A Random Shooting

“Everyone is armed here! I can’t believe it!” my friend, Connie, who had been visiting from the U.S. for the past two weeks, remarked on her first day driving around downtown Kampala.

Then she asked me if it freaked me out…all of these guys walking around with some sort of rifle or machine gun, casually slung over their backs or resting across their laps. Usually, with the safety off.

I admitted that I didn’t even notice it anymore. I had barely noticed it to begin with except that I was curious about the make and model of the most popular rifle of choice that nearly everyone seems to carry and I didn’t recognize. Once my friend, Ed, cleared that one up for me (some Chinese rifle), I promptly stopped noticing the guns.

But I do get how strange all of this heavy weaponry must look to Americans. I think, mostly, because there is no easily defined and obvious “system” that classifies who gets to carry weapons and who does not.

In Uganda, as in most former-second and current-third world countries, it appears random and that is scary to Westerners who come from countries where it is very clearly defined who gets to be armed and who doesn’t.

In the U.S., we know that cops carry guns (although they don’t in Britain and they don’t in Uganda), soldiers and marines carry weapons (although not around our own civilians), and special law enforcement agencies carry weapons (FBI, CIA, DIA) but we’re not supposed to know that or even know they belong to any of those agencies if they are doing their jobs right.

Finally, gangsters, the Mafia, and hunters carry weapons. However, other than cops, most Americans do not find themselves confronted with heavy metal on a daily basis.

Which is why Connie found it so off-putting.

“I thought you said Uganda was safe!”

It is. Actually, compared to most African countries and even most American cities, Uganda is VERY safe. But it is the randomness that throws people off.

The fact that I fail to notice these things anymore is not because I am not paying attention or I think I am cool, rather, over the past seven years I have traveled almost exclusively to these “random” gun countries and if you let yourself start freaking out…well…you can’t get your work done.

But I did notice the first time…did I ever…

It was in Nigeria back in 2003---a lovely country but one where everyone SHOULD carry a gun---and my colleague and I had just been retrieved at the airport by a car sent by a friend. In the passenger seat was a guard with a sawed-off shotgun. I was immediately terrified.

“Holy shit!” I said to my colleague, “he has a gun!!! In the CAR!! On his lap!! Oh my God, we are going to die!!”

My colleague, who was always so infuriatingly much more composed when confronted with our early-on potentially life-threatening discoveries, said, “Calm down, I am sure it is normal here.”

HOW CAN CARRYING A SAWED-OFF SHOTGUN IN A CAR BE NORMAL???

I later realized that, in places like Nigeria, a sawed-off shotgun was definitely for safety reasons…as I did in Somalia later on when confronted with an African “Rambo” as an escort.

But there are also just places, very safe places, where everyone just has a weapon.

Georgia (one of my favorite countries on Earth) is heavily armed. But it is cultural…all males over the age of 16 possess firearms…mostly pistols. The fact that I almost got shot twice in Georgia by accident (it is also pretty much required that all males over 16 also consume copious quantities of vodka) was not a testament to its safety or lack thereof… just that in countries where the majority of the population is armed, one has to be careful about hanging out in bars, century-old bathhouses, or movie-theaters too often after 9PM when the alcohol flows.

Finally, given my former job, I was basically around weapons all the time, either in my country or in someone else’s…so they became like purses, in a sense, to me. They had become accessories more than deadly weapons…I just got used to being around guns. Which explains why I noticed them when I first got here---I didn’t recognize this model---and then just as quickly forgot about them until it was the first thing that Connie noticed.

The fact that most Ugandans, who are culturally so laid-back and NOT violent, were carrying all of these weapons around honestly failed to faze me.

Plus, Ugandans are not big drinkers…so the ratio of accidents related to alcohol-consumption and firearms is actually quite low…

Which, admittedly, gave me a false sense of security.

Until Friday.

I was at the mall during my lunch hour doing some banking when someone shot himself in the
foot…literally.

Taking into account the whole “randomness” theory operating in third-world countries about who gets to carry weapons, I have ascertained that, in Uganda, the military is EXTREMELY heavily armed (and does mingle with civilians regularly…the President is a former General and this is a militarized country despite its laid-back attitude), special police units, and random security companies are all armed. Regular police are not, civilians definitely are not, and even most body guards are not…but “Rent-a-Cops?” They are decked out.

Last month, at the biggest mall in Kampala that caters almost exclusively to foreigners, there was a troubling incident at my regular bank where one of the armed guards determined that his girlfriend (a bank teller) was cheating on him so he shot and killed her before finishing himself off.

This incident paralyzed Kampala for a few days as it was unheard of for a security guard to ever actually USE his weapon.

Of course, it frightened all of the mall customers too so the owners immediately fired the entire firm and replaced it with a new outfit that they promised to be much better trained, possess much better weapons, and also have undergone a “Mental push-ups regime” to ensure that they were of sound mind.

So imagine my surprise on Friday when banking at the local British bank and noting the conversation going on between two of the security guards. The one was vigorously trying to make his point by tapping the muzzle of his gun on the ground.

He was speaking in Lugandan so I have no idea what he was really saying but it sounded like, “I am TELLING YOU!!!”

Tap, tap, tap.

I have always been gifted by something of a “sixth sense” when it comes to dangerous situations and I immediately felt my stomach start to knot.

Tap, tap, tap.

“Is the safety on?” I wondered, trying to get a look at the gun that this guard was now using as a walking stick to underscore his every word…

Then, it happened.

A loud crack punctured the air and everyone screamed.

I was standing at the ATM at the time and ducked behind the nearest wall, hoping to avoid the ricochet.

When I looked out, the guard was frozen in place with one of those permanent “O’s” tattooed on his face like a cartoon character.

I saw the blood starting to seep out from his left shoe and realized that he had somehow managed to shoot himself in the foot.

He had also dropped the gun, safety still off, on the floor and everyone was kicking it around trying to get out of the bank in their terror.

I was momentarily torn about what to do…should I make sure the guy was OK? But then decided to just leave.

Later, back at the office, I told my colleagues about it and they were all horrified.

Then I wrote to Scott who was as attentive and concerned as ever…

“Jesus Christ! You almost got shot at the damn bank?” he asked.

No, not really. I was never in the line of fire but…

Still. These random things do happen.

“I’m OK” I told him.

And I am OK.

I was not nearly as close to it as I was in Tbilisi when the gun went off in the bathhouse….

I was Skyping with my friend Beverly, who is from inner city Philly, a former Army MP, and one of the most real people I know, last night.

“Girl, if you make it that long, you are going to have some good stories for your grandkids…” she declared.

Then…

“But, this stuff happens all the time in the inner city where someone has a little too much to drink or gets a little excited. Black folks die all the time like this…you aren’t special being a white woman who almost got shot at a bank in AFRICA.”

I didn’t think I was special…but still….this was kind of unusual.

“Only thing that makes you special is that your ass can afford to go to a damn 2000-year old bathhouse to get shot at…good thing you almost got shot where the rest of us do…it’ll make you have a deeper understanding of what the rest of us go through.” Bev declared.

I never had thought of it that way but it was true enough I suppose…

Still, I am paying more attention to the guns these days.