Gaddafi, a mosque, and me

Here it is.

So, speaking of Ugandan hospitality…

Yesterday night I went to the National Theatre (the theatre featured in the movie War Dance if anyone has ever seen it–good movie about N. Uganda), to do what? To learn how to dance traditional Ugandan dances. Having been out of town so much with my work on Wednesday nights, I hadn’t been able to take a dance class and had been waiting for this last week to do so. As I traveled there, I was sad to find that the normal sessions were cancelled on account of a huge performance that night. Disappointment was an understatement. The one thing I wanted to do in Africa was learn their crazy gyrations (please feel free to enjoy the mental picture of me attempting to do so) but no such thing was going to take place. So who came to the rescue of my disappointment? Gaddafi! The most hated man in the world now that Osamas dead.

He built a huge, huge, beautiful mosque here from 2003 to 2006 that sits upon a tall hill adjacent to downtown Kampala. Alex and I one night ventured into a high rise building, found a bar, bought a beer, and watched the sun set over the mosque in what was engrained into my memory as one of the most fantastic sunsets I’d ever seen. Adding to the ambiance was the taxi park we were overlooking as well, at the bottom of the hill, which is a complete frenzy, or what my generation would call, “a cluster**ck”, in the most poignant sense of the word. While I don’t have pictures from that day because I didn’t have my camera, I went back to get some shots on another, not-as-magnificent day, too early before sundown. I hope you enjoy them anyways.

So, to get to the point of my story. Marika and Kira had invited me to the mosque for the evening, but I’d declined because of my African cha-cha lessons. With my newly freed up schedule, I hopped on a boda and took a ride to Old Kampala. As I got there, the girls had just arrived too, without any communication between us… perfect timing. Even better, after they’d just got turned away because the afternoon prayer had subsided and the mosque wasn’t fully open on Wednesdays, they’d negotiated. With 5000 shillings given as a donation, and 6000 to pay for renting the necessary attire, Mahkmud, the prayer caller gave us a private tour. We were the only people at the mosque, standing on a huge veranda with a golden arch pointing them toward Mecca that was some of the most heavenly architecture I’d ever been able to see. Once inside the main mosque, where the men pray, Mahkmud sang us the Quran and interpreted it for us. Then, we waited to hear him call to prayer when? Right as the sun was setting. The clouds turned pink and orange across the cityscape while we bounced around taking pictures. Somehow I got stuck with awkward Hawaiian fabric that would not stay on my head, which only added to the memories I will now forever have thanks to Gaddafi, that crazy fool. The real point of this post though was to just have an avenue for you all to see these pictures, so here goes:

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