Organized by Collective Disorder

In grade school, I went everywhere as one segment of a straight line of classmates, dutifully ducky-ing along behind my teachers. I remember one teacher would play a game with my class as we walked from the art room to the lunchroom or back to our classroom, surprising us by turning around from her position at the head of the line to inspect our line. We loved the game, and giggled as we carefully followed the child in front of us to ensure that all twenty-one of us stood neatly like dominos.

I don’t think Ugandan kids play that game.


Ugandans don’t order themselves like Americans. There are few zebra crossings (crosswalks) here and where there are, people don’t use them. Rather, people cross four lanes of traffic wherever they please. And when I say lanes, I really mean a road three cars wide, that has boda-bodas (taxi motorcycles) weaving in and out of the cars and matatus (mini-buses), because there are no lanes.

In churches, a collection basket isn’t passed around. Instead, there is one large basket at the front of the church and at a designated time in the service, everyone gets up and squeezes past the others to put their donation in. At communion, people don’t get up row by row or form a line. There is a holy free for all towards the priest and the little round wafers.

Last week, while I was in town, a man stole something, or at least that’s what someone said. In retribution for the theft, the shopkeeper threw a rock at him. Another man joined and then six more and soon there were thirty some people throwing rocks at one man as he ran away, stopping occasionally to deflect the rocks with a large stick.