| Respect: In some villages, when men are present in a place, young girls kneel as a sign of respect. I was able to witness this one afternoon when I found myself in a shop. An approximately 11-year-old girl knelt down as she approached. Initially I thought that she was greeting the shop female workers in a very peculiar way, but it was not the case.
|
| Public transport: There are 2 types of public transportation: taxi and boda-boda. The taxi is like a minibus, while the boda-boda is a motorcycle. |
| Boda-boda: Where does the term boda-boda come from? In the past, people were transported in these vehicles from one country to another. Then, when they reached the border of the country, the driver usually shouted: "border-border", and over time the word border-border became boda-boda. |
| Sex: Unfortunately, in Uganda child marriage exists, especially between a young girl and an adult. For this reason, in some provinces, when a girl reaches puberty, she is groomed by her aunt to have sexual intercourse and be able to satisfy her husband. Fortunately, in the new century, the government of Yoweri Museveni has gotten down to work and is fighting to combat this problem. |
| United Kingdom influence: Uganda was United Kingdom's colony until 1962, when they got its independence. In October 1963, it became a republic. For this reason, the official language is English. However, not everybody speaks it. In fact, Uganda has other languages depending on the region. For example, in the capital, Kampala, besides English, Luganda is spoken. A word that I learned in this language is "Mzungu", which is used to refer to a white person. It is worthy to note also that due to the United Kingdom influence, Ugandan people are fans of the Premier League (the English football soccer league). |
| Hydrocarbon industry: While most countries around the world discuss about energy transition (leaving aside gas and oil and betting on renewable energies), in Uganda the oil industry is just flourishing. The national company in this area is UNOC (Uganda National Oil Company) and was founded in 2014. |
| Public education: The public high school education is not the best, but this changes once in university. The state offers about 4,000 scholarships throughout the country for those students with the best performance in the admission exam. Those who don't get the scholarship can still study in a public university, but they must pay the corresponding tuition fee. For example, in Makerere university, the semester tuition fee for Bachelor's students varies from 1 to 1.8 million UGX (from ~200 to ~500 USD), and for Master's students, it goes up to 2.5 million UGX (about ~650 USD). |
| Mathematics: Makerere University is considered the best university in the country and due to this, it receives a lot of funding from European countries, especially the Mathematics faculty. |
| The Nile River: The longest river in the world, begins in Uganda and is the country's main hydroelectric source. |
| Safari: While it is true that safaris in East Africa are expensive, Uganda is the cheapest destination compared to its neighbors Kenya and Tanzania. About 30% of the Ugandan territory is set aside to protect the wildlife. The favorite places for tourists to go on a safari are the "Queen Elizabeth" and "Murchison Falls" national parks. |
| Gastronomy: Uganda has a rich gastronomy. For breakfast people have Rolex with African tea. Rolex is a popular food item, combining an egg omelette and vegetables wrapped in a chapati, and the African tea is basically tea with milk. For lunch and dinner, people may have posho, matooke, beans, and/or sweet potatoes with any kind of meat. Posho is made from maize flour which is mingled in boiling hot water until it becomes hard, and matooke is a thick paste made of raw green bananas that are previously cooked and smashed. On top of all this, a man born and raised in Uganda is not considered as such if he has never eaten about 3kg of pork and drunk 25 beers in just one afternoon! |
| Tribes: There are 56 tribes in Uganda and not all of them speak the same language. Moreover, people from the same tribe cannot get married. So when 2 people from different tribes get married, the children end up belonging to the father's tribe. |
