But, what is it about Ronnie that makes him a legend?

Perhaps it is his beat up white hatchback bedecked with painted flames and etched-in Ronnie-ness.   Homo-erotic Action Men posed just-so on the dashboard help to define Ronnie's image.  His car walks the fine line between retro-coolness and camp.

Maybe we can understand his legend by examining his attire: His laundry-commercial white shirt matches his Brokeback boots. Together with his red velveteen pants and stetson hat, we can finally answer that age old question: What's black and white and red all over?

His affect on people might helps is to understand the legend.  Take Gudrid from Belgium for example.  After chatting to Ronnie for a tad too long - including getting his cellphone number (she denies ever calling it) - her name changed from the hard-to-pronounce Gudrid, to the slightly better Gudrid Gunz and finally into the ever pronounceable and lovable Gigi.

Ronnie Gunz is the self-proclaimed breakdance champion of Uganda.  Maybe it is there we can find his legend?  On many a late night in Ugandan discos you can find Ronnie breaking out his patented moves: from using his arms as a skipping ropes to rotating on things that weren't designed to be rotated on.

The only way though to truly appreciate the legend is to understand how quickly your opinion of him changes.  For me, he started out as a try-hard metro-sexual dork, struggling to get out of the Ronnie-mobile that was parked too close to another car.  An hour or so later, he was busting out his John Travolta coolness at a local disco to the great delight of all.

This is where I found myself when I first met Machete Girl.  I was with there with Sporty Spice and Hippy Chick on some MACRO outreach-a-rather. We were swamped with the normal glug of kids.  One little girl was hanging around the back of the group.  She was shoe-less, dressed in a dirty green dress and carried a machete in each hand.

Whenever I caught her eye, she would drop her head to one side and a shy little smile would spread across her face.  You can almost always get at least a laugh out of small children, but not with machete girl.  All she had to give was her shy smile.  We started to suspect she was deaf or perhaps mute.  We asked some people but we never really found out for sure.

I never learned what her real name was.  She will forever be Machete Girl.

They need to slow down because far too many car accidents in Ugandan are caused by unsafe vehicles being driven at excessive speed.  I knew a very responsible Ugandan guy.  He was passionate about his people and was doing great work to wrest them from poverty.  But put him in the driving seat of a car and he became an absolute idiot. It was almost as if you weren't a real man unless you drove very fast.  

They need to wear condoms for numerous reasons, HIV not being the least of them.  They also need to wear them to slow down the population explosion.

While I was in Kitgum, Jackson took me and some friends to meet his step-dad.  His step dad is married to Jackson's mother and two other wives (Ugandan family trees are very complicated).

We dubbed Jackson's step dad Needs-A-Condom man because he had - at a guess - twenty children.  Needs-A-Condom man proudly paraded his family around for us.  He bemoaned the fact that could not long support his family because he had lost his job at the hospital.  He wanted us to give him some money for his children.  My friends and I exchanged glances and made some weak excuses.  Later on, we realised we were all thinking the same though: "Err, you have twenty - twenty! - children.  Maybe if you had wrapped up Mr. Happy, you wouldn't be having this problem!"

We found out later on the he was planning to marry another young lady.  

Some Africans just break your heart.  When  I was in Rwanda, I met a lady outside the Murambi Memorial. We didn't say much: She didn't speak a word of English and my French consisted of bonjour and merci.  I had been moved - as anybody would of - by the sights I'd seen at the memorial and I found myself just giving her stuff.  Bracelets and money from memory.  It was like I was saying: "Sorry about the while genocide thing.  Have some free stuff."  Others like this girl in the Good Shepherd's Orphanage in Kenya have a similar affect.

Needs-A-Condom man no such affect on me.

Elephant Lady is called Elephant Lady for two reasons:

1. I can't remember her real name
   
   
2. She has elephantitis 
   Yes, that's the say thing that the Elephant Man had.  It is a mosquito-borne disease and causes your bones (I think...) to deform. You can notice the affect on Elephant Lady's feet.

I first met Elephant Lady while I was on a MACRO camp.  The powers-at-be at MACRO decided that people in the village of Kitale needed some dish racks.  Being the keen volunteer that I was, I was desperate to get stuck into some hard work.  I mean why else would I be on this camp?  So I went along and, well, watched other people do stuff^*.  One of the lucky recipients of a dish rack was Elephant Lady.   

The one thing that strikes her about Elephant lady is her boundless enthusiasm.  She takes care of many children:  Some of the her own,  most of them her own orphaned grandchildren.  She works for many hours in the fields to provide for them, despite what must be excruciating pain in her feet.  She thanked me repeatedly for (not) building a table for her.  I remember visiting her a couple of months later.  She was smiling and laughing (and limping) as she emerged from the fields to greet me.  She dropped to knees in front of me (as in the manner of Ugandan woman) and kept on saying: "Hello.  Hello.  Thank you.  Thank you. Thank you.  Hello."  Quite nice considering I hadn't actually done anything.

What was actually accomplished here?  Was the world's net understanding of the conjugate verb actually increased?  Did the volunteer actually add anything?  Was it a waste of time?  Or did it actually do more harm than good?

I struggle to see the benefit myself.  But, at the worse you've at least sent a message to the people who are trying to help. You're here, you give you a shit, and you're putting your money where your mouth is. That is a very strong message.  

With the exception of the odd dickhead, people get that you're trying to help.  They just appreciated that you're there.

One lady I met felt that I should head back to New Zealand and, well, breed.  She felt that I had the opportunity to bring children up in a affluent society and that not doing so was selfish.  I explained to her that having kids was the last thing in the world that I wanted do and that I was happy doing what I was doing.  She started to get very angry with me.  

Something along the lines of: "How dare you not have children!  You look at the children around you.   They are starving.  Starving!  You have the opportunity to raise happy, healthy children and you're not taking it!"

She was the and-partner of an African guy I hung around with.  So I got the selfish-bastard speech every now and then.

I guess it points out a large cultural difference between me and her.  My culture says that it is okay not to have kids.  That's fine that's your choice.  Her culture says that kids are critical.  If you don't have kids then who will provide for you when you are older?  

There's a little boy in the village of Kitale who has a whole different technique.  He'll walk just in front of you and say "Gimme fifty shillings" over and over again.  He just doesn't stop.  He can keep it up for about an hour.  "Gimme fifty shillings.  Gimme fifty shillings."  Fifty shillings is about four New Zealand cents.  One volunteer caved in and gave him fifty shillings, and guess what he did?  He started off again.  "Gimme fifty shillings.  Gimme fifty shillings."

Sam was the guy responsible for giving me my haircuts.  Most of them were great.  He took his time and did a good job.

Occasionally though something went wrong.  Like the time the power went out half way through the haircut.  The results were not pleasing to the eye, but quite amusing.

Other times the result was all my fault.  Like when I decided to shave off all my hair African-Style!  Sam didn't quite understand that I wanted to shave all of it off.  Maybe it's just not the type of thing that Bazungu (white people) do.  He eventually clicked to the idea.  Perhaps he still didn't quite understand though because I had to stop him from shaving my eyebrows off.  I did keep my 'tash though as a protest against 'tashs everywhere. There is no excuse for only have a 'tash with no beard guys.  Just don't do it.  If you still need convincing, check this out.

You'll find Baju's rolex stand about fifty meters down the guest house in Mukono.  Baju is just plain old nice.  You always greets you with a mile wide smile.  Baju will even deliver the Rolexs direct to your door.

Baju struggles to make ends meet.  He is a solo dad and sells each Rolex for about 500 shillings ($NZ 0.40).  At a guess, he'd make about 250 shillings ($NZ 0.20) on each sale.

The two Irish boys, Eddie and Simon, took a real liking to Baju.  They would yell "Baju!  Rolex!" from the veranda on the guest house and before long Baju would arrive with rolexs.  Just before the Irishmen left, they wanted to say thank you to Baju and gave him 40,000 shillings ($NZ 37.72).  That's eighty Rolexs and all profit!  Baju dropped to his knees, wept a little and thanked them repeatedly.

The 40,000 shillings was nothing to the Irishmen and a fortune for Baju.  I guess it further emphasis the gap between the have and the have-nots.

I also used to hang out at Best Meals (whose meals weren't).  It was a nice place to relax and order some Chips Chicken and Coke.  A couple of months before I left, Best Meals opened up an Internet cafe.  But this wasn't just any old Internet cafe.  It had flat screens, flash computers, comfy office chairs and - blessings upon blessings - a broadband internet connection.

Now Kevin is a nice guy, but broadband is broadband.  So I (and many other volunteers) switched to the Best Meals cafe.  This was a big blow to Kevin as volunteers made up a big part of his business.

I bumped into Kevin a few times after the switch.  He looked like a kicked puppy.  I felt so bad. Mind you, not bad enough to give up my broadband...

Moses also drives a boda-boda around Mukono and often helps out the Bazungu (white people).  I needed a machete for Man Camp and had no idea where to get one.  Mose soon sorted it out.  We jumped on his boda, zoomed around to a hardware store, purchased a machete and he even got it sharpened for me. Legend.

Moses spent a lot of time helping Bluey with his skate park project.  Check out the state of the project here.  I'm sure the boyz would appreciate any skating paraphernalia you could give them.

Esther is a lovely lady and was born to giggle.  Just about anything would set her off.  

Me: "Esther, what's the time?"

Esther: *explosion of giggles*

Esther is onto a good thing with her job at the guest house.  She is making good money and has a secure future.  Most Ugandans would be happy with that.  A steady job and - as an added bonus - regular contact with Bazungu (white people) is very hard to come by in Uganda.  

Esther wanted to do even more though and enrolled herself at University to study the culinary arts.  I was fortunate enough to attend her graduation while I was in Uganda.

Good on you Esther.  More power to you.

The best way to get Nakalema to laugh is to ask her not to laugh.  She can be an insanely happy little girl.  It's hard not to like such a happy person.  Naka always has a smile for you.

He and her sister remind me a lot of the door kids at the refugee camp. It's great that she gets so much contact with the volunteers.  The contact improves her English and - surprise surprise - she ends up getting sponsored by a volunteer and now attends a private school which will do just wonders for her education.  

But its gotta be weird for her to have an ever changing adult influence on her as the volunteers come and go.  Nakalema will get very attached to a volunteer and vice versa, and then the volunteer leaves.  Naka re-attachs and the cycle repeats. It must be very hard on her to have the people she is close to constantly leaving.

Nantale is a bundle of energy.  Give her a bottle of Fanta and watch her go!  Team her up with Eddie and you've got a real handful!

If something happened that Nantale didn't like, she would let out a guttural scream not dissimilar to the Nazgul in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.  It would of been scary if it wasn't for the fact that she is so small and cute.

Wanna help in a real and tangible way?

Then visit GrassRootsUganda.com and purchase some crafts made by Ugandan ladies.  100% of the profits are returned to the ladies