unlike Kampala, where the power sometimes goes out, in Gulu, the power sometimes come on. We've had huge chunks of days with naught but a flickering of the lights every now and then, and when the electricity does come on, the water tends to go off. It's like camping. I've gotten used to making guacamole on the floor in the candlelight with Leslie and Ben. We've all become accustomed to picking up the sound of a generator from a mile away, knowing all too well that it means our hotel will have no power. There are very few places in town that have generators--the Indian grocery store, and that delightful little pentecostal church on the other side of my wall. I don't know which is worse, the clanking roar of the generator or the shrieking congregants cursing their souls to be rid of evil spirits. Oh wait, I do know.
religion has always perplexed me without necessarily terrifying me, but the screaming coming from that church every afternoon makes me want to dig my fingernails into my skin until there is blood. The songs are okay, even nice sometimes, but when it gets to the Jesus-wailing I just want to book it back to Brighton. Little children cry, men scream, and women shriek verses and prayers that could be heard on Zanzibar. And then there's an electronic keyboard that tries to accompany the whole thing. Ugh, that might actually be the worst part...
in other news, my malaria is gone, though it took a while for me to be able to move my shoulder again. It healed just in time for a drunk man to grab me by the arm yesterday as I was trying to enter a building and hold it in grip worthy of Arnold Schwarzeneggar. The whole management staff had to run out and pry him off me.
there's not a lot of food in Gulu, as evidenced by the one skimpy market in the middle of town. If there are no sweet potatoes at the market, there are no sweet potatoes in Gulu, and therefore any restaurant, when you order them, will simply say, 'they are not there.' Menus are useless; when entering any dining establishment it is custom to preface by asking, 'is there food?' Which may frequently be met with, 'it is not there.' Currently, pineapples are not there, much to my chagrin. Whenever pineapples are in season, mangoes are not, and vice versa. I never thought I could become sick of mangoes, but there you have it. Most nights I just end up making guacamole for dinner, as the market's three most dependable produce items happen to be the ingredients for a certain Mexican dish beloved by all muzungus. I'm taking a leaf out of my mother's book (well, except I'm not trying to substitute plain yogurt for avocados).
I've connected up with NAADS, the National Agriculture Advisory Services, and have spent the past couple of days with a farmer training worker named Charles who takes me to see his farmer groups in IDP camps. The irony that I've made it my life goal to study agriculture while barely setting foot on my farm at home never dawned on me quite so bluntly as when I first stepped onto the field where the farmers were planting maize. I wanted to collapse from thirst and from the sun, and I wasn't even holding a hoe. But it was really nice to be able to go out and see the farmers plant. They asked me if I knew any donors, and I sheepishly told them I was just a student, but they talked to me a lot about my research and told me about what it was like to try to farm during the war. Right now there is very high demand in Sudan for northern Uganda's crops, and the farmers seemed encouraged. I feel as though I am studying the right thing.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
it may startle some to learn that Uganda is a Christian country. So Christian, in fact, that the only place in town apart from the Indian grocery store that has a generator is the great big pentecostal church with which I share a wall. I am asked on a regular basis if I pray, if I have been saved, if I hate the homosexuals. So at the times when there's just a little too much Jesus (aka Holy Week), we get the urge to take the first bus out of town.
Mbale is where the Abayudaya are, the largest Jewish community in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, the student body of SIT is pretty much a mirror image of what I'm used to at home (vegetarian, gay, Jewish, or some combination of the above), but I was just desiring a little more Judaism in my life. A couple of classmates are doing research in Mbale, which is right under Mount Elgon on the border of Kenya, and we Gulu-dwellers stormed down for a Passover visit.
(the bus ride down was, quite literally, the Road to Hell. The bus driver had many different horns at his disposal to compose a sort of trumpet fanfare as he barreled down the road, which was not a road so much as a dirt trail through the bush. Jamie and I made sad faces to each other the whole way there.)
on a side note, one of the most enjoyable parts of the weekend was when Kaitlyn and I happened across a Chinese grocery store. We stayed for almost a half-hour at the cash register, conversing with the shopkeepers in putonghua. I think the owners (from Shanghai) were a little extra-jolly at the prospects of meeting people in Africa who actually spoke Chinese, but it was an endearing exchange nonetheless. Beijing opera played on the tv in the background. As we left the grocery store, it was dark, and street children swarwed around us, grabbing us and shoving us and asking for money, and we were so flustered that we couldn't find our hotel, which was just one street over. I actually shouted, 'I miss China!!!'
I do though, and I think about China all the time. I don't feel the same connection as I do here, but there are things about it that I always miss. Especially in light of how I am treated as a white woman in Africa. We went on a hike up Mount Elgon on saturday, and dunked our heads under the waterfall, but I feel a little maxed-out on scenery after last semester. I know it's terrible, but I just can't find Africa nearly as beautiful as I should after seeing Tibetan prayer flags in the Himalayas. I keep thinking about going back to Yunnan and Tibet, if for nothing but an extraordinary hiking trip.
transport to the Abayudaya for shabbat was a bit of a pickle. We were running late, and there were no taxis and bodas were too expensive for the long distance, so finally someone went up to a lorry parked on the side of the road and said, 'how much?' The drivers agreed to take us for only 1500 shillings each, and we all piled into the back of the lorry, which was just a glorified pickup truck with bars overhead. I was just desperate to see the Jews.
later that night I was having some trouble with my eye, so I spent about a half-hour on the phone with my mom freaking out about losing my vision. She told me to go to the clinic to get checked for pink eye, which was a good idea considering the next morning my eye was even puffier. I also noticed some aches in my joints, no moreso than my left shoulder which felt like it had had about a million meningitis vaccines. I hobbled over to a clinic which was mercifully open on Easter Sunday, and found out that I had not only pink eye, but malaria. What a joyous gift. Fortunately because of the malarone I've been taking it's only a mild case with a slight fever. I could most aptly describe malaria as hallucinating a broken arm. Just a few more days, and I'll be good as new.
(the drive back to Gulu from Mbala was also, quite literally, the Road to Hell. With a side of malaria.)
Mbale is where the Abayudaya are, the largest Jewish community in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now, the student body of SIT is pretty much a mirror image of what I'm used to at home (vegetarian, gay, Jewish, or some combination of the above), but I was just desiring a little more Judaism in my life. A couple of classmates are doing research in Mbale, which is right under Mount Elgon on the border of Kenya, and we Gulu-dwellers stormed down for a Passover visit.
(the bus ride down was, quite literally, the Road to Hell. The bus driver had many different horns at his disposal to compose a sort of trumpet fanfare as he barreled down the road, which was not a road so much as a dirt trail through the bush. Jamie and I made sad faces to each other the whole way there.)
on a side note, one of the most enjoyable parts of the weekend was when Kaitlyn and I happened across a Chinese grocery store. We stayed for almost a half-hour at the cash register, conversing with the shopkeepers in putonghua. I think the owners (from Shanghai) were a little extra-jolly at the prospects of meeting people in Africa who actually spoke Chinese, but it was an endearing exchange nonetheless. Beijing opera played on the tv in the background. As we left the grocery store, it was dark, and street children swarwed around us, grabbing us and shoving us and asking for money, and we were so flustered that we couldn't find our hotel, which was just one street over. I actually shouted, 'I miss China!!!'
I do though, and I think about China all the time. I don't feel the same connection as I do here, but there are things about it that I always miss. Especially in light of how I am treated as a white woman in Africa. We went on a hike up Mount Elgon on saturday, and dunked our heads under the waterfall, but I feel a little maxed-out on scenery after last semester. I know it's terrible, but I just can't find Africa nearly as beautiful as I should after seeing Tibetan prayer flags in the Himalayas. I keep thinking about going back to Yunnan and Tibet, if for nothing but an extraordinary hiking trip.
transport to the Abayudaya for shabbat was a bit of a pickle. We were running late, and there were no taxis and bodas were too expensive for the long distance, so finally someone went up to a lorry parked on the side of the road and said, 'how much?' The drivers agreed to take us for only 1500 shillings each, and we all piled into the back of the lorry, which was just a glorified pickup truck with bars overhead. I was just desperate to see the Jews.
later that night I was having some trouble with my eye, so I spent about a half-hour on the phone with my mom freaking out about losing my vision. She told me to go to the clinic to get checked for pink eye, which was a good idea considering the next morning my eye was even puffier. I also noticed some aches in my joints, no moreso than my left shoulder which felt like it had had about a million meningitis vaccines. I hobbled over to a clinic which was mercifully open on Easter Sunday, and found out that I had not only pink eye, but malaria. What a joyous gift. Fortunately because of the malarone I've been taking it's only a mild case with a slight fever. I could most aptly describe malaria as hallucinating a broken arm. Just a few more days, and I'll be good as new.
(the drive back to Gulu from Mbala was also, quite literally, the Road to Hell. With a side of malaria.)
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
my taxi ran over a baby goat. It frolicked the wrong way into the road and gave a dying bleat as it clunked under the wheels. Everyone in the taxi started laughing. I felt like crying.
living in Gulu is like living in weird NGO world. There's the city proper, a dusty grid swarming with bodas and airtime vendors, and then there's the NGO village up the hill, with offices of ever major NGO and UN committee in the world. It's surprisingly easy to do research here. You just make a phone call, set up an appointment, show up, ask your questions, and repeat. No one denies you, everybody wants to help. I'm having the problem that my project is almost too easy; I'm going to have to focus to make sure I don't get carried away on every little issue.
we're finally moving into a house today, after a week in real estate hell a.k.a. flooded hotel rooms (it's the rainy season). It's been hard looking for places that will rent only for one month, and have a security wall, and have electricity/a water source all at the same time, but I'm looking forward to having a permanent place to live. The other day the managers of our hotel actually called Katie, Ben, and I into a meeting; they were, of course, trying to tell us the room cost more than it did. We were not fooled. I'm a little sick of basically walking around with a $ sign on my forehead.
yesterday I went down to Lira, a couple of hours south of Gulu, to talk to the World Food Programme office there. I met with one guy, Michael Besigye, for our appointment, and when I went outside the sky was a terrifying thing to behold. The clouds were low and dark and maliciously contorting. Mr. Besigye yelled at me to get on his motorcycle so I wouldn't have to call a boda to the bus park, so I awkwardly hopped on until the rain and wind started coming down like a hurricane. Ten feet out of the compound we made a U-turn back. Luckily, just then the World Food Program Land Cruiser came barreling down the road, and the driver said he was picking some stuff up to take to the Gulu office, so Mr. Besigye arranged to me to catch a ride. Now, I may deride NGOs for thinking that no operation is complete without a shiny white Land Cruiser, but the prospect of riding in a vehicle with those baby blue UN letters on the side thrilled my inner IR nerd. I was sitting in the backseat, gloating at not having to pay the 10,000 shillings back to Gulu, when into the front seat comes Gilbert Buzu, the head of the Gulu Sub-Office. Twenty minutes of small talk later, he knows my name and life story and has invited me to 'pop in' to his office anytime to see about observing some projects in the field.
this is so much fun.
living in Gulu is like living in weird NGO world. There's the city proper, a dusty grid swarming with bodas and airtime vendors, and then there's the NGO village up the hill, with offices of ever major NGO and UN committee in the world. It's surprisingly easy to do research here. You just make a phone call, set up an appointment, show up, ask your questions, and repeat. No one denies you, everybody wants to help. I'm having the problem that my project is almost too easy; I'm going to have to focus to make sure I don't get carried away on every little issue.
we're finally moving into a house today, after a week in real estate hell a.k.a. flooded hotel rooms (it's the rainy season). It's been hard looking for places that will rent only for one month, and have a security wall, and have electricity/a water source all at the same time, but I'm looking forward to having a permanent place to live. The other day the managers of our hotel actually called Katie, Ben, and I into a meeting; they were, of course, trying to tell us the room cost more than it did. We were not fooled. I'm a little sick of basically walking around with a $ sign on my forehead.
yesterday I went down to Lira, a couple of hours south of Gulu, to talk to the World Food Programme office there. I met with one guy, Michael Besigye, for our appointment, and when I went outside the sky was a terrifying thing to behold. The clouds were low and dark and maliciously contorting. Mr. Besigye yelled at me to get on his motorcycle so I wouldn't have to call a boda to the bus park, so I awkwardly hopped on until the rain and wind started coming down like a hurricane. Ten feet out of the compound we made a U-turn back. Luckily, just then the World Food Program Land Cruiser came barreling down the road, and the driver said he was picking some stuff up to take to the Gulu office, so Mr. Besigye arranged to me to catch a ride. Now, I may deride NGOs for thinking that no operation is complete without a shiny white Land Cruiser, but the prospect of riding in a vehicle with those baby blue UN letters on the side thrilled my inner IR nerd. I was sitting in the backseat, gloating at not having to pay the 10,000 shillings back to Gulu, when into the front seat comes Gilbert Buzu, the head of the Gulu Sub-Office. Twenty minutes of small talk later, he knows my name and life story and has invited me to 'pop in' to his office anytime to see about observing some projects in the field.
this is so much fun.
Friday, April 3, 2009
I've been in Gulu for the past few days, having taken the 8:00 am post office bus from Kampala on tuesday. Right before we left, a post office employee came on the bus and I thought she was going to make announcements about Gulu, but she just asked if anyone on the bus could lead us in prayer for a safe journey. I closed my eyes and missed New England.
I continue to be astounded by East Africa. Gulu is tucked into the corner of Ugana between Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, and has been host to the longest civil conflict in Africa, the Lord's Resistance Army rebellion. It's one of the poorest parts of Uganda, agriculturally backwards, and with most of its residents still in IDP camps. I was expecting to arrive in a war-torn, crumbling outpost with dust instead of roads and no sign of a market economy. Oh, how the media can leave us so misinformed. You would never know Gulu had been in a civil war. The roads are paved and in better shape than many of Kampala's. The only soldiers are bank security guards. The town is bright, orderly, and charming. There are guest houses everywhere and shops where you can buy five different varieties of imported cereal. The atmosphere is very laid back, and happy hour seems to be a staple of the work week.
I like Kampala, but I love Gulu. Everything is within walking distance, and in the worst cases you can just take a boda. English is still pretty prevalent, and everyone is even more friendly than in other parts of the country. There are seven of my classmates here, currently staying in hostels while we look for an apartment. Katie, Ben, and I, more cost-conscious than the rest, share a bed in a squashed room barely big enough to hold our duffle bags. When not going to interviews or exploring, we have come close to polishing off the entire fourth season of "Friends." Considering our ambitions for the next six weeks, everyone is pretty calm, and I feel significantly less stressed than I thought I would. Every day we can just get out of bed and walk to our organizations, since Gulu has a branch of just about all of them, and be back in time for lunch.
maybe I'll write again in a week when I figure out the catch.
I continue to be astounded by East Africa. Gulu is tucked into the corner of Ugana between Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, and has been host to the longest civil conflict in Africa, the Lord's Resistance Army rebellion. It's one of the poorest parts of Uganda, agriculturally backwards, and with most of its residents still in IDP camps. I was expecting to arrive in a war-torn, crumbling outpost with dust instead of roads and no sign of a market economy. Oh, how the media can leave us so misinformed. You would never know Gulu had been in a civil war. The roads are paved and in better shape than many of Kampala's. The only soldiers are bank security guards. The town is bright, orderly, and charming. There are guest houses everywhere and shops where you can buy five different varieties of imported cereal. The atmosphere is very laid back, and happy hour seems to be a staple of the work week.
I like Kampala, but I love Gulu. Everything is within walking distance, and in the worst cases you can just take a boda. English is still pretty prevalent, and everyone is even more friendly than in other parts of the country. There are seven of my classmates here, currently staying in hostels while we look for an apartment. Katie, Ben, and I, more cost-conscious than the rest, share a bed in a squashed room barely big enough to hold our duffle bags. When not going to interviews or exploring, we have come close to polishing off the entire fourth season of "Friends." Considering our ambitions for the next six weeks, everyone is pretty calm, and I feel significantly less stressed than I thought I would. Every day we can just get out of bed and walk to our organizations, since Gulu has a branch of just about all of them, and be back in time for lunch.
maybe I'll write again in a week when I figure out the catch.
Monday, March 30, 2009
my computer, and everyone else's computer, caught one of the deadly East African viruses. I actually had about sixteen of them, but the one of greatest concern was called Sweetheart, which I luckily nipped in the bud before it could do any harm (though it did ruin a few of my friends' computers). I think there's a big parallel here between computer viruses and HIV. We all caught Sweetheart by plugging our flash drives into internet cafe computers and then plugging them into our laptops, a metaphor for intercourse if I even saw one. Since you pretty much have to use your flash drive in internet cafes because the appallingly slow wireless here, it's unavoidable to eventually catch a virus. Much like how women here know it's only a matter of time before their cheating husbands bring HIV home, since it's a taboo for the woman to suggest a condom.
however, this is where computer HIV becomes more like the Clap, because it is symptomless and curable if you treat it before it messes up your reproductive system (hard drive?). Kaitlyn in particular kept lamenting the lack of a flash drive "condom," which we knew would be the solution to all our problems, until we finally found a computer repair stand that provided us with such a thing (a program that scans any USB device for viruses before letting it in). Now I know I can't just insert my flash drive anywhere without protection.
I had my first interview with the World Food Programme yesterday, which, like my church, hands out free condoms in the bathroom. My professor had found the number for Elvis, the man in charge of Purchase for Progress which is the local food aid procurement initiative I'm looking at, and I called him on a whim, half-expecting him to be a stuffy old suit who wouldn't help me. The WFP office was on the other side of town, amid the rich Muzungu office parks that look more like a neighborhood of San Francisco than an African capital. But Elvis was actually really helpful, and gave me a really long history of food aid in Uganda as well as a lot of good advice and contacts in Gulu and Lira. I left feeling pretty good about my ISP--only hope things keep going so well. But if I can hook up with the WFP offices up north then I can talk to distributors and farmers and that's what I want to do right there. It's so different doing research in an English-speaking country, I never realized how much language was an obstacle in Bolivia and China.
I've been thinking more about the World Food Programme. While I believe the WFP is a vehicle of short-term aid that creates long-term dependency, I respect them for acknowledging this problem themselves and trying to come up with a policy that addresses it (no matter how much it pisses off the US farm lobby). Right now about 70% of food aid in Uganda is purchased in-country, but the big problem is that farmers in the North, which was a hot spot for civil war until a couple of years ago, can't produce much more than what they eat themselves. The biggest no-brainer of food aid is that it's far better to stimulate farm production of developing countries by purchasing food from them than to ship in food from the US and EU. The WFP still doesn't know how to purchase from the smallest farmers, but it's trying.
poverty is strange. Out of all the homestay families of my classmates, mine is one of the poorest. Students from rich families bring fruit and lunches their family packs them to school, while my family doesn't even feed me breakfast. Dinner for me each night it a single chapati with a portion of beans, which is still better than what the rest of the family eats (posho). I know that my family can afford to feed me more, because the program pays them each week, but they use the money elsewhere, and my appetite has shrunk anyway. My family has a car but can't afford school fees for all the kids. My host mother has a cabinet filled with more dishes than I've ever seen in my life (from when she couldn't afford them and the neighborhood went a little overboard in helping out), but the boys wear too-small shoes with holes in them. There aren't enough chairs in the living room, and when watching "Second Chance" I either have to stand or grab a milking stool from the cows, yet the family bought another second-hand TV when theirs broke. I don't think any of this is because they are pretending to be more poor than they are; there's just another set of priorities for consumption that I've never thought about, being rich and from America. I don't understand why they wouldn't use money for clothes and toilet paper and food, but then I've never grown up in a country with no property rights or insurance policies, where the police are corrupt to the point of uselessness and malaria is unavoidable.
when the water pipes in Kampala are shut off half the time, it's more convenient to have a pit latrine even if you can afford a toilet. When the electricity goes every afternoon, it's hard to have a business that involves using computers or the internet or electrical cooking appliances. I once watched my host brother spend all afternoon shaving one customer's head in his salon, because the power kept shutting off every fifteen minutes. Here, electricity is a luxury, and you're better off if you don't depend on it in your daily life. Kaitlyn's family isn't even on the electrical grid, but they have their own housekeeper.
if it took me two months of living here to figure just that out, how can any outsider organization presume that they are in the position to help?
however, this is where computer HIV becomes more like the Clap, because it is symptomless and curable if you treat it before it messes up your reproductive system (hard drive?). Kaitlyn in particular kept lamenting the lack of a flash drive "condom," which we knew would be the solution to all our problems, until we finally found a computer repair stand that provided us with such a thing (a program that scans any USB device for viruses before letting it in). Now I know I can't just insert my flash drive anywhere without protection.
I had my first interview with the World Food Programme yesterday, which, like my church, hands out free condoms in the bathroom. My professor had found the number for Elvis, the man in charge of Purchase for Progress which is the local food aid procurement initiative I'm looking at, and I called him on a whim, half-expecting him to be a stuffy old suit who wouldn't help me. The WFP office was on the other side of town, amid the rich Muzungu office parks that look more like a neighborhood of San Francisco than an African capital. But Elvis was actually really helpful, and gave me a really long history of food aid in Uganda as well as a lot of good advice and contacts in Gulu and Lira. I left feeling pretty good about my ISP--only hope things keep going so well. But if I can hook up with the WFP offices up north then I can talk to distributors and farmers and that's what I want to do right there. It's so different doing research in an English-speaking country, I never realized how much language was an obstacle in Bolivia and China.
I've been thinking more about the World Food Programme. While I believe the WFP is a vehicle of short-term aid that creates long-term dependency, I respect them for acknowledging this problem themselves and trying to come up with a policy that addresses it (no matter how much it pisses off the US farm lobby). Right now about 70% of food aid in Uganda is purchased in-country, but the big problem is that farmers in the North, which was a hot spot for civil war until a couple of years ago, can't produce much more than what they eat themselves. The biggest no-brainer of food aid is that it's far better to stimulate farm production of developing countries by purchasing food from them than to ship in food from the US and EU. The WFP still doesn't know how to purchase from the smallest farmers, but it's trying.
poverty is strange. Out of all the homestay families of my classmates, mine is one of the poorest. Students from rich families bring fruit and lunches their family packs them to school, while my family doesn't even feed me breakfast. Dinner for me each night it a single chapati with a portion of beans, which is still better than what the rest of the family eats (posho). I know that my family can afford to feed me more, because the program pays them each week, but they use the money elsewhere, and my appetite has shrunk anyway. My family has a car but can't afford school fees for all the kids. My host mother has a cabinet filled with more dishes than I've ever seen in my life (from when she couldn't afford them and the neighborhood went a little overboard in helping out), but the boys wear too-small shoes with holes in them. There aren't enough chairs in the living room, and when watching "Second Chance" I either have to stand or grab a milking stool from the cows, yet the family bought another second-hand TV when theirs broke. I don't think any of this is because they are pretending to be more poor than they are; there's just another set of priorities for consumption that I've never thought about, being rich and from America. I don't understand why they wouldn't use money for clothes and toilet paper and food, but then I've never grown up in a country with no property rights or insurance policies, where the police are corrupt to the point of uselessness and malaria is unavoidable.
when the water pipes in Kampala are shut off half the time, it's more convenient to have a pit latrine even if you can afford a toilet. When the electricity goes every afternoon, it's hard to have a business that involves using computers or the internet or electrical cooking appliances. I once watched my host brother spend all afternoon shaving one customer's head in his salon, because the power kept shutting off every fifteen minutes. Here, electricity is a luxury, and you're better off if you don't depend on it in your daily life. Kaitlyn's family isn't even on the electrical grid, but they have their own housekeeper.
if it took me two months of living here to figure just that out, how can any outsider organization presume that they are in the position to help?
Friday, March 27, 2009
Dennis, my Luganda professor, gave me a Luganda name one day at lunch, "Mirembe," or "Peace," which is the same name as one of our cows. Unsatisfied, I asked by rural homestay father to give me a Bagwe name. He pondered for a day and then told me he would name me "Angela." And then, randomly in the grocery store yesterday, the guy who was mopping the floor shouted "Nawa Kula!" at me. "It's a name," his coworker explained. "He is naming you."
the taxi system is quite genius here. You can get anywhere you need to go, and if you need walk further to get to your destination, you can just hop on the back of someone's bicycle. Each taxi is a Toyota microbus with a driver and conductor; the conductor hangs out the window shouting "Kalerwe Kyebando Kanyanya Mpererwe!" etc and picks passengers off the side of the road. Anywhere from fifteen to twenty people cram into the seats, and you are supposed to pay before you get off (the most unlucky get the fold-up seats at the end of the row which tip over at every turn). To get off you yell "masaawo!," which will cause everyone in the taxi to crack up if you are a muzungu. There are technically "stages" which are the designated stops, but really anyplace along the route you can yell at the conductor to get off or picked up.
in downtown Kampala there are various stages where taxis stop to fill up, and there are usually men walking up and down the stage directing people into the right taxis. Additionally, there are two huge taxi parks, Old and New, which were described to me by Zack as "a beach, only with taxis instead of sand." There are market vendors surrounding the lot and boys selling g-nuts and men who ask where you're going, seize you by the hand, and shove you into the appropriate taxi. It's a pretty well-run system, overall. Boston could do to take a leaf from Kampala.
I'm 90% sure I'm going to Gulu in the north for my ISP to study farming, or, "The Post-Conflict Restoration of Agriculture Through Local Procurement of Food Aid." Until a couple of years ago Gulu was a hot spot for the Lord's Resistance Army, which has since moved into DRC, and receives a ton of food aid that has created a cycle of dependency EXCEPT for an initiative to buy the food locally instead of importing it through the US and EU's agricultural surplus. It is, in a nutshell, everything I am interested in academically, and (crossing fingers) I'll be in Gulu for a month before coming back to Kampala for a few weeks. There are 5 or 6 other students headed up there so we're hoping we can all rent a house. I'm really excited because I actually have direction unlike for my China ISP, though I'm sure other aspects of it will fail to measure up to last semester.
today I had brunch at City Oil. In Uganda, the nicest restaurants are at gas stations. It had air conditioning and I was even cold! But I maintain that no place outside of New York State knows what a bagel is. They should be boiled! The ideal bagel is crusty on the outside and doughy and moist on the inside, and shouldn't even require cream cheese.
the taxi system is quite genius here. You can get anywhere you need to go, and if you need walk further to get to your destination, you can just hop on the back of someone's bicycle. Each taxi is a Toyota microbus with a driver and conductor; the conductor hangs out the window shouting "Kalerwe Kyebando Kanyanya Mpererwe!" etc and picks passengers off the side of the road. Anywhere from fifteen to twenty people cram into the seats, and you are supposed to pay before you get off (the most unlucky get the fold-up seats at the end of the row which tip over at every turn). To get off you yell "masaawo!," which will cause everyone in the taxi to crack up if you are a muzungu. There are technically "stages" which are the designated stops, but really anyplace along the route you can yell at the conductor to get off or picked up.
in downtown Kampala there are various stages where taxis stop to fill up, and there are usually men walking up and down the stage directing people into the right taxis. Additionally, there are two huge taxi parks, Old and New, which were described to me by Zack as "a beach, only with taxis instead of sand." There are market vendors surrounding the lot and boys selling g-nuts and men who ask where you're going, seize you by the hand, and shove you into the appropriate taxi. It's a pretty well-run system, overall. Boston could do to take a leaf from Kampala.
I'm 90% sure I'm going to Gulu in the north for my ISP to study farming, or, "The Post-Conflict Restoration of Agriculture Through Local Procurement of Food Aid." Until a couple of years ago Gulu was a hot spot for the Lord's Resistance Army, which has since moved into DRC, and receives a ton of food aid that has created a cycle of dependency EXCEPT for an initiative to buy the food locally instead of importing it through the US and EU's agricultural surplus. It is, in a nutshell, everything I am interested in academically, and (crossing fingers) I'll be in Gulu for a month before coming back to Kampala for a few weeks. There are 5 or 6 other students headed up there so we're hoping we can all rent a house. I'm really excited because I actually have direction unlike for my China ISP, though I'm sure other aspects of it will fail to measure up to last semester.
today I had brunch at City Oil. In Uganda, the nicest restaurants are at gas stations. It had air conditioning and I was even cold! But I maintain that no place outside of New York State knows what a bagel is. They should be boiled! The ideal bagel is crusty on the outside and doughy and moist on the inside, and shouldn't even require cream cheese.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
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.
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.
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