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Saturday, November 15, 2008

Man on Stilts

I'm never short of new and funny sights around Kampala. This is a relief to the frequent sights of despair and poverty. Yesterday's sight actually made us all laugh. Traffic is a frequent nuissance here and most people get exasperated around the time of evening traffic. At every major intersection threre are three or four police directing traffic.
Yesterday afternoon as I was leaving the slum, I had to cross an intersection in order to board the taxi that would take me up to the center of town where I would then board another taxi home. As I was crossing the street, there was a loud whistling coming from a few meters away. It was an old man walking on stilts. He was dressed like a clown, wearing sunglasses and carrying a radio. The man proceeded to stand in the middle of the road and danced, while still on stilts. Since traffic wasn't moving there was no danger to him, but at least those onlookers trapped inside of those nonmoving taxis got a good laugh.
He even sat on a few and begged for money from those inside. I saw quite a number of people hand him coins. I think they were thankful for the break of monotony. I for one was glad to have the laugh.

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