I left Uganda with a bang – a physical one that is. Finally, after two years of being in and out of the region, I had my inevitable boda-boda (motorcycle) accident. On the last day in Entebbe, after a delicious Nile on the shores of Lake Victoria, I climbed on a scooter-boda to grab dinner in town with a friend. Dusk, a car clipped us on a curb sending us flying. While the car skid off, we kicked the bike off and fortunately were all in one piece save scrapes and a bit of blood and brusing. Now nursing an infected elbow, I can’t say I will miss boda-boda transportation anymore.
On my way to Damascus, I flew into Cairo and spent the day walking the streets. The cat-calling is quite an affront, and, while I am used to being stared at in Uganda, it’s another matter swatting off crowds of teenagers. Otherwise, the city is the typical noisy and dusty body one would imagine. The Nile is a grisly yet enchanting river with a cool breeze for hot days. I attempted to visit the Egyptian museum to only be faced with a thousand tourists. Instead, I hired a cab to see the tips of the pyramids and the Citadel.
The cab driver rattled around in one of many small old black Peugots. His dashboard covered in all kinds of colorful paraphenelia. In the back, a framed copy of the Koran. He handed me breadstick after breadstick, “Hey Lady, it’s good.” We drove by the project-housing reaching towards the pyramids: hundreds of empty apartments mixed into walkways strung with jeans and tshirts. We stopped on the highway to peer at the tips of the pyramids. The scene was more depressing than inspiring. The remnants of a kingdom – or so it seems now – relegated to shadows behind slums.
On the way to the airport, we passed the Citadel. A massive mosque perched on the hillside. Many pottery makers in the area, their blue and beige ceramics displayed across hundreds of work stations. The city is covered in this thin beige dust rendering the landscape falsely brilliant in uniformity.