Political unrest

2/15/10 2:00PM
Uganda; day 48

The atmosphere here in Jinja has changed over the past week. I noticed small differences on Sunday when we went to town, but nothing major, just enough to notice that something was up. Today however, was a different story. On our way to town men walked in front of our taxi in Bugembe, they were yelling something in Luganda, and it appeared they wanted the driver to stop so they could talk to the passengers, the driver steered right for one of them and didn’t slow down until the man jumped onto the curb out of the way. Something similar had happened on Sunday, so I became curious as to what was going on. I mentioned it to Kurt, but since we don’t speak Luganda we were left in the dark. So we headed to our normal spot, the Source Cafe, on Main street. As we were sitting there drinking coffee a political parade went by, tons of people on motorcycles, bikes, trucks or walking, all holding signs. Most of them said things like “Homosexuality is an abomination”, “God love’s homo’s but hates homosexuality” you get the idea. From what I’ve heard they are having a vote, something to the effect of, if people are caught doing homosexual acts they should be put to death. So this is pretty serious stuff, I’m going to find out more details so I understand exactly what they’re voting for. But in the midst of all of this I’ve noticed a definite change in attitude toward us as we’re walking in town. I can only attribute it to the fact that most of the population here appears to be against homosexuality, and everyone is well aware of how much of America not only accepts it, but supports it. People were, giving us odd looks, and making comments to each other as we passed by, some of them even called out to us asking if we agree with everything going on in our country, another asked if we think homosexuality is ok. Considering how high tensions seem to be here over this vote, it tends to make one nervous when your getting put in the group of “opposition” just because of the color of your skin.


-Brandi