When I got home, everything was really familiar, but not normal. I would make a phone call to say, AT&T and try to greet everyone that answered realizing later that I should just get to the point. Sounds silly, but I came home pretty socially awkward. It's amazing how many social ettiquettes there are in every new place you go.
Well, I recovered quick and now life feels pretty normal. Since home, I've taken the GRE, applied to UW-Milwaukee and enrolled in 2 Anatomy and Physiology classes and a statistics class for the summer, organized a sublet in Milwaukee and ran errands. Lots of errands. I'm applying to a master's program to become a Nurse Midwife. Not sure if I'll get in, but I'm hopeful.
Tomorrow I leave for Costa Rica to accompany my mom down to her hand clinic Nicaragua trip. I won't actually attend the hand clinic, but I'll do a couple days of traveling with her from Costa Rica to Nicaragua. We're planning on stopping at 2 cities on the way and then I'll fly home and she'll hold her clinic in a few hospitals in Managua. Quick trip, but it'll be fun for the last week before school.
I've been really lucky since I've been home; I've been able to see a lot of my family and friends. They've been so supportive and I've loved hearing about everything that's happened since I left. Hope all is well in everyone else's lives. Can't wait to see and hear from everyone.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Coming Home.
So I’ve been dreaming about coming home every since I got on the plane to come here. I got here and loved my life, but couldn’t help but miss my family and friends. I’ve spent just over 2 years here and loved many (not all) moments here. Uganda is a wonderful and beautiful place with incredible people. It’s a very different culture from my own…hard to get ‘used’ to, but different all the same (not better, not worse).
I’ll be home early (according to my peace corps agreement) for Jessin’s wedding! I can’t wait. All I could think about for the last couple months was getting home. I even made a paper chain (like young children do counting down the days to Christmas) to the date I get home. All I could think about was the excitement to see America, eat Chipolte burritos and anything cold (icecream, especially).
Then I got my plane ticket itinerary. Now I’m all sentimental. It’s not like leaving college or high school. Colleagues have email addresses and consistent phone numbers. They have parent’s home postal addresses. Here…phone numbers, for who can afford phones, change every 6 months for some reason and a whole school can’t even seem to afford a post office box. Teachers get transferred. People move. Once I leave this place, my Ugandan life is over with the exception of the other peace corps people in my group. That’s a weird feeling. I have about 10 days left and how am I supposed to say goodbye to everyone that’s been in my life for the past 2 years. I’m excited to come home, but I can never have this back.
I’ll just name a few things I love about this place.
1. My house: It’s a love-hate relationship. I get tired of birds during the day and bats (pooping everywhere and scaring me), spiders (making webs to run into) and cockroaches during the night. But I love sitting out on my porch staring into the school garden of matokkee (plantain) trees. Cooking on my sigiri (charcoal stove). Sitting on my stool. Sleeping in my bed under my mosquito net (creating a barrier between me and the night time critters). Silence (with the exception of the crickets living in my door frame).
2. My pit latrine: I know I’ve given it a hard time in the past, but when feeling sick and other people are around, being as far from the house as possible is a blessing.
3. My boyfriend: Ahh, I love him. He’s probably what got me through this, but I’m taking him home with me.
4. The people: No one can dispute the fact that Ugandans are accommodating and helpful whenever you need someone. I’ve never known a Ugandan to turn any request for help down, even in Kampala (where I often need someone to walk me to the taxi park despite how many times I’ve been there).
5. The culture: African time is quite the opposite of American time. Well, not just quite…exactly the opposite. That never got easier. But they have a culture that they are very proud of that and many parts of it took me a long time to understand but the longer I spend here, the more appreciation I have for it. The ‘time’ one is really really hard though.
I complain about ‘time,’ but I must point out that all the things I hate are also somehow loved and many of the things I love are also somehow hated.
This experience is one I could never regret or forget. I love the time I’ve spent here, but I’ve realized that I’ve learned as much as I can in my two years. I’ve loved the people and the culture as much as I could. It will be missed and I’m sure I will come home as a socially abnormal human being since I’ve become used to social and culture norms here. I’m sure there is even a difference in my language. They (as in peace corps) say that going home is the hardest part of the whole cultural transition. It’s an odd concept to get used to…we can adapt to an entirely new culture easier than adapting back to our own. I’m nervous.
Well, I fly home April 9th so I guess I’ll be home next Friday. I’m excited, but it freaks me out.
I’ll be home early (according to my peace corps agreement) for Jessin’s wedding! I can’t wait. All I could think about for the last couple months was getting home. I even made a paper chain (like young children do counting down the days to Christmas) to the date I get home. All I could think about was the excitement to see America, eat Chipolte burritos and anything cold (icecream, especially).
Then I got my plane ticket itinerary. Now I’m all sentimental. It’s not like leaving college or high school. Colleagues have email addresses and consistent phone numbers. They have parent’s home postal addresses. Here…phone numbers, for who can afford phones, change every 6 months for some reason and a whole school can’t even seem to afford a post office box. Teachers get transferred. People move. Once I leave this place, my Ugandan life is over with the exception of the other peace corps people in my group. That’s a weird feeling. I have about 10 days left and how am I supposed to say goodbye to everyone that’s been in my life for the past 2 years. I’m excited to come home, but I can never have this back.
I’ll just name a few things I love about this place.
1. My house: It’s a love-hate relationship. I get tired of birds during the day and bats (pooping everywhere and scaring me), spiders (making webs to run into) and cockroaches during the night. But I love sitting out on my porch staring into the school garden of matokkee (plantain) trees. Cooking on my sigiri (charcoal stove). Sitting on my stool. Sleeping in my bed under my mosquito net (creating a barrier between me and the night time critters). Silence (with the exception of the crickets living in my door frame).
2. My pit latrine: I know I’ve given it a hard time in the past, but when feeling sick and other people are around, being as far from the house as possible is a blessing.
3. My boyfriend: Ahh, I love him. He’s probably what got me through this, but I’m taking him home with me.
4. The people: No one can dispute the fact that Ugandans are accommodating and helpful whenever you need someone. I’ve never known a Ugandan to turn any request for help down, even in Kampala (where I often need someone to walk me to the taxi park despite how many times I’ve been there).
5. The culture: African time is quite the opposite of American time. Well, not just quite…exactly the opposite. That never got easier. But they have a culture that they are very proud of that and many parts of it took me a long time to understand but the longer I spend here, the more appreciation I have for it. The ‘time’ one is really really hard though.
I complain about ‘time,’ but I must point out that all the things I hate are also somehow loved and many of the things I love are also somehow hated.
This experience is one I could never regret or forget. I love the time I’ve spent here, but I’ve realized that I’ve learned as much as I can in my two years. I’ve loved the people and the culture as much as I could. It will be missed and I’m sure I will come home as a socially abnormal human being since I’ve become used to social and culture norms here. I’m sure there is even a difference in my language. They (as in peace corps) say that going home is the hardest part of the whole cultural transition. It’s an odd concept to get used to…we can adapt to an entirely new culture easier than adapting back to our own. I’m nervous.
Well, I fly home April 9th so I guess I’ll be home next Friday. I’m excited, but it freaks me out.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Hitchhiking, Portuguese Church Ladies and Rabbit Meat: 24 Hours in Mozambique [Part 4]
Part 4
While our coelho was being butchered and prepared we sipped on our fresh mango juice and tried to explain a little about ourselves. We found an atlas on their shelf and showed her where we each lived and worked in Uganda and also where we came from in the States. Then we flipped to a map of Portugal. One of them was from outside of Porto in the north and the other was from the capital, Lisbon. The driver and the one currently tending to us was named Mila, while the other, the butcher and cook, was named Conceicao. They each worked for a Portuguese Catholic missionary movement called “Missionario Boa Nova”, or, the “Missionaries of the Good News”. Mila had been in Mozambique for 10 years and had also previously served for several years in Brazil. Conceicao had been in Mozambique for 4 years and was soon to be returning to Portugal.
With the basic information taken care of and our reserve of Portuguese pretty well exhausted the inevitable awkward silence settled in. We quietly poured more juice, sipped on it slowly, glanced back and forth and casually smiled at each other, and intermittently let out a sigh of vague satisfaction. After a few minutes of this Mila got up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a video camera in one hand and big smile on her face. She slowly untangled the cords and plugged the camera into the TV. With a remote in one hand she quickly scanned through some images of herself and Conceicao and what appeared to be another younger missionary what had been there some time ago. As the images crossed the screen she continued to talk and very likely tried explaining what we were seeing, apparently either oblivious to us not understanding her or simply indifferent. Finally she slowed the images down to real time and her face lit up as she watched the screen, letting out an occasional giggle. As the images on the TV first slowed my mind must still have been lingering in the travel fog of that day and of the preceding week. I couldn’t quite put together what I was looking at. It didn’t help that the video was a little disorienting with the camera pointed at the floor and no recognizable points of reference on the screen. What appeared to be two creatures were darting in and out of the frame, grappling with each other from time to time, forming an amorphous mass of hair when they collided. Mila was absolutely no help. She just stood a few feet from the TV, silently watching the action with a remote in one hand. I tried squinting and cocking my head and leaning forward. Was that a… cat? Really? Yes. Fair enough. Lots of people have videos of their cats. But what was that other animal? Was it… a monkey? It was. It was a monkey. In one instant of recognition of what we were looking at our evening and indeed our entire afternoon-long interaction with our new friends of the Missionario Boa Nova had descended into the absurd and the surreal. For 20 minutes that evening Amy and I sat silent and motionless in a room in the middle of northern Mozambique and watched a home video of a cat and a monkey wrestling. Life is wonderful.
We were eventually shaken out of our wrestling-cat-and-monkey-induced stupor when Conceicao came in from the back with dinner ready. One look at the serving plate was all it took to at long last translate “coelho”. Rabbit. Coelho means rabbit. Paulo Rabbit. Brer Coelho and the Tar Baby. Of course. This was infinitely better and more reassuring–though probably less interesting–than eating a bat or hyrax. And, more importantly, it was delicious. I had never eaten rabbit before—tender and kind of rubbery, just as you’d expect. We also had some apples, fresh salad and homemade bread. It was amazing to have a homemade meal for the first time in a long while. We were offered to watch more videos with Mila after dinner. I suspected it’d be more mesmerizing exotic-animal-on-domestic-animal wrestling but it turned out they had a fairly extensive collection of Portuguese-dubbed Disney cartoons. Instead, we declined and decided to go to sleep. In a way I think we both wanted to stay up to see what else might possibly happen with these Portuguese Mary Poppins’, full of mischief and surprises. But we also wanted to preserve our already immaculately weird and wonderful day. We were also completely exhausted.
The next morning as soon as we emerged from our room we were ushered to the kitchen table for breakfast. This time there was nothing mysterious about our meal – fresh bread again and delicious instant cappuccino. Afterwards we were eagerly given a tour of their house and compound. At the opposite end of the hallway with our bedroom Mila very proudly showed us their private chapel. Then, without any hesitation, she took us out the back door and into the previously and inexplicably off-limits backyard. She walked us around to see a separate kitchen, an outdoor brick oven for making bread, a garage-closet filled with batteries spitting out cords and plugs and wires leading to a series of solar panels on their roof, and, lastly, a collection of about 30 cages full of soft, sleeping, and red-eyed (and delicious) rabbits. The rest of the yard was like the secret garden, filled with untended plants and flowers and vines overtaking the house and outer walls. Our tour of the rear was admittedly anti-climactic and bewildering considering the efforts Mila and Conceicao had taken the night before to dissuade us from getting back there. Who truly knows the backyard secrets and habits of Portuguese church ladies? Certainly neither of us is any wiser after our stay.
Back in the house we collected our bags and started for the door when all four of us simultaneously scrambled for our cameras. We gathered around the “Missionario Boa Nova” sign in their sitting room and put our cameras on automatic, Amy and I looking like some sort of fairy tale American giants visiting the land of 5:8 scale Portuguese women.
Conceicao gave out two last hugs for us and we finally hopped into the car with Mila who was taking us to the next junction and a few kilometers down the road where we’d be able to catch a bus to Nampula. It felt good at last to have some vague idea of what was happening.
As we approached the intersection to be dropped off steam started rising from out of the hood of the car. After stopping in the middle of the median in the intersection Mila popped the hood and we noticed the tube from the radiator had become disconnected. Not knowing anything about cars I naturally offered to help. Mila was completely serene, declined my offer and just shrugged and walked away. Not only does she pick up strangers on the side of the road, cook rabbit for them and show weird videos, Mila also had apparently attained some kind of otherworldly Zen tranquility in the face of uncooperative and faulty auto mechanics.
We walked away from the hissing Kia and were immediately swarmed by chapa drivers offering to take us to Nampula. Mila stood her ground, though, and refused to put us on a chapa; instead, she was set on getting us on a safer and more efficient bus. As we were walking away from the car a number of terse but still playful words were quickly exchanged between Mila and the flock of chapa drivers before things suddenly hushed and other bystanders started hooting and whistling and laughing. I don’t know what she said but the chapa drivers all smiled and walked away, not saying anything at all to us the rest of our time there, only periodically giving us a sideways look and a smirk. It was like we were on a middle school playground and Mila was the girl who just schooled all the trash-talking boys on the basketball court and the whole school was around to see it.
We all sat down on the curb waiting for the next bus to arrive, Mila rightfully staking us out as her own and not trusting us to be able to take care of ourselves. Amy and Mila sat close to one another, while I was off to one side. We had long ago worn out our efforts with speaking Portuguese but Mila paid no mind. For 10 minutes or more she continued chattering uninterrupted to Amy without any acknowledgement what she understood a single word. Amy dutifully continued to smile and nod her head during all of the pauses. Finally a bus arrived. Hugs and kisses went all around and in one last gesture of infinite and unexpected generosity Mila paid for both of our tickets. Amy and I were both too dazed to offer any resistance. Mila pushed us onto the bus and as we were climbing the steps and looked back we saw her swallowed up in the sea of Mozambicans jockeying for position to enter or leave the bus or hawking their fresh fruit or bread to its passengers.
THE END
While our coelho was being butchered and prepared we sipped on our fresh mango juice and tried to explain a little about ourselves. We found an atlas on their shelf and showed her where we each lived and worked in Uganda and also where we came from in the States. Then we flipped to a map of Portugal. One of them was from outside of Porto in the north and the other was from the capital, Lisbon. The driver and the one currently tending to us was named Mila, while the other, the butcher and cook, was named Conceicao. They each worked for a Portuguese Catholic missionary movement called “Missionario Boa Nova”, or, the “Missionaries of the Good News”. Mila had been in Mozambique for 10 years and had also previously served for several years in Brazil. Conceicao had been in Mozambique for 4 years and was soon to be returning to Portugal.
With the basic information taken care of and our reserve of Portuguese pretty well exhausted the inevitable awkward silence settled in. We quietly poured more juice, sipped on it slowly, glanced back and forth and casually smiled at each other, and intermittently let out a sigh of vague satisfaction. After a few minutes of this Mila got up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a video camera in one hand and big smile on her face. She slowly untangled the cords and plugged the camera into the TV. With a remote in one hand she quickly scanned through some images of herself and Conceicao and what appeared to be another younger missionary what had been there some time ago. As the images crossed the screen she continued to talk and very likely tried explaining what we were seeing, apparently either oblivious to us not understanding her or simply indifferent. Finally she slowed the images down to real time and her face lit up as she watched the screen, letting out an occasional giggle. As the images on the TV first slowed my mind must still have been lingering in the travel fog of that day and of the preceding week. I couldn’t quite put together what I was looking at. It didn’t help that the video was a little disorienting with the camera pointed at the floor and no recognizable points of reference on the screen. What appeared to be two creatures were darting in and out of the frame, grappling with each other from time to time, forming an amorphous mass of hair when they collided. Mila was absolutely no help. She just stood a few feet from the TV, silently watching the action with a remote in one hand. I tried squinting and cocking my head and leaning forward. Was that a… cat? Really? Yes. Fair enough. Lots of people have videos of their cats. But what was that other animal? Was it… a monkey? It was. It was a monkey. In one instant of recognition of what we were looking at our evening and indeed our entire afternoon-long interaction with our new friends of the Missionario Boa Nova had descended into the absurd and the surreal. For 20 minutes that evening Amy and I sat silent and motionless in a room in the middle of northern Mozambique and watched a home video of a cat and a monkey wrestling. Life is wonderful.
We were eventually shaken out of our wrestling-cat-and-monkey-induced stupor when Conceicao came in from the back with dinner ready. One look at the serving plate was all it took to at long last translate “coelho”. Rabbit. Coelho means rabbit. Paulo Rabbit. Brer Coelho and the Tar Baby. Of course. This was infinitely better and more reassuring–though probably less interesting–than eating a bat or hyrax. And, more importantly, it was delicious. I had never eaten rabbit before—tender and kind of rubbery, just as you’d expect. We also had some apples, fresh salad and homemade bread. It was amazing to have a homemade meal for the first time in a long while. We were offered to watch more videos with Mila after dinner. I suspected it’d be more mesmerizing exotic-animal-on-domestic-animal wrestling but it turned out they had a fairly extensive collection of Portuguese-dubbed Disney cartoons. Instead, we declined and decided to go to sleep. In a way I think we both wanted to stay up to see what else might possibly happen with these Portuguese Mary Poppins’, full of mischief and surprises. But we also wanted to preserve our already immaculately weird and wonderful day. We were also completely exhausted.
The next morning as soon as we emerged from our room we were ushered to the kitchen table for breakfast. This time there was nothing mysterious about our meal – fresh bread again and delicious instant cappuccino. Afterwards we were eagerly given a tour of their house and compound. At the opposite end of the hallway with our bedroom Mila very proudly showed us their private chapel. Then, without any hesitation, she took us out the back door and into the previously and inexplicably off-limits backyard. She walked us around to see a separate kitchen, an outdoor brick oven for making bread, a garage-closet filled with batteries spitting out cords and plugs and wires leading to a series of solar panels on their roof, and, lastly, a collection of about 30 cages full of soft, sleeping, and red-eyed (and delicious) rabbits. The rest of the yard was like the secret garden, filled with untended plants and flowers and vines overtaking the house and outer walls. Our tour of the rear was admittedly anti-climactic and bewildering considering the efforts Mila and Conceicao had taken the night before to dissuade us from getting back there. Who truly knows the backyard secrets and habits of Portuguese church ladies? Certainly neither of us is any wiser after our stay.
Back in the house we collected our bags and started for the door when all four of us simultaneously scrambled for our cameras. We gathered around the “Missionario Boa Nova” sign in their sitting room and put our cameras on automatic, Amy and I looking like some sort of fairy tale American giants visiting the land of 5:8 scale Portuguese women.
Conceicao gave out two last hugs for us and we finally hopped into the car with Mila who was taking us to the next junction and a few kilometers down the road where we’d be able to catch a bus to Nampula. It felt good at last to have some vague idea of what was happening.
As we approached the intersection to be dropped off steam started rising from out of the hood of the car. After stopping in the middle of the median in the intersection Mila popped the hood and we noticed the tube from the radiator had become disconnected. Not knowing anything about cars I naturally offered to help. Mila was completely serene, declined my offer and just shrugged and walked away. Not only does she pick up strangers on the side of the road, cook rabbit for them and show weird videos, Mila also had apparently attained some kind of otherworldly Zen tranquility in the face of uncooperative and faulty auto mechanics.
We walked away from the hissing Kia and were immediately swarmed by chapa drivers offering to take us to Nampula. Mila stood her ground, though, and refused to put us on a chapa; instead, she was set on getting us on a safer and more efficient bus. As we were walking away from the car a number of terse but still playful words were quickly exchanged between Mila and the flock of chapa drivers before things suddenly hushed and other bystanders started hooting and whistling and laughing. I don’t know what she said but the chapa drivers all smiled and walked away, not saying anything at all to us the rest of our time there, only periodically giving us a sideways look and a smirk. It was like we were on a middle school playground and Mila was the girl who just schooled all the trash-talking boys on the basketball court and the whole school was around to see it.
We all sat down on the curb waiting for the next bus to arrive, Mila rightfully staking us out as her own and not trusting us to be able to take care of ourselves. Amy and Mila sat close to one another, while I was off to one side. We had long ago worn out our efforts with speaking Portuguese but Mila paid no mind. For 10 minutes or more she continued chattering uninterrupted to Amy without any acknowledgement what she understood a single word. Amy dutifully continued to smile and nod her head during all of the pauses. Finally a bus arrived. Hugs and kisses went all around and in one last gesture of infinite and unexpected generosity Mila paid for both of our tickets. Amy and I were both too dazed to offer any resistance. Mila pushed us onto the bus and as we were climbing the steps and looked back we saw her swallowed up in the sea of Mozambicans jockeying for position to enter or leave the bus or hawking their fresh fruit or bread to its passengers.
THE END
Hitchhiking, Portuguese Church Ladies and Rabbit Meat: 24 Hours in Mozambique [Part 3]
Part 3
Now, at this point, after having been in Mozambique for a week or so, our understanding of Portuguese was limited to greetings, basic bargaining, directions, and standard Lonely Planet-provided phrases. Even with this impressive linguistic arsenal, we were pretty miserable. It seemed that up until that point we had been lucky to run into someone with a modest grasp of English (less modest, at least, than our facility with Portuguese) at just the right time; or, a mix of Amy’s Spanish and my Kiswahili got us by. Luckily, before we left Uganda some friends had given us an English-Portuguese dictionary (without, however, a corresponding Portuguese-English portion, which figures into our plot later on) to help us muddle through the language and the country.
So the initial 15 or 20 minutes in the car was spent just trying to make sense of what was going on, considering we had no idea where we were going or who we were with. Amy and I each took turns alternating between frantically flipping through our dictionary and politely smiling and nodding our heads at what we thought were the appropriate gaps in conversation or when one of the two women would look back at us and smile with eyebrows raised in what we assumed was a request for some kind of affirmation. We managed (I think) to introduce ourselves and mention that we were Americans and just traveling in Mozambique and could speak little-to-no Portuguese (as if that needed any further clarification). We also told them that we were trying to get to Nampula and subsequently asked where they were going. In response, we mostly got some giggling, finger wagging, shaking of heads, and what sounded like a lot of doubtful-sounding Portuguese exclamations. We didn’t need to dig through our dictionary to figure out that we probably weren’t going to Nampula that day. What we did gather during that car ride, however, was 1) they were Portuguese missionaries; 2) they were returning from a day trip to Pemba where they picked up some groceries and checked email; 3) they were, importantly, driving in the right direction; and, 4) they were very, very cute.
We struggled along these same occasionally-amusing, occasionally-frustrating and always-exhausting lines of communication for a lot longer than we expected. Neither of us knew what really was happening. From time to time we would look at each other in the back seat and silently mouth mutual misunderstanding and confusion. At best I think we both hoped to get dropped off at a reasonable guesthouse along the main road; at worst they’d drop us off somewhere and we’d just have to hitchhike the rest of the way. After an hour and a half or more we pulled off the main road in the town of Chiure and drove up to a large, western-style house. We both grabbed our bags and got out, thinking we’d made it to a guesthouse or hotel. Immediately after stepping out of the car the driver tsk-tsked us and motioned for us to put our bags back in the car. Meanwhile, a third lady comes out of the home and gives our two escorts hugs and kisses. Up until now, because of being in the car, neither of us had been able to properly size up our new friends. It wasn’t until this third, new friend unexpectedly hugged me that I first noticed how remarkably tiny each of these women was. I don’t think any of them were over five feet tall. They were so small! They were like animated versions of those oversized stuffed animals you can win at the state fair. And they smiled and talked constantly and they loved giving hugs. They were our very own life-sized Portuguese church lady care bears.
Following a brief conversation and subsequent farewell amongst the three of them, we four got back in the car and continued a few more kilometers down the main road, eventually crossing the river Rio Lurio. Soon afterwards, we again turned off and approached another western-style one-floored house situated next to a Catholic church. As one of them went to open the metal gate to the compound the other motioned for us to get our bags and get out. In typical fashion Amy and I looked at each other and shrugged and followed our instructions, happy to reach some kind of destination for the day.
After and hour and a half in the car Amy and I had attained a sort of calm amidst everything that was happening all around us. Despite not being able to communicate and not really knowing where we’d be that night we both gave up trying to control a situation that was obviously so uncontrollable and unpredictable. This sense of calm was very quickly dislodged once we arrived at the house as our two hosts suddenly descended into a flurry of activity. One drove the car to the back while the other escorted us inside. Soon we found ourselves alone in the main sitting room of the house uncomfortably doing nothing as one of the women prepared our bedroom. The other soon entered the house from the rear and immediately offered us some fresh mango juice before disappearing again without a word. No sooner after we were invited to put our bags inside our freshly arranged bedroom did she sneak out the back door of the house. Meanwhile, the other came back to tell us we could shower if we we’d like and informed us that her friend had gone out back to cook dinner. We politely asked what we were having, mostly just trying to make use of the few words we knew. Our hostess told us that we’d be eating “coelho” (pronounced KWAY-loh) and made an ominous cutting motion with her hand across her throat and pointed to the back of the house. We were instantly fascinated and also vaguely horrified. Apparently the other woman had gone out back to kill a “coelho”, our as-yet-undefined main dish. It didn’t help our morbid curiosity that we were subtly but still suspiciously being prevented from going into the back of the house where our “coelho” was being prepared. We asked what “coelho” was and our hostess put her fingers up to the sides of her head and started making indistinct squeaking noises. At least we knew for certain this time it wasn’t Portuguese. We guessed bat, mouse, squirrel, hyrax (it had been a long day up until then – somehow we lost the logical connection between the animal we were trying to guess and the fact that it was also our dinner. Of course our hosts wouldn’t feed us bat or squirrel or hyrax for dinner. Or would they?). I finally got nosy and started looking through their bookshelf to see if any help in our quest for “coelho” might be found (this whole time I kept thinking of Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist). On the bookshelf I found a Portuguese-Italian dictionary, a Portuguese-French dictionary, a Portuguese-Kiswahili dictionary, and a Portuguese-Makua dictionary, but, naturally, no Portuguese-English dictionary. Curiosity still overwhelmed us but I think we started to worry a little. What the hell we were going to be eating for dinner?
Now, at this point, after having been in Mozambique for a week or so, our understanding of Portuguese was limited to greetings, basic bargaining, directions, and standard Lonely Planet-provided phrases. Even with this impressive linguistic arsenal, we were pretty miserable. It seemed that up until that point we had been lucky to run into someone with a modest grasp of English (less modest, at least, than our facility with Portuguese) at just the right time; or, a mix of Amy’s Spanish and my Kiswahili got us by. Luckily, before we left Uganda some friends had given us an English-Portuguese dictionary (without, however, a corresponding Portuguese-English portion, which figures into our plot later on) to help us muddle through the language and the country.
So the initial 15 or 20 minutes in the car was spent just trying to make sense of what was going on, considering we had no idea where we were going or who we were with. Amy and I each took turns alternating between frantically flipping through our dictionary and politely smiling and nodding our heads at what we thought were the appropriate gaps in conversation or when one of the two women would look back at us and smile with eyebrows raised in what we assumed was a request for some kind of affirmation. We managed (I think) to introduce ourselves and mention that we were Americans and just traveling in Mozambique and could speak little-to-no Portuguese (as if that needed any further clarification). We also told them that we were trying to get to Nampula and subsequently asked where they were going. In response, we mostly got some giggling, finger wagging, shaking of heads, and what sounded like a lot of doubtful-sounding Portuguese exclamations. We didn’t need to dig through our dictionary to figure out that we probably weren’t going to Nampula that day. What we did gather during that car ride, however, was 1) they were Portuguese missionaries; 2) they were returning from a day trip to Pemba where they picked up some groceries and checked email; 3) they were, importantly, driving in the right direction; and, 4) they were very, very cute.
We struggled along these same occasionally-amusing, occasionally-frustrating and always-exhausting lines of communication for a lot longer than we expected. Neither of us knew what really was happening. From time to time we would look at each other in the back seat and silently mouth mutual misunderstanding and confusion. At best I think we both hoped to get dropped off at a reasonable guesthouse along the main road; at worst they’d drop us off somewhere and we’d just have to hitchhike the rest of the way. After an hour and a half or more we pulled off the main road in the town of Chiure and drove up to a large, western-style house. We both grabbed our bags and got out, thinking we’d made it to a guesthouse or hotel. Immediately after stepping out of the car the driver tsk-tsked us and motioned for us to put our bags back in the car. Meanwhile, a third lady comes out of the home and gives our two escorts hugs and kisses. Up until now, because of being in the car, neither of us had been able to properly size up our new friends. It wasn’t until this third, new friend unexpectedly hugged me that I first noticed how remarkably tiny each of these women was. I don’t think any of them were over five feet tall. They were so small! They were like animated versions of those oversized stuffed animals you can win at the state fair. And they smiled and talked constantly and they loved giving hugs. They were our very own life-sized Portuguese church lady care bears.
Following a brief conversation and subsequent farewell amongst the three of them, we four got back in the car and continued a few more kilometers down the main road, eventually crossing the river Rio Lurio. Soon afterwards, we again turned off and approached another western-style one-floored house situated next to a Catholic church. As one of them went to open the metal gate to the compound the other motioned for us to get our bags and get out. In typical fashion Amy and I looked at each other and shrugged and followed our instructions, happy to reach some kind of destination for the day.
After and hour and a half in the car Amy and I had attained a sort of calm amidst everything that was happening all around us. Despite not being able to communicate and not really knowing where we’d be that night we both gave up trying to control a situation that was obviously so uncontrollable and unpredictable. This sense of calm was very quickly dislodged once we arrived at the house as our two hosts suddenly descended into a flurry of activity. One drove the car to the back while the other escorted us inside. Soon we found ourselves alone in the main sitting room of the house uncomfortably doing nothing as one of the women prepared our bedroom. The other soon entered the house from the rear and immediately offered us some fresh mango juice before disappearing again without a word. No sooner after we were invited to put our bags inside our freshly arranged bedroom did she sneak out the back door of the house. Meanwhile, the other came back to tell us we could shower if we we’d like and informed us that her friend had gone out back to cook dinner. We politely asked what we were having, mostly just trying to make use of the few words we knew. Our hostess told us that we’d be eating “coelho” (pronounced KWAY-loh) and made an ominous cutting motion with her hand across her throat and pointed to the back of the house. We were instantly fascinated and also vaguely horrified. Apparently the other woman had gone out back to kill a “coelho”, our as-yet-undefined main dish. It didn’t help our morbid curiosity that we were subtly but still suspiciously being prevented from going into the back of the house where our “coelho” was being prepared. We asked what “coelho” was and our hostess put her fingers up to the sides of her head and started making indistinct squeaking noises. At least we knew for certain this time it wasn’t Portuguese. We guessed bat, mouse, squirrel, hyrax (it had been a long day up until then – somehow we lost the logical connection between the animal we were trying to guess and the fact that it was also our dinner. Of course our hosts wouldn’t feed us bat or squirrel or hyrax for dinner. Or would they?). I finally got nosy and started looking through their bookshelf to see if any help in our quest for “coelho” might be found (this whole time I kept thinking of Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist). On the bookshelf I found a Portuguese-Italian dictionary, a Portuguese-French dictionary, a Portuguese-Kiswahili dictionary, and a Portuguese-Makua dictionary, but, naturally, no Portuguese-English dictionary. Curiosity still overwhelmed us but I think we started to worry a little. What the hell we were going to be eating for dinner?
Monday, March 09, 2009
Hitchhiking, Portuguese Church Ladies and Rabbit Meat: 24 Hours in Mozambique [Part 2]
Part 2
As we sat on the shoulder of the asphalt, munching on our usual and surprisingly satisfying prisoner’s diet of bread and chlorine-neutralized water (supplemented that day by a few sticky sweet mangoes a fellow stranded and waiting traveler had given us), we alternated trying to flag down the occasional passing car or truck. The longer we waited the more we talked about heading backwards to Pemba in order to catch the usual early morning taxi to Nampula the next day. But nothing was going in the other direction, either, so it was looking more and more like we were stuck at the crossroads for the night. As a last resort we scouted out a nearby guesthouse but held off getting a room until we were absolutely sure we needed it.
After a handful of fruitless attempts to flag down the occasional passing car or truck, a glimmer of hope came when a Kia SUV about the size of a mini-fridge puttered by us with what appeared to be two European women in the front seats. We each leapt up and began violently waving our arms about in our best attempts to get their attention. Sadly, consistent with our luck with transportation on the trip up until then, the little car kept going. We looked at each other in mutual alarm and disbelief and dejectedly sat back down by the roadside, completely beside ourselves that two fellow traveling foreigners would completely ignore us, literally on the side of a road to nowhere (It wasn’t until a bit later, after our frenzy of misguided self-pity subsided, that our thoughts turned more sensitive and curious, wondering what in the world these two little ladies were doing in northern Mozambique all by themselves. More on that later).
This reaction probably doesn’t seem entirely or even partially logical (and, frankly, it isn’t, really) and maybe it seems even wildly tactless and incoherent. Fair enough. But let me take a moment to try to explain—not to justify—our initial outrage at being ignored on the side of the road.
Being a foreigner or, more to the point, white, in Africa has many obvious and distinct benefits to go along with all of the negative attention and hassling we are consistently subject to. One, namely, for better or for worse, is the at-first-completely-disorienting-and-off-putting-but-later-completely-accepted-and-expected privilege of being forced to the front of lines and unwittingly taking precedence for service over others (that is, locals) who clearly had been there first and had been waiting longer. It’s something we haven’t ever gotten comfortable with and as it’s happening it’s something we’re often conscious of and even discussed amongst ourselves, but it’s also something we’ve come to more or less accept and even occasionally (rightly or wrongly; mostly the latter, I imagine) take advantage of for the sake of common sense convenience. It seems the longer we are here, the less we think about it and the more frequently we take advantage of these small favors. This means we can get a seat in the front of a minibus when there are already people sitting there. It means we can move to the front of the line at the well or borehole or tap to get water where there might be a dozen women and kids already lined up. This kind of stuff happens everywhere, every day. And to clarify further, we are generally offered these small social allowances by those same people we are displacing in line rather than outright requesting them for ourselves. It was this rather unsettling and conditioned privilege that caused us such alarm and dismay when these two ex-pat ladies passed by us when we clearly needed a ride (completely disregarding the fact that there were about 12 or 15 Mozambicans waiting with us who, with equal urgency and likely fewer resources, needed to get somewhere along the same road we were traveling). This is all very difficult to justify and explain, of course; especially to those who haven’t been here. These not-so-subtle and eventually conditioned privileges aren’t a set of circumstances or social hierarchies that are in any way fair—it’s just one of those strange and disconcerting facts of life here that you simultaneously get used to but remain conscious of and uncomfortable with.
Well, the looks of horror on our faces must have registered with the ladies in the passing Kia as a few minutes later they came down the other side of the road and waved us over to talk with them. It was immediately apparent that neither of them spoke a word of English. But through a brilliant combination of broken Spanish, wild hand gestures and some indiscriminate Portuguese numbers, Amy was able to elicit a vague nod and hand wave from the driver that we interpreted (not necessarily correctly) as an invitation to get in the car with them.
As we sat on the shoulder of the asphalt, munching on our usual and surprisingly satisfying prisoner’s diet of bread and chlorine-neutralized water (supplemented that day by a few sticky sweet mangoes a fellow stranded and waiting traveler had given us), we alternated trying to flag down the occasional passing car or truck. The longer we waited the more we talked about heading backwards to Pemba in order to catch the usual early morning taxi to Nampula the next day. But nothing was going in the other direction, either, so it was looking more and more like we were stuck at the crossroads for the night. As a last resort we scouted out a nearby guesthouse but held off getting a room until we were absolutely sure we needed it.
After a handful of fruitless attempts to flag down the occasional passing car or truck, a glimmer of hope came when a Kia SUV about the size of a mini-fridge puttered by us with what appeared to be two European women in the front seats. We each leapt up and began violently waving our arms about in our best attempts to get their attention. Sadly, consistent with our luck with transportation on the trip up until then, the little car kept going. We looked at each other in mutual alarm and disbelief and dejectedly sat back down by the roadside, completely beside ourselves that two fellow traveling foreigners would completely ignore us, literally on the side of a road to nowhere (It wasn’t until a bit later, after our frenzy of misguided self-pity subsided, that our thoughts turned more sensitive and curious, wondering what in the world these two little ladies were doing in northern Mozambique all by themselves. More on that later).
This reaction probably doesn’t seem entirely or even partially logical (and, frankly, it isn’t, really) and maybe it seems even wildly tactless and incoherent. Fair enough. But let me take a moment to try to explain—not to justify—our initial outrage at being ignored on the side of the road.
Being a foreigner or, more to the point, white, in Africa has many obvious and distinct benefits to go along with all of the negative attention and hassling we are consistently subject to. One, namely, for better or for worse, is the at-first-completely-disorienting-and-off-putting-but-later-completely-accepted-and-expected privilege of being forced to the front of lines and unwittingly taking precedence for service over others (that is, locals) who clearly had been there first and had been waiting longer. It’s something we haven’t ever gotten comfortable with and as it’s happening it’s something we’re often conscious of and even discussed amongst ourselves, but it’s also something we’ve come to more or less accept and even occasionally (rightly or wrongly; mostly the latter, I imagine) take advantage of for the sake of common sense convenience. It seems the longer we are here, the less we think about it and the more frequently we take advantage of these small favors. This means we can get a seat in the front of a minibus when there are already people sitting there. It means we can move to the front of the line at the well or borehole or tap to get water where there might be a dozen women and kids already lined up. This kind of stuff happens everywhere, every day. And to clarify further, we are generally offered these small social allowances by those same people we are displacing in line rather than outright requesting them for ourselves. It was this rather unsettling and conditioned privilege that caused us such alarm and dismay when these two ex-pat ladies passed by us when we clearly needed a ride (completely disregarding the fact that there were about 12 or 15 Mozambicans waiting with us who, with equal urgency and likely fewer resources, needed to get somewhere along the same road we were traveling). This is all very difficult to justify and explain, of course; especially to those who haven’t been here. These not-so-subtle and eventually conditioned privileges aren’t a set of circumstances or social hierarchies that are in any way fair—it’s just one of those strange and disconcerting facts of life here that you simultaneously get used to but remain conscious of and uncomfortable with.
Well, the looks of horror on our faces must have registered with the ladies in the passing Kia as a few minutes later they came down the other side of the road and waved us over to talk with them. It was immediately apparent that neither of them spoke a word of English. But through a brilliant combination of broken Spanish, wild hand gestures and some indiscriminate Portuguese numbers, Amy was able to elicit a vague nod and hand wave from the driver that we interpreted (not necessarily correctly) as an invitation to get in the car with them.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Hitchhiking, Portuguese Church Ladies and Rabbit Meat: 24 Hours in Mozambique [Part 1]
Part 1
Sitting on the side of the main road somewhere between Pemba on the coast and Nampula further inland to the west, it had already been a long day. We had gotten up at something like 4a.m. that morning on the advice that we’d better be on the beach at sunrise in order to be assured of a spot on the first out-going dhow to get back to the mainland from eerie, lazy, lost, wonderful Ilha do Ibo.
After nearly two years in Uganda neither of us had quite wised up to the fact that no one ever needs to be in a hurry in Africa. This notion is always in the back of our heads of course, and we typically even talk about not wasting our time by showing up ‘on-time’, but American stubbornness and ignorance always prevail and we dutifully show up punctually and find ourselves feeling like suckers waiting (for hours, usually) on everyone else. It certainly didn’t ease our minds that Ibo was literally off the coast of the middle of nowhere and we had a good stretch of land between us and our next destination, Nampula, an otherwise un-noteworthy transportation hub and largest town in northern Mozambique. A few days before, from Pemba, we nearly missed a 4a.m. mini-bus that we had arranged the previous night to swing by our guesthouse because it actually showed up early. It just goes to show that whenever you think you’ve got this placed figured out, something sensible happens.
So, to briefly recap our already-overlong day that eventually found ourselves semi-stranded on the side of the road, our morning consisted of the following:
1. Waking up at 4am on Ilha do Ibo after having spent the previous evening sitting in a turret of a the 18th century Fort of São João Batista sipping on cold Castle Milk Stouts, watching the sunset over the Indian Ocean and Mozambique coastline;
2. Sitting on the beach waiting for 2 hours for our dhow to load up and leave;
3. Riding for an hour and a half on an overcrowded dhow trying to not get smacked in the face by the flying fish hurtling past us and willing our way through the bottom-scraping, low-tide channel between Ibo and mainland Mozambique; and, finally,
4. Loading our bags onto the roof of a chapa (the main means of pubic transportation in Mozambique: basically a converted Ford F350 with a flimsy and dubiously welded metal frame draped over the back with unreasonably cramped and awkward wooden benches lining the sides of its bed); hopping into the back of it with about 30 other people, hundreds of pounds of rice and bananas and untold numbers of farm animals; trying for 5 hours not to rub our rear ends raw on the wooden planks by alternating using my coat as a seat cushion and turning around to dangle my knobby and bafflingly white legs out the side of the truck in order to be reassured of feeling in my toes, while doing my best not to hit any oncoming trucks, bicycles, pedestrians, trees, or bushes. Or monkeys.
Despite embarking on our vacation equipped with two Mozambique travel guides and talking to several friends who had visited before us, we somehow remained woefully unprepared for the transportation situation there. Uganda is a small, densely population country that seems to have transportation options available to nearly every part of the country at nearly every hour of the day. In contrast, Mozambique is a much larger country with a significantly smaller population and a more degraded network of roads (particularly in the north, where we were traveling). As a result, transportation there, in a way, is more systematic but initially it’s a totally bewildering experience—at least it was to us, who were so used to the relative luxury and convenience of travel in Uganda (Convenient? Transport in Uganda? Really? Really.). It turns out that ALL relatively long-distance transport in Mozambique leaves early, early in the morning. Like 3 or 4 a.m. early. And that’s it for the rest of the day. So, if you’re a couple of well-seasoned and ambitious travelers like (ahem) us, you get up at 4 a.m., hop on the bus, arrive at the first stop at 8 or 9, and then get stuck in same no-name transport hub because all the options to points further down the line already departed earlier that morning. Needless to say, this was frustrating for us. We were on a pretty tight itinerary (compulsively prepared on Microsoft Excel by Amy weeks or even months ahead of time, God bless her), trying to cover a handful of sights spread out over a big area in a matter of 10 days or so. It wasn’t until later on in the trip, until those few hours of hopelessly waiting on the side of the road between Pemba and Nampula, patiently allowing our butts to recover from our 5 hour chapa ride from the coast with our limbs intact and no dead or wounded bicyclists or monkeys in our wake, that we belatedly discovered the wonders of hitchhiking. And Portuguese Church Ladies.
Sitting on the side of the main road somewhere between Pemba on the coast and Nampula further inland to the west, it had already been a long day. We had gotten up at something like 4a.m. that morning on the advice that we’d better be on the beach at sunrise in order to be assured of a spot on the first out-going dhow to get back to the mainland from eerie, lazy, lost, wonderful Ilha do Ibo.
After nearly two years in Uganda neither of us had quite wised up to the fact that no one ever needs to be in a hurry in Africa. This notion is always in the back of our heads of course, and we typically even talk about not wasting our time by showing up ‘on-time’, but American stubbornness and ignorance always prevail and we dutifully show up punctually and find ourselves feeling like suckers waiting (for hours, usually) on everyone else. It certainly didn’t ease our minds that Ibo was literally off the coast of the middle of nowhere and we had a good stretch of land between us and our next destination, Nampula, an otherwise un-noteworthy transportation hub and largest town in northern Mozambique. A few days before, from Pemba, we nearly missed a 4a.m. mini-bus that we had arranged the previous night to swing by our guesthouse because it actually showed up early. It just goes to show that whenever you think you’ve got this placed figured out, something sensible happens.
So, to briefly recap our already-overlong day that eventually found ourselves semi-stranded on the side of the road, our morning consisted of the following:
1. Waking up at 4am on Ilha do Ibo after having spent the previous evening sitting in a turret of a the 18th century Fort of São João Batista sipping on cold Castle Milk Stouts, watching the sunset over the Indian Ocean and Mozambique coastline;
2. Sitting on the beach waiting for 2 hours for our dhow to load up and leave;
3. Riding for an hour and a half on an overcrowded dhow trying to not get smacked in the face by the flying fish hurtling past us and willing our way through the bottom-scraping, low-tide channel between Ibo and mainland Mozambique; and, finally,
4. Loading our bags onto the roof of a chapa (the main means of pubic transportation in Mozambique: basically a converted Ford F350 with a flimsy and dubiously welded metal frame draped over the back with unreasonably cramped and awkward wooden benches lining the sides of its bed); hopping into the back of it with about 30 other people, hundreds of pounds of rice and bananas and untold numbers of farm animals; trying for 5 hours not to rub our rear ends raw on the wooden planks by alternating using my coat as a seat cushion and turning around to dangle my knobby and bafflingly white legs out the side of the truck in order to be reassured of feeling in my toes, while doing my best not to hit any oncoming trucks, bicycles, pedestrians, trees, or bushes. Or monkeys.
Despite embarking on our vacation equipped with two Mozambique travel guides and talking to several friends who had visited before us, we somehow remained woefully unprepared for the transportation situation there. Uganda is a small, densely population country that seems to have transportation options available to nearly every part of the country at nearly every hour of the day. In contrast, Mozambique is a much larger country with a significantly smaller population and a more degraded network of roads (particularly in the north, where we were traveling). As a result, transportation there, in a way, is more systematic but initially it’s a totally bewildering experience—at least it was to us, who were so used to the relative luxury and convenience of travel in Uganda (Convenient? Transport in Uganda? Really? Really.). It turns out that ALL relatively long-distance transport in Mozambique leaves early, early in the morning. Like 3 or 4 a.m. early. And that’s it for the rest of the day. So, if you’re a couple of well-seasoned and ambitious travelers like (ahem) us, you get up at 4 a.m., hop on the bus, arrive at the first stop at 8 or 9, and then get stuck in same no-name transport hub because all the options to points further down the line already departed earlier that morning. Needless to say, this was frustrating for us. We were on a pretty tight itinerary (compulsively prepared on Microsoft Excel by Amy weeks or even months ahead of time, God bless her), trying to cover a handful of sights spread out over a big area in a matter of 10 days or so. It wasn’t until later on in the trip, until those few hours of hopelessly waiting on the side of the road between Pemba and Nampula, patiently allowing our butts to recover from our 5 hour chapa ride from the coast with our limbs intact and no dead or wounded bicyclists or monkeys in our wake, that we belatedly discovered the wonders of hitchhiking. And Portuguese Church Ladies.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
work, mostly
The Dragonfly Story
My cousin, Jenny Olson, started a company recycling onesies in honor of her lost baby, Jack. It is to remember him forever. Here is the story,
“In the bottom on an old pond lived some grubs who could not understand why none of their group ever came back after crawling up the lily stems to the top of the water. They promised each other that the next one who was called to make the upward climb would return and tell what had happened to him. Soon one of them felt an urgent impulse to seek the surface; he rested himself on the top of a lily pad and went through a glorious transformation which made him a dragonfly with beautiful wings. In vain he tried to keep his promise. Flying back and forth over the pond, he peered down at his friends below. Then he realized that even if they could see him they would not recognize such a radiant creature as one of their number.
The fact that we cannot see our friends or communicate with them after the transformation which we call death is no proof that they cease to exist.”
By Walter Dudley Cavert
I gave four of these away to families who have babies and told them the story. Many, if not most, families lose a baby or young child to malaria, HIV/AIDS, etc. This served as a reminder that they aren’t gone completely.
Work
The libraries are set up at two schools: Ssezibwa and Bishop Brown. The children absolutely love them. I’m usually in the computer room after school getting ready for computer class and whenever the bell sounds indicating the end of the day I’ll see maybe 50 children race by my door. The first time this happened I was so confused so I looked to see where they were going and it was straight to the library…there is only enough room for about 30 pupils so that’s how many we allow. The children were all racing to get in line. This happens everyday with a different class. 3rd grade is Mondays, 4th grade Tuesdays, 5th grade Wednesdays, etc.
We’ve had a few unforeseen problems – the termite hill at the Bishop Brown Library, which I think I’ve already posted pictures of. An iron door is being put in this week, hopefully. Also, the library at Ssezibwa is in bad condition. The shutters and door are broken along with the floor. We are raising money among the parents and I’ll probably add in the left over money I have from my SPA grant. Raising money is good because it gets everyone involved, but it is slow going. So I may borrow the money to the school so we can get everything accomplished before I go so I can be sure the library is settled and set up properly. Currently it is in the 2nd grade classroom, which works fine temporarily.
The computer class is also going well. Two laptops are at Kanjuki UMEA, about 5 kilometers north from the center school so teachers in that area can learn. One laptop is at Ssezibwa 3 kilometers southwest. Two computers and two laptops are still at Bishop Brown for the computer classes held here. I want to send a laptop to a school south east of Bishop Brown, but I’m waiting for a capable teacher to take over that area. Well, that’s a lie. There are plenty of capable teachers that have gone through the program from that area but very few schools have electricity that way so I’m waiting for a responsible teacher at a school with electricity.
Reproductive health is finished. I taught at 13 schools…about 2500 pupils. I only taught the girls, so personally, I can only claim teaching about half that number. The children have had some great questions and every session I leave happy. This program has been good for me because it yields immediate results.
Other than that…I’m coming home!!!! It hasn’t sunk in that I’m leaving this place. I can be really harsh on my feelings towards Kayunga, but every time I leave it for more than 3 days, I miss it. I’ve started telling people I’m leaving soon just so it doesn’t come up out of nowhere and I almost feel bad. Like I’m leaving them. Either way, I’m still excited to get home, take a shower, feel carpet, eat sandwiches, pee inside, cook a meal in less than an hour…put the leftovers in the fridge for later. But I will miss sitting on my porch in the silence only to be broken by the children who hang out with me everyday, having the luxury to do anything I want on any given day, heck, I’ll probably miss the food and the pit latrines too.
So going out in Kampala with friends from Peace Corps, I think we’ve all noticed that our social skills are lacking. We seem to be fine around each other and around Ugandans, but when it comes to other Americans…we’re just awkward. One girl who went back mentioned that our casual bathroom humor talk is not so funny in America. I’m sure I’ll be fine, but it’ll be interesting to see how I (or we all) cope with American life/culture.
I’m still waiting for those Egypt and Mozambique/Malawi stories, but I’ll post them as soon as they come from my parents and Joseph.
Sorry I don't have more time to post pictures.
My cousin, Jenny Olson, started a company recycling onesies in honor of her lost baby, Jack. It is to remember him forever. Here is the story,
“In the bottom on an old pond lived some grubs who could not understand why none of their group ever came back after crawling up the lily stems to the top of the water. They promised each other that the next one who was called to make the upward climb would return and tell what had happened to him. Soon one of them felt an urgent impulse to seek the surface; he rested himself on the top of a lily pad and went through a glorious transformation which made him a dragonfly with beautiful wings. In vain he tried to keep his promise. Flying back and forth over the pond, he peered down at his friends below. Then he realized that even if they could see him they would not recognize such a radiant creature as one of their number.
The fact that we cannot see our friends or communicate with them after the transformation which we call death is no proof that they cease to exist.”
By Walter Dudley Cavert
I gave four of these away to families who have babies and told them the story. Many, if not most, families lose a baby or young child to malaria, HIV/AIDS, etc. This served as a reminder that they aren’t gone completely.
Work
The libraries are set up at two schools: Ssezibwa and Bishop Brown. The children absolutely love them. I’m usually in the computer room after school getting ready for computer class and whenever the bell sounds indicating the end of the day I’ll see maybe 50 children race by my door. The first time this happened I was so confused so I looked to see where they were going and it was straight to the library…there is only enough room for about 30 pupils so that’s how many we allow. The children were all racing to get in line. This happens everyday with a different class. 3rd grade is Mondays, 4th grade Tuesdays, 5th grade Wednesdays, etc.
We’ve had a few unforeseen problems – the termite hill at the Bishop Brown Library, which I think I’ve already posted pictures of. An iron door is being put in this week, hopefully. Also, the library at Ssezibwa is in bad condition. The shutters and door are broken along with the floor. We are raising money among the parents and I’ll probably add in the left over money I have from my SPA grant. Raising money is good because it gets everyone involved, but it is slow going. So I may borrow the money to the school so we can get everything accomplished before I go so I can be sure the library is settled and set up properly. Currently it is in the 2nd grade classroom, which works fine temporarily.
The computer class is also going well. Two laptops are at Kanjuki UMEA, about 5 kilometers north from the center school so teachers in that area can learn. One laptop is at Ssezibwa 3 kilometers southwest. Two computers and two laptops are still at Bishop Brown for the computer classes held here. I want to send a laptop to a school south east of Bishop Brown, but I’m waiting for a capable teacher to take over that area. Well, that’s a lie. There are plenty of capable teachers that have gone through the program from that area but very few schools have electricity that way so I’m waiting for a responsible teacher at a school with electricity.
Reproductive health is finished. I taught at 13 schools…about 2500 pupils. I only taught the girls, so personally, I can only claim teaching about half that number. The children have had some great questions and every session I leave happy. This program has been good for me because it yields immediate results.
Other than that…I’m coming home!!!! It hasn’t sunk in that I’m leaving this place. I can be really harsh on my feelings towards Kayunga, but every time I leave it for more than 3 days, I miss it. I’ve started telling people I’m leaving soon just so it doesn’t come up out of nowhere and I almost feel bad. Like I’m leaving them. Either way, I’m still excited to get home, take a shower, feel carpet, eat sandwiches, pee inside, cook a meal in less than an hour…put the leftovers in the fridge for later. But I will miss sitting on my porch in the silence only to be broken by the children who hang out with me everyday, having the luxury to do anything I want on any given day, heck, I’ll probably miss the food and the pit latrines too.
So going out in Kampala with friends from Peace Corps, I think we’ve all noticed that our social skills are lacking. We seem to be fine around each other and around Ugandans, but when it comes to other Americans…we’re just awkward. One girl who went back mentioned that our casual bathroom humor talk is not so funny in America. I’m sure I’ll be fine, but it’ll be interesting to see how I (or we all) cope with American life/culture.
I’m still waiting for those Egypt and Mozambique/Malawi stories, but I’ll post them as soon as they come from my parents and Joseph.
Sorry I don't have more time to post pictures.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Egypt
Camel trekking to our snorkeling destination. Hurts your bum with all that bumping.
classic picture with sphnix and pyramid.
random photos
Crazy hair.
Mountain Dew came to Uganda.
My neighbor boy pretending to be me.
Hooter's shirt!
Pictures of bishop Brown Library
The unexpected termite hill that formed over school holiday. That was not fun breaking up, but we poured lots of 'whoknowswhat' chemicals down to kill them so they don't build again.
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