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How Corruption in the U.S. Puts Everyday Corruption in Africa to Shame
By Lawrence Weschler
A bit over an hour into the five-hour drive across the ferrous red plateau, heading south toward Uganda’s capital Kampala, suddenly, there’s the Nile, a boiling, roiling cataract at this time of year, rain-swollen and ropy and rabid below the bridge that vaults over it. If Niagara Falls surged horizontally and a rickety bridge arced, shudderingly, over the torrent below, it might feel like the Nile at Karuma.
Naturally, I take out my iPhone and begin snapping pics.
On the other side of the bridge, three soldiers standing in wait in the middle of the road, rifles slung over their shoulders, direct my Kampalan driver Godfrey and me to pull over.
“You were photographing the bridge,” one of them announces, coming up to my open window. “We saw you.”
“Taking photos of the bridge is expressly forbidden,” the second offers by way of clarification, as the first reaches in and grabs the iPhone out of my hand. “National security. Terrorists could use such photos to help in planning to blow up the bridge.”
“Do I look like a terrorist to you?” I ask. “And anyway,” I shout as Soldiers One and Two walk off with their prize, oblivious, “I wasn’t photographing the bridge. I was photographing the rapids. The bridge was precisely the one thing I wasn’t photographing!”
To no avail. I open my car door and begin to get out -- but the third soldier pushes me gently back and then leans into the window, peering amiably. “And besides,” I continue, “there were no signs forbidding such photographs. Anyway, if it’s such a big deal just give me back the phone and I’ll delete the photos. You can watch.”
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