It’s one of the reasons Africa still suits me well: It walks.

Only about 9 people for every 1,000 owns a vehicle in Uganda, as of 2009. (As long as I’m doing better math than usual, that’s about .9% of the country.) Now. This, along with other reasons, means some roads with potholes like Swiss cheese. And it somehow still means said roads are perpetually clotted with traffic that makes us shake our exhaust-clouded heads. It also still means that, in my new remote neighborhood, I skate to the grocery store behind the tinted windows of our dinged, high-clearance minivan.

But it does mean that as I’m sitting on my front porch with one of my children or my Bible, I can wave at neighbors and greet them. It means that through my open windows flit assorted languages chatting on the road outside my house. It means that last year, as I picked my way to the refugee center, backpack full of the odd teaching supplies (even a couple of Nerf swords to act out stories; the guys seemed to love those), I tacked on at least an extra ten minutes for those meandering African greetings, the smiles and handshakes and Uglish (a Luganda/English equivalent of Spanglish). read more