There was no one to take my business at the electronics shop on Saturday morning. I needed a new plug adapter for my computer, and one of the customers, a middle-aged man trying to buy a lantern, chatted with me while we waited. His name was Kennedy. He told me he hoped I would come back to Gulu and work in development, and I asked what he thought of white people engaged in aid in Africa, and he said that any development worker who is white automatically has more connections. I hear that a lot, especially when I interview farmers, and it’s so strange because people here interact with far more donors and projects than I ever do. I’m just a college student from upstate New York still trying to graduate from university, but their image of me, simply because I’m white, is that I dine with the rich bankrollers of London and Washington DC.

When it became clear we would not be waited on anytime soon in that electronics shop, Kennedy offered to take me to another place in town to buy an adapter. Never one to prolong happenstance encounters with strangers, I protested, but since it is Ugandan culture to physically take a person somewhere instead of just giving directions, I relented. On the walk to town came that inevitable, dreaded question: “do you pray?”

I decided to do something I’d never fathomed before in Uganda, and come out and admit I wasn’t Christian. “I respect many things about it, but I’m just not a spiritual person,” I replied. “Okay,” he said. The next twenty minutes were then filled by his harangues about Jesus and how people living outside the Lord are living in the dark and I must go to church and pray or else my life would never see joy and it’s not to late for me to be saved and I must choose the path of righteousness because Jesus loves me. I walked along and took it, trying to focus my mind on the plug adapter that would soon be mine. When we finally parted ways, he asked for my number, which I knew he would since everybody asks for your number, and I was so mentally exhausted that I just gave it, making a note to myself about screening my calls.

One thing here that has left my classmates and I utterly bewildered is the tendency of Ugandans to whom we give our telephone numbers to call us over and over without relent. My rural homestay father in Busia, who I knew for a total of four days, still calls me repeatedly at odd hours of the day; I have long since stopped answering. Our first week in Gulu when we were sharing a bed, Katie would jump awake at four in the morning as the housekeeper from her Kampala homestay unapologetically rang. “Hello again, Harriet. Yes. I am fine,” Katie would say in her sleep, accustomed to this ritual. People we met on taxis the first few days of the semester would unaccountably call a few months later, and you can forget about any guy you give your number to in a bar. So I was not surprised when Kennedy called me thirteen times in a row. I wish I were exaggerating but I’m not. One, two, three, thirteen. I turned my phone on silent and sat there, watching the screen light up and fade away.

Why?

Sometimes when people realize we’re not proper Christians, the politeness and chatter at the beginning slowly turns into resentment. This happens with tailors, hotel management, the old lady named Christine who lives across from us. The first few days she was so friendly, telling me about how she just moved back here from Masindi and remembering my name. Then one day Leslie hangs her gym shorts on the public line and all of a sudden Christine starts refusing to acknowledge us when we say good morning, rudely brushing us off when we try to carry her things. I’m tired of trying to force the American out of me. Sometimes we wear gym shorts and don’t go to church and have homosexual friends and eat guacamole. It’s so much more fun that way.

I’m also tired of being hit up for money, which happens at every moment of the day, either in passing (people shouting, “Muzungu! Give me some money!”) or through a long, drawn out story that ends, as a grand finale, with a request for money. Maybe it’s horrible, but I think I’ve become immune to every rehearsed, pitiful plea. I’ve moved past the stage of white guilt to the stage where I just feel used and annoyed.

I just witnessed a boda parade outside. I’m not sure what the cause was, a Manchester United victory or just boredom, but about fifty bodas crammed together snaked up and down the five-street grid that spans Gulu’s downtown, the drivers yelling and honking, a half -exasperated, half-laughing policeman failing to hold them back at the front. Bodas are probably my favorite thing about Uganda, and in Gulu they’re in no short supply. This town is smaller than my college campus, but I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t walk more than a few meters before I’m hit by the urge to hail a boda. I wish there were some sort of market for bodas at Tufts—it’s late at night, you’re alone, you have to walk back from Davis…

This probably means my next boyfriend will have a motorcycle.