I am fine.

Here’s the experiment: to each person that I pass on the walk to work I’ll say “Hello,” then I’ll count the frequency of the responses I get. There are only three: the rare “hello”, even scarcer “how are you,” and the most common “I am fine.” That final response to any English greeting strikes me as funny, and people are always willing to smile back.

Kimberly and I walked the half hour down-up-downhill trip to town both yesterday and today. It’s good to stretch my legs and each time I walk up-down-uphill back, I’m struck once again by the sight of Fort Portal tucked in between green pastures dotted with houses and cows. Really, if they had postcards in Uganda, I’d send you one.

Last fall, our study abroad coordinator posed the question: “what’s Africa?” Eventually someone stumbled “…it’s a continent…?” That idea is becoming more real to me with every conversation about travel I have. Uganda has already provided a multiplicity of experiences: Kampala homestay, a short safari, rural homestay, numerous taxi and bus trips, and now the practicum stationed in F/P. And those headings don’t begin to cover the minute details that shape my time here: bananas and matoke, latrines and showers, chickens and cows, or bikes and bodas. Sometimes it’s hard to decide what to blog about: is it too trivial, too idealistic, too stereotypical, too mundane? My take on this semester is just one addition to the diversity of Africas being shared. Luckily there’s enough room for all of them here and they don’t have to compete; it seems like it’s just a matter of getting the most out of whatever people and sights you happen to have around you.

Today I was content to the utmost extent with the bit of the continent I found myself on. After days of rain, the sun quickly established its dominance over this Sunday. It’s amazing that at precisely 10:00 the cool morning evaporates into day. I celebrated the absence of the blue soap so common at my homestay while washing my clothes (no more residue dwelling like bruises on my yellow shirt). While most families here wash clothes, dishes, and bodies with the same type of soap, I have multiple face washes in my room: that’s the lifestyle difference I was most conscious of and embarrassed by in Kampala. With my shirts left decorating the clothesline and errands to town accomplished, I was quite happy to get lost in a book while basking in the backyard. There were a few passages in chapter two of Barak Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” describing his mother’s experience living in a foreign country that I surely appreciated more here than I would have at any other point in the past.

Except for the invasion of insects we experienced tonight, all is well. Cooking adventures have been more or less successful (always yielding something edible) and it’s been novel to shop for fresh tomatoes and bananas (or better yet the baby bananas, ndiizi) every few days. There’s thunder in the distance now, I suppose it’s silly to expect a full twenty four hours free of precipitation. I hope the walk to work isn’t too muddy in the morning. As they say here, I am fine. Goodnight!

An hour and a half later we ended up in Kamwenge

The more we get together together together the more we get together the happier we’ll be.

80 voices paused, 160 hands balanced shoulder width apart, and a common intake of breath was appreciable. Three seconds later the chorus returned:

For my friends are your friends and your friends are my friends (don’t forget to point!) The more we get together together together the more we get together the happier we’ll be.

Perhaps appropriate at a conference on primary education, the sight of teachers, headmasters, local government officials, and NGO representatives participating so fully involved in nursery song was fascinating. During the two day education conference in Kamwenge District topics included the status of local education, exam results, and NGO partner experiences. The quality of teaching, class size (pupil to classroom ratio 83:1), lack of resources, parental contributions, and prevalent student and teacher absenteeism were major issues. The lack of a literary culture struck me overall: inefficient teaching in large classes, unsupportive parents, and limited supply of books deprive kids of the practice required to really learn how to read. The conference was an exceptional opportunity to listen to the stakeholders give their own take on the statistics that I am so familiar with; it would have been easier to contextualize the information if I had heard of Kamwenge before we drove into town. Increased attention to school basics such as penmanship and question interpretation was called for; I got a lot of complements on my handwriting. Considerations for the “girl child” and persons with disabilities were usually excluded from presentations but were mentioned during open discussions.

African tea (milk, tea, and a lot of sugar) was served from jerry cans multiple times throughout the day; the provided meals and a travel allowance attracted participants (contrast that with conference registration fees!). Participants were overwhelmingly male (65/80) and numbered 120 near lunchtime when the church hall was fullest. A little blame-passing began on the first afternoon, but the conference concluded with groups of stakeholders each brainstorming short-term goals for themselves. Each time the microphone was passed, a new presenter shared his own views at length. During these speeches, I caught many attendees in brown suit coats staring over at me in the back row. Even though these looks (the same that I get everywhere) are without judgment, they are simultaneously without purpose and I find them disconcerting. It goes back to American mothers chiding their preschoolers for staring at others; here it is the older generation that teaches kids to wave and call to mzungus. It’s just different and strange to me. As is standard, we ran two hours behind schedule (sometimes stretching to three) from opening remarks through the Local Council chairman’s hour-long closing sermon on dependency thinking.

I attended the conference with two others from KRC. Kabarole Research and Resource Centre (KRC) is an indigenous research group well-established in the area, located 25 minutes by foot from the hostel where I’m staying. The hostel is in a great location out of town down a dirt road, quiet and calm. Upstairs from the hallway of dorm rooms is the office for an NGO that works with local orphans and pays school fees for 400 or so students (so there is the occasional straggling kid hanging around, but it’s Uganda so that’s expected regardless). The woman in charge, Carol, is a white haired lady who plays the role of tough-love grandmother well. I was suspicious upon first meeting that she was disillusioned by too many years of NGO work, but I think she’s a genuinely nice lady with a pure no-nonsense attitude toward life. It’s cooler in Fort Porrtal (F/P) than Kampala (K’la) and my fleece and raincoat will be put to good use. It’s the beginning of rainy season and the first two afternoons here blue thunderstorm clouds blended into the Rwenzori Mountains and created an eerily uniform cornflower blue sky. I’m excited to be in my new home for the weekend to explore a bit and maybe even relax.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from Uganda!

Today, Monday, is a national holiday which really just means that there was no traffic jam this morning. Sunday was celebrated across the country with church services and food in colossal proportions.

After a brief but muddy walk to the nearest Catholic Church, Nick and I attracted an audience of approximately 30 children daring one another to run close or say hello to us. The service started abruptly but was simple and familiar. Afterward, we took a walk to see Baha’i Temple whose green dome stood atop the next hill.

Baha’i religion stresses oneness: of humanity, religions, and manifestations of God. It exudes and essence of inclusion, moderation, and calm. The service was silent except for congregants’ readings (taken from multiple faiths) and a choir that took advantage of the great acoustics in the 9-sided room. The simplicity of the quiet rite was reflected in the wood paneling, blue and green stained glass, scattered Persian carpets, and plain pews inside the temple. Just as the Baha’i landscaped grounds were an odd green oasis in Kampala, our visit was an interesting religious encounter on Easter Sunday.

A yellow-gray sky and persistent rain suggested that it would endure all day; the weather kept its promise. I made it home soaked and bundled into a dry skirt and fleece. Lunch was piled onto full size dinner plates: the obligatory matoke, rice, chopped cassava, purple yams, cabbage and beans, two meat dishes I left uninvestigated, greens, diced green beans, and fresh juice. From other SIT students’ reports, 3 o’clock brought similar spreads to their homes as well. I spent the afternoon curled in a chair reading while the family watched Ugandan movies dubbed in Luganda.

The heavy lunch that characterizes Ugandan Easter is a far cry from the sugary start of Easter egg hunts at home. I brought a bag of jelly beans to the resource center today and they disappeared quite quickly (thanks mom!). I’ll be glad to have a basket and a chocolate egg or two next year.

Today I became a millionaire. Too bad it’s Ugandan shillings and has to last me for the six-week practicum. Kimberly and I are taking the 5 hour bus ride tomorrow to Fort Portal where we’ll be staying and I’ll be working with the Kabarole Research and Resource Center. My final paper will be on education in Uganda and work with KRC seems like a great chance to help with research in the field. Fort Portal is a smaller (much smaller) town in Western Uganda with one main street. When I visited last week I was charmed by the hills surrounding my hostel and the blue Rwenzori mountains in the distance (I’ve been surrounded by flat American cornfields for too long). I’m excited to go back a place where the people you pass greet you with a smile and an English “I am fine.”

Hey Look, Africa

Mbale, Hadoda village and the Kenyan border, Busia, Kampala, Fort Portal...it's been a long week and a half of traveling across the width of southern Uganda. Practicum preparations are almost done and as of next Wednesday I will be located in Fort Portal working with the Kabarole Research Centre studying Uganda's Universal Primary Education program. It's time to try out the wireless with a few pictures of eastern Uganda, one dominated by green and one by pink: farmland skirted by flowering bushes and the school uniforms of innumerable students that came to our yard to play and take pictures.

Kampala-bound

We just drove by a lady balancing a jackfruit on her head. Wikipedia jackfruit. It’s sticky sweet, reminiscent of fruity Smarties and texture-wise like hard boiled egg white (without any other sensatory implications).

Yesterday I rode a boda boda 21km from Annah’s home to our meeting point in Busia. My driver had a helmet, I did not, and I was sitting sidesaddle with 2 bags balanced on my lap. Pretty sure that’s what the mother meant during the “no motorcycles” instruction when I was younger. Once I found my balance, driving the narrow roads was an “I’m in Africa” moment. The sun, the landscape, and the mixture of confusion and amusement on the faces of people I waved to in passing (plus the absurdity of riding a motorcycle in a dress with a full LLBean backpack) were collectively captivating. And it was spectacular.

The whole excursion week has been like a long and welcome vacation. We didn’t stay in or originally planned hotel because, as our director informed us just before we left, it burned down. So we stayed at Noah’s Ark (no animal theme, sadly) but at lunch at our intended destination twice. They had pancakes and I’m not certain whether they were really fantastic or I’m very baked-goods deprived, but I know I’ll be experimenting with cinnamon, ginger, and Bisquick in May. The 2 hikes to Siipi Falls left us terribly dirty but engergized, excited to have some exercise, and gave us a chance to climb rocks and pass precarious bridges. We hiked the first trail at dusk and because it’s dry season saw a fine mist of a waterfall that was simple and unjustified in pictures. The second day we did another few hours of misting falls and cool (literally) caves. At the Ark, a common dining room/reception area was the perfect place to gather and watch tv. We managed to pick the, like, most mzungu movie ever: Clueless. The best part was Cher’s description of her ex-stepbrother’s “post adolescent idealistic phase,” which we can probably all identify with a bit.

From Siipi Falls we were dropped at our rural homestays in pairs of 2 and were told to research a topic within the village. Tom and I wanted to visit a school, so we picked education and went with our neighbor/translator/friend (who called my cell within 3 hours of me handing over my number) to many homes. At each we were invited to sit in the main room or hut depending on set-up and income level could be gauged by the presence or quality of seat cushions on the angular wooden chairs. Décor consisted of old calendars: the 2006 Presidential Candidates calendar, 2003 Give a Cow program calendar, 2007 The Rise and Fall of Sadaam Hussein calendar. Political print ads, especially for Museveni, dominated the remaining wall space, with an odd ABC poster here or there. I looked at the “Our Beloved Presidents and their Wives” each night at our homestay but Museveni in his goofy safari hat on the front wall was my favorite.

A close second was the amount of pink in the village. Not even the pastel Rwandan prision uniforms prepared me for the dozens upon dozens of kids in buttons up shirts or dresses in varying styles but identical color. Many young me also wore the color either because of the material’s abundance or as remnants of their past days in school. I’m grateful to whatever whim inclined the school to institute this color; the black white and pink pictures I took striking.

On one of our walks, Ben told us “life is good here. Except for the poverty.” Life was indeed different, but crops grew, kids ran around, and people were overwhelmingly friendly. Going to rural Africa and sleeping in a thatched hut for 3 days is as novel and entertaining as it sounds. But living with a family and being so obviously an outsider requires careful consideration of every conversation and action. I never forgot that my backpack contained more possessions than most homes we visited. The experience gave me good insight into the way many Ugandans live outside of Kampala; that said, 3 days is only enough time to being formulating questions and wishing for the time to get answers.

Up at dawn, writing by headlamp

By early afternoon yesterday my pen was gummy from shaking too many hands. I met more families, got stares from more old men on bicycles, and touched more children’s hands than I could have foreseen myself doing in two days. I have enough group-of-African-children pictures, mainly as posed by our translator Ben, to fill an album. And I’m a little sad to be leaving this morning.

Our host mother, Annah, was the sweetest woman ever and her mother-in-law was the African version of Mulan’s grandmother. We laughed a lot together, though I don’t have any idea what she said for 3 days. Tom and I got to our rural homestay on Wednesday night, had tea, and bathed (were given a basin, provided with a jerry can of water, and shown to the deserted front yard that would serve as our large shower room). We were both surprised to see a small square house with a tin roof among the thatched roof huts we had seen on the drive. We eat there, our formal goodbye pictures will be posed there, and several of Annah’s adopted children roll out mats to sleep in the main room. The set up of the family/home doesn’t afford privacy or solitude: everyone is working, moving, outside in the garden, or near the kitchen hut just behind the house.

Meeting people as a mzungu female with a male companion has been interesting. Tom gets longer handshakes and is questioned first about where he is from and what he is doing in Uganda. I’m asked if I’m tired from walking, if Annah should give us water or supper, or if I’ve ever slept in a hut before. I have now: a little round room with a thatched roof that stays dark all day and incredibly chilly at night. The cold isn’t exactly damp, but it sits on your skin and I wish I had dry socks to put on.

All of mine are still wet from yesterday’s washing, but at least they’re white again. Too much Ugandan dust turned them chocolate brown as we walked both days all over the village to do primitive research about eduation. Anna had Ben, a neighbor with great English, take us to meet the local council chairman and half dozen families. We asked about the importance of education (to get skills and build a future), the effects of Universal Primary Education (larger classes, reluctant teachers, less learning), and the challenge of affording school. We were also able to visit the closest primary and secondary schools, in the process disturbing any semblance of order or purpose within the schools. I absolutely love the bright flamingo pink uniform dresses and shirts of the primary school students.

The first afternoon’s visit to the school alerted a vast number of children to our presence. Within 30 minutes of the end of classes, 70 children were running in our front yard away from Tom in a giant game of tag. He kept the kids entertained throughout our stay with clapping games, chasing, and even basketball warm-up drills. We tried hopscotch and made a train to weave in and out of the trees lining the main path. Pictures were, as expected, a hit. The drawback was that as they held the camera to look at the screen, there was no way to capture the “eh, oh! Oh!” of their reactions (the funniest part). Whenever I tried to take a picture of Tom and the kids, the mad rush toward the camera obscured the games being played and deprived me of the image of primary chaos.

A lot of kids and adults alike shook our hands as we passed them on the roads. Ben talked a lot in Kisamai and eventually told us that, as whites, people expected us to be giving something out and he was explaining that we were only students doing research. A few times he laughed that this child or that had never seen a mzungu before. I felt a bit ridiculous from all the waving I did; I would never wave like that to strangers in the US, even in my very own Overbrook Shores neighborhood. Despite the lack of justice it does to these people’s demeanor, I will simply describe them as nice. Especially Annah who serves us enough for 8 at each meal, greets us warmly upon each return, and shares her home. She seems to be an impressive lady: local council vice chairperson, host to Friday meetings of the local savings and loan group, treasurer of the nearby nursery school, mother of 13 and caretaker of a hoard of cheerful kids. I’m impressed and grateful.

Yesterday, after more interviews and a lunch of both matoke/gnut sauce and rice/beans/tomato, Benn took us to Kenya. The paths bisected plots of cassava, skirted maize fields, and wound past a few monkeys and a little marijuana. Some were just wide enough for the unimaginably angular frame of our translator Ben, a real Jack Sprat, while others more traveled were wider and lined with yellow flowers. We arrived at the river border and waited among the watering cows and bikes crossing to go to the market. We stepped into a dugout canoe made from a “coconut type” palm and one of the boys from the secondary school used a pole to steer us 5 minutes down a narrow canal. Feet firmly planted 3 meters into Kenyan territory, we “took a snap” and were accused of trespassing into the country by similarly passport-less Ugandan. The ride back felt like being in a log flume, including the constant effort to keep my sneakers from the puddle of water at the bottom of the boat. The most interesting part was the seats: planks of wood propped between the sides that were moved depending on the number of passengers and type of cargo. So Kenya seemed nice, fields looked pretty similar to Uganda, and I’d imagine the other millions of meters are as good as the first few.

Thank you Lotus Internet

I think that the skies of Kampala would be an awesome sight for any dinosaur-inclined 4 year old. From far away, a backlit multitude of large birds look like a flock of pterodactyls circling overhead. Up close, however, no one could be convinced that they are anything but marabou storks with a wingspan greater than my height, head and neck unsettlingly retracted into the body, and a repugnant diet of Kampala waste. Use this time to appreciate your quick internet and Wikipedia “marabou stork.”

Birds aside, the study portion of study abroad proved extremely interesting and draining this week. As part of the program, we split into groups to study a particular area of development in-depth, mine was gender. The first week was a return to Makerere University and our old routine of 1 to 2 hour lectures that involved a lot of definitions and produced a few doodles worth saving. It was difficult to relate the theories and frameworks to…anything; we suffered a frustrating lack of examples and connection to Ugandan life. Hence a second week.

Working with Slum Aid Project was, tritely, enlightening and moving. Home visits and group discussions gave us insight into domestic violence, women’s social roles, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and the changes that SAP is seeking to make. It was not a particularly “powerful” experience but was unsettling nonetheless. Working deep within communities through volunteers and grassroots trainings, SAP has begun to change attitudes and behaviors among both men and women in some slum communities. We met a number of enthusiastic volunteers and open clients willing to share stories with us. It was great to see not only the work that SAP has accomplished but how it continues with the challenge of meeting residents’ needs on a daily basis.

Tomorrow we depart for our second excursion. This trip will take us to eastern Uganda and include a three day rural homestay. My Kampala homestay will continue for another week after our return from the east and then I will leave for the six-week practicum. On Wednesday night, the only fauna in the courtyard was the goat kid tethered to a banana tree happily munching matoke peelings. On Thursday morning I noticed that it was in my brother Derek’s room, not housed in the store room as is normal on nights of bad weather. Looking over my shoulder toward the storage area, I discovered a green rooster watching me with a similarly tilted head. By the time I reemerged from the house to brush my teeth 20 minutes later, a second pale rooster had appeared in the courtyard. Taata had chicken for dinner last night and I’m done counting birds.

1st Attempt to Post from an Internet Cafe...

My favorite recent purchase is a small Made in Japan stainless steel knife with a scalloped serrated blade and a red plastic handle, 500/= (~$0.30). It’s a slightly gawky addition to my everyday bag, but satisfyingly efficient at spreading peanut butter, trimming threads, e.t.c. e.t.c. (you have to pronounce the letters here). My favorite niche in my homestay is the largely overlooked front porch. It usually allots me 15 minutes of quiet before the little girls find me, and today I had ample time to dice an improvised salad with my knife and eat undisturbed. In contrast to the feeling of pure sunlight yesterday, the air this morning encouraged me to carry a raincoat. Gray clouds are just now meandering in announced by thunder though from my perch (which is in fact the discarded backseat of a minivan, seatbelts dangling behind) I’ve yet to see raindrops.

At mass today I was again the only white person in attendance. Every time walking around Kampala begins to feel normal, passersby calling “mzungu!” remind me that anonymity requires not only an internal feeling of ease but an external camouflage that I don’t have. But Catholic is catholic: I knew when to strain my ears to hear the homily within the priest’s accent and followed familiar prayers recited with unusual inflections. The subtleties marked the service as distinct: clapping during singing, the overhead projector standing in for song books, the seemingly optional and definitely unorchestrated communion. The most telling thing was the timing of songs at communion. After the congregation returned to their places and the remaining hosts did likewise, the choir completed a further song and a half. Fitting mass to the music, rather than timing songs to an anticipated communion length is indicative of the way time is perceived here.

There’s a fluidity in Ugandan life. To be on time to an 8 o’clock liason requires one to be there before the hour turns to 9. Lectures often run over time (only once by 90 minutes), full taxis pause to get gas or squeeze one more person into the second row, and people are patient. It’s a different approach to everyday. Less rush. Less worry. To learn that in Luganda the day starts at 7am (so 7am is the 1st hour, noon is the 6th hour, 2pm is actually 8, e.t.c) was a small surprise. No wonder time is so flexible here!

Uganda is also characterized by a presence of religion. With freedom to worship comes an expectation that everyone does practice. My Luganda class threw my teacher into a tizzy of bewilderment when we asked how to answer the question “when do you pray?” with the negative “I do not pray.” I have made numerous introductions to friends of my homestay family whose first inquiry is “are you born again?” Just as the host families vary in economic status, they differ in religious practices and have allowed our SIT group to discuss a wide range of religious practices and services. Religion isn’t handled here the way it is at home and people are more openly interested in knowing how we practice faith; it’s something we’ve all had to adapt to.