KAMPALA, Uganda - There is no Wal-Mart here, nor is there a Macy's, Kohl's, Best Buy or even a Walgreen's. But here in the capital of this East African country of 30 million people, there is plenty of commerce.

Whatever it is you need you can likely find it, or more likely it might find you in the form of a hawker approaching your vehicle or grabbing your hand on the sidewalk; selling anything from heavy padlocks, to underwear, sheets, fresh vegetables or eggs.

There are also few price tags, the price varies with the purchaser, the well-dressed Ugandan business woman will be charged more than a university student in a T-shirt.

All prices are negotiable, but the starting point for the well to do is always higher.

"Muzungu! Muzungu! Look here," the vendor calls out in a sugared tongue, touting his merchandise with enticing pomp - the visitor is hooked! Muzungu is a Bantu word widely used in East Africa to describe a white person, and it is not an offense term.

In June, a four week long internship program was run in connection with Makerere University, the country's oldest and most prestigious university.

With assistance of the SIUC College of Mass Communication and Media Arts and the U.S. Embassy in Kampala, a faculty member of the SIUC School of Journalism supervised the program for 16 African students in Makerere's Department of Mass Communication.

The group published an online student newspaper, theivorypost.com, writing on local issues and documenting life in this vigorous city of 1.2 million.

The students, armed with reporter's notebooks from the Poynter Institute in Florida and a few simple point-and-shoot cameras, set out to take a good look at the city they live in.

A wealth of stories

They discovered a wealth of stories from the binding and print shops that surround this campus of 30,000 students. It is now the busy period for them as the turn 60, 70 or 80 page research papers required for their degrees in to hard covered books with the titles embossed in gold.

"She approved it and told me to bind," said a smiling Justus Lyatuu, who was headed to the print shop to have three copies of his work, bound in a hard cover. The approval by his faculty supervisor is a final step toward his graduation in January.

The budding reporters also took a look at the source of the well-known daily nightmare of Kampala, "the jam."

This is the horrible traffic gridlock that occurred daily on the few paved streets in a city, where stop signs and traffic lights are looked on as suggestions, not requirements, half of the vehicles in the country take to these few streets and the results are predictable, many who transit to work or school in taxi's, small white vans that carry 14, sometimes more, and cost just 500 shillings (22 cents), for a short ride.

But those short rides can take hours, it might be faster to walk, but in a city built on seven hills, that too is challenging. There is an alternative, but it is not for the faint of heart, the motorcycle or boda boda, the price is negotiated first, usually three times the taxi fare, and the driver weaves in and out of traffic, coming perilously close to oncoming vehicles.

It is a dangerous mode of transport, but here it is often the quickest way to your destination.

Taxis work from a central taxi park near the downtown area, literally thousands of the small vans crowd in to the park and unless you speak Luganda, the most used of the more than 100 tribal languages, locating a taxi going to where you want to go is a challenge.

Journalism or law?

Next to the taxi park is Owino market that has cut its niche in used cloths and used shoes that are more preferred by the locals than homemade fabrics. For several years, Bob Roberts Katende worked in this largest East African market, to support himself.

"I would work with a trader who purchased used cloths by the bale, I would sell them for a small commission," Katende said.

He had dropped out of primary school after his parents died and he was 23 when he returned to attend night classes, he finished two years work in just nine months at the head of classes in an evening school near Makerere University.

Katende, 27, eventually entered the Makerere University, served as president of his class and is set to graduate as an honors student with a degree in Mass Communication. He writes for the Ugandan weekly news magazine, 'The Independent.' Like many African students who come from humble backgrounds, he is now searching for a place to obtain a graduate degree.

"I enjoy reporting and writing but also have thought about law school," Katende said.

As for a return to the used shoes and clothing business, Katende breaks into a broad grin, "No, no I have already done that," he said.

William Recktenwald is the journalist-in-residence at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Journalism. He is a retired reporter for the Chicago Tribune.