The Final Weeks and My Return Home

The week following my return to Kampala felt like a return to normalcy, and to a lifestyle to which I am much more accustomed. The guest house had a kitchen where we could cook all the Muzungu food we wanted, an electric generator which ensure that all the lights (but not the cook facilities in the kitchen) were always running, a satellite television system where we could watch anything from Aljazeera to American Idol, and constantly running water. Living here was a little bit like living in a dorm room during finals week, no class, but everyone was plenty busy with the forty page paper due in a week. Since the focus of my week was primarily on this paper, it was a fairly unremarkable week, but just the same I have nothing but fond memories of the Better Foundations Guest House where I stayed.

The first few nights I was put up in a room with a guy named Greg. He was here with the SIT Uganda group with whom we had been sharing the program with throughout the semester (we of course were the SIT Kenya in Uganda group). We had met a couple times before in the regular course of the day while at the SIT resource center, but I knew very little of Greg other than that. His talkative nature, and slacker work ethic, however, quickly made me enjoy his company. Their program had started a week before ours all the way back in February, and so on this end of the trip they were also ending a week earlier. This meant that while I had just moved into the guest house giving myself a week to write the paper, they only had a few more days, and so would theoretically just be wrapping theirs up, finals touches etc. With two days before the his due date, however, Greg proudly showed me the crude made of his fieldwork site he had constructed using paint, and proceeded to move to the common room dressed only in his bath towel for some quality time with the satellite TV. Not only was it nice not having a room mate who was stressing over finishing his paper on my first couple days back, when all I really wanted to do was relax, have a good meal, and talk friends, but his attitude also put me at ease for writing my paper. It was of coarsely merely a delusional notion that if someone else wasn’t worried I shouldn’t be either, but the fact that I still had a week to write my paper, and could accomplish more in a day than someone whose due date was less than 48 hours away was still somehow comforting.

Anyway, after one and a half all-nighters he did finally manage to whip out his paper, and moved out of our room just in time for Brendan, the other guy from my program to return to Kampala and move in. I was extremely glad to see Brendan as we had often been each other’s only source of refuge from the sea of estrogen (15 girls!) that continually swarmed around us within our program group. This common hardship had bonded us in a way I image soldiers at war can relate to. Brendan had been off in Kapchorwa, a region in the East, living at a high altitude running camp where world class Ugandan athletes train for cross country and distance running events. Brendan is a devoted runner, and aside from his interest in development studies, he has told me that the high concentration of distance runner from East Africa definitely influence his initial decision to study abroad in Kenya. When he returned we found that we had shared many similar experiences. We had both had a great time during ISP, and we were both traveling to remote locations far from the smug crowded streets of Kampala, a city we both agreed we had had enough of by the time ISP had rolled around. While I had my bus on fire story to tell, he similarly had to put up with some ridiculous means of travel, and to my surprise, it sounds like he traveled even farther into the bush than I had. Using the Ugandan bus and taxi system he made it as far out as the town of Kapchorwa, but the running camp was still a couple hours ride further east. When he asked which vehicle would take him the remainder of the way, the guides at the taxi park pointed him to an open backed truck, normally used for carrying large loads of bananas to and from markets. So for five hours, he stood in the back of a truck stuffed full of people, with no where to sit, holding on to the horizontal bars hanging from overhead traveling over entirely dirt roads. Finally, some friendly Ugandans pointed to the running camp, and he hopped off. Here, on the very border of Kenya, he spent the month running with world class athletes (although he admitted that he was by no means actually keeping up), talking about cattle (a favorite pastime of the Sebae, the primary group at the camp), and eating nothing but posho (basically flour mixed with boiling water to form this globular block of carbohydrates) and beans, and generally loving life.

Upon returning to Kampala we both instantly noticed that we seemed far more relaxed than our colleagues who had elected to stay in the city. Now Brendan and I had noticed throughout the trip that we were generally more relaxed than the girls we traveled with (don’t get me wrong, at times this was a good thing, often we would find that potential problems had been taken care of long before either of us would have even considered the problem due to this worrisome vigilance), but even the girls returning from the country seemed generally less stressed, than those who had never left. We concluded that a trip to the country had been very good for us, and that Kampala was simply a stressful city. As Brendan put it, even on his limited diet of posho and beans, he had never before in his life felt so good and healthy.

While a big part of it is the retreat from the busy, crowded, stressful life provided by Kampala, I also speculate that a big part of it was the separation from the others, which took anyway any competitive nature in the research, and allowed us to at times almost forget that there was a paper at the end of this research, and instead simply enjoy the experience for its own sake. When I asked Brendan how he intended to relate his month of living at a running camp with development, health, or society he merely replied, “Oh, I’ll think of something”. It was clearly the experience and not the findings that he had gone for. Similarly, I had walked into the bush with some vague notion of “learning about subsistence strategies”, and ended up stumbling upon a land conflict issue. I was certainly lucky to have such good findings, but it was the fieldwork itself, that I think I was after. Anyway all who left Kampala for the countryside seemed to have sincerely enjoyed their research. If we weren’t totally prepared to write our papers just yet, at least we weren’t stressed about it.

As I said my time at Better Foundations resembled something like college dorm life. My day even fell into something resembling a routine, which had been lacking from my life for the past three months or so. Every morning I would wake up around 8:30 o’clock (this for me was sleeping in, as I had been accustomed to waking up to the sound of blaring radio noise at 5 am every morning in my village stay house in Kyanzi, something for which I never bothered finding an explanation). Brendan was normally just returning from his morning run, and I’d wander into the kitchen, toast some bread for a light breakfast, and watch Aljazeera (which btw is far and away the best cable news network I’ve ever seen) for the daily headlines. Normally I would learn that the primary in America is still close, Zimbabwe is still threatening to breakdown, and Myanmar is still a mess. After I felt as though I had adequately caught up on the news, I would return to my room and begin typing. Around about lunch time, I would go make myself some lunch, and wander around the guesthouse looking for someone I could distract from their work to entertain myself. After lunch, I would head back to my room and write until the words no longer made sense. Around this time it was normally about time to start thinking of dinner. Dinners in the guesthouse were always fun. We had stalked the kitchen full of delicious Muzungu food, and in an attempt to eat well, we would always try obscure dishes with vaguely understood recipes that normally turned out absolutely delicious. In the evenings everyone staying at the house would normally have finished their days work and so would hang around the common room and the kitchen just chatting. These evening chats were very fun and everyone at the house became friends. Aside from the SIT students (about half of our group chose to stay at this guest house), there were two young men from Holland here doing graduate work. They were paired together because they shared nationality, but beyond this, they had very little in common. They actually got along pretty well, but whenever I saw them I couldn’t help but think of the odd couple. Steven was an avid rugby player in his mid-twenties. He was probably about six three, shaved head, and looked like he could bench press a small vehicle, so I couldn’t help but laugh when he told me that his area of study in Uganda was the burgeoning flower industry. I had no idea what this actually entailed, but the mental image that popped into my head was this goliath of a man holding a garden spade with work-gloved hands and a flower apron, maybe even wearing a visor so as to keep the sun out of his eyes. While you didn’t want to mess with the guy, he was about the friendliest person you could imagine. Martin, his roommate, on the other hand was a slightly overweight young man with short brown hair and glasses. The two just didn’t seem to match up, but both were very nice, and fun to talk to (their English was impeccable). Added to the cast was a Rwandan man named Vincent who spoke poor English and drove a brand new BMW (very very very upscale for this part of the world). We all wondered exactly what he did, but his English did not allow for a proper explanation. All we knew was that he was here for his company, studying English at Makerere. He said he had only been studying about two weeks, so the fact that he could actually hold any conversation at all was remarkable. In an attempt to try his English proficiency by telling a story, he once related to Steven Martin and I the story of how the infamous Rwandan genocide affected his life. He spoke so calmly and evenly that we were taken by surprise when he relayed how his family had been killed while they hid in a cornfield, and how this prompted him to join the resistance movement which would eventually reclaim the nation. When I asked if he was bitter, he replied that they had buried the hatchet, and wished only to move forward as a unified country. He explained that he was Mututsi, but that tribal affiliations are no longer spoken of in Rwanda, people wish only to be known as Banyarwanda (Rwandan). I found amazing how collected his life seemed to be given the magnitude of the tragedy he had suffered.

Africans as a whole, I find, seem to take a much different attitude towards tragedy than us westerners. Perhaps their impressions are lost in translation but I have spoken with several other Muzungus who agree that tragedy, violence, and conflict all seem to be extremely understated by Africans (at least the ones we’ve come across). One of my friends was volunteering at a school where the headmaster had attempted to kill the director (something like a school board coup d’etat). She explained that everyone knew he had tried to kill her but no one could prove it, so they both kept working side by side. Similarly, many have argued that the practice of cattle raiding (one group raiding and pillaging another’s cattle) has only recently been corrupted by the government’s involvement in such raids (the allegations are that the government has violently raided cattle, under the name of some other tribe, in order to instigate instability in certain regions. While this sounds far fetched these claims are fairly well supported by documented evidence, and they are also generally assumed to be true. It is a fallacy to assume that all stable governments are looking out for the best interest of their people. In the case of Uganda, the government has essentially turned its back on the people of the north who don’t support the ruling regime anyway, for over twenty years). Traditionally, cattle raiding was done with a mutual understanding that the action was reciprocal and that the raiding group will take every precaution to minimize casualties. This, however, meant that the group would only kill the strong men of the village, who could potentially prevent the cattle raid. People argued that this was an inevitability that was somehow permissible. Despite the raids, people from each tribe claim to have borne no ill will against the other until the government became involved. However, any argument that Africans don’t view tragedy through the same sort of…well...tragic lens as westerners, is pure speculation on my part, and I would think that the subject of the value of life is too charged (though I’m certainly not arguing that culturally Africans don’t value human life as much) to claim that I understand anything conclusively. These are merely my rough, uninformed, observations, so don’t quote me on them.

Anyway, every night we would normally gather around the television to watch whatever happened to be on. Vincent would sit there smiling, but obviously not saying much, while Steven and Martin would quiz us on American culture, while we’d do the same about Dutch culture. Occasionally Irene, the manager would pop in and join us. Steve would engage her in flirtatious banter that would always get her worked up. Watching their interaction was always hysterically funny. On the whole I truly enjoyed my time at the guest house, and all the people I met there. When people are traveling, and are outside of their normal realm of experience, striped of the comforts of their life they have established elsewhere, they are much more open to meeting new people and find they enjoy the company of whomever they may find, especially a fellow traveler, who they know will also be outside of their daily routine. They are more willing to befriend almost total strangers quicker than under normal circumstances. This bonding under the common experience of traveling is what makes hostels and guest houses so great.

Regardless, after a week of this routine, our papers were written and it was time to turn them in and move out. Next we had our presentations. For the presentations our program splurged and took us to the luxurious Kingfisher Resort in Jinja (the nice town just east of Kampala) which sat on the shores of Lake Victoria. SIT’s rational for taking us here, I believe, was twofold. One it was a form of congratulations for completing the semester. With everyone returning from their work, they were rewarding us with a relaxing week of listening to presentations, sitting by the pool sipping tropical drinks, and boat rides on the lake. The other was simply to prepare us for our return to America. Our academic directors, Jamal and Odoch warned us that returning to the states can be a bit overwhelming. We had become accustomed to living with much less than we had in the states, and the nature of an undeveloped country, which upon arrival had shocked and rattled us, had now become like home. A return to development, they warned, would have a similar effect as our arrival in Uganda. So the Kingfisher Resort was a way to ease this transition, and get us used to having nice things again. The resort was very nice too. Their were three pools, each one connected to the other, the last one leading up to a bar that could be reached from the pool or the deck. The rooms were pseudo-African thatched roof huts, spread across the lawn. Below the pool were paths that lead to the beautiful English lawn garden, complete with hedge trails, and thatch umbrella tables, where you could sit and watch the lake. The lawn was cut low, in true English colony style, and the first day we saw an Indian family playing cricket. It felt like the sort of paradise you read about in novels concerning the colonial presence in Africa circa the late 19^th century (from the colonist POV of course). This English green gave way to the shores of the lake, where they offered guided boat tours and another bar. Absolutely beautiful! Our days here were spend utilizing the morning, before the sun came out of course, to present our research findings to the rest of the group. While this sounds comparatively boring to the wonderful resort outside, everyone had genuinely interesting topics of study (at least for a group that had been living in Uganda for three months) and everyone knew how hard people had worked on their projects, so seeing them presented was, at least for me, extremely interesting. By around 11, when the sun was just beginning to really bake the earth, we would break for the pool. After lunch we would normally try to get a game of some sort going on the green. Since we only had a soccer ball our options were soccer, or wrist bruising round of volleyball. In the evenings we would relax by the pool. As a going away present Jamal and Odoch bought the group kangas (African wraps). So naturally that evening we threw a toga party, much to the befuddlement of the locals. We made a fire in a fire pit on the lawn and roasted marshmallows (an extremely rare commodity in Uganda) for s’mores, all in our kangas (and bed sheets in the case of me and Brendan). It is safe to say that this was a definite step towards our re-acclimation to the American lifestyle.

By Thursday of that week we had left Jinja and returned to Kampala. I stopped by Mama’s house to say my final goodbyes, which was hard to do. I had become attached to her and her family, and promised to write and keep in touch as best as possible, now back in America, I still have every intention to keep in touch with her, and everyone else I came to know well along the way, I sincerely hope they do the same. Friday, I spent the whole day running around, saying my goodbyes, and mailing my research to the people with whom I had stayed, and who had helped me with the hope of my work in some way benefiting them. I wrote a note asking that they use the work in any way they saw fit, with the hopes that it may actually make some small contribution to the greater knowledge, and maybe make some small difference in people’s lives. I had grown truly attached to the people I was working with, and wanted truly to help them in any way I could. While I think my findings were good, given my inexperience and limited time, I don’t think they will in any way truly affect the lives of my subjects. However, I at least wanted to give them the option of using it for their own benefit. Anyway, that night we had our farewell dinner, and an American style restaurant called Sam’s. They sold game meat and so Brendan and I tried a combination of Spring Buck, Kuddu, and Wildebeest, just to say we had. The dinner was characterized by fond reminiscing, confessions to Jamal and Odoch about the rules we had broken throughout the semester, farewell speaks and a barrage of pictures.

Early the next morning we left Kampala for Entebbe airport, where we had landed three and a half months ago. From here we began our long journey back to the developed world. The trip felt almost surreal, and even now, back at home, I still half expect to wake up surrounded by a mosquito net in Mama’s house to the sound of the rooster crowing. At each stop, our group, the people with whom we had shared everything for the past three months began to disband. Emily saw us off from the hotel as she was meeting a friend in Uganda in a couple days. Cara, Kerry, and Sally left in Kenya where they planned for about two week of travel and more adventure. We also here departed from Jamal and Odoch who had flow with us back to their homeland of Kenya. As I said before it felt more surreal than sad. Though we all will certainly miss them (they were amazing academic directors, and everyone enjoyed their company), we were still bothered by the knowledge that we would have to negotiate the long journey ahead. After about three hours of pestering the information desk at Nairobi airport we finally had someone print out tickets and make sure that our bags had been transferred from the Kenya Air flight we had come in on to the Emirates flight by which we would leave. We boarded and five hours later we were in Dubai. Here we lost two more of our group, Crystal and Cristina, the couple who planned on spending a few days relaxing in the tourist friendly atmosphere of Dubai the city that has an island shaped like a palm tree. Dubai is something like a Disney land for adults. It is packaged as the luxurious Middle Eastern experience, but it is really quite tame, and smoothly run. It is the quintessential tourist destination. Unfortunately, from the plane we were shipped in buses to the terminal, Crystal and Cristina were in the back of the plane and so boarded the second bus, while everyone else boarded the first. The buses made two stops one for connecting flights and one for customs. Since they were staying here, they went to the latter and we never got to say a proper goodbye.

Dubai airport is far and away the nicest airport I have ever been to. It’s more like a shopping mall than anything, with unending kiosks and huge duty free shops, a food court with McDonalds, Cold Stone, and Dunkin Donuts, free public Wifi, and large spaceship looking chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The sensory stimulation was simply too much for our group and we fell into a fit of laughter about how ridiculous and developed it all seemed. Until this point I don’t think any of us had realized how accustomed we were to going without all this fanfare, and for the circus that is Dubai airport to be our first reintroduction was almost cruel. We arrived at around two in the morning, and the floor was still packed vendors, and buyers and people from all over trying to grab the best deals free of duty. It was almost like an upscale twenty four hour Walmart.

From here we boarded our final flight aboard the exceedingly nice transatlantic Emirates Airbus 300. As I’ve described in my first blog, each chair had a personal touch activated widescreen monitor with over 400 movies to choose from, not to mention a full iPod worth of Music and games to boot. The service was wonderful, and the chairs were comfortable enough to sleep like a baby the whole 14 hours if you so chose.

Finally we arrived back in America at JFK Airport around 8 o’clock Sunday morning, and the majority of our group disbanded. I left for home, while most others caught their connecting flights which would take them back home. We said our final melancholic goodbyes and I was quickly met with an overjoyed hello from my parents who had been waiting on the other side of customs.

Now I suppose all that is left is to say my final thoughts about how I am adjusting to life in America. I certainly don’t have some great philosophical or introspective conclusion that I’m ready to put, perhaps if I find that sometime, I’ll add one more post. So far I’ve been here almost five days now, though I am glad to be home, I truly miss Africa. It is very strange to be back in the “land of excess” as everyone here is calling it. Many of the things people do here seem wholly unnecessary, I was expecting the tabloids, People Magazine, and our consumer driven commercial society to seem as ridiculous as ever, and I’m sure everyone has already heard countless polemics on that subject. Truth be told, they have some of that stuff in Uganda as well. What I find most hard to get used to is simply the amount of stuff that’s here. Everything from the portions of food, to the amount of things I have in my room (most of which I’m realizing I have no use for), even the amount of water that comes out of the shower head seems a bit much (in truth it felt like I was drowning the first time I stepped into the shower at home). Don’t think that I’m complaining about American’s being wasteful (although we are excessively wasteful, I’m unfortunately as guilty as the next person), but the amount of stuff is just a bit overwhelming sometimes. Coming back, however, has also assured me that no matter what we have going wrong (again, we are doing quite a bit wrong) we are far and away the best place to live, and there is so much that we’ve done right for ourselves and our people, I’m definitely proud to be an American, and I don’t think I would have felt as comfortable saying that so loudly before this trip. Other than that, the food is much better here (although I’m already missing the abundance of Indian food), the people generally seem less friendly (of course I base this experience on my one trip to the grocery store and another to Walmart, so its not exactly a fair sample), and I miss be able to walk everywhere.

Falling into my routine at home has also stifled the excitement of something new and adventurous every day. In Africa, it is safe to say that pretty much every day something somewhat remarkable and noteworthy happened in my life. Here I’m doing nothing new and as such, am producing no more stories. But I realize that excitement can’t go on forever, in fact if it didn’t, it would cease to be exciting. America, Long Valley NJ in particular, isn’t a new experience, but that’s precisely what makes it my home, and there is something comfortable about being home. Beside it’s only another week or so until I move into New York City and start my next big adventure (which will no doubt be a bit different from my last), beginning with the quest to find employment.

Finally, this experience has, I think, reserved a special place in my heart for Africa. I cannot even fathom my future without a return at some point to the continent and especially Uganda. People who’ve experienced this call it the “Africa bug”, and it sounds corny but they say that you’re always drawn back to Africa after having been there once. For myself, I have no doubt that I will absolutely return there one day. While it will certainly be under different circumstances next time, I hope to find some of the people I came to know and love there, and I know that no matter what the experience it will be worthwhile and good. So concludes my adventures in Africa, thank you all for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed my sharing of a wonderful chapter in my life.

Return to Kampala

After my short break from village life in Kasese town, I returned to Kyanzi village refreshed, eager for some company, and completely ready to renegotiate any cultural factor I had taken issue with. In fact, during this second attempt I found the cultural differences much less pronounced and much easier to deal with. I have since returned to Kampala, and now, seeing how strange the big city life seems to me, I think this sentiment was much less a result of my willingness to explore new cultures or my renewed appreciation of cultural sensitivity, as it was a subconscious acculturation and acceptance of the terms and conditions of cultural life within the village. For example, I was able to casually shrug it off as ‘normal’ when only two of a group of elders who had promised to schedule an interview with me as part of their weekly meeting show up for the interview, and even then, only an hour and a half after the designated meeting time. When I asked what happened, on elder responded that the meet had been canceled. When asked why he said with an obvious tone, “Because no one showed up”. At the time it didn’t even occur to me how circular that logic was.

I also noticed that I began to see more clearly the complicated relationships between all the many people living in my village-stay house, and could more easily identify these relationships with the idea of family that I have become accustomed to as an American. I attribute this both to having lived there long enough to see their day to day life as it really is, and to my acculturation into the society which allowed me to see how, underneath the cultural constructions that govern the relationships between various members of the family, there is essentially the same bonding agent that bonds families all over the world. While this bond is expressed differently across the world, it’s good to know that it is still there. I believe I first noticed this as I was sitting in the kitchen watching the mother prepare dinner. Most of the family was inside the kitchen, I was there enjoying watching the interaction but most of them were there because it was a “cold” night (maybe 65degrees F) and close quarters and stove fire of the kitchen provided the best warmth. Jolam Busa, my little buddy and youngest son of the family, was curled up in his mothers lap, while she squatted over the stove stirring the cassava flour to prepare tapioc (this really sticky mushy stuff that is balled up with the hands, made into a bowl with the imprint of the thumb, and then used to scoop up stew). Meanwhile, the older sisters helped prepare other parts of the meal, while Getride the younger sister was humming out a song, and Zephyr, her slightly younger brother, about ten was singing the melody. Tembo Joshua, the five year old second youngest sat clapping along, while the three older brothers, Gerald, Richard, and Moses all relaxed after spending the day in the shamba (what they call the crop field). Meanwhile the father sat next to me on a small stool. Resting in his arms was a small girl (can’t be older than three), named Lisa, who stays in the neighborhood. The sun had gone down and no one was really sure why she was still here, but as it was the village, which is basically just like an extended family, no one minded and figured someone would take her home when it got too late. For the moment she was cute enough to keep around. Nothing particularly special happened during this scene, I merely saw the whole family in one place, interacting like a family as I have known family. Normally I only see them coming and going from the house. The three young boys run together, the older boys do their own thing, the sisters spend most of the day cooking, and the father seems to be around much less than one would expect. When he is around it had always seemed to me that he was playing the role of stern disciplinarian (I also have to believe that impression is partly a result of Bantu languages sounding like angry yelling when you don’t understand them). This scene, as the whole family sat around enjoying each others company gave me a very different perspective.

The trip to Kasese town itself was also very instrumental in conducting my research. Without going in too deep my research is essentially focused around land conflict issues surrounding a group of pastoralist and another group of farmers in Kasese district who until recently have lived supposedly peacefully, but now due to population pressure and an over-reliance on antiquated subsistence techniques, basically no longer have enough land to feed themselves. In Kasese, I met with members of the pastoralist tribe who I had yet to interview as I had been living with members of the farmer’s tribe. This allowed me to organize a home-stay with the pastoralists (Basongora), who were recently resettled onto former government prison farm land. I was also able to speak with members of the Banyabinde tribe, who are largely uninvolved in the land conflict, but as the second largest tribe in Kasese district provided a good third person perspective on the issue.

I returned to the village on a Friday. Every Friday is known as market day. Market day is a day when the border between Congo and Uganda is opened up and all the locals bring their goods to exchange at a huge inter-country farmers market. I took the opportunity to see if I couldn’t make my way into Congo, mostly just to say that I had been there. Unfortunately in a typical example of negligence by an African government, the bridge connecting the two countries had collapsed the week before (seriously injuring many and killing a few). Apparently the bridge had been in disrepair for over twenty years, but since it connected the two countries, and was therefore not technically in either one, neither government would take responsibility to fix it. This of course did not stop market day the following weeks, too many people base their livelihood on this day for them to be willing to cancel it. Instead they had small rowboats ferry goods back and forth across the small river, while men constructing a makeshift wooden bridge out of felled trees that would be fit for cars to pass over. I decided that this bridge was likely my best bet at getting across, and let my home-stay brother and sister who had accompanied me there. When I got there a Congolese man stopped me and said men could only cross if they helped to dig and build, but noticing my water bottle, said he would escort me across in exchange for the rest of my water. I agreed and began across. This came with much disapproval from the surrounding workers, who all thought not only that I should work, but also that since I was a Muzungu, they should pester me for some of my money (it is commonly believed that Muzungus simply carry large amounts of cash to give away at any given time). Congolese, coming from a much poorer country, are also much more persistent and bothersome when pestering you. Seeing that I was surrounded by about thirty men, all with shovels, sticks and hoes, I thought for a second that I perhaps had gotten myself in too deep in my attempt to get to Congo. When I set foot on Congo soil, Cabiira, my sister, urged me to turn around and head back before things got out of hand. Instead, I grabbed a hoe lying next to a man who was taking a small break, and swung it into the earth. After a moment of silent confusion, the atmosphere of the surrounding crowd changed entirely. Suddenly everyone was cheering me on, laughing and yelling in complete surprise that I would work for them (probably because they have never seen it before, African seem to have a very firm belief that Muzungus are completely incapable of even the smallest manual labor in any form). After maybe two more swings of the hoe, the owner took it back, shaking my hand. He thanked me for digging (as is the tradition in Bakonzo society) and said I had done quite enough work for today. With the crowd on my side I presented with the opportunity to go explore the Congo side of the market a bit. I looked back and saw that my sister still had a concerned look on her face. I decided that I may have perhaps pushed my luck enough for one day, and though I was pretty sure the crowd now welcomed me, I had accomplished what I had set out to do that day (get into Congo), and so I turned around and went back across the bridge. That is the story of how I spent one afternoon digging dirt in Congo.

Later that week, I spent a couple of day up in the hills of the Rwenzori, just above my village stay. I spend the night up there at a local chairman’s house. The chairman had organized for me to meet with various people affected by the land conflict issue, and was very helpful to my research. Accompanying me on this journey was a young man named Paul, from the village. He was a twenty one year old University student who was back home on break from school, and had offered to spend the two days working for me as a translator. On this trip the two of us became fairly close. It was refreshing to talk to someone who not only spoke English very fluently, but was also educated, and articulate. On top of this, someone of the same age was a nice change from the forty plus people who I had normally been interacting with. At the chairman’s house, we stayed up late shoot the bull. I hope that this friendship continues and am confident that he will be my main correspondence to the village in the future, both because he is the best English speaker there, and because he goes to school in Kampala where he can email me, instead of waiting the two weeks it takes for a letter to be sent.

The following weekend I went over to Ibuga Prison Farm, where I would spend four days living with the Basongora cattle keepers, and learning not only about their side of the conflict, but also about cattle keeping and the history of pastoralism in Africa in general. I arrived Friday, where I was introduced to the man I was meant to stay with, a cattle keeper named Leonard. He had warned me before coming that he had only recently moved to Ibuga and therefore was quite unprepared for company. I assumed that he (like almost all other Africans) simply believed that a Muzungu such as myself was simply incapable of staying in such places as a pastoralist resettlement village, and so went ahead with him anyway. The cattle keepers stay in an environment entirely different from the Bakonzo’s traditional home, where I had been staying in the hills. The cattle require large land and a lot of grass. For this reason the Basongora stay in the plans of the Semiliki valley at the foot of the Rwenzori. As we walked through these fields towards Leonard’s home, we first stopped at his friend’s house to say hi. We sat there for a while, and Leonard explained that his home was just about a quarter mile further down the trail. He then confessed that his home was merely a plot of land upon which he intended to eventually build a house. For the moment he was staying there guarding the land, and sleeping under the stars. I gave a moment’s pause, and then thought, why not, and consented to stay with him under the stars for the next couple of days. Everyone laughed and asked the usual ‘how can a Muzungu do such a thing’ questions. Several minutes later, Leonard said, “You stay here, I will go and come back”. He left and his friend, Isongoma invited me inside for a meal. I stayed here until the late hours of the night, and finally asked if Leonard would be coming back. Isongoma said that I would in fact be staying with him for the weekend, in his two mud huts. To my relief, these people had pulled a typical African move, and changed my plans for me, without ever telling me. So my home-stay host became Isongoma and his family. For supper we had a bowl of matoke, and several glasses of milk. Traditionally pastoralist subsist entirely on milk and blood, however, these people have apparently abandoned the tradition of eating the latter. Still I was surprised at how much of their diet consisted of milk. It is served at every meal, and is often the meal itself. It is interesting that this unvaried diet produces a people who are generally of a much taller stature than their farming counterpart, who eat a plethora of varied crops. The milk they drink is always freshly boiled. This actually made research fairly difficult. As everyone knows, one of the best ways to make babies and small children go to sleep is to give them a glass of warm milk. The Basongora would always promise to do an interview after a meal. They were used to drinking warm milk all the time and so found that it had effect on them. I on the other hand found it hard to keep my eyes open long enough to ask any questions. Interestingly, I couldn’t help but notice that everyone in the village seemed to have that distinct smell of small baby about them. I supposed because they, like babies, drink almost nothing but milk, that they simply never stopped having that new baby smell.

While staying with the Basongora, I learned a lot about cattle keeping. I milked the cow, learned how to make them move where you like, and even got the opportunity to take the cattle out to pasture one morning. Cattle are surprising a very calm, almost apathetic animal. This is perhaps why cattle are so often worshiped, particularly in eastern religions, as beings that are completely content and complacent Zen masters. I noticed that the Basongora were also the most calm, even-spoken people I’ve come across in Uganda. It is purely conjecture on my part, but I imagine that by spending all their time around cattle, some of the characteristics cattle exhibit must have rubbed off on them. This makes them extremely agreeable, amicable, and comfortable people. When I would try to help them herd the cattle, I would often screw up, causing a cow to get away, and make a lot more work for everyone else. While I wouldn’t expect them to say anything, as guest etiquette would forbid their chastising me, it seemed like they didn’t even notice. They would simply run off after the cattle and get it back in line, as though nothing had happened. Furthermore, unlike the Bakonzo, who would often become heated during the interviews explaining how their land had been stolen, the Basongora would always explain in full the vast number of grievances they have had over the years, which have forced them to continually relocate themselves, and how they have been marginalized as a minority in local government, and now face significant loss of cattle due to poor grazing, but would do so calmly and evenly.

That Sunday, both my and Isongoma’s phone had died, so he took me to where they normally charge them. We walked down the path he lived on for maybe three miles, and passed through the gate of a fence of barbed wire about four feet high. The gate was wide open and no one there stood guard. Isongoma informed me that we were now in Ibuga Prison (the section of the farm that had not been given over to settle land conflicts). We walked by some men sitting around amongst some maize. Isongoma stopped, shook hands with them, and exchanged a few words, one of the men had a pattern of small bumps running across his face, a signature cultural feature that distinguishes the Karamojong cattle keepers of northern Uganda. The area of Karamoja is always in the papers as a place of great unrest, where the people have suffered from prolonged drought and have taken to stealing cattle from others. After we passed them Isongoma explained that they had been arrested for armed cattle rustling, and were imprisoned for seven years. He explained that they quickly befriended the Basongora since their pastoral lifestyle makes their culture very similar. I noted that the prisoners had no guard with them, and were very close to the wide open, unguarded gate. It seemed like there was literally nothing keeping them in prison, and yet they were clearly not trying to make a break for it. Soon we came to the prisoner’s quarters. It looked essentially like any other village, except that the huts were constructed of metal and not mud and thatch. Mothers were cooking while children were playing at their feet. Apparently in Uganda when you go to prison, you bring your family. We went into one of the metal huts, sat down, and handed our phone to the daughter who was standing there. Isongoma explained that he was a friend of these prisoners and so he could charge his phone for free here, because the prisoner’s quarters had electricity. So in summation, Ugandan prisons allow the family to live with the prisoner, allow free interaction all day, allow the prisoners to farm freely, seem to have no guards present whatsoever, do no lock the doors, and do not even bother to construct much to contain the prisoners, and give the prisoners electricity that the surrounding villages don’t have. On top of all that, the prisoners are allowed to buy things to furnish their huts. While we waited for our phones to charge, we sat on comfy couches, watching Nigerian films on the prisoners TV, and sipping cold sodas from the prisoner’s personal fridge. I assumed that this prison must be the very lowest level security prison, holding minor felons, of whom the cattle rustling we had met must have been about the worst. I thought back to how dreadful maximum security prisons in the US are, and couldn’t imagine how much worse they must be in a place like Uganda. To the contrary, as we walked freely pasted the prison gate after charging our phones, Isongoma assured me that this was the highest security prison, and that only the worst criminals were sent here. Most of them were major thieves, rapists and murderers. I’m still baffled by how such a prison works (or counts as prison instead of government organized village).

That afternoon, Isongoma approached me holding one of his two chickens by the wings. He told me that this chicken would be dinner, and that he just wanted me to have a look at it before he killed it. He said they saved the chickens for when they had very special company. I assured him that he didn’t have to kill one of his birds for me, but he would hear none of it, and proceeded to kill the bird and give it to his wife to prepare. Unfortunately, at this point I believe drinking all the un-pasturized, fresh from the cows utter milk was catching up with me. This was the only night of the entire program so far that I became incredibly sick, so much so that I couldn’t even hold down water. I felt terrible because this of course meant that I couldn’t eat the chicken Isongoma had killed in my honor, but eating was simply out of the question. I awoke the next morning feeling slightly better, but was still a little uneasy. Before I left to return to the village in Kyanzi, however, I managed to scarf down some leftover chicken and show my appreciation for all the kindness and hospitality Isongoma had shown me.

I returned to the village that afternoon and spend the whole rest of the day sleeping and trying to feel better. That night, dinner was served, and once again in my stew lay bits and pieces of a chicken. Gerald, my home-stay brother, informed me that he had decided to kill one of his chickens in my honor. Fortunately I was well enough by this point to eat this meal with no problem, but I did think it interesting that within the past 24 hours two chickens had died on my behalf.

The following day I felt completely better. This was fortunate because I had made plans to return to the highlands above Kyanzi and hike up to the base of Mt. Rwenzori National Park. Along with Solomon, the village liaison for my program, my friend Paul, my friend and other Muzungu who had come to study in the town of Bwera, and a guide, we spent the whole day walking up the steep narrow trails leading to the park. Now I know I always say this but, the scenery up here was definitely, without question, the most beautiful I have seen in all of Uganda. We could look up to the snow capped mountain range ahead, turn around and see the rolling hills and valleys below us, and look beyond these hills out into the plans, where we could see for miles. We could even see the beginning and end of Lake Edward (on of the Great Lakes of Africa). It was absolutely incredible. At one point our guide was led by a old man, who could not have been younger than 70. As we panted and struggled up, he ran ahead, barefoot, and waited for us at the top. We learned that he had in fact been a spear thrower in the Rwenzoruru Movement. The Rwenzoruru was a rebellion by the Bakonzo people during the 60s and 70s in which they effectively succeeded from the rest of Uganda for about twenty years. They were able to do this by running up into the hills where only they knew the terrain. Though they had only primitive spears for weapons, the Ugandan army was no match for mountainous terrain of the Rwenzori. Though the kingdom of Rwenzoruru was never an officially recognized state, they were effectively independent for most of their rebellion due to the government’s inability to enforce its will upon them.

The following day was our last full day in the village, and so I spent most of the day saying my goodbyes. Solomon had both Sally and I over for a farewell dinner, and assured us that we would always have a place to stay here in Kyanzi village (in fact he even offered each of us our own piece of land should we one day choose to return). Though I have no doubt that it was time to leave, I know that I'll always look back fondly on my time in Kyanzi and I hope to one day return and see again all the friend's I've made there. The following day we awoke at four in the morning to catch the buses to Kampala. After a grueling, but comparatively uneventful bus ride we arrived back in the big city of Kampala.

It is now my second day back in civilization and I have to admit that I am going through a bit of what is called reverse culture shock. I’m very happy to be back, and it is great to see everyone, but life is the city all seems very weird. Even things like taking a shower and not a bucket bath feel good but a bit off (like I’m using a ridiculous amount of water to get clean). I’m already shocked at how expensive it is to live here. People take taxis everywhere, which adds up. Already in one day I’ve spent more than I would have in a week in the village, and the fact that people are unwilling to just walk places seems strange to me. What’s more, I find myself speaking in very simple terms, and explaining thing unnecessarily elaborately. I must have become accustomed to speaking in such a manner in the village since the language barrier made regular communication fairly difficult.

That said there are some definite perks to coming back. Last night, to celebrate my return we went out to what is as far as I know the only steak house in Kampala. It is run by an Indian who has apparently spent over twenty years living in the states. He looks like he could be an American dad who wears an apron over his polo shirt and shorts and the Labor Day barbeque, smiling while he cooks up everyone’s favorite meat. With a big smile he make his way to all the tables in the restaurant (most of which were occupied by Muzungus) and makes sure that everyone is enjoying themselves in his restaurant. This is starkly different from the average Ugandan restaurant which most of the time doesn’t have half of the items listed on the menu, and the waiters look at you as though you are stupid if you order one of the items they don’t have. The food was also incredible. Instead of the typical Ugandan bland starch with some stew, we had a thick cut of tender steak marinated in a delicious red wine sauce, complete with a vegetable salad, cooked vegetables (including caramelized cloves of garlic), and mashed potatoes drenched in gravy. It was an incredible meal, and I’m not using the scale of Ugandan food, this would have been a delicious steak in the states as well, and on top of that, the cost of the meal totaled to 9500. A somewhat pricey meal in Uganda, but in American dollars it equals out to approximately $5.60, cheaper than a Big Mac and large fries. I had not expected a meal this good until I returned to the states and getting it now was a welcomed treat.

Otherwise it is now time for me to hunker down and write up my research into a 40 or so page paper. The good news is that now I’ll have easy access to internet and can update this blog more frequently, the bad news is that since most of my time will be spent writing this paper, I probably won’t have anything interesting to say. But you can’t be sure unless you read and see, so keep checking, and I’ll try my best to throw in some city bound adventures while I’m here.

To the Bush!

I am currently sitting in the restaurant/lounge of the White House Hotel in Kasese town. Kasese town is the largest town in Kasese district and therefore offers the most modern comforts. This hotel is also the second nicest hotel in Kasese town. My room is self contained (so I don’t need to use the shared bathroom at the end of the hall), I have a king sized bed all to myself, there not only is electricity, it has yet to go out since I’ve been here, and the internet café downstairs has flat screen monitors and something resembling fast internet. All these luxuries are afforded me for 20,000 Ugandan shillings a night, which works out to about 11.75 USD, and is well within my research stipend of 25000 UGS/day. This is a welcome break from my most recent lodgings in the village of Kyanzi (pronounced Chensey), outside of the small town of Bwera (locally known as Mpondwe) located on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I have embarked upon my month long research project looking at the land conflict issues in Kasese between cultivators and pastoralists.
I am staying in the same village (and with the same family) were a few weeks earlier, I did my village stay. The family, and in fact the whole village has been very welcoming and has been assisting me in conducting my research in any way they can. On the first day of my research I had also come to Kasese town to meet with several officials and inform them of my presence and my research. The District Security Officer informed me that the people I was staying with was a “pre-capitalist society” and were therefore very welcoming, giving (since they had little concept of the market value of things, and of the principles of bargaining etc), and that he personally finds them “incredibly naïve”. Though I’m unsure how fair it is to label those in a “pre-capital state” which is, logically, the state that most of humanity has found itself in for most of history as naïve, nor am I entirely convinced that they are in fact a pre-capitalist society, I have found their warm, welcoming, and generous (despite how truly little they have to give). It is not, therefore the people, from which I am taking a welcome break. Rather the internet connection to the outside world, electricity, privacy, and flushing toilets are what I am appreciating about being here. Incidentally when checking in I foolishly only requested a toilet that flushes and so the first room they showed me had a toilet bowl, build right into the ground. Ugandans have really seemed to miss the point on this subject, while running water is certainly a perk, the nicest part about toilets is that you don’t have to squat down over a tiny hole in the ground, getting a full lower body workout while trying to do your business, all while trying not to fall over.
Since I am traveling alone, there is even less company away from the village, but I must admit that I am enjoying not having to spend ten minutes thinking up ways to phrase a question so that the locals will understand me, only to be answered with something completely irrelevant to what I’ve asked. I’m only just realizing how little interaction I’ve had with any native English speaker as I find myself speaking greedily long windedly both in emails and phone calls to anyone who will listen. Furthermore, while I miss the entire village of children that follows at my feet everywhere I go in the Kyanzi, I am also enjoying a break from this as well. Traveling alone has also forced me to socialize with random people. I am even writing this blog in between spurts of conversation with some Europeans here doing work with a local NGO. Also, my trip to Kasese has so far proved very useful in furthering my research. I have only arrived yesterday, and already I’ve interviewed a high ranking official in the district government who has had direct involvement in the land conflict issue, and three cultural leaders of the minority Banyabinde tribe of the district, who I admit I had until then neglected to consider in my work.
My solo adventure in western Uganda began Tuesday of last week. Two girls from the program who were also heading west and I, with all our luggage for the next month, trekked our way down to Bus Park (which is essentially the same thing as the Taxi Parks described an earlier posting, scaled up to accommodate old coach buses. As soon as we set foot in the park, we were swarmed by a herd of porters all grabbing at our bags, and yelling at us to come with them. We had to literally push them away from us while yelling that they stop touching our stuff. Finally we reached our bus, where we had to bargain them down from the Muzungu price, to what I suspect was probably a slightly lower Muzungu price that I had got when I had investigated the park the previous day. When I set foot on the bus, the first thing I noticed was there were pretty much no seats. I had foolishly assumed that they would only sell as many tickets as there were seats on the bus. Of course, like every other mode of transportation, they stuff it to capacity like a can of sardines (In the taxies meant to fit 14 they put a minimum of 17, on boda bodas meant to fit two I’ve seen 4, and in cars meant to carry 5 comfortably I’ve seen ten, including two people sitting in the drivers seat). I finally forced a rather rotund lady who was occupying two seats to move over and give me a seat. However, for the whole seven hour ride she absolutely refused to relinquish a solid half of my seat. She got a seat and a half while I got half a seat. However, I didn’t make too much fuss about it as I’m pretty sure that was as tight as she could squeeze, and it was certainly better than those who boarded after us who were forced to sit in on the floor in the aisle. The bus itself traveled down the poorly maintained Ugandan roads at incredibly unsafe speeds, threatening to overturn at every corner, stopping only to let vendors board in one town, walk through the aisle (over the people sitting there), trying to make a buck, before de-boarding at the next town.
After about five hours, one of the two girls, who were working at a forest reserve in Bushenye district, reached her stop. We said our goodbyes and she headed off into the unknown. As we approached our destination the bus finally began to clear out, and there was even enough space to take a seat next to my other travel companion, and discuss what a ridiculous day we had had so far. We pulled up to what appeared to be another roadside town, I believe we even got money ready to purchase a snack from one of the vendors we expected to board.
Suddenly there was a panic and a rush for the door. It seemed as though the locals were gathering around the bus and my first thought was that they were stealing bags from below. As I moved over to the other side of the bus to get a better look, I was pushed forward by a surge of people in the aisle. Through one of the open windows bellowed smoke coming from below the bus. In a panic, Sally (the girl I was traveling with) and I joined into the surge of people heading for the door. People were literally trampling over others trying to get off the bus. We made it out safely to find a crowd of people trying to put the mysterious flame under the bus out with jerry cans of water and dirt.
We were astounded to see the driver underneath the burning vehicle frantically putting himself in incredible danger frantically trying to extinguish the flame. I concluded that this bus must have been his only source of income and livelihood for him to have put his life so clearly in harms way to save it. There was suddenly a large boom as those under the bus scurried out all covered axel grease and oil. I have no idea what the explosion was and no one appeared harmed, but this was enough to convince us that we were simply not getting back on that bus. They finally got the glowing light under the bus under control, and as we were taking our bags out from underneath the conductor (man who collects money from people boarding and de-boarding) tried explaining to us that the problem was under control, the axel simply didn’t have enough grease. I peered over and saw the driver emptying a bottle of WD40 onto the problem area. The thought that a 1 liter can of WD40 couldn’t possibly make up for a total lack of axel grease on the rear wheel of a full sized coach bus, I steeled my previous conviction not to set foot back upon the bus.
Unfortunately, this left us with few options. We were totally stranded on the side of the road in the middle of Uganda, with no place to stay, and no where to go, it was about 6 o’clock and the sun was beginning to set. As I’ve said before, its advisable not to travel by road in Uganda after the sun has gone down. As we were bargaining with a bypassing banana truck to take us to the nearest large town where we hoped to either find lodging or a taxi that would take us the rest of the way to Bwera, a private hire driver approached us offering to take us the whole way. He was asking an exorbitantly high price, and naturally assuming he was taking advantage of some Bazungu we began to bargain down. Unfortunately, he would not budge on the price, apparently appreciating our predicament and seeing that we basically had no other options. Fortunately a few others from the bus that were heading to Bwera jumped in and helped bear the burden of the cost. Having the private hire was better than being stranded on the side of the road, but not much. Private hires in Uganda are unmarked, and the drivers carry no identification. We essentially got into a car with a perfect stranger, asking an exorbitant price, on faith that he would safely deliver us to Kampala, on top of this, there was no making it to Bwera before the sun set. It was not an appealing option, but like I said, we had no other choice. We’ve found that in Africa, you very often have to simply take what you are given (and be thankful for that). Sally later described her state on the ride as absolutely terrified. I’d call my own continually alert and suspicious. The fact that other Ugandans from the bus had also put their trust in this solution helped to ease my mind at the time, but in hindsight, they were in the same predicament as us, and so had as few options as we did. Fortunately, since it was getting late and we were expected in town, we received several calls from our AD’s, our friends in Kampala, and Solomon, our contact in the village. It was comforting to know that the driver knew that we were being expected, and that people were looking after us from both Kampala and our destination. Almost to my surprise we arrived in Bwera, at about 8:30, without any problems. We were greeted right in town by Solomon, a short (nearly all Bakonzo are short) but well carried man, with a big, welcoming hug. He arranged for a well known and trusted private hire to take us back to the village, and assured us that everyone was anxiously awaiting our presence, and had dinner ready and waiting for us. As the private hire pulled up to Samuel Matte’s (matte is short for Masereka, which means third born son, since I follow Bradley and Patrick in my own family, the village has also christened me Matte) modest brick home, all 9 children residing in the house (Samuel has 11 children but two are away at school and work) ran up yelling my name, taking my bags and offering hugs of welcome. I have never in my life so appreciated such a warm welcome, I felt like I had arrived back home (partly because home-stay families always speak of you in terms of family), and that the trials of the day had finally ended. As I had ate dinner by the now familiar lamp light, with all 10 children’s faces, they informed me that not much had changed since my last visit, but that the young ones had been missing me so much they had called my name in their sleep. Samuel walked in with a big smile, and greeted me with the lengthy traditional greeting. The greeting covers every aspect of your life. It begins by asking “how are you”, followed by “how is here” (referring to wherever you are at the moment), next you are asked “how is there” (referring to wherever you have just come from), then “how are they” (referring to those you have left, this question is often posed to me as “how are those sisters of yours” which always phases me for a second, they are sort of like my Ugandan family, but... not that literally), and finally “how is everyone from where you come?” (referring to your family and friends in America). To all of these questions the correct response is “fine”, if by some chance it is not fine, you say “fine, but…”. While such a long drawn out small talk can be annoying, at this point in time everything about Kyanzi was comforting. Exhausted from my day’s misadventures, I set up my mosquito net (more to protect me from rat dropping falling from the rafters than from any bugs) and slept like a baby in my home-stay bed.
The next day, after my obligatory visit to Kasese, to inform the officials of my presence and purpose, I dove right in to my research. I quickly found the land conflict so interesting that I decided to focus almost entirely on it for my research. Samuel has been instrumental in facilitating my research, both working as a translator, and an “in” to local officials and people.
Being alone in the village (Sally is also working in Bwera, but she spends most of her time at the hospital, and so I’ve not seen here since the first day) has given me my first real case of culture shock in Uganda. Last weekend, I showed Samuel one of my letters of introduction, intended to be shown to the officials wherever I went to conduct research. Surprisingly the letter mobilized Samuel into action trying to help me with my work. He said he had previously misunderstood the purpose of my research and now understood that we had to be doing much more work. I found this funny for a number of reasons, first of all the letter seemed to misinform him that simply because I am living with him that he needs to facilitate my research (while this is not true, I’m keeping my mouth shut because him taking this roll has in some ways come in handy, and I’ve since made clear that I reserve the right to take full control of the direction of the study if his help begins to lead me astray). Next the parts of the letter he sited as showing him what he had previously failed to realize were the parts that Helen (our program assistant who wrote the letters) had clearly BSed as totally filler, such as the goal is “to interact with people of all cultural backgrounds (both Christian and Muslim)”, a goal which is inherent, but also sort of ancillary to the real purpose of my study. I suppose along with being a pre-capitalist society comes being unaccustomed to bureaucratic jargon, which we capitalist can pick out a disregard from a mile away.
Anyway he insisted that we pack our bags this instant and spend the night a little to the south in Katwe, at the heart of the land in conflict, talking to local officials from the Basongora pastoralists and the Bakonzo cultivators. This happened to be exactly what I wanted to do so it worked out well, but this trip would prove a little more culture shock than I could handle. The interviews I got were actually very helpful, and were the first impressions I was able to record from the Basongora point of view. However, the time spent in between left me irritated and wishing only to conclude the trip. Samuel knew the area since he had been a headmaster at a school several years back. He had not returned to the area since he had left, and naturally wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to say hi to some old friends. Unfortunately saying hi in Konzo culture is a lengthy process that I believe has arisen out of the fact that in cultivating villages there is often NOTHING to do. I’ve already described the lengthy greeting speech which accompanies each meeting, but the process of “greeting” people is a little more complex. Basically you go into someone’s house, wait for them to come from wherever they are and say hi (or the lengthy greeting describe above). You then ask all the local news and see if any interesting conversation pops up. If there is you can spend anywhere from ten minutes to three hours talking with this person. If not, you wait till maybe the third awkward silence, and take your leave, making your way to the next house you intend to greet. The practice, which helps to maintain social relations and kill boredom in an interactive and healthy way, is in and of itself a fairly good thing, but when you have things to do it can get annoying. I assume since they presume they will later have nothing to do, if a Mukonzo has some errand to run, he will stop at every house he knows on the way to completing this errand, while it kills time, it makes getting things done in a timely manner difficult. Similarly the process of getting a hotel, meeting the people I’m meant to interview, and getting dinner, an extremely long drawn out process. What’s more is that like all Ugandans the Bakonzo have the problem that they fail to tell you their full plan (this is possibly because they themselves have no plan, Ugandans are terrible planners, and it is not uncommon to make plans with a Ugandan for the next day, the next day when you approach them and ask if they still want to do whatever it is you had agreed upon the day before, they will look at you as though they had never heard of the idea before and act as though you had randomly thought it up on the spot). To this end, Samuel would often say something like, “let us go check into the lodge”, only minutes later to say “let me first greet this friend”, this would lead to a series of greetings, each time he would assure that this is the last one, which added to my skepticism that I could not trust any info he was telling me. It was getting dark and I was worried that the lodge would run out of rooms, so I finally I insisted that before we do anything else we go and check in.
In a related complaint, Ugandans also continually make decisions affecting you without your consent. This is in part because Ugandans don’t seem to plan, but rather continually make a series of impulse decision (in truth the entire trip to Katwe was the result of Samuels impulse decision), in part because it is understandably easier to simply make decisions in their native tongue and relay the information to me once they have finished, and also partly because I believe that Bantu languages (I base this assumption on Swahili, which I consider the standard bearer of the Bantu language group) don’t use works like would, or please. To ask for ice cream, you do not say “Ningepende ice cream tafadale” which translate to “I would like ice cream please”, you instead say “Ninataka ice cream” or “I want ice cream”. Naturally this method of speaking rubs westerners, who spend a good deal of time figuring out how to delicately state their desires, the wrong way. So, I believe, when a Bantu speaker unaccustomed to English manners of speech asks you if you’d presently like to come visit his grandmother (as my home stay brother Gerald [pronounced somewhere between Gerald and Gerard] requested of me the other night) he will say “Now you will go see my grandmother”. I have found that I often get the impression that I am being ordered to do something. As a knee jerk reaction I am very often tempted to refuse merely on principle (sort of like how Mom always tells me of when I was two and she’d ask if I wanted ice cream and I’d say No, simply because I had just figured out that I could, so she’d have to explain to me that in fact I liked ice cream and so would probably enjoy having some). I’ve had to continually check myself.
This not letting me in on his plans became completely unacceptable, however, when after my morning interview with a Basongora cattle herder, Samuel led me, unannounced to the place we had eaten dinner the night before. Though it was only nine in the morning the place was filled with men who had obviously been drinking for some hours. As they ogled over the Muzungu Samuel had dragged with him, he ordered a pint of the local brew himself, and thought nothing of it when I refused the midmorning drink. Thinking that perhaps this was just another greeting on our way to returning home, I sat and put on a smile and did my little Muzungu dance for the two soldiers and two other intoxicated men (I say muzungu dance because I sometimes can’t help but think, whenever I go anywhere with any Ugandan, that I’m merely being put on display for his/her friends). Finally, after about a half hour, I ask Samuel why we were here. He looked at me as if surprised that I didn’t already know, and said we’re here to eat breakfast, and that it will be out momentarily. After what seemed like an hour, I asked again where breakfast was, and once again received the answer that it would be out any minute. Finally, entirely fed up with having to deal with these people, (one of whom was still trying to talk to me despite the fact that he had become so intoxicated he could no longer speak English, and kept on addressing me in Lutoro the local language) while waiting for the breakfast I didn’t even know we were having and which I frankly wasn’t even that hungry for, I demanded that if breakfast wasn’t out in the next five minutes we were leaving (in retrospect I was perhaps a little harsh, but at this point I was entirely fed up with the whole situation and completely unconcerned with who I would offend). At this Samuel went in and saw to it that breakfast was ready to be taken in another room, away from the drunks, in a matter of minutes. By this point I merely wanted to get home.
At the time I was pretty fed up with Samuel, thinking that he had intentionally deceived me to have his own fun, and more or less had complete disregard for the purpose of the journey, which was to enhance my research. In retrospect, I now realize that I had judged much too harshly. In reality, the only reason Samuel had planned this trip in the first place was to help me in my studies, and I certainly can’t blame him for wanting to say hi to some old friends whom he hadn’t seen in years and likely wouldn’t get the opportunity to again any time soon. Everything else was simply the result of a difference in culture. A Mukonzo will see nothing wrong with socializing along the way to completing the task at hand, they are not accustomed to planning, there is apparently no taboo against morning drinking, (this coupled with crippling poverty is likely why there is such a high rate of alcoholism in Uganda), and I suspect since the village where we had stayed was largely a fishing community that this was the end of the day for many of the people in the bar, since they had been up since three fishing on the lake. Finally if you are going to eat at local restaurants, you must expect your meal to arrive according to the local time. Just the same, it was the first time that I really let culture shock get to me, which I think strange since by all accounts by now I ought to be reconciling my cultural differences to the Ugandan culture and “learning and growing from the experience”. Until now, I’ve found adapting to Ugandan culture, while by no means seamless, surprisingly easy.
Back at home, I have become increasingly fonder of my village-stay mother. On my first visit I interacted with her very little, since she speaks minimal English. Despite the language barrier, I’ve now managed to interact quite a bit by simply hanging around the kitchen in my spare time. She will allow me to try some traditional cooking method, and then laugh as I struggle to do it as well as she can. Because of this interaction, I’ve learned to crush g-nuts to make g-nut stew, peel matoke, catch chickens, mingle flour, and sift maize. Since there is little to do in my down time, anything that fills it up is much appreciated. I’ve also read about halfway through Crime and Punishment, which I find a fairly impressive feet considering it’s been less than a week since I started.
I’ve also interacted quite a bit with the children, in particular the three youngest boys, who are 3, 5 and 9. They absolutely love playing with me, and will often merely walk into my room, and stand there while I read. They speak very little English, but this hasn’t prevented a lucritive exchange of childhood games. So far I’ve taught them the hand slap game, that trick where you cross your hands and then try to move the finger your friend points to, how to make a whistle out of a blade of grass (which given how much wild grass there is I can’t believe they didn’t know before), that whistle where you blow in between you thumbs into your clasped hands, and I’ve tried with little success to teach them how to thumb war. In return they’ve tried to show me how to play marbles, although I admit I still don’t get the finer points of scoring (if anyone knows the rules and can explain them well in English I’d greatly appreciate it).
I’ve even tried to affect the methods of discipline in the house. The other day the youngest one Jolame Busa was acting up so his older sister threatened to smack him, thinking I’d appreciate the opportunity to put the fear of God into the kid, she asked if I’d like to do the honors. Personally I’m not entirely against the occasional spanking for a serious offense, but his testing his sister’s nerves hardly constituted that offense, so instead, I took him and put him in the corner. The whole family laughed assured that my mild punishment would never be effective. At first he just tried to run away, but I quickly caught him and put him back into the corner, this time staying close at hand to ensure he wouldn’t make another break for it, and that no fun was had while in the corner. To the surprise of everyone, myself included, he was surprisingly subdued for the rest of the evening, and even seemed a little embarrassed, or angry (it was sort of hard to tell) with me.
Anyway, its been an interesting week, but now it is approaching the time for my meeting with the cultural leaders of the Basongora, and so I must take my leave. I suspect that internet connection will be sparse for the next two weeks (until my triumphant return to Kampala) as I do not think there will be time to make another trip to Kasese town and so I will likely post more blogs then. Till then I plan on returning to the village, doing some more interviews and then heading to the plans of Kasese district to live with the Basongora cattle keepers for a few days. As always, wish me luck!

Spring Break '08 Northern Uganda Pt 3: The Final Installment

As promised, here is the thrilling conclusion to my three part saga documenting my spring break in war-torn Northern Uganda. We packed our bags and headed north out of the dusty strip of road called Soroti. We left at the crack of dawn since Muna had told us that the road to Lira took a while. What we did not know is that the extra time allotted for the drive had nothing to do with the distance. I remember sitting in the van, engaged in a fairly interesting conversation (though I don’t remember what it was about), when we hit a bumpy patch in the road. These are fairly common in Uganda so I thought little of it, but the bumps made the van rattle too loudly to continue a conversation, so we paused. I remember thinking we would pick it up where we left off just as soon as the road got better. After passing over the bumps the road turned into unkempt dirt. After about a half hour of this, any attempt at conversation had been abandoned and any hope of resuming it was dwindling. For four hours we rode at a grueling 20 mph on this same dirt road. This was a true “now your in Africa” experience, although I have to admit I would have been satisfied, and would have felt I had something to write home about, had this particular cultural growth experience lasted only 20 minutes. The only road between two of the largest cities in Northern Uganda isn’t paved. To say it is not paved, however, is a great understatement, as it is really little more than a dirt trail just wide enough for two cars to pass each other when they meet en route. Once again, however, the beauty of the landscape, and the feeling of being right in the middle of it instead of merely observing it from the safely civilized protection of a paved road, made up for the four hours of noise, bumps, hitting of head on the ceiling of van, and moments when the terrain was so uneven I feared that it would flip sideways.
Along the way we passed tall, majestic forest of pines. Yes, evergreen pines only a couple parallels off the equator. The scene would have been awe inspiring in southern Jersey, or Northern California, but in Northern Uganda it just looked strange. The pines are not native to the region, and were introduced (along with the eucalyptus tree) as a source of lumber. While having a cheap, local source of lumber is great for the economy, it is terrible for the environment. In pine forest the covering is so thick that there is not enough sun below to support the local underbrush. This is disastrous for the ecosystem, and in the long run subsistence farmers will likely have a hard time cultivating enough food to feed themselves if these trees take off. Controlling the spread of these trees would be a hard job for a fully functional government in a developed nation. Imagine the odds they’re up against here in Uganda. Of course the allure of a quick buck (err... shilling) is too great of an incentive to consider these long term consequences. Even in the village in which we stayed in western Uganda, local farmers were proud to show off their newly planted pine and eucalyptus, as the trees would be sure to be great sources of income some day.
After four or so hours, about three miles outside of Lira, paved road resumed. Upon first glance it became obvious that Lira was by far the least developed town we have traveled to so far. The boda bodas so omnipresent in other towns (if you are wondering what a boda boda is, see next paragraph) are replaced by rusty bicycles with a seat on the back which slightly resemble those beach cruiser you see at the shore (except while they also look cheap and antiquated, it’s not because it looks cool). When I say the roads are paved, I mean the pavement only comes out from the center wide enough for one lane on either side. After that, it became choppy and fragmented where the dirt has begun to reclaim the path. One thing I noted, while there are no major university or college in the town, there are book stores everywhere. However, none of them have any books, just school supplies. I have no idea what this means, but I thought it was very curious.
So, I should devote a little bit of time to discuss boda bodas, since they are a pretty big part of Ugandan life. Boda Bodas are hired motorcycles/trained Muzungu killers always seeming to steer directly across the path of where your trying to walk. They are literally everywhere, and on every corner you’re guaranteed to find a small pack gathered around looking bored. One will inevitably look at you, and ask in simple English “we go?” to which the answer is always negative (I wonder how often people actually stop whatever they were doing before and say “well I wasn’t looking for a ride a minute ago, but since you ask why not”). I believe the enormous number of boda bodas is a) evident that there are too many young men in this country who can’t find a better job than waiting around most of the day for someone to want a ride, and b) because of the high traffic density and total lack of traffic rules, which makes them the fastest way around most major cities. We are actually forbidden by our program to use them. However, this is strictly for insurance purposes. Literally everyone on our program has used one at one point or another. At most times we students willingly adhere to SIT’s regulation, traffic here makes riding these guys (who fearlessly weave in and out of jams) pretty dangerous. There are, however, instances when taking a boda boda is simply unavoidable. For example, one of my friends home stay families insist that if she get home before dark, she must take a boda boda from the taxi stage to her home. This is because the road is apparently full of roadside thieves (that’s right they actually still have highway robbery here, so much so that we will not travel in between cities at night) waiting in the bushes so it is simply be too dangerous to walk home. Personally I will only consent to using one of these in extremely extenuating circumstances, and even then only at night, outside of downtown where there is considerably less traffic and for very short distances. Apparently boda boda drivers are generally looked down upon by the greater Ugandan community. In one of the primary schools we visited, among the signs on the wall warning about the dangers of unprotected sex, stay away from sugar daddies etc. was one that read “avoid boda boda life”. Now you may be wondering if boda boda is some strange sounding Luganda word for motorcycle (in truth the Swahili word “piki piki” isn’t that far off). However, the origins of boda boda apparently date back to the time of Idi Amin’s tyrannical reign. Men would get motorcycles and offer to smuggle people out of the country to safety. They would do so by yelling “We go to the boda, the boda!” In Bantu languages words normally end in a vowel, and so they have a pretty hard time with -er words like border. Anyway this mispronunciation (I’m assuming this is a mispronunciation although often Bantu languages will adapt English words but change the ending to better suit the language e.g. Komputa) stuck and while they no longer sneak people past the border, that’s what they are known for.
Anyway, back to Lira, after checking into our hotel, we headed over to the UN-OCHA organization Lira. OCHA is the UN association responsible for humanitarian and developmental initiatives. After a brief talk they took us to another IDP camp. As literally the entire town gathered around us in wonder and amazement, the LC1 (equivalent to the mayor of a very small community, maybe closer to the head of the home owners association or something like that) gave us a talk about the massacre which occurred here a couple years ago. They were very unwilling to talk about it but the official story is that the LRA (the Lord Resistance Army, or the rebel group in the North, I should at some point go into this history but it is exceedingly complicated) came to these peoples home, and told them to remain inside and they would be safe. Once inside fire was put to all the buildings burning many alive. This apparently caused a clash between the UPDF (the army of the government) and the LRA right in the center of this village. While this is the official story, it doesn’t really hold water. For one thing, these are people from the north, and so the LRA who is fighting primarily for equal recognition for these people seems to have little motivation to randomly kill a village of them. This must be taken with a grain of salt of course because the LRA has been terrorizing the people it claims to represent for years, abducting children from local schools and turning the boys into child soldiers and the girls into sex slaves. But in this instance they seem to have stood to gain very little by killing these people. Furthermore there were reports of UPDF soldiers dressing as LRA and telling the people to stay in their homes. Finally the UPDF was right there, and so their presence in the first place is very suspicious. Furthermore, for whatever reason the government clearly doctored the death count. One military spokesperson initially set the body count at 60 people. However, a record keeper working for the government visited the scene several days after (giving the government plenty of time to clean up the mess) and marked the total at no less than 120. Mysteriously, on the way back to Kampala, this spokesperson died in a car crash. The official death toll was left at 120, but folks around those parts, know that the numbers were upwards of three hundred, and are seriously suspicious about the governments roll in the killings.
At any rate in the wake of the massacre, amidst a wave of publicity, President Museveni promised to compensate for the communities loss by building a medical clinic, a school and various other basic amenities. However, once the publicity died down he failed to come through on virtually all of these promises. It is common knowledge that the north feels betrayed by Museveni, who for the past twenty years has failed to protect them from the LRA. Museveni acknowledges that he has no support in the north, and so will not get any votes from the region anyway, and has essentially abandoned them. This is a vicious cycle, I do not know exactly where it started, but for all intents and purposes, the government has no interest in helping the North, the section of Uganda which clearly needs the most help. Anyway, the LC1 ended his speech with a plea to tell his story, and to remind Museveni of their plight and his promise.
Very often, especially in the villages, people will think we must be very important, and have some political leverage, simply because we are white. They feel that even “big people” will listen to us, just because we come from a developed country. Sadly, this is to a large extent true, as I have said before many of the people we have been fortunate enough to rub elbows with here in Uganda (often on an extremely casual basis) are in positions that would make them completely inaccessible in the states. However, to think that we could call up Museveni and in the course of a casual conversation remind him about his promises to a small IDP camp/village in Lira is completely unreasonable. Feeling extremely disheartened and disempowered, we tried to communicate that we were only students and quite unfortunately had no real power to do anything. They seemed unconvinced. At the very least, they said go back and tell people in your country that there are places like this, and such injustices that occur unchecked. So that is exactly what I am doing now. Unfortunately I think it takes actually seeing places like this, where people have no place to go, not enough food to eat, no means of generating income, no government they can trust in to protect them, no security on a day to day basis, and no means of filing grievances, in order to fully understand the severity of the situation in which these people live.
As we left that day, the downtrodden locals all waved goodbye with big smiles, I believe still clinging to some hope that we would be able to enact some change on their behalf. As always the children ran after the van till it was almost out of sight, screaming and waving there hands, but this scene which normally fills us with enthusiasm and joy, didn’t quite fit our mood. We returned to the hotel disturbed and exhausted, but thankful, and perhaps a little ashamed, that these were our biggest causes for grief that day.
The next day, a good night’s sleep renewed our spirits as we set out for the day’s activities. First we stopped at the International Rescue Committee a group which focuses on the displaced people caused by the violence in the North. This was refreshing since it was the first place that we got anything resembling straight answers about the North. I’ve already mentioned the issue of No Information Transferred (NIT), which we have dealt with everywhere in Uganda. Compound this with a fear of talking about certain subjects and gathering any picture of what is really happening at all is next to impossible. Apparently, answering certain questions in the North is unsafe to do. Once we asked the name of a certain village that we had been discussing in the lecture, the lecturer, who had been friendly and amiable up to that point, drew his face tightly, and said very sternly that he was not at liberty to disclose such information. There is a lot of mistrust in the North, since people working for the LRA and people working for the government are considered the enemy, and people are very careful when discussing any issue involving either.
Our program director, Odoche (Donna’s husband), is an Achole, a tribe of Northern Uganda central to the conflict. He now lives in Kenya, but once told us an anecdote about the complexity of relations in the North, and just how uneasy people are about certain subjects. He was visiting relatives in his old village in Kitgum district, and he staying at his brother’s house. He was talking to someone whom he believed was in the LRA (in the north relations are very confusing, soldiers of an extremely brutal group are often intermixed within local communities). However, Odoche knew nothing of this at the time and, simply as a way to start a conversation, asked the man what he did for a living. The man became visibly enraged at this and refused to talk to Odoche for the rest of the night. Apparently because of the danger associated with discussing anything regarding the war, asking such questions in the north is considered extremely poor etiquette. Afterwards, Odoche’s brother approached him and said that he should leave the gathering, go to his room and go to bed. Odoche, having lived in Kenya for the past twenty years, did not know what he had done, and since it was still light out he began to protest. His brother stopped him, and told him that he must simply trust him, it would be much better if he just went to bed.
At any rate, at the International Rescue Center, though we still had to deal with the issue of NIT, we got the straightest answers regarding the extremely complicated matter of the war that we had received anywhere.
From here we visited a small NGO run by a Norwegian couple (the husband was actually a Ugandan who had applied for citizenship in Norway where he had found and married the love of his life). They had returned to Uganda to open a center for disabled children. The center, known as The Fritis Rehabilitation and Disable Center was open physically and mentally handicapped (most of these were physical disabilities caused by poor healthcare and malnutrition that given proper medical attention likely could have been prevented). They also accepted former child soldiers who needed to reintegrate into society.
For those of you who are like I was before coming to Uganda, and understand little about how armies enlist child soldiers, I will briefly explain what little I know about the extremely traumatic and detestable method. Children are first abducted by the LRA, normally from a school that is raided. Next they are told to kill someone very close to them, normally one of their family members. If they do not comply they will be killed themselves. Once they kill a family member they know that they cannot return to their home, since they will be social outcasts. Since they are young children, they have no where to turn but to the LRA. The army then takes them in, and trains them as their own. They are placed under the surveillance of their peers. Children remain there since any defector is to be killed by one of his age bracket. Since they are young and impressionable, the children quickly become desensitized to violence and are easily molded to do what is asked of them (addictive drugs are also often used, since people with an addiction are more easily made dependant and more willing to do what is asked of them in exchange for the drug). Life at war in the bush quickly becomes the only life they know and so they are completely un-acculturated to normal society. At the Fritis Center, they told us how they child soldiers were obviously the most psychologically unstable, but that they were also by far the best disciplined. They stayed amongst themselves, but among themselves naturally chose a leader who ensured that they all followed every command given to them by their therapist. They explained how it was eerie to see children as young as six behave so disciplined. Even eerier is the fact that these six year old have essentially been brainwashed to be killers. At the center they told us a story of a returned child soldier who had not been fully reintegrated into society. He was helping his father farm in the field, when the dad asked him a question about how life in the bush had changed him. The young boy calmly responded that for one thing, he could kill the father right now. Thinking the young boy kidding with him, he began to laugh and resumed work. Without even thinking about it, the boy grabbed a hoe and hacked his own father to death.
While these stories are incredibly gruesome they are important to hear in order to know just how awful this war that has lasted over twenty years, has been. Child soldiers are also help to understand the complexity of the issue, since the war is neighbors killing neighbors, and family killing family. Many people want to bring the LRA out of the bush and bring them to justice, but many people also have children in the LRA. In fact the issue of child soldiers has seriously complicated any attempt at peace talks. There is a strong desire to judge the atrocities committed by the soldiers as harshly as such atrocities deserve, but this war has been going on for so long that nearly all current LRA soldiers were at one time child abductees. So while they are the culprits committing the atrocities, they are also the victims of the atrocities. So how much can you really hold them accountable for their actions?
Anyway back to the center. We got the impression that the two Norwegians who ran the place saw an area in need and have incredibly big hearts. They both abandoned relatively comfortable lives with good jobs in a country with one of the highest standards of living to come help vulnerable people in the poorest, most unstable region of one of the UN’s Ten Least Developed Countries, and in doing so have barely been able to make ends meet. While their heart was absolutely in the right place, it seemed as though the place needed some organizational management. For one thing, I didn’t make a typo two paragraphs up when I said it was The Fritis Rehabilitation and Disable Center that is actually the name on the sign outside the gate, grammatical errors and all. Fortunately, one of my fellow program members is doing her independent research project helping the center to write grants. She figured that if their English skills were actually that limited, applying to English speaking aid organizations for money must be very difficult. This is likely one of the main reason they are having such problems finding funding.
We took a brief tour of the place, culminating in the physical therapy room, where the Norwegian wife, in broken English nervously tried to explain the absolutely state of the art therapy tool that could heal pretty much everything. Apparently is was invented in Sweden and is so new on the market that it hasn’t even made it America or most other of the developed nations yet, she was just fortunate enough to personally know the inventor. We had a hard time understanding what exactly it did, since when she turned it on, it looked like a series of small, extremely bright lights that were shined onto the disabled area. She said it was so effective that the staff would use it to cure back pains and it had fully rehabilitated several children. It pretty much sounded like this machine could do just about anything.
After the tour, we got to have lunch with the children staying at the center. This was incredible. Since the center provided us with a free lunch, we spend our per diem lunch money on buying toys for each of the children. We figured that since they had so little, (many were orphans) and that which they did have was used communally, that they would greatly appreciate some private possession. Bringing the toys out was fantastic, since most of the children spoke very little English. While we couldn’t communicate with words, everyone can speak play. I spent the greater part of the afternoon playing catch with a boy who looked to be about seven, but was actually around fourteen. He had some mental developmental issues, and could not walk so he would scoot around on his knees chasing after the ball with a huge smile on his face. He couldn’t catch for his life, but he could throw like a champ.
There were no former child soldiers staying at the center when we went to visit, so we never got the chance to interact with one, but they said that with the upcoming peace talks they expect to be receiving many in the near future. I sincerely hope my friend’s grant proposal writing helps the center, otherwise I fear they will be unable to accommodate the incoming flux of children.
After this we went to visit CARITAS, the Catholic aid organization. This talk was definitely not the highlight of the trip. We had already had a long day, and were very tired. On top of that the person who gave the talk was a fill-in for the regular and looked extremely nervous, apologizing several time (once when he noticed people were asleep) for not being the best speaker (people close to the front said they could see the poor guy shaking). Unfortunately, our group, though composed of a strangely large number of devoutly religious people, is also composed of extremely liberal people many of whom despise the catholic churches position on condom use, abortion, etc. They showed no mercy as they grilled into our ill prepared speaker on how the church viewed condom use as a preventative measure against HIV/AIDS and so on, asking questions they already knew the answer to so they could grimace disapprovingly when they heard him say it. Worse yet, the man was relatively uninformed and on several occasions gave answers which contradicted current church doctrine. At any rate, I was happy, largely for the speaker’s sake, when the talk was over.
The next day we road back to Kampala, where without our noticing (since we were up in the more arid regions of Uganda), the rainy season had begun. On the way home we saw some baboons along the side of the road and gave them some bananas. This was awesome. They came right up to the van and grabbed bananas out of people’s hands, scoffing them down in one bite. I’m upset that my camera was in the luggage rake because people got some great footage of these guys.
Anyway back in Kampala the rainy season started. Now if you are like me and got most of your info on Africa from the National Geographic channel, you would think the rainy season is that time of year when it pours nonstop for like three months to make up for the rest of the year when it never rains (come on that’s how they show it on NG). This is not true at all. In fact we have only had what you could call a rainy day once on this entire trip. While it does rain more during the rainy season, (which happens twice a year alternating between the two dry seasons) it only rains for about twenty minutes everyday. When it rains, however, it absolutely pours. Fortunately these torrential downpours normally happen at night, so while they wake you up if you have a tin roof like I do, they don’t disturb your day. The rainy season is actually very nice, since it makes the days much cooler. My home stay family will actually bundle up in sweaters before leaving the house in the morning. They are always amazed that I am not cold, but it never actually gets below seventy here. For a muzungu used to the freezing cold winters of the North-Eastern United States, this is perfect weather.
So there you have the conclusion of my first adventure into the Ugandan countryside. My next adventure will be a return to the west to conduct my independent research on the Bakonzo farmers I stayed with earlier and the Basongora pastoralist group. My access to internet (and electricity for that matter) will be ever more limited than it is now, but stay tuned as I will do my best to keep this blog updated. Till next time wish me luck!