The Prophet and the Poet

"Issa is the prophet Jesus," explains my hired taxi driver. "For Muslims, Jesus was a prophet." So Issa, the prophet Jesus taxi driver, steers Eve, the first woman and sign of life, through the maddening traffic of Kampala on a rainy Saturday morning. What a ride. Issa's voice is warm and smooth, like coffee with milk and sugar, yet it is his high falsetto laugh that wins me over - shocking, piercing, genuine, like that of a little girl shrieking in delight. A crescent moon scar from eyebrow to cheekbone graces the left side of his face, the side that turns towards me as we fill the time between moving inches with broken English conversation. "Dancing Queen" by Abba plays on the radio and he drums his finger against the dash as my foot flops in and out of my sandal with the rhythm of that silly delicious song. Issa has five children, one wife, one Toyota Corolla taxi, and more passengers in his lifetime then he could possibly count. For some reason I feel grateful to be one of the many this morning.

It suddenly strikes me that here I am in Uganda in the midst of it all: the motorcycles whirring around us with ladies sitting side-saddle in colorful skirts and flip-flops, the goats roped to fences bleating their woes, the children running in front of cars in street-crossing that resembles trench warfare, the bum on the street with his hand outstretched in the universal mudra of poverty, the guards at the bank with shotguns aimed at poorly tiled hallway floors, the boys on the median selling newspapers and phone cards at your car window like old-school drive-in diner waitresses minus the roller-skates, the hustle and bustle of the markets where mangoes topple in towers reminiscent of Pisa and bananas grow the size of your thumb, the life that teems regardless of the hour and the day and the time and the year all over this crazy beautiful world.