ugandan novel #356198561

So I feel quite settled into Uganda now -- almost in the bad way, the way where I don't notice as many exciting things as I used to. And I'm getting a little worn down on fighting off marriage proposals, fighting the taxi driver every morning, being constantly threatened by fatal computer viruses that I contract at the local internet cafe (one of which... succeeded in destroying a lot. Though I did manage to save my documents and a handful of pictures. I'm glad I'm such a psycho facebook picture poster, or else, my life would be over. My music may or may not be gone forever. Oh Uganda. Anyway), and eating rice/potatoes/tomatoes for almost every meal. So last week was hard. And then I had... CRAZY UGANDAN SATURDAY.

Crazy Ugandan Saturday started like any other Saturday, I wake up to my crazyish host brother singing Phillip Bungalotyre (sp.? the first Ugandan singer to announce he was HIV positive?) songs as soon as the sun rises. I eat my oatmeal. Hajat prepares to take me into town for a dress fitting. I had my dress all planned out, it was going to be a classy little number in tie dye. Hajat had other plans. And since she doesn't really speak English, arguing was futile. So... now I have a long African skirt/top combination, with a kind of country-junglish pattern, in green and gold. Maybe I can wear it to football games? I don't even know what the shirt looks like this year.

So what I thought would take about 4 hours took 20 minutes,thanks to Hajat's wonderful efficiency in choosing my dress. Then, since I had told her I was meeting friends in Jinja, she left me. I wasn't meeting friends for 5 more hours though. What followed was a day where I walked around town as slowly as I could and read a Ugandan paper, as slowly as I could. I learned about the massive fires in Ugandan schools (it's a copycat epidemic... 43 schools set on fire, mostly by students this year), how fishermen don't report dead bodies to police so they can use them as bait, and what happens when you challenge the President on the radio (jail). I was also invited to "surf the net" by 3 different Ugandan men, and then one followed me to a restaurant and bought me rice. I didn't really want to eat his blood rice, but I was hungry. Then I went to the AG SHOW.

The Ag Show is basically the county fair of Jinja, and it made me quite nostalgic. They had a lot of beer tents, alternated with tents where you could learn how chickens are slaughtered/how to make sunflower seed oil. My favorite tent was the Ugandan Prisoner's Tent. There, they had fine wood furniture, Ugandan flags, and dining room sets made exclusively by the inmates of Uganda -- and it was all for sale! Woo! There were concerts and dancing too, though it's always kind of awkward to be the one white girl dancing, especially when you have hips like mine, so I had to hold back. The concert ended up being kind of awkward when an Indian Michael Jackson interpretative dancer took the stage as a video of porn played behind him? And he didn't even do Thriller or anything. He lip-synched Speechless.

SPEECHLESS.

So all that improved my bad week.

I've been working a lot. I helped WORI get their first grant (though it was only a partial grant), and we've been working on a brochure and blog. You can see our blog! Leave comments, they'd love that:

http://wori-uganda.blogspot.com

We went to visit one of the communities last week, and the women gave me a huge tour of their entire village. Then, they showered me with gifts: they gave me eggs. Corn. Sugar cane. Bananas. Fresh matooke. Grain (what am I supposed to do with grain?!). And FRESH FISH.

Last night, I participated in a radio program on domestic violence. I reread my old psych papers and stuff from my time in California... but then I showed up, and none of it was in English. They asked me like one question and immediately labled me the "angry dramatic one"? I felt like Hillary Clinton. You know, the strong hated female thing.

At home, the weirdest thing that happened last week was that I realized one of my host brothers was missing? I mentioned it one night and everyone just started laughing. Like hysterically laughing. Uncle Pi was like, "Heli -- heli--- hee hee! Helicopter! Hee!" and no one could manage to articulate anything. Finally Pi goes, "I believe a helicopter landed in the field and took him to America." Now, I obviously knew that couldn't possibly be true -- but I mean, I'm not from this country, I started doubting myself, and it was the only explanation I was given. The next day I was told that my host brother had took to the Nile in search of his parents (although I thought he was an orphan)? The next day I was told he had run away. No one seemed to really think this was a big deal. The kid is 12. Then, the next day, I get home, and he's just chillin' on the porch. "Kofi Annan!" I said (because we call him Kofi Annan, another thing I don't understand). "Welcome back!" And he just smiled. I guess the police brought him home. No one ever explained any thing to me.

Other tidbits:
- I've had some good talks with Uncle Pi. He always talks to me, intellectually and abstractly, about love, his wife, the girl he dated for 2 weeks in Scotland, how he used to be quite the stud ice skater and he'd get "12-14 girls desperate to skate with me a night," how his first secondary school girlfriend broke his heart, etc. I've always enjoyed these conversations. Last night he told me he is currently gathering research for his two books: one about engineering. The other... is about love. Haha. I think I'm a research subject.

- I caved and bought nutella. Nutella + chapati = the answer to life's problems

- It is a cultural taboo to wash someone else's underwear. I was washing my own underwear the other day, and Hajat comes outside and just took over. I tried to stop her, but I guess she was frustrated by my (lack of) speed. She then proceeded to make catcall noises and laugh hysterically at my underwear. Oh, Haj.

- I was attacked by a flying bug the size of my fist the other day. My crazyish host brother threw my shoe at it and it went away. When trying to discern what the damn thing was, I received four different answers:
Crazyish host bro Mbala -- "a mimbadisa!" (no one else has ever heard of this word
Cool host bro Ambrose -- "a grasshopper!"
Uncle Pi -- "I believe it must have been a very large locust."
Little host bro Sam -- "frog!"

SO I was attacked by a flying grasshopper frog locust mimbadisa. And thus, I must leave you. Tomorrow I'm returning to Kampala to see Wyclef! I don't know any of his songs. EXCEPT HIPS DON'T LIE. The time is going quickly! I only have one more true weekend in Jinja, and I know it's going to go really fast, with dinners and end reports and the like! I hope August treats you all well, and I'll see many of you soon :)

love, love, love,

Lisa

nuns, Kampala, and educating the youth of Uganda

Hello my American and some French/Japanese friends...

So I last left you at the fourth of July. I hope you all celebrated in style... here, a whole bunch of ND kids went to the Holy Cross house, where 4 guys are currently living for 16 months and teaching primary school. They treated us to a fabulous time: they had painted an American flag on the wall of their house (partly celebratory, partly because they hate their landlord), created homemade fireworks using hundreds of match heads bought at a local Chinese explosives factory, and even brought in beef from the capital, since foot and mouth disease was running rampantin my district. So I had a hamburger! There were 5 kids from Indiana at the party, so I spent most of the night shouting along to John Mellencamp songs and reminscing about the beauty of the Hoosier state. AND AMERICA. The next day I returned to the real Ugandan world.

So I've had some more exciting encounters. Like the time Hajat dragged me to this convent across the street at 9pm and just left me there... there were about 30 Ugandan girls around my age running around, eating, and just being girls. But she just left me there. I didn't know who these people were or anything. I eventually found out they all want to be nuns? They were really nice. They were visiting from a district in the northwest... and they wanted to take me home with them. They said the boys would marry me so fast, and give me 80,000-100,000 shillings (please note: that is like less than $100. And apparently what I'm worth). They also kept saying randomly awesome things like "LISA! (long pause) Did you know... you resemble my mother?" Later I found out they are actually from a tribe that does not wear clothes. That does not change the friendship I formed with them but it was SO RANDOM. Also, their tribe believes all the cattle in the world belong to them... and they steal random cattle and shoot people who threaten the cows. And when you want to marry one of their women, the man must fight the women. Like viciously and
physically. If he loses, he cannot marry her. Consequently, these women are some of the tallest and strongest in Uganda. All of these things... just made these seemingly simple, nice nun girls SO COOL. So that was random.

Then I went to Kampala to stay with Hajat's youngest daughter, Joan. IT WAS A DIFFERENT WORLD. Actually it kind of freaked me out. She rolled up in a Hummer, took me to her house, and I immediately felt underdressed, because everyone had cute neon colored matching outfits, and I was covered in village mud and hadn't washed my feet in about 3 weeks. She spent a lot of the weekend watching E! and Extreme Home Makeover on her satellite TV. I just couldn't figure out how she was a product of the family I am currently living with...the modest one, with chickens and a toilet in the back. It was bizarre. They took me out though. I karaoked Toto's Africa. In Africa. Ha! I realize that just about every tourist has probably had that same brilliant idea, but on that night, I was the only white person there, and I brought down the house.

I've been doing a lot of work lately, and finished my first grant proposal. That's not a good story so I'll just move on. I've gotten to visit more of the communities WORI works with, which is always fun. We went to a school and I was forced to teach them about sex. If you've never said words like "vagina" and "anal sex" in front of 200 15-16 year olds, you have not lived. I didn't think I'd be one to get embarrassed... but yeah. It was especially great because it was a Catholic school and we'd been told to teach abstinence only. So the kids kept fishing for ways to get us to say condoms. Ahhh children! And I rowed out to the island community too. We had to row there. Like on a canoe. It took an hour. Everyone thought it was hilarious that I knew how to paddle a boat? The island was actually kind of depressing though. Since it is so hard to get to, I guess the teachers never even show up, and there is no secondary school. So after primary school, girls basically get married, and boys become fishermen. It was crazy. I ate fish there and got sick. That sucked. But it happens.

I just got back from our FSD retreat at Sipi Falls... they're these gorgeous waterfalls up in the mountains. We went on a hike, and I just kept having flashes of Predator, Jurassic Park, and Congo (the movie)... and then being like ahhhh I'm on an African safari! Except it was just a hike. The only wild animals I see are chickens, pigs, cattle, and random goats. Uganda is one large free range farm. I spent a lot of the retreat being amused by Joel, our Ugandan program coordinator who looks like a big scary man but speaks like a little boy. I wish I had a little dwarf that could just follow him around and stenograph the things he said. Kind of like that old lady on Chapelle's show, maybe. He always ends up saying things that are perfectly normal in Ugandan english but entirely creepy to Americans, but he's harmless, so it's hilarious. Like, when he found out he was assigned on the bed next to me, he said, "Oh, Lisa. I will watch you sleep all through the night!" All I do is laugh in this country.

And home is still just as crazy, with my crazy, rambling-ish brother currently on the kick that one of my adopted brothers is the devil and he does not trust his "plastic smile", Margreta the one who calls me "maaja" occasionally just opening the shutters of my window to deliver a lengthy morning greeting, and Hajat has tried to elevate my cooking skills to skinning chickens with her in the mornings. I watch the best show every made, The Gardener's Daughter -- an English dubbed Mexican soap opera -- every Monday and Tuesday with the fam, I read War and Peace, and I keep company with the 2 pet lizards who have been chilling in my room. I'm excited because over the next few weeks, I'm planning to go rafting on the Nile, attend a session on Ugandan witchcraft, be on Ugandan radio for a panel discussion of domestic violence, and see Wyclef Jean in Kampala! Woo! I still have a lot of work to do too. I can't believe I'm over halfway done... in one month, I'll be home! Ahh!

Peace, love, and Ugandan handshakes,

Lisa!

i'm still in uganda.

So everything I post now is drawn from mass emails. I hope if you are reading this and do not receive the mass emails, you are not offended. Don't be offended.



UGANDA: the latest developments

1. My job! I'll go more into detail. I was going to help with the poultry farm
thing... but it turns out that FSD's founder refuses to fund anything with
animals. Because she's a vegetarian. I mean, I guess I respect that... but
does vegetarianism really have to get in the way of helping poor African women
make a living? Honestly vegetarians. Honestly. So my project has shifted.
I'm going to be helping the organization organize their projects to try and get
more funding. I had thought it seemed like an okay idea, but as I've gotten
started... it's turned into a really good idea. They have no documentation
about anything they've already done. So I'll be running around, interviewing
people and taking pictures about past projects, helping them make
brochures,contact donors and grants, maybe make a blog. I also have been
helping teach some of their lessons, and I made a lesson plan for high
schoolers. I really like the people I work with though... it's a really small
organization, one room, but we take music breaks throughout the day. This
country is obsessed with Westlife. I don't understand it. I thought that band
broke up like 7 years ago. I do feel really fortunate with my work because some
other organizations have had really high expectations of the interns. Like my
friend Jon... on his first day, he was given a paper that addressed him as
"YOUR HONOR JONATHAN" and asked for his help in "addressing the problem of
poverty in Uganda, alleviating homelessess, and tapping into some American
celebrities to come visit the organization" among other things.

2. The other day I had the opportunity to go to a wedding. Just when I started
to feel like I was being given special treatment... which was awesome, because
I'm often awkwardly given way too many privelages here... I was invited to come
eat with the bride and groom. Then the tribal dancers came out. And had me
come dance with them. And then they put they native costume of the Buganda
kingdom, which is basically a tailfeather, on me. This was how I earned
respect in Uganda. I ended the night by being invited to the stage, as the
girl from the USA! and asked to give a speech. I was careful to mention my
love for Uganda and Obama. They love him here.

3. Some quotes from my host family:
"I would like to get into a rap battle with Fat Joe." -- Sam, my 12 year old
host brother

"You must pick out your clothing carefully, yes. You see, some color
combinations can be quite repulsive to the viewer." -- my host uncle

"I have watched the beauty pageants for many years, and I have concluded that
yes, a fat woman will never win the Miss America." -- my host uncle

"I took into account the high cost of living in America -- washing machines,
vehicles, groceries -- and I decided that no, $20,000 a month was not a
sufficient salary. So I have stayed in Uganda, unless they offer me more." --
my host uncle

"Is that Michael Jackson?" -- my host brother, watching a music video of Michael
Bolton

"I worked for a car company, back in 1984, that was when computers were
invented, I do research each day, about authors, and books, and Shakespeare is
often called England's greatest author." -- my crazy housemate Geoffry David
who I think is partially a genius

"Your face... very smart!" -- Hajat Sarah

"But I thought every American family had 3 guns? One they keep in the drawer in
the kitchen, one they keep under their pillow, and one in the closet in the
hall? That is how it always is in movies!" -- my supervisor at work

"These Amish cannot possibly exist!" -- my supervisor after I told her about
Amish people

4. So I've had some bad days, where I've desperately been missing French cheese
especially... for some reason. And there are days when I drop my entire fresh
roll of toilet paper down the latrine, days when we have matooke for dinner...
again, days when it takes someone 10 minutes to read one sentence because they
have so many dramatic pauses (example: a ugandan would read that phrase as "it
takes. someone. 10 minutes. to read... the what? (long pause) the... one
sentence. because they have so many... of... the what? (long dramatic
pause)... the dramatic pauses). But then there are days when I take my bucket
bath and the sun is rising right in front of me, and nights where I play soccer
outside with the kids, and days when I get home and my family treats me like
I've been gone for 8 years and not 8 hours. I hope all of you are having
wonderful summers, and I love you all :) Let me know how things are. My
nomadic ways have caused me to miss people a lot!

ciao
sula bulungi!
-- lisa