The African Trail

“Mulembe!” =Hello in Lugiisu (My new language)

Ive made it out of the village alive and alone! For that fact I am very proud. When I first got to Mbale and was led to the village by my family, we walked for about an hour and a half from the main road to the house. We arrived at night and I realized I didn’t know so many stars even existed. My village is in the middle of miles of tewali (nothing/nowhere). Thankfully, I found out the next day that we had taken the long road. It really only takes about 35 minutes to get to a road.It still takes around an hour and a half to get to Mbale each day. I am proud of myself for memorizing the way. Here it is:

After you reach Namwanga from a taxi that most likely cheated you, walk along the path that could possibly be handled by a lifted AMC Eagle until you come to a collection of three huts, one of which has bricks piled in front of it. At this point, veer right onto a footpath (one foot in front of the other from here on out). Continue on this path until you get to a small group of “black-eyed susans.” Here, opt for the shortcut by taking a slight jog to the right into the middle of a matooke plantation. Pick up speed after you pass the mud house with white polkadots because you are headed fore the house of the crazy old man who might grab your hand and ardently repeat “I am your father!” Don’t believe him. Stay to the left of his house and take the trail that has the spiky grass bushes. Follow this until you get through the matooke. Take the next jog right after the 7 foot tall ant hill taking over the tree. While you continue through the maize and matooke and huts, continue to greet everyone you see (as you will be considered rude if you don’t). Also continue to dodge marriage proposals (pretending you don’t understand works well). Step on the ropes of the cattle as you are walking past, otherwise they might get spooked and trip you. After you come to the sight of the really tall and straight trees clustered together behind the water hole, you are getting close. Stay on the current trail until you get to Angella’s.

Sorry you will probably get lost because in the interest of time, I have lkeft out most of the trail details. But don’t fret. Being “lost” isn’t so bad. The other day as I walked during the sunset, I was singing out loud and trying not to pee my pants when I had a revelation. “This is how pineapples grow.” Wait! My family told me the pineapples were far. Great. I got caught up with Alanis Morrissette and my mind had left me. Thankfully a yell from a man named Titus Matete interrupted my newly collected thoughts and he was able to guide me home.

But the village is fun. America has nothing like an African village (that Im aware of). I am an hour’s walk from the nearest power outlet. Though we do have enough solar power to support a light and a tiny black and white TV. (this should make us question the excuse that solar power is too expensive. Our solar panels are held up by a tall stick and I live in a village that cant afford toilet paper). After my first hike into the village, Family Guy was on TV (white static with the voices of Peter and Lois). We eat our first meal of the day at 4-5pm and dinner at 11pm. I bathe in complete darkness. At this time, its fun to pretend I am blind and there are no cockroaches. I prefer to pee out in the open at night time because our latrine is also a hike that I don’t feel comfortable with at night time. Especially because I am very cautious of walking in the grass because of the poisonous snakes. More about them later.

On my first day in the village, I farmed with my mother. She taught me how to plant cassava and we toured the village. We stopped in a tiny hut with about 20 people in it gathered around a pot of warm millet beer. They drink out of 3 foot long straws… and they can start early in the morning. I tried it and its not so bad if you can get over the chunks.

On the second day, I also farmed (I enjoy wearing the same dress everyday like everyone else does). I also learned that because I am a foreigner, I am the village expert on everything from farming to first-aid to fake eyes. My mom (who’s a nurse) came to ask me what to do for a snake bite. “ummmm… tie it off. If it’s poisonous we find a doctor.” Yep it was poisonous so I ran with her to the village nurse/health center where a girl was crying on the ground with a banana leaf tied around her ankle. This bandage had been administered by the nurse. They asked me if I have anything for her. “Ummm. I can give you something to clean it and a bandage.” I also had stuff for bites and the itch she would later feel. Yay. I ran panicked knowing that I was the only one in the village who had the resources to get this girl out of the village and to a doctor. It was really scary. I brought her what first-aid I had and a glass of water to calm her. The nurse ended up having an antidote, and I got thanked for the “treatment.” I followed up with her, and the next day the only real treatment I could provide was entertaining her while she was bored and in pain. She has been living at our house and teaching me games… though her favorite activity is to touch my “smooth” hair. Although she always fails to braid it because it is too short… she has managed to tie strings from her skirt into it (and give me small baldspots in the process). We laugh and pretend I have extensions.

My mother is so kind. Her name is Wanjera Angella and she is a widow with a long story. We share a bed and she prays the rosary before bed and upon waking. She always prays for me to have a good husband and she wants to come to the wedding. She says when she gets to America she will be wearing the OSU Buckeyes shirt I gave her and will ask people at the airport to show her the way. She will then make posho and Calo for my family and visit the churches. I said I would know the perfect church docent for her (my own grandma). She is very old and I worry a little about her health but she is still very strong. She farms all day and I have personally seen her on multiple occasions carrying our small calf.

Also, as a fun side story… the night before I arrived in the village, I slept with my friend Jenna and some of the street children in Kisenye slums. They were so nice. Especially their “daddy” (a 17 year old boy named Johnson.) Johnson came as a Tutsi refugee when he was three. He is all alone. He recently got out of prison for being idle in Kampala. He enjoyed singing Chris Brown and Celine Dion to me. We danced with the kids and the song “No Air” will always remind me of them. When it was time for us to sleep, Jenna and I tucked them in with the blankets we had gotten from our friends and we sang them to sleep. (Everything from church songs to Ben Folds Five to John Denver… I had a fun little solo of “When you say nothing at all”… that one was for you daddy (if I knew any prince lyrics, I would have sang for you too mom).
Although I almost got no sleep at all, we got up bright and early and the kids walked us to our resource center so I could leave for Mbale. One the way to Mbale, we passed a large crowd waving machetes and playing drums. Some of them were painted white. For a circumcision. Every other year in November the school children are circumcised. Then the driver pointed ahead and said “my cousins are there.” We saw about 30 baboons. Later we stopped for one to cross the road.

I am now being kicked off the computer at the internet café so I will have more fun stories next time as I think this weekend promises to be amazing!! Take care!

Best Week Ever!

My trip to Mbale started with a bang. After driving through the savannah and the hills, we drove up a mountain (on which we got stuck in the mud for 45 minutes) and watched the sunset over Uganda. We could see for miles and miles. The next day after breakfast, we went to Children’s Resotration Outreach and played with homeless street children and learned about the CRO program. CRO gives them two meals a day, counsels them, and supports their schooling, but unfortunately cannot shelter them. We had seen many children sleeping on the streets, so it was both happy and heartbreaking to see them being children during the daytime. We learned that one major problem for them is drugs. When one child was asked why he cannot give up drugs, he said that Mbale is cold at night and he cannot afford a blanket. “The drugs are my blanket.”

Even in Kampala, there are so many street children. You always hear that most homeless in America are children too… but the homeless children are much more visible here. Often they choose to be on the streets because street life may be better than their home lives. They often come from violent homes, and they choose not to go to school because they can make money on the streets. Unfortunately it can be a confusing moral dilemma about whether or not to give them money. Many of them don’t choose street life. Kampala has a large problem with human trafficking. Many of the children (and prostitutes) here are kidnapped from villages or sold by their parents and beg and work for bosses. Thus, giving money to children may mean giving money to their bosses so that they can acquire more children.

Now for the fun part!

Later that day, we got cabins on a hillside that overlooked Sipi Falls. If ever I can post pictures, you will agree with me that it is absolutely gorgeous. We went on a two hour hike to the base of the falls and stood in the spray from the water (though we were not allowed to swim because SIT is currently battling a lawsuit from another program about a swimming-related death). That night, after dinner when we were all singing around the campfire, I snuck to the top of the hill on which we were staying and stood alone in the dark on top of the mountain. From this island in the sky, I could see 360 degrees of other mountains and flatland and Lake Choga for miles and miles. My friend Laura called and had suspected where I had gone off too. She met me on top of the mountain and we decided to sleep under the African stars.

After taking all of our bedsheets and making a little bed on the ground, we talked about life, stargazed, and found shapes in the clouds. We actually saw a star slowly fall and burn out. The clouds above us started moving much closer and much more quickly and we thought maybe it was about to storm. But suddenly everything around us went white and turned to mist, and we could no longer see further than our little island. We realized that we were inside a cloud. We just looked at each other and then jumped up and started dancing. We danced for probably 15 minutes until the cloud had gone. After that we had little left to say and we fell asleep under the full moon. We woke up in the morning to the sun rising over Sipi Falls on our right. Muna, our “minister of transport”/ taxi driver, hiked up the mountain to watch the sunrise and filled us with some fresh parables (as he is accustomed to doing) to start the day. He loves animal analogies, and I think this one in particular was “be a snail. Leave your mark behind.”

The next day, we hiked up to see two other waterfalls and we stood behind one of them and got completely drenched before we split into groups and went into villages to do focus groups. My group spoke to farmers about cattle rustling which has caused a huge conflict in the region for the last fifty years. The Karamojong, a violent tribe in the East, believe that all horned cattle in the world belong to them and were stolen at some point. (interesting fact: one reason for the chaos and conflict in Karamoja is that they were neglected by British colonization. Great Britain said “geez, we are not going to deal with that,” and left Karamoja alone). They justify their cattle raids on the grounds that they are taking back what is rightfully theirs. They kill and rape and burn and pillage while they steal the cows. Cattle rustling affects everything from the education system to the health care system to the economy of Kapchorwa which is a two day walk from Karamoja.

We then left for the rural homestay. It was fun dropping everyone off and seeing where they lived… little mud, grass-roofed houses, hikes up undrivable terrain, baboon territory, etc. Any children we encountered on the way were scared of our car. One time we were swarmed by them until our taxi turned on. They each jumped back about 10 feet and briefly cowered. The last thing our taxi-driver told to us before we got to our homes was don’t walk without a man at night. According to him, the baboons are known to (to censor this for my 5 year old readers) forcibly have their way with women. He is kinda crazy. He said even a newborn male infant could serve as baboon repellent at night.

Our rural homestay was amazing. Cara and I got unlucky because we had a tin roof instead of a grass-roofed hut… and we had a mattress to share. Our resentment quickly faded though because we had a wonderful time in the village. They were very fond of feeding us… way way way too much! (For one breakfast … which people out there usually cannot afford to eat… we were served 30 matooke, an entire cabbage, and 4 pounds of rice). Our dad was the chairman on the local council and he took us all around the community to talk to farmers about our research on subsistence farming. We spoke to like 50 cassava farmers and one pot smuggler. We had two one-year-old babies living with us who liked to play with knives. Most children here do. I feel like I missed out when I was growing up because we were not allowed to play with huge machetes or run with knives. But I guess monopoly was the next best thing. Gotta make the best with what ya got.

Our gift to the family was a goat (also soap and salt). When the goat arrived by motorcycle, our dad was really confused, but the look on his face when he found out it was a gift was unforgettable. I have never seen someone so excited and so grateful about a gift I had given. He made plans for the goat—he will build a shelter so it doesn’t have to worry about getting wet, milk it for the children everyday, and borrow a neighbor’s male goat to impregnate ours so that he can save up enough goats to trade them for a cow. Cara and I also got to milk the goat. I accidentally shot both my dad and myself with the milk until the goat kicked me and I spilled most of the children’s breakfast on the ground. I wish I could post pictures!

On our third day in the homestay, Cara and I, hopped on the back of some bicycles and rode to Kenya. We freely walked past customs and wandered around Kisumu Road (two hours from Barrack’s grandmother). Nothing really exciting happened because all the cool shows didn’t start until after dark… but we did get really cheap tea and a stalker!

Our last day was bitter sweet. Our dad repeatedly told us we were good people (as he had told us the whole time). To thank us, he bought 2 one-foot tall mahogany trees named Cara and Alex. We planted them on his property and he promised that they would be there whenever we come back. He even said that he would water them everyday for a month and when Cara and Alex are medium-sized, he will make two cement stones with the names and bury them so that we can always know which trees are ours. He was so cute… and also very protective of us. He had a wonderfully welcoming family. We promised to send him pictures.

I am back in Kampala for now, but next week I will begin an internship with The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) in Mbale, Uganda. I think I will be working with counselors there and hopefully I will be involved in the outreach programs. I will keep you updated!!! Yay!

To those of you interested in learning more about schools and disabled people in Uganda:

Because education is seen as a way out of poverty, schools here are intense! A huge number of children go to boarding school (even when they are five). Two of my host siblings go to a really good boarding school. This is their schedule: They are woken by a bell at 3:30am. “If you are not in the classroom by 4, you just kneel” (they cane you in schools). At 4am, mandatory study hours start. Breakfast is at 6am. At 7am classes start. They have a lunch break and a 30 minute dinner break. At 7pm mandatory study hours start. They last until 10pm. The next day, they are again woken at 3:30am.

As for the disabled… again the disabled are much more visible in Uganda. There are so many more people with natural physical deformities (a huge reminder of the prominence and convenience of both plastic surgery and wheel chairs in the US). Also, many people are crippled in accidents and cannot be helped here. An incredible amount of people crawl around the city with sandals on their hands and calluses on their knees. Not only have I never seen people crawling around the city in America… but I have never seen them try to cross the road of anarchy on all fours. Every time I see a careening taxi with a man crawling in front of it, I hold my breath. It is kind of terrifying. I do enjoy seeing careening taxis with men on roller skates holding onto the back for a free ride.