Goodbye City Life

Well culture shock is a little bit of an understatement at the moment. Today (5/15) my host family picked me up and took me to the village where I will be staying for the next 8 weeks. The main house is simple, but nice for Uganda, and I have my own room, which is actually a separate building. This is where the big differences between my old home and my new one start to become very apparent. The bed has a nice mosquito net, and I can tell that they gave me the nicest sheets possible. There is nothing else in the room except a small table stand with two shelves and a rickety little chair. A small half wall separates the main part of the room from the bathroom. Behind the wall though, there is just a bucket – that is the shower. I was told that there was electricity and running water at the house. The first is true – there is one light in my room and one outlet. The light is a little fluorescent bulb or something though, and it does not light up much! The running water seems to be a myth so far. I think perhaps there is a spigot near by the house where they fill up the canteens with water to clean dishes and fill the buckets for bathing, but it’s not anywhere near where would be convenient. The mattress is the foam type that seems common here, but you can feel the wooden slates right through this one. The pillow is definitely moldy, so I am using the inflatable camping one I brought for travelling, which is actually quite comfy. There is a gecko that hides near the window, and as long as he stays out of my pack and my bed, I don’t think I will lose it. That being said, I keep the bug net tightly tucked under the mattress at all times so nothing has an easy chance of making a break for my bed even when I am not around.

I had my first truly African meal today, which was composed of Matoke (it was described to me as an unsweetened banana, but I don’t really see any resemblance at all), sweet potato, groundnut sauce over rice (G-nuts are more or less what we call peanuts), eggplant, avocado, and passion fruit juice. All these things we eat at home, yet I would argue that only the avocado and to some extent the juice resembled anything familiar. To say the least, I think some of this food requires an acquired taste. Also, the servings are huge both in people’s homes and at restaurants here. They say Americans eat a lot of food, but literally my huge plate was completely buried in food. Next time I will try and speak up before the food is plated! I unpacked my things after lunch, and while waiting to go for a walk with one of the girls who lives at the house, I decided to venture out to find the toilet. I couldn’t find it. It ended up being hidden in a shed a couple of meters away from my room, and the shed is only about 5 feet high and next door to a couple other doors. This was the culminating point of my culture shock I would say. There before me was a narrow hole right in the dirt – no toilet paper, no soap, no light, no room hardly to move…I just…this is…all I can say at this point is I hope I don’t get some stomach bug because that is just going to be cruel.

The owners of the NGO speak English pretty well, but there is definitely a language barrier. It will be interesting to see how I get along here, as most of the population doesn’t speak hardly any English. I can tell my pantomiming skills will be nicely polished by the time I return.

The village is up on a hill, so the main house is pretty comfortable as a light breeze passes through the front and the back door. In the room however, it is pretty stagnant and boy does humidity make a huge difference in terms of how hot the climate actually feels. My glasses will hardly stay on my face, which is becoming exceedingly annoying. Nothing dries here very quickly or thoroughly – so different from either Arizona or Colorado.

I just finished taking a walk around the village with the director’s daughter Kate. She is 18, but looks 14 or 15. She goes to school here, and is going to be finishing her last year of high school in the fall. The village is pretty rural, but there are schools and little stores out of people’s homes. People listen to the radio a lot, and I’ve seen a few TVs as well. There are all sorts of plants here making it so green and tropical. The most noticeable leaves are those of the banana plantations that spot the hillside. There are also mango, cassava, potato, avocado, and many other types of trees/plants here. Kate pointed out another plant, and said that even though it was really bad for people, people can make a lot of money on it, so they continue to grow it. I looked in the direction she pointed, and after a moment, I realized that I was looking at some very large Marijuana plants (which they pronounce the way it is spelled). As we walked throughout the dirt paths and dirt road or the village, and the neighboring one, all the kids drop whatever they are doing and start staring as we walk by. They love it when we wave to them, and say “byebye.” If I say something to them like “byebye,” they go nuts. It is pretty cute, but definitely not so cute when the adults constantly stare. They feel the need to tell each other, very loudly, that I am a mzungu (white person), as if that was not clearly apparent by me just being. In all fairness, I understand. This is a poor rural village in Uganda, and while there are a few tourists in the capital, but they are very surprised and confused when someone else comes out here. However, there have been two other interns at the organization in the past, and there is a Japanese aid worker somewhere else in the village as well. Kate told me that they will always get excited when I walk by, so I know I just need to get learn to accept it, and remember that I am the visitor. I did laugh when Kate told me that they thought I was Japanese. They often see her with the Japanese woman, and their concept of race is basically comprised of African and everything else.

Kate was very curious about all the differences between here and the U.S., and it was honestly kind of hard to be truthful. She asked if our houses looked like this – corrugated roofs with mud-brick walls. I don’t think she would even believe me if I told her what poor college students live in; that type of wealth just does not exist in her world. I settled on the answer that the houses just looked different, and that we used different materials. She asked what religions we had in the U.S. and when I said everything she thought that meant just two: Christian and Muslim – that made me laugh a little. They are all very Christian here, but I can’t tell yet how religious they actually are. While on our tour of the town, we went into a home of one of her friends, and on the wall was a laminated poster of Jesus and a verse below in English. The other interesting religious bit of the day was at lunch when the director responded to my question about what was the hottest month here with this: “We are proud of our constant temperature here, it is pretty much the same year round. God has blessed Africa. If we had winters like you [in Colorado], everyone here would die.” The other woman made the astute note that the temperatures also bless the mosquitoes, which kill many through malaria. It is interesting to see how they feel about living here. I think as you see other parts of the world, it’s easier to question things, but to them, this is home and it always has been.

His comment really struck me though – could there actually be a cause and effect relationship there that he just uncovered unknowingly? In places where it does get cold (like the northern hemisphere) have humans had to develop good housing techniques and other technology like heating systems and ways to continue to live even in the snow. We have to wear shoes, but that helps prevent a lot of diseases. Or is the southern hemisphere’s lag in progress due more to the rampant diseases that thrive in the moist hot air, the lack of big strong wood, or something else entirely. I know these ideas are actually not brand new at all, but being here it seems a lot more believable that living in such weather could have huge implications on how people live.

As I continued to walk with Kate, we got into pretty big topics, which I was surprised and happy to talk with her about. She mentioned something about if when she marries and her husband hits her she will hit him right back. I suggested she find someone who would respect her and who she could respect. She thought I meant that couples in America never fought, and I just tried to explain that no that’s not what I meant at all, but that domestic abuse is not something that happens everywhere – so people can change here too. It was sad to see how foreign that concept was to her. It is very clear that she has had a pretty different upbringing than many girls here, based on her desire to study sciences and become a doctor. That being said, when we had lunch earlier, she brought out all the food while the other 2 adults and I sat in the living room and, without speaking once, she went back into the kitchen where she ate with the other women. I can’t tell yet whether it is like that because she is a girl, or if it is more because it is respectful to older people/guests. Their cook is an old woman though who also did the same thing when clearing up things. She never spoke once. Whatever the reason, it is a bit strange to me, but I will just try to better understand women’s position here as I actually do the job.

As I have been writing this evening, the power has gone out twice for a number of minutes. The darkness up here is astounding, and I just need to learn to get in the habit of keeping everything charged, because sure enough Murphy’s Law seems to always dictate that when I need to charge something, we will lose electricity.

The evenings/nights here are going to be the hardest I think. At about 7 pm Kate told me that she was making dinner, so I waited patiently until 8:30 when she knocked on my door. I got up and got my sandals on to go into the main house. When I opened the door though, Kate was standing there with a tray. She handed me my huge plate of food (the same we had for lunch), and a cup of tea. I didn’t even know what to do. I wasn’t really hungry at all for some reason, and sitting on the floor of my little room eating by myself was pretty lonely. After I ate some, I managed to brush my teeth, use the toilet in the dark (the light from my flashlight spooked a gecko as I walked in –ew!), and get into bed. Kate said she doesn’t normally go to be until 10 or 11 pm, but she clearly walked away after she left me with my dinner, and said that she would see me in the morning. I passed out at 9 pm. Sitting up in the dark alone is not so fun, but waking up around 6:30 or 7 isn’t so bad because it’s light out, and quiet. This has already become my sleeping pattern since I got here. Strange, but without a good lighting it makes a big difference. No running water also makes the simplest things very difficult. Brushing your teeth, washing your face, washing hands, etc. all get a lot more complicated when the water must be poured out of a huge canteen, and it’s not even clean water for drinking. I try not to swallow any when brushing my teeth, and just use very minimal amounts of toothpaste. I think I am going to buy some soap when I get into town. They don’t use it for hand-washing, but I am not sure my immune system is quite up to their level. It’s interesting that I am supposed to be educating the women about good hygiene practices, when the well off house doesn’t use soap or anything.

I start my internship tomorrow, and I am just really hoping that I get to really be involved in the program, not just the fundraising aspect. The office is about 1 km from the house, I guess it would be foolish to hope that there is magically a real toilet there, but I might wishing that there is just the same.

I wanted to write a lot after my first few days to describe what Africa was like. I think it’s a place that a lot more people would be interested to visit if there wasn’t still such stigma from the history of Uganda, Rwanda, and Africa as a whole. The people here are incredibly warm and friendly. They hold your hand for a long time as they shake it and welcome you to their home, to their country, and to their Africa. There are nice hotels throughout the country and from what I’ve read and heard about, more things to do than you can fit into a couple weeks. The tourist potential is huge, and I suspect that in the coming decades, Uganda could do quite well as becoming a destination for tourists.

I’m going to try and take some time off of writing so regularly, and spend a few days working before reporting back.

Until the next time,

Megan

Here is a picture of one of the women I visited while working at TORUWU. She is one of the women who attends their weekly AIDS support group meetings. They taught her how to make baskets in order for her to have some work to do and to make a little income.