I do not like my homestay father. He is, to put it lightly, a chauvinist pig, and, according to my host brother, the only member of the family who still votes for Museveni. He's loud and blares the tv, and every time I speak Luganda to him he makes me add "ssebo" at the end, which is the equivalent to "sir." The other day when I was doing laundry he wordlessly threw down his hat at my feet to wash. Good thing he's starting to spend more time with his other wife.

bargaining here, on the other hand, is a lot of fun. Of course, it's when I miss speaking Chinese the most, but I love the playful interaction with shopkeepers after I tell them their price for bananas is outrageous. It inevitably ends in them first assuming I am Indian, second assuming I am British, and last exclaiming "Obama!" when I tell them that I am from the United States. People here love him. If they had their way they would have President of Uganda Barack Obama, with First Lady Rihanna. Roads and hotels and restaurants are named after him, and there's that nice get-out-of-jail-free card of America, for the first time in anyone's memory, having more enlightened leadership than any other muzungu country.

it's hard to keep myself set on Latin America when I'm loving East Africa more and more. It's the land of Obama, pineapples, The Lion King, and Mount Kilimanjaro. In Uganda, English is almost everywhere, but I don't mind the idea of learning an African language (I hear Swahili is easier than Luganda). Everything that drove me crazy in China is endearing in Uganda, and I have really loved exploring Kampala.

The only catch is the "muzungu!" shouting--it's getting to the point where I want to scream at anyone who says that to me. It's all I hear when I walk down the street, ladies murmuring and men calling. Also, Ugandan men for some reason think they are supposed to talk in cartoon character voices when addressing white women. "Are you married? Gyebaleko!" they squeal in high-pitched voices. Which, of course, really improves their chances. No matter how many times Ugandans tell me it's a good thing, they love white people, I can't help but think how politically incorrect it is for an entire society to shout your race at you every time you step outside. That's the thing I could never escape if I lived here for twenty years. I will always be that white girl. Or at least, that non-Ugandan girl, as I am apparently the least Irish Catholic-looking person of Irish Catholic descent (with the possible exception of my half-black, half-Indian, half-Peruvian, and half-Chinese cousins). Throughout my life I've had so many races attributed to to my ethnicity--Persian, Indian, Puerto Rican--that by taking a general tally I've concluded that the place I would blend in most would be an affluent Jewish neighborhood of Mexico City.

I still get thrown by the African/British English spoken here. I refuse to call my family's roosters "cocks" and for the longest time thought signs that read "to let" were a misspelling of "toilet." When you greet someone in Luganda, you say the equivalent of "how are you?" rather than "hello," so you can't just repeat the same greeting back like you do in English. Which also means, when you say "hello" to a Ugandan in English, they will often respond by telling you how they are, automatically throwing off the pace of the conversation.

it goes like this:

"hello."
"I am fine!"
"how are--what? Wait..."
"how are you?"
"I am...you are...er"

Things happen at weird times here. There are huge traffic jams in the middle of sunday afternoons, and every night my family serves dinner between the hours of 10 and 11 pm (sometimes I actually have to be woken up and gotten out of bed to take my tea and matooke). Every night, for the past three nights, my homestay family from eastern Uganda has called me at about 4 am. And last night, as I was getting ready for bed, my host brother and sister burst into my room and started having a photo shoot with my camera as I sat on my bed, exhausted and bewildered.

It's sad that most coffee-exporting countries just drink Nescafe, while muzungu countries that grow no coffee enjoy Ugandan blend for breakfast.