My last post described how stepping outside your doorstep is always an adventure. I have certainly proved my point. Naturally, today is a completely different day: I am not even remotely afraid because of yesterday's events.
Actually, this marks a perfect segway between two blog posts. I left off saying that every time you walk out the door a story unfolds. That is certainly the case.
A future blog post about perspectives will use this protest as a case study. I'll leave off with a couple of quotes from that BBC story:
"People were demonstrating peacefully when there was a misunderstanding with the police. All of a sudden they opened fire," environmental activist Frank Muramuzi told Reuters news agency.
The BBC's Sarah Grainger in Kampala says protesters threw stones at the police and set fire to vehicles.
Now, you, fellow reader, should remember that truth is difficult to find in Africa. The BBC is good enough to quote its sources for most of its information. I'll step out on a limb and say that these two quotes are somewhat contradictory, as chronology can be a bit fuzzy. Even more blatantly obviously, these quotes are part of larger stories: the quotes' contexts have been removed in interests of brevity.
You're not going to find out exactly what happened. Give up: nobody knows. Truth doesn't work that way. Instead, let me ask a rhetorical meta-question:
- What did Frank Muramuzi experience to make him say what he said?
- What did Sarah Grainger experience to make her say what she said?
- What did the BBC journalist experience to make him/her say what he/she said?
- What did Adam Hooper experience to make him say what he said?
Stay tuned. I have two more serious blog entries lined up (with a white-water-rafting experience in between). My last entry will discuss this question in more depth.