enough to give me energy for the day and evening ahead.

The day’s highlights were seeing my first protected water spring of the trip in the Entebbe botanical garden as well as numerous monkeys, which I usually don’t like. (The park attendant said they wouldn’t hurt me they are used to whites. Upon questioning, I discovered the monkeys are also docile around blacks too.) Less enjoyable was the experience with ants crawling up my pants and biting after I entered a forest to see more monkeys.

Although I was sleep under-nourished and had a busy day, I was ready to meet some others. So I called my newfound friend Becca who took me to a pantomime show at the National Theater; and then the local bar.

Becca, her friend and I all chatted, hitting important topics: the shower pressure at my guest house (all the velocity of a fine warm mist); a new anti-homosexual bill in Ugandan Parliament (controversial); and why Ugandan men prefer to drink Smirnoff Ice but American males won’t touch it (odd).

As the evening grew later and the music a bit louder, I found myself talking water projects with Sean Farrell, an extremely knowledgeable water expert from Trocaire, an Irish aid agency. We discussed (read: yelled over the beats of American and Ugandan hip-hop) the merits of including local government water officials in borehole projects. Although the discussion was productive the environment for conversation was not.

It was good for dancing, and dance those at the bar did. I watched with a sense of awe. Men hit the floor with break dancing moves and rhythm that could earn them far more than a spot on the ground in a Kampala bar. The speed, the spins, the starts and stops. They could do physically, what I could not fathom mentally. It was if the music was emanating from within them. And when I heard Jay-Z’s lyrics that “Brooklyn was in the house” I looked around with a sense pride -- a sense of belonging -- as if the lyrical genius was speaking directly to me. After all I was from Brooklyn; I was representin’. No doubt Jay-Z would have been proud of me…or maybe not.