September 19, 2010
Iganga Town, Uganda
The music meandered from marvin gaye’s sexual healing with a techno beat dropped in, it to shakira’s world cup African anthem. Bubbles O’Leary, one of Kampala’s busiest night spots, was equally diverse.
I spent most of the evening trying not to stare as people mingled inexplicably. I say inexplicably because I can think of no other social situation on earth that would result in the amalgamation of folks gathered together for drinks and dancing on a Friday night.
Old white men, their pale legs peeking out between knee length cargo shorts and black socks, chatted and laughed with exquisitely coiffed black women in short skirts and high heels. Three asisan women, clustered close to the row of windows facing the patio, smiled and danced among themselves. A cluster of olive skinned men, shirts unbuttoned to various depths (some almost to navel) , one with a healthy ponytail hugging snug to his scalp, attempted a conga line, while another man climbed on one of the dark wooden tables, removed his shirt completely, and danced oblivious to the beat. A south asian man perched on a stool across a narrow strip of wooden table from me, stared at me and my friends unblinking and unapologetically, while a Sikh man sat quietly at the bar.
Clothes varied from prostitute sexy to safari comfortable and everything in-between.
And as foreign as all this seems from a domestic point of view – even with my united colors of Benetton world – this is the expat world. Something about people being thrown into situations where everything is different, where “other” becomes the norm, that makes anything- even marvin gaye with a techno beat – possible.
Tags: crazystuff, music, observations, travel, uganda
The smoke plumes black and acrid, catching in the branches of the banana tree peering leisurely over my glass tipped fence. The plastic and coated paper smolder below, blue and orange flames peak and then disappear into the charred ooze that is this week’s garbage.
My compost festers in a hole at the back corner of the yard beside another cluster of banana trees on my side of the fence. The green tops of eggplants and the rind of sweet pineapple succumb to the constant rain and heat, creating the perfect habitat for flies and mice alike.
Where the compost-esque (we don’t quite tend to it properly to truly call it compost) heap returns our contributions to the earth it came from, each time I strike a match to the rest of the garbage I am taunted by the reality that it is a far cry from recycling. Never mind how much I reuse and the sheer amount of reduction my lifestyle has taken on. Here I bake more than I buy. Sundry breads, sauces. Even my beans are likely to come from a huge reusable woven sack in the market.
But still I watch the ominous plume. Smell the unmistakable stench of burning plastic…my pasta and washing powder bag, my used deodorant container or toothbrush. It all has to go somewhere.
The glass and sturdier plastic evaporate into the landscape. Placed in a bag and set beside the front gate and it magically drifts into a new reusable life with someone else. That is after its multiple incarnations with me.
I know that the fate of my garbage is only marginally better back in America. The biggest difference is out of sight out of mind. Instead of the constant reminder that refuse has to reside someplace I had the luxury of it being whisked magically away to be burned or buried. To float unseen particle into the air I breath or to leach imperceptibly into the water I drink.
It gives little comfort even as my fruits and vegetables begin the process of turning themselves into more of themselves. Little comfort because despite my attempt to help Uganda help itself I know that I am part of a larger non-biodegradable problem.
The water steamed immediately. On the wood paneled walls, against the rocks and the metal pipe pushing out the wood burned heat. We set our vinyl covered cushions on the slatted bench and chatted quietly, sweat pooling on my upper lip, the center of his chest. Just barely visible in the square of light lurking at the door.
The vinyl cushions, much like my metal earrings, proved a bad idea. After a few minutes they both had to be removed and santa and I retired to our chairs in the cool night air. American idol droned in the background, someone screaming because they were that good, someone else bewildered that the noise they were emitting was not appreciated.
Glasses of water later, tea, roasted nuts, we returned to the dry sauna. Santa demonstrating proper technique in the flinging of water. Conversation wandered but always pivoted on heat.
“we’re not practicing for hell,” santa quipped as we cinched our sheets, just beginning to cling to us, and headed out for another breather.
This time the respite was longer. More water. More lounging.
My first time, I followed santa’s lead and this time we headed to the wet sauna. It was like a hot wet blanket thrown over your head or a houston summer day. More than texas, it conjured up this morning’s asthma attack. But I sat patiently, lowered my head as instructed and stayed on the low tiers while santa climbed two rows up…and then, shortly after, joined me below the searing cloud of heat.
Near scalding water dripped randomly from the tile ceiling and by our second round in the wet sauna we were both exhausted.
Football (err…soccer) replaced bad music on the wide screen television and the breeze floated rain and tidings of sleep into the lounge where we recuperated.
Back at my gate the relaxation fell away. Knocking proved fruitless. As did banging. And clanging. I scaled the fence enough to peer over and scan for the guard. Nowhere. Aussie’s phone is dead and rain pelted me lightly.
“any ideas?”
Nothing new except back to his place…only the scandal of that kind of platonic arrangement would be far reaching. We negotiated…what time to leave, who is where when. We didn’t even make it to sleep arrangements with all the concern for lurid stories and tarnished reputations.
An anguished santa was saved as the guard, 15 minutes late, finally emerged and unlocked the gate as if I’d just arrived.
Relaxation destroyed but scandal averted.
September 4, 2010
Iganga Town (en route to Jinja), Ugnada
Mutatus are exercises in patience, tolerance, and humor. Every president, general, and potential saint should have to ride in one for at least a three-hour journey.
The mutatu, a minivan divided into four rows of seats that could comfortably (if you ignore your knees) seat three in each row, but usually seats at least four. When children are involved seven isn’t unheard of.
A conductor who takes money and directs the starts and stops of the mutate, sits in the first row of seats; that doesn’t mean there is one less passenger in that row, just that much less space. when the mutatu is full (a relative term), the conductor moves to the second row and leans/sits in the lap of the person on the end of that row, or bends over – butt in the face of someone in the second row, head squeezed into the first all the while still calling for new passengers and fussing with current ones.
Today’s trip to jinja (a mere 45 minute ride if you get the luxury of just riding, something I’m finding is rare) we stopped incessantly even when we were seemingly full. There were four adults (including the conductor) in the first row along with three children. At one point a little boy of about 8 clutched the metal rails separating the driver’s seat from the four rows in the back of the van, his legs swung unceremoniously toward the driver’s area but not quite entering. His head tilted awkwardly to avoid bumping against the ceiling.
He rode, expressionless and uncomplaining until we stopped…again…and passed another parcel of passengers. Finally we reached the magical fare to destination ratio and he was allowed a new perch, slightly less precarious. This one left him crouched on the metal van frame jutting slightly out from beneath the driver’s area. Here, he crowded the feet of the first row passengers, but he remained silent, his flawless skin – truly like the polished ebony figurine I saw in Zambia years ago – reflecting the last rays of the sun as it descended.
Some trips are uneventful, the taxi comfortably full, everyone going to the same destination. But in my short time here, I find those rides infrequent, almost mythical. Instead, most are marred with numerous stops; contorted bodies rewarding squished passengers with back pain; surly conductors arguing mysteriously (since I can’t understand Lusoga); aromatic passengers that cut off window breezes an inch at a time; and speeds that, while fast enough to warrant fear of oncoming traffic and bodas (motorcycles) darting dangerously in drivers’ peripheral vision, still manage a slowness that makes a 42 km ride 45 minutes long on a good day.
Of course for less than a dollar…
Tags: observations, travel, uganda
Iganga Town, Uganda
September 1, 2010
“I’m thinking about Columbia.”
My mother’s perfect composure cracked and she whispered fiercely, “why do you always have to go so far away?”
I’d just gotten back from South Africa and my mother mistook my interest in Columbia, for graduate school, with an interest in South America. She was wrong about that particular location but not my inclination. I travel when I can and as such I’ve expanded my concept of family.
Despite america’s definitive step away from the “traditional” nuclear family – mom dad and two point five kids- my family has hung on. My folks have been married for 40 years. My sister is married with three kids of her own. I seem to be the only outlier to our familiar norm. I’ve chosen to expand our family in a decidedly different way, I get adopted.
There is no paperwork and no one is claiming me on taxes – although I do occasionally get a name change, but I have been successfully (and repeatedly) adopted or absorbed into families all over the world. A running joke, when I tell them they are my favorite mom and dad, they know it means something because I have a history laden with doting moms and protective fathers.
South Africa, New Zealand, Liberia, folks have literally taken me into their homes, fed me, taken care of me when I was sick, and kept me safe and happy before bundling me back home to the blood that birthed me.
And so family for me is this expansive thing. A thing that transcends biology or language. In my village in south Africa, my friend Skware’s mother, who spoke Ndebele to my limited northern sotho, claimed me as her family. When I was absent too long I was chided, when I got old (around 23) and wasn’t married she had solutions (mostly that I marry Skware) and when I was injured, she cried.
It doesn’t take blood to love someone fiercely.
My brother in-law’s father died yesterday. I’m still reeling from the idea that that quirky, funny, friendly man is gone. And while he technically has no familial ties to me beyond marriage, I feel his loss none the less. He is family because he loved and raised Ced. Because he insulted me affectionately the way he did all his family. Because family is more arbitrary than blood.
September 1, 2010
Iganga Town, Uganda
The issue with long distance sick-ing is two-fold. There is the long distance part. The idea that folks who care about you are worried and can’t do anything. They can’t bring you soup or see you to make sure you aren’t worse than you say (which when far away you might be inclined to do just a little tiny bit to alleviate worry). And of course there is the fear of the health care facilities…at least where I tend to do my long distance sick-ing.
The other issue is the things you tend to suffer from. Silly me, when I got malaria earlier this year, I just assumed everyone knew it is a mosquito borne illness endemic in large swaths of Africa, asia, and latin America.
But not in America. And so folks asked me about how I got it, was I boiling my water, could I treat it?
I realize now I should have done a better explanation, especially if I want to minimize unnecessary panic. The thing is, whereas the flu and colds and allergies, are all commonplace stateside, there are other things that are pretty common place here. And just like no one gets too worked up over the flu going around (in most cases), the same is true (in most cases) with things like malaria.
schistosomiasis, a water borne parasite that lives in your blood, is pretty common here – where lake Victoria and the nile meet. It makes you tired and if left untreated it can do liver damage among other things. But for my part, the tired part seems to be the biggest problem…at least until today…today I started treatment (and will end treatment, it is only one day). Let me just take this time out to say while I had slight malaise before, the treatment knocked me squarely on my behind and put me in the bed asleep in a way the illness didn’t.
Still…comments from friends and family were mostly in the range of, “if you were here(USA) you wouldn’t have that problem” or “you need to come home and treat that.”
While there is truth in the, “if I stayed home…” argument, there is very little in the “come home for treatment. America, the West in general, is a place to treat a lot of things, especially chronic things…but something rare on its shores and unfamiliar to its doctors? I’ll take my chances with treatment from a place where every pharmacist and most average citizens know the treatment (and often the dosage) off the tops of their heads.
this wasn’t the first time I’ve gotten sick far from home. In mozambique it was a head-breaking car accident, in Liberia a little malaria (and apparently schisto since the initial diagnosis came as a result of my check-up upon leaving Liberia), and who knows what Uganda will bring. Still…you can get sick anywhere. No one blames America for my allergies and says I should move to Uganda or brazil because of those…
so I’ll stay put. I’ll be careful and I’ll explain better so the worry is less. It’s ok, really, I’m feeling much better now.
Iganga Town, Uganda
August 31, 2010
There are some americanism, my inner mzungo so to speak, that I would presume are rigid and inflexible. I’d be wrong but I sometimes argue with myself that it is true. Personal space is one of those things. From my history I know that I can work through the concept of space; the idea that it is personal– seemingly a mzungo/lakugwa concept.
In south Africa I acclimated myself to women patting my breast when greeting me or gesturing in my general direction. It would rest there absently as we went through our greeting, “how did you wake up?” “I woke up” (a very literal sotho greeting) and onto the part of the conversation about how my parents were and their children. In anticipation of my mzungo/lakugwa family’s visit I took my mother and sister aside to explain and demonstrate. My sister cleared her throat after it had been a few minutes, I’d moved on to another topic, and my hand still rested lightly on her left breast.
And when I stood in lines at the post office or a bank, I quickly learned that line means a throng of people vying for the next teller to process their money or to sell them stamps. And so I squished my breasts against backs or wedged my foot unceremoniously into an almost nonexistent gap, lest there be confusion about my place in line.
I know how to forego the personal in my space.
Still I had wedged that part of myself somewhere deep and forgotten. Until…until I realized that South Africa was just practice. Here people don’t even pretend to get in line. It isn’t a subtle inching forward or even a competition culminating in a mad dash to the front. Instead, people casually walk past an otherwise orderly line and place their receipt for stamping, groceries for buying, or money for paying on the counter in front of a person who has been waiting in line for ages.
Recovering my south African instincts, the other day I ignored woman who circumvented the long cue I’d just stood in and placed her withdrawal slip under the teller’s window. I casually removed her form and replaced it with mine smiling all the while at the teller and simultaneously giving the woman the side-eye (a difficult feat in unison).
I’m not all the way there, today I forgot to physically press myself against the back of the woman at the immigration line which allowed a man to slip in-between us and put his papers down. The line was short and I was tired. I let it pass. The conversion isn’t complete. When I approach the bank manager’s desk and see that someone is sitting there I instinctively hang back, my mzungo in full gear. He generally gestures toward the inevitably empty chair opposite the person already at his desk, and shakes his head.
“why do you stand over there when there is a chair right here?” he makes a point to tease me repeatedly because he doesn’t understand that in America you just don’t crowd a person when they are talking money.
I’m sure in a month I won’t even realize I’ve adapted again. Won’t realize that I no longer allow air or light between me and the body in front of me in any given line or allow for the privacy of the monetary transactions of strangers. Hell…I’m halfway there already. Right now I still hear my inner mzungo urging me to reacquaint space with personal. But that voice is getting fainter. Hell, I might forget I’m a mzungo at all if the kids would stop screaming it at my every time I pass by.
Tags: observations, transition, travel, uganda
Finding the balance is treacherous. Somewhere between apathy-inducing sympathy and hypocritical heartlessness I have to believe lays the way to help people help themselves.
I have no delusions of grandeur. No belief that I have solutions to old and complex problems that a whole country and generations of people failed to think of on their own. So my public health work that is the job I undertake in various countries (including the USA) is not one I take with conceit or the expectation of changing the world right now.
Still, I find it difficult at times to navigate through the confusing waters of what I should do, what my expectations for others should be. So it is with the orphan support program I’m responsible for in my current job. I do not know what it is to live, parentless and income-less, in rural Uganda. I don’t know the nuances of finding food and shelter when the people who would generally be responsible for such things are unable to.
It would be so simple to write a check. To dole out cash with little expectation from a student to help…because, how can they help? What do they have to contribute?
Only they do have resources. Not cash reserves or rich friends, but every culture, every person, has something to draw from that enables them to survive. And I can’t help but think that pretending those resources aren’t important or don’t exist, that people – even students – are helpless as they navigate through life, is counter-productive. It instead leads to a culture of entitlement simply because…a culture of apathy to its own progress and success.
I lived in rural South Africa from 1999-2001, not long after the elections. South Africa, with Mandela at the helm, was the world’s darling. Aid money coursed through the economy, often unchecked and seemingly with little oversight. As a result, when I approached the communities I lived and worked with, I was once met literally with, “what will you bring us?” there was no discussion of collaboration or mutual contributions. And when I told one of my schools (requesting computers despite the lack of electricity in the community…and for that matter potable water) that I had brought myself, the principal told me that he “would hate to have to report me to my boss for not doing my job.”
And so now I find myself flirting with the other side – or at least feeling as if I am. An attitude and expectation that students be held accountable for, be participants, in their own educations. Passing grades, contributions to the other materials that are necessary in schooling.
My colleague gently reminds me that many of these kids are alone in the world save for their siblings. Some are scrimping to help their sisters and brothers, are caretakers in a way that I can’t begin to imagine. And I am chastened. Humbled. Who am I to require anything more than their survival?
Only this program…any program…won’t be here forever…won’t help forever. Children grow up and sponsors fall away. Recessions linger and donations shrink. People must figure out a way to survive – to dare to thrive – in spite of the harrowing circumstances that are unfair but still their circumstances.
Sometimes it feels like I’m dancing with the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” crowd; that wonderfully ignorant notion that people have that somehow they managed to get where they are purely by their own volition, their own determination and brilliance. Never mind their station in life, their social capital, their family history, a break, a fluke, an accident.
I am not so delusional. I know that where I am is squarely on the shoulders of a community of people that actually spans the globe and has been everything from steadfast contributor to flashes of influence.
But I also know that my organization is now part of these students’ community of influence. Contributing fees and support to an education that might otherwise be beyond reach. But community alone – like a person alone – can’t be everything. And so while I don’t want to pretend that the obstacles I’ve overcome in my life’s journey remotely reflect what these kids are forced to, they still have to overcome. They have to study and diversify their resources, think creatively for solutions, because it has to be done and no one can do it for them…even with a program designed to help and the best of intentions.
Tags: aid, socialcommentary, uganda, work
It has been raining for hours, a symphony on a tin roof lulling to the patter of flowing tears. I should be sleeping. This is my favorite lullaby. The night wrapping me in a moist embrace and singing sweetly to me. But I find myself stingy with this unquiet. The electricity flashed away by a streak of lightening breaking the night into temporary day, the glow of my laptop growing faint, and I find myself not willing to relinquish this rare part of my life now, my days, where no one needs me and no one can reach me if they did.
My Saturday evaporated into a cloud of students from our orphan support program and a nap of sheer exhaustion. The kids dubbed me mom and my colleague dad. But even without all the students present, 22 children is a lot to handle all at once.
And maybe if it had simply been their 22 pairs of eyes needing…needing school fees and books and belief that this isn’t all we can give, maybe fatigue would not have held me hostage and stolen most of my daylight.
But Thursday…beyond the sanitation push that had me wielding a hoe to help dig trash pits and nails to assemble tippy taps…there was a child so tiny and frail, skin hanging from the bones. So malnourished I could see it from across the yard. No need to know the age because no age should look like that.
Only age does matter.
Ten months.
Ten months. And when I held her in my hands, she was weightless, her sounds – tiny like her frail body – barely loud enough from my arms to reach my ears but shouting at me just the same.
And what can do at this point? so much damage is already done. This week we’ll take her and her mother to the nutrition ward. But it isn’t a matter of simple malnutrition; the other children are happy and healthy. She is sick. Appropriate care so long in coming, she is probably dying as well.
What to do but schedule appointments for for the coming week. finish the day.
I readied for the ride home, waiting on a stretch of narrow dirt road. Distracting myself, I bent over to watch as the tips of my fingers trailed lightly over slender leaves triggered the closing of the touch-me-nots woven into the blanket of other greenery. The Ugandans stared curiously and laughed and the strangeness of the foreigners.
The group of children that had trailed us from house to house as we asked if people had trash pits, a place to wash their hands, latrines, increased and their chorus of “mzungo” grew in volume as well.
And like their voices, my week followed me home, urged me to lie still for just a moment, enticed me to sleep mid-day leaving me sleepless in the midst of my thunderstorm lullaby.
Tags: health, observations, travel, uganda, work
mad mzungo
September 4, 2010
Iganga Town, Uganda
I was fuming. My mind working out possible solutions to a work problem. The sun glaring down on me, perspiration filming salty and shiny on my top lip. The ground, uneven and muddy, passed unnoticed beneath my feet. .
“Mzungo goodbye,” somehow penetrated the roar in my head and what annoys me on a good day incensed me further.
I walked faster ignoring the small shrill voices – their excitement unnecessary since it was my usual path – was unacknowledged.
But my mad isn’t that simple. I am not just a person in a bad mood; I am a mzugno in a bad mood. Frowning. Unspeaking. Curt in my interactions. I didn’t smile and “ole otiya” in my usual fashion. Instead I avoided eye contact and headed for the bank. Of course surliness finds the surly in everything. The line at the bank, long. The air conditioning, broken. my usual manager, busy. my problem , my fault. I left the bank even more agitated.
Outside the sky opened up and spit on me. Great, now the weather matched my mood.
I brooded in the shelter of the bank awning, ignoring the cluster of men staring and discussing the apparent intrigue of my other-ness (I deduced from the frequent glances and constant use of the word “mzungo” in their conversation).
Ultimately I was angriest at myself. Angry at the heavy mood that had hardened my personal interactions for the day, because, after all, it is just a day. And all that hardness has potential for lingering damage because the thing about being of a very few anything is that you run the risk of representing the everything that you are simply one of. You become the “proof” of some theory about black men, old women, government employees, Ugandan children, and…mzungos.
Iganga has a few mzungos to speak of, but not many. And if my day of brooding is any indication to my neighborhood, muzungos aren’t friendly and possibly think they are better than you.
In Phebe (Liberia) mzungos were often considered unfriendly if they didn’t speak first and often. Never mind that it took weeks for people to return my greetings. I kept at it because I was fighting against the impressions of every other rude foreigner, or shy, or one simply having a bad day.
Walking home, breathing deeply against the psychological chaffing of “mzungo goodbye” rubbing against work and life, a little girl at my final corner smiled shyly and then quietly greeted, “mzungo hello.” Exasperated, I responded not mean but definitely not friendly, “ninze Linnea.” She blinked slowly and replied, “Linnea hello.”
And just like that, I smiled.
Tags: me-ness, observations, race, socialcommentary, travel, uganda