From Kampala to Bollywood to Gulu

Kampala Karaoke most definitely does not fit in with any notion of Karaoke I was previously familiar with. First, Kampalan karaoke is not a participatory event. Everyone drinks at their tables or dances, while a troupe of semi-professional dancers lip synch pop songs.

Between songs, there are dramatic and comedic interludes in Luganda, which are amusing even when you understand nothing the performers say.

The entertainers at the karaoke club last night in the university district were "The Sober Royals", who are among the better karaoke groups in Kampala according to my friends who had brought me out of Zzana and back into the city. As the Sober Royals shook their asses, made out on stage, and some of the men partied in drag as pregnant women, I couldn't help but suspect that their definition of "sober" was different from mine as well. So, I reached over the web of empty beer bottles on my table and tapped my friend Dora on the shoulder.

"What does sober mean?" I asked.

"Mmmmm." She thought. "Here it means that they don't drink or do drugs and have a very calm mind," she answered.

Oh well, I thought. I guess their definition is the same as mine.

Throughout the entire show, I tried to figure out why the format seemed so familiar to me, but I couldn't place where I had seen anything like it until after one character, having won the heart of a fellow dancer, lipsynched "You are my inspiration" with such sincerity that a woman stepped out of the audience onto the stage and refused to leave the lipsynchers side for the rest of the show.

Yes. There was something familiar to all of this... and it wasn't just Courtney Cox's stepping up onto the stage in Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' video.

This was to me a live version of a Bollywood movie. It had the drama, the comedy, the suggested sex, the dancing, and the lipsynching... And Ugandans' facinations with India and Indians made me wonder if the connection was not something more than a synchronicity.

So, what my friends called Karaoke, I called my first live Bollywood show.

I woke up this morning to the sound of lowing cattle... in the same night club district I had fallen asleep in with a group of four other kids crashed on the floor of my friend Barbara's Kampala apartment. Even in the night club district, their is grazing to be done.

I headed back up to Zzana where I learned that tomorrow is the day that Steve, myself and a few other kids will be heading up to Gulu. I believe we are going to visit Olee's home and the area where he was abducted by the LRA. Then, we will be heading up to Gulu. If there is time, we may be going to the Pader IDP camp outside Gulu as well.

We should be back to web-friendly urban environs Friday.