Saturday, January 27, 2007

What’s Hot, What’s Not; Kampala Edition

1) Hot: Tears of the Giraffe; the second book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Our heroine is Mma Ramotswe, traditionally built Botswanan detective lady and her soon to be husband Mr. J L B Makone. These are charming quick reads that give a little glimpse into African culture.

2) Not: Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage as an unscrupulous Kazahki arms dealer. I’m not saying this is a big shocker or anything, but this movie really sunk to new depths or badness. Sample dialogue “Honey, the President of Zimbabwe is on his way up.” “Okay babe. Thanks.” He walks outside his fancy penthouse apartment. “What the hell are you doing here? Don’t you know I’ve gone straight? I’m in oil now, man!” Real scintillating screenwriting.

3) Hot: My sweatpants finally arrived in the mail. They were lost in the shuffle from Hotel to Casa Linda, and I’ve dearly missed them. Sometimes you just have to let it all hang out. The boys received their pants with similar levels of excitement. The bag arrived and we all went into our respective rooms to exchange our disintegrating clothing for fresh new khakis and jeans.

4) Not: The even worse than usual internet situation in Kampala. We went to the Kibera Country Club yesterday to use their highly regarded wireless connection and it was crushing to realize that we had bought 45,000 shilling day passes to use a connection that took almost 45 minutes to load the yahoo home page. Not encouraging.

5) Hot: The pork roast Helen and I made for dinner on Thursday night. Its amazing how delicious roasts are and how little effort they really require. All you need is time and a lot of garlic and onion.

6) Not: the pita bread that Helen and I attempted was far from edible. It ended up being very crunchy balls of scorched flour. I’m still not really sure what went wrong there.

7) Hot: My new Ugandan Haircut, done at a place called Swiss Cut by a woman from Albania. It doesn’t look any different really, but I like the international feel of the whole experience.

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