Anti-progress

Boni and I went to the Soroti Regional Referral Hospital (SRRH) to check things out. We ran into the head of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and stopped to talk to him. I told him that I was here to work with Dr. Wilson over the weekend, and he suggested that I talk to the Hospital Director. So Boni and I went to the Director’s office, and waited for 2 hours before we finally got to see the Director. When we went into his office, the Director welcomed us warmly, and apologized for keeping us waiting for so long. He then went on to tell us (mainly talking to Boni though) how he really admired China, and how China had made so much progress over the years, etc. One thing he said that struck a note with Boni – he said that China and Uganda had been pretty much on par with each other 20 years ago (I would say maybe more like 30-40 years ago), but since then, China has progressed greatly, joining the ranks of the world superpowers, whereas Uganda has stagnated.

Boni did not agree. Instead of stagnating, Uganda has regressed. We walked to town after the hospital visit, and the road we used was broken up on all sides, with a narrow slim of intact tarmac in the centre. “This road used to be nice and new when I was young, maybe around 20 years ago. Cars used to be able to run on this road. Look at it now.” Boni commented as we walked on the broken road leading up to the local branch of the National Road Authorities. What a statement. When we reached town, I spotted a cinema, and got really excited to see what kind of movies they played. “Oh that cinema used to be functional 20 years ago, but it’s now closed. We no longer have a cinema in this town.” And when dusk came, the street lights remained dark. “These lights used to work 20 years ago, but now they’re all broken.”

We finally got to the reason that we went to town in the first place – to get some ice-cream from MY SUPERMARKET. As we sat on a ledge near the supermarket, eating our Koopsky and Simka ice-cream (both very good, and much better than Fidodido, in my opinion), I commented “Well, at least now your power is reliable enough that you can have access to ice-cream. That’s some real progress.”

“Nobody really eats ice-cream around here,” Boni remarked.