Emotions

This has been a whirlwind of a week.

Saturday all four GESI teams (20 of us total) went to Kampala with the FSD staff to see the Uganda Museum. I think they mentioned that it was the only museum in the whole country. Surprising, especially since the placards describing the items in the display cases looked and read like they had been created by fourth graders. I guess I shouldn't compare to the multi-million dollar WWII Museum in Kansas City. KC probably has more resources to devote to pretty placards. We did get to try and make some music on traditional African instruments and watch some cricket at a nearby field, though. The cricket set-up was interesting. There is a large Indian population in Uganda. Many of the Indians were expelled from the country during the dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s because they were the ones (basically the only ones) making a bunch of profit off self-started businesses. I'm not sure when they started trickling back to Uganda, but this cricket field (which had about 10 matches going on simultaneously) was heavily segregated: it was the Indian children versus Ugandan children. There were no racially mixed teams, and even the bleachers were segregated. It was an odd sight. While in Kampala, I also bought my host dad some balloons. He turns 47 on July 23, and I'm hoping to surprise him when he gets home from work. Oh yeah, and on our way home, I saw a tall Ugandan woman with a Kansas City Royals shirt. It made me happy.

On Sunday, we attended Mass again in the morning. This time around, Mass was held outside to accommodate for the extra people attending the confirmation ceremony. It was actually quite beautiful. There were several tents surrounding the altar from all sides, and a massive tree near the back where probably 60 kids had perched themselves in the branches. We got there late and sat on a woven mat underneath the shade. It was a good thing we didn't stand, given that the service lasted a whole four hours. And it was ALL in Luganda. I did some deep thinking during that time. When we got home, Daisy and I got to work on strategizing how we would bake the brownie mix I had brought along from the US. Our family doesn't have an oven...only a charcoal pit out back and a bunsen-burner-type thing inside. We decided to simulate an oven by mixing the brownies in a small metal pot, placing that pot on top of an upside-down glass plate that was situated on the inside of a larger metal pot, placing a lid over the larger pot, and sticking it over the charcoal. After about an hour of baking, the brownies were PERFECT: still a little gooey, but delicious. We didn't enjoy long, as the sun was setting and we had to get to the garden before dark. Our family has a plot of land about a mile away, tended to by my dad's deceased brother's son. We got to see their avocado, matooke, and mango trees, and their sweet potato mounds. I also learned how to milk a cow. Not much came out, and the cow kept looking at me like I was an idiot, but I'm glad I learned nonetheless. Before leaving, my dad's nephew asked us to stop in to eat. Like I've mentioned, whenever you visit someone, even if it's unexpected, it is only polite for the host to provide "food for the journey." So we were fed chicken, beef, bumonde (sweet potato), and passion fruit juice. It was on this visit that I witnessed something that I hadn't seen before but had heard about: Ugandan women, when they are serving food to men or greeting someone of high respect, are expected to kneel. It was so odd to see my dad's nephew's wife kneel in front of him to deliver the food. It looked wrong, and actually kind of made me upset. There are so many times I have had to tell myself, "It's a cultural thing" to avoid thinking too much. For example, homosexuality here is not only illegal in practice; merely discussing it is illegal. A member of a different GESI group here told me on Saturday that her dad thinks it's OK to beat women with sugar cane poles if she's "being annoying." I've seen a woman walking around, breastfeeding her child WITHOUT HANDS. The child was just dangling there. I wanted to take a picture but didn't know how without being discreet. So many odd encounters I just have to remind myself to dismiss.

I'm beginning to get used to and almost comforted by my little village in Mbikko (yep, I've been spelling it wrong all along). When we went out to eat on Friday night to eat muzungu food (i.e. pizza), I actually missed eating my mom's food. It also makes me smile when the next-door neighbor children walk their goats on leashes every morning, when I can look up at the sky while brushing my teeth outside at night and see billions of stars shining so much brighter than they do in the US, and when kids walking home from school peer through our kitchen window and shout, "Muzungu, how are you?" Actually, funny story. I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking milk tea and eating my favorite purple ground nuts, and a little kid said exactly that. I shouted back, "Muganda," meaning, "I'm Ugandan." My mom unfortunately happened to be drinking porridge at the time, found my declaration funny, and snorted the liquid up her nose. So that was Sunday.

Monday. Bryan and I had set up a meeting with the bishop of Jinja diocese because we heard from one of our supervisors that this bishop had experience in exporting mushrooms. So Bryan and I hopped on a motorcycle boda boda (I know, I said they were illegal according to FSD, which they are ... but we were running late, and it's the fastest mode of transportation available). I made Bryan sit between me and the driver so I could grab onto Bryan. Luckily, the bicycle boda experience seemed far more terrifying than the motorcycle. When we entered his office, we were confused. A white man was sitting at the desk. Bryan asked for the bishop. He said, in a think Dutch accent, "That's me!" We foud out that he's been in East Africa for 50 years now: he spent 7 years in Kenya and the last 43 in Uganda. Surprise #2: he knew absolutely nothing about mushroom exportation. He does, however, love eating mushrooms. Surprise #3: he said, if we wanted to, he could take us to her house right then! So we hopped in the car with the bishop and went to Mushroom Margaret's house. She is also half-Dutch, half-Ugandan, and is a very serious businesswoman. She started producing mushrooms out of her house in 1984, and now has some pretty lucrative contracts with Chinese herbalists in Kampala and several markets in Jinja. She showed us her shed and gave us her number. More about her later. She is also the one of the reasons I cried this week. Also on Monday, we told Jjaja Judith that we had picked her to be our point person for the mushroom project. She was SO excited, and hugged us all, blessing us in Luganda. That evening, Daisy and I went on a walk up a hill surrounded by cornfields behind our house. As we neared the top, 8 monkeys emerged from the crops (we were told monkey theft is a problem here), looked curiously at us, then wandered off.

Tuesday was crazy. Nelson, an ex-rebel who knows a lot about the materials needed to start a mushroom garden, took Bryan, Daisy, Katie, and me to Jinja town to get some of the materials. Frankie and Ellen made the trek to Kampala to get the mushroom seeds, only available at Makerere University (according to Jonathan). That turned out to be a fiasco. When they got to the "herbarium" (the location to which Jonathan had directed them) after a three-hour matatu ride, they were told that no one had ever heard of mushroom seeds. After wandering around Kampala looking for an internet cafe so they could look up phone numbers of other university departments, they finally contacted the chemistry department, which had the seeds. But they won't be ready until Monday. We were hoping to start the growing process on this past Wednesday so we could see the whole process before leaving in August.

Let me explain briefly the growing process: Monday, we will train Jjaja to soak the cotton husks in large barrels. Tuesday, we will train her how to drain the husks, then boil them. Wednesday, we will layer the prepared cotton husks and the mushroom seeds into black plastic bags. These bags will then sit in the Jjaja's mushroom shed (which we constructed on Wednesday) for two weeks. After those two weeks, they will be taken home by the 5 families who Jjaja Judith designated and watered in their sheds. After a week of water, they will be ready for their first harvest. The families can then sell their mushrooms in local markets. Dried mushrooms go for more money than fresh ones. So they'll have to decide how much effort they want to put into the process.

So back to the craziness of Tuesday: while Frankie and Ellen were having trouble in Kampala, the four of us were having our own issues in Jinja. As we were preparing to leave St. Francis in an ambulance (we needed enough space to load our three barrels) to head to the market, two nurses asked if we could transport a patient to the Jinja hospital on our way. So they loaded a man in on a stretcher. This man was so so sick. He looked to be about 80 pounds, had sores all over his ankles, vomit around his mouth, and he was breathing so quickly and mumbling incomprehensible things with all his strength. When sun would come in from the window, he would clench his eyes tight and reach for Katie's hand. With each bump in the road, he would grimace and moan. The inefficiency of the hospital was absurd. It took us forever to find the right unit due to lack of signs. When a doctor finally hopped into the car to check him out, we found out that the man was HIV-positive and severely dehydrated. Before checking him into a ward, he had to be registered, which took probably 45 minutes. All the while, the man started shaking and moaning louder. I don't know the mannerisms of dying people, but he looked like he was literally dying right before our eyes. I started crying, maybe unnecessarily because the doctors didn't seem too concerned about speeding up the process.

So once in Jinja, we had already missed lunch. With the help of Nelson, we were able to find our materials pretty quickly (and avoid muzungu prices): charcoal dust for the floor, black bags for the gardens, string to hang the bags in the sheds, nails for the shed construction, tarp to make the sheds completely dark, sugar sacks to assist in draining, and the barrels. At one point, Katie and I guarded our barrels on probably the most chaotic corner of the market while waiting for the ambulance to come pick us up. Soooo many men came up to us to ask if they could help us transport our barrels. One man even tried to sell us the barrels, not knowing we had already bought them. Another asked about our project, and wondered whether we could expand it to his village. Katie gave him her number. Our last stop was a soap factory for the 6 large bags of cotton husks. The van wasn't big enough for the barrels and the husks, so the ambulance had to drive to Buzkia (Jjaja's town), drop off the barrels, then drive back for the husks. Daisy and I waited at the soap factory, run by Ugandans, who were supervised by Indians. The Ugandans tried to get us to give them 300 shillings to load the bags onto the ambulance. Their Indian supervisor chastised them and even threatened to fire them for trying to trick us into tipping. The said thing is, 300 shillings is only 15 cents. They probably make a dollar a day. I wouldn't have minded. The Indians run a tight ship, though. Before heading home from work, Katie, Daisy, and I walked about a mile from St. Francis to the lumber yard to negotiate prices for the next day's purchases (we needed logs and papyrus mats to construct Jjaja's shed the next day). On the way back, none of us talked. It was hot, we hadn't eaten since seven, and we had sat in a car with a dying man. The only thing mentioned was, "Wow," as ten truckloads of army men, each equipped with an AK-47, drove by. It was an overwhelming day. To top it off, my dad mentioned at dinner (a delicious spread of Nile perch, avocados, pumpkin, and g-nut sauce) that he thought Idi Amin was one of the best leaders Uganda had ever had. Shocking. I don't know if the Last King of Scotland just depicted him in an exaggerated negative light, but from my understanding he killed around 300,000 political adversaries and regular civilians. I wasn't in the mood to argue.

On Wednesday, we constructed Jjaja Judith's shed. It went so splendidly, and seems sturdy enough to stand firm against the rainy season's gusts of wind. While the engineers were finishing fortifying the shed, Daisy, Katie, and I visited the five families who Jjaja had designated. All were older, physically limited, and taking care of 6-15 grandkids orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. Luckily we only have to construct one more mushroom shed! The other four families already had exisiting rooms or structures that will be suitable. By the time we got to the fifth house, though, I was feeling the effects of dehydration. One of my water bottles keeps breeding moss, so I had purchased another. But I gave that one to Jjaja Judith halfway into our visits. Adding to the dizziness was the fact that the fifth jjaja (jjaja, remember, means old person) was taking care of her 17-year-old granddaughter who had had HIV since birth. While we gathered around her to introduce ourselves, she vomited. Her grandma told us that the anti-retrovirals she's been taking haven't been working because she hasn't been able to hold any food down since May, thus incapacitating absorption of the medication. So since May, this poor girl has been withering away to probably 70 pounds, and the grandma hasn't taken her to see any doctors. We told her that immediately (as in Thursday morning of this week) she needed to go to St. Francis and be admitted to the Omoana House, a home for children in need of an environment of monitored recovery. Hopefully they did that today. I started getting nauseous, probably as a result of no water and this girl's story. I would've passed out had the jjaja not placed a goat-skin mat under my butt and told me to sit down. After rehydrating, I felt well enough by evening to go running with Katie. This was the most memorable run yet. While heading down a road surrounded on both sides by maize, we came upon a group of 8 young men carrying machetes. Their leader said, "Good evening madams. Well done! Thanks for your work! Can we join you?" Before we could answer, they started jogging: four on our left, and four on our right. They said they were on their way to brand cattle. It actually wasn't frightening. I felt safe. They stuck with us for half a mile before bidding farewell.

On Thursday, we did a bunch of financial figuring. This involved calling Mushroom Margaret to ask how long a bag of mushroom seeds will last before it needs to be replenished. I was the one to call. Boy did she lash out at me. She was wondering why, if we had reliable informants stepping us through the mushroom-growing training process, we were calling her. I explained that although Jonathan (a St. Francis employee who had some experience growing mushrooms before) knew what he was talking about, we didn't think it'd hurt to have a second opinion. Without saying it, she basically told me (in a very loud and angry voice) that if we were going to consult her for her expert insight, we would need to pay her. So I thanked her and she hung up. I teared up. I wasn't personally hurt; I think I was just emotionally exhausted by all the week's activities and didn't think a little unpaid cooperation would be a big deal. Obviously it was.



So, as you can tell, this has been a crazy week. I'm learning a lot, though, and love my host family more and more each day. This weekend, our team is going rafting on Nile. Also, Bryan and I would like to go bungee jumping. I've heard that girls can jump for free if they jump naked. I'm tempted...any comments?

Sula bulungi ("Good night" in Luganda),

Abby