The Ugandan Experience

Hello blog readers! How are we all? Well I have had some fun experiences since my last entry, which have given me a taste of real Ugandan life. On both Wednesday and Thursday night, the volunteers were invited to the homes of local families for dinner which was great fun. Although both houses were modest, they were fairly "luxurious" in Mbale terms in that they have electricity, furnishings and running water. Both meals were delicious and we had some really good conversations about Ugandan politics, marriage norms, the history of Jenga and people converting from Islam to Christianity and the difference it has made in their lives. On Friday night, I had organised to have dinner at my friend Natasha's place, so I made a chocolate cake, met her after work and we shared a picky to Namakwekwe where she lives (about 10 minutes out of town). It felt kind of strange walking through a local "suburb" with a local, being the only white person around! Got a few stares and some excited kids shouting out "mzungu!", but hey, I'm pretty used to that now.

We arrived at Natasha's place - I can't really say house, because it's literally one room - and was quite humbled by what I saw. She rents a single room in a line of about four room, only about 3 or 4 metres squared. She has a bed, a couch, two armchairs and a coffee table...and that's really all the room can fit. All her clothes are piled up in one corner of the room atop a small shelving unit and another shelving unit behind the door holds all her cooking equipment. There is just enough room to walk around the coffee table and a thin sheet seperates the bed from the "lounge room/kitchen". There is one window next to the front door and the roof is made of tin. There is no electricity, she shares a pit latrine and "shower" (small room where you pour water on yourself from a bucket or jerry can) with her neighbours and water comes from a shared source somewhere in the area. She has to boil it before it's safe to drink.

Natasha had her younger brother Victor staying with her and he was very excited to have a strange mzungu over for dinner! We did the typical Ugandan thing and started with cake and milky African tea (I think I might adopt the dessert first approach back home!) and Victor devoured two rather large slices of cake with his mug of tea while Natasha peeled the matooke (like a savoury planteen/banana) and got her small charcoal stove going. There was nothing but a single candle to provide light for us. I watched as Natasha chopped up tomatoes & onions and boiled the matooke for our dinner. Here is a girl roughly my age, with a fairly decent job, living in conditions that would be considered unliveable back home in Australia. I realised how easy I have it back home, I earn a decent wage, drive my car home after work while listening to my ipod, get home, turn on the lights, watch some tv, heat some food in the microwave or order some Thai take-away, and the rest of the night is mine to enjoy, always ending with a comfy bed and the promise of a hot shower in the morning. Natasha comes home after earning practically nothing, either has to walk for ages to get home or use a large chunk of her daily earnings to hire a picky, arrives home to a dark, dingy room, has to cook in that same room for herself and her brother, wash all her dishes in water one of them had to carry back from the tap/borehole, walk through the pouring rain to use the stinky pit latrine in the dark, then goes to sleep being bitten by mosquitos (possibly carrying malaria) because she doesn't have anything in the walls from which to hang her mosquito net. And yet she doesn't complain. This is her life.

I have been quite humbled here at how joyful people are when they not only have very little, but are often facing really hard circumstances ie: their husband has run off with all their money, or their child is sick with malaria. We love to whinge in the west. If something isn't exactly the way we wanted it or if something causes us the slightest bit of discomfort, we start stomping our feet and having a little tantrum or pity party. We have a meltdown if the internet isn't working. We go mental if our car breaks down. We have a whinge if we had to wait 15 minutes in the queue at the post office. Nothing ever goes our way. Poor us. Yet, these people who actually ARE poor, are walking around with smiles on their faces, gratitude in their hearts and just get on with life and make the most of what they do have. I think we can learn a lot from the "third world". Maybe they're not so backward after all?

Anyway, back to my dinner at Natasha's. So we eat matooke in ground nut sauce (very much like peanuts) which is quite delicious, I chat with Natasha and Victor and speak to their parents on the phone (EVERYONE has a mobile phone over here!) and eventually get ready to leave. About this time, it starts raining. Ok, no big deal, we will just find a picky that Natasha knows (by now it's dark and not particularly safe to be jumping on a motorbike with a strange man) and I might get a little bit wet on the way home. Natasha tries to call a guy she knows but his phone is off. Okay, we will just wander down and find someone that someone else knows. It starts pouring. Oh dear. So now, even if I could find a picky willing to ride around the heavy downpour, I'm not sure that I want to risk my life zooming around in the dark on slippery roads. So I wait for the rain to stop. It doesn't. Natasha says I can stay the night, so I text Jo just to let her know that I won't be coming home and that I'm safe. Natasha puts clean sheets on the bed which she makes me sleep in while she takes the couch (Victor had left by this time to stay with their sister round the corner) and we go to bed early with the sound of heavy rain falling on a tin roof. I actually really like that sound. The bed is comfy and I fall asleep quickly and all is well....until I wake up maybe an hour or two later itching all over. I feel like I have been eaten alive. I spend the next few hours until day break fighting mosquitos buzzing around my head and praying to God that I don't get malaria. It was not a fun night! Finally the morning arrives and we get up around 6am. Natasha puts water on the stove for tea and Victor returns. I give him some money to buy some bread and he goes off to the local shop and returns with a loaf. We drink black tea with lemon grass stalks in it and eat bread with honey. Natasha goes to bathe and returns in a towel and picks out her clothes to wear to work that day. She works Monday to Saturday, and Sundays are for hand washing her clothes, cleaning and going to church. There's not really such a thing as leisure time for a lot of people in Mbale. I say goodbye to Victor and their sister Violet who I have also met, and Natasha and I take a picky to town where she jumps off at her MTN counter and I return home around 8am, exhausted.

Oh funny story, I get to the gate and I have my hand on the inside, trying to turn the key in the padlock, when Korah (our fast-growing German Shepard puppy) jumps up, scratching my hand with her paws. I instinctively retract my hand, leaving the keys hanging in the padlock. You can imagine what happens next. Korah jumps up to the lock, pulling the keys out and on the ground on the inside of the gate. Great. My two housemates are bound to be fast sleep, but I text one of them to explain my situation. I wait for her to come and open the gate. She doesn't come. So I unclip my laptop bag strap, shove a stick in the end hook and attempt to do a Macgyver type move where I hook the keys onto the stick and lift them safely through the hole. It doesn't work so well. I am still struggling pathetically when Jo arrives to rescue me. Turns out her phone was on silent, so there was a bit of a delay in her getting my message.  That same day, I made fresh bread, risotto, shepherd's pie, tuna pasta bake, green beans, carrots, corn and brownies for 11 people. Oh and visited the kids Bible club in Namatala to see them get their free school supplies. Phew!

The next day (Sunday) I visitied Sam's local church in Namabasa, near where the storehouse is that I took photos of. His church had a small to medium sized congregation but a big vibe! I was welcomed very warmly and was very blessed by the songs the choir performed and our time of worship together. As a mzungu visitor, I was given a Mountain Dew at the end of the service. Mmm. Afterwards, we (Sam, his wife Deborah and their 3-year old son, Caleb) went back to their house for a "snack" before our late main meal, which turned out to be a main meal in itself. Africans love to over-feed visitors it seems! So I spend the day chatting with Sam & Deborah, playing his guitar, meeting his mum and the millions of children she's looking after in the next plot of land over and enjoying the beauty of village life. Namabasa is far more rural than the other towns I have been to so far. It was really nice to see some open spaces and see large gardens next to all the houses and kids running around safely. Although the houses there don't have electricity or running water, there is something undeniably homely about the place and I actually thought for the first time "I could live here". I am actually toying with the idea of living with locals for the last 3 weeks I will be in Uganda, but I need to find the right fit. It's one thing to work with Ugandans, but it's another to actually live like a Ugandan (to the best of my ability!). I will let you know when I have organised something concrete.

So I left my power adaptor at home today and only have a few minutes of battery time left, so I'm going to have to leave it there. (Did I just hear a sigh of relief?) Thanks again for reading and I will try and take some more pics over the coming weeks cause I have been very slack with updating you visually. Until then,

Louise :)