Sixty-four years in the same place

I am not cropping or zooming in on this photo, because this is the image we saw walking past a tiny cobbler's shop on a narrow Cashbah street. The shopkeeper came out to the sidewalk to talk a little -- through Said's Arabic, of course. He turned on one of his creaky shoe making machines for us, dug through the heaps of foot forms, glue and leather scraps to find an old identity card to show us how handsome he used to be and he let us take a picture. He's been in the Cashbah since 1943, he said. Remembers GIs coming in after German soldiers and the terrorism of the 1990s. "We suffered," he said, an expression Olivia used a lot in Kampala. His view is Give it away before they take it -- a sentiment he appeared to apply both to his children -- and thieves in the quarter.

Everything passes, said this veteran of many changes.

Another shopkeeper huddled over the back of a chair with a cigarette said definitely no to a photo. His shop, more cramped than the cobbler's was jammed with racks of little envelopes. Here for pennies was every CD and DVD I could think of in the world. "You know," Said whispered to him, "you are a pirate. The U.S. government would be very upset with you."

He didn't move except to look up through his smoke and said, without hardly moving his lips, "I don't give a damn about the U.S. government."