The last man publicly found drinking before sundown was immortalized as Taata Mukiibi on one episode of Vvumbula with Drake Ssekeba. Here he would have been normal, beer is available as part of breakfast, and, for most men in a hurry, lunch of a beer and a large sausage is sufficient.

2. Long pinkies in Uganda are the preserve of ill-mannered witches who hide poison under them to inject it later in food. In folklore they are called ba muwabutwa (Givers of Poison). Chinese men by contrast deliberately grow them to act as mobile tooth-picks, calibration pens for touch screens, and as ear-picks when the itch comes.

3. If  a man my father's age walked about shirtless, unless he were already a resident of Butabika, most people would think about taking him there. In the summer heat wave it makes sense for adult males here to even drive shirtless-as long as the shirt is somewhere the traffic officers can see it. Strange country, really.

4. Internal tourism is a certified money-maker for the Chinese government wherever it has a finger in the pie. Ironically, most Chinese pay pilgrimage to cultural sites that survived Chairman Mao's infamous Cultural Revolution of 1966. The Bird's Nest, Great Wall and other architectural and cultural landmarks are always packed with mostly Chinese tourists from Beijing itself and other provinces. In Uganda most people's experience with internal tourism stops only at Entebbe Zoo and school trips to Jinja and Entebbe.

5.    National holidays and political events are held in much higher-esteem than we do (these days?) in Uganda. The daily flag-raising ceremony at 5am at Tiananmen Square attracts at least 5000 people everyday, and the holidays like Dragon Boat Festival, Dumpling Day, the Chinese Valentines and New Year's are occasions for city administration to try outclass each other in fireworks display and public entertainment.

6. The Chinese like their Lady Gaga alright, but more than half of all music programming on the national televisions features classical or contemporary Chinese dance and performing arts, so their performance culture is not in danger of extinction like might happen to Uganda's cultural identity when globalization makes its effects fully felt.

7. With the conscious attention to culture comes the tangential determination to have a Chinese version of everything popular to the world. There is a Chinese version of all TV shows u can think of (Idols, America's Got Talent etc), a version of Google (Baidu), Youtube (Youku), Facebook (Kaixinwang), MSN (QQ), the I-phone (LePhone), and everything else u can think of. Uganda can't even begin to compare.

8. Most Chinese don't burden themselves with accumulating property the way it makes a social statement in Uganda. Many plan on renting one-room bed-sitters till the day they die. Ugandans by contrast consider owning a house a rite of passage of sorts. While most people here are comfortable with one or two Kappa shirts and a fake Nike or Adidas somewhere, one girl on our team already has a suitcase full of shoes alone.

9. Sharing porn is part of the male-bonding process, the participants anyone over 18 who owns a phone with enough memory to load dirty videos on. The average cabbie, fruit-wagon owner, landlord, shopkeeper and passer-by are all as likely to have porn as to be expert players of pool. Now, which Ugandan friend have I shared my non-existent porn collection with? None. Which friend has shared theirs with me? None.

10. Shaving underarm hair? That concept has no fans here, and even when we give them pointed looks as they stretch their armpit dreadlocks over our heads on the subway or bus hand overhead grasps. Yet paradoxically, razor blades are made here. In Uganda we have stories of people making namungodi by rolling it under-arm, right after they've shaved using hot coals. blog comments powered by Disqus

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