Mini-portrait of 2 years in Uganda
on Volunteers Abroad (Uganda), 14/Sep/2009 17:51, 34 days ago
new arrivals.....trying to figure out how to phone the VSO office when nobody met us at the airportarriving at our campus house to find it had 2 beds, a table and chairs and nothing else! having to completely furnish the house.waking up every morning for a week or two hoping that when I opened my eyes I'd be in our lovely blue bedroom in Scotlandtrying to figure out the money. So many zeros!! Then referring to the money as.... 1,000 shs is a single, 5,000 shs is a fiver, etc.learning how to bargaintrying to figure out how much we should pay for our household furnishings and trying not to pay the very highly-inflated mzungu pricesmost people not understanding my accent--me not understanding theirsbeing the centre of attention EVERYWHEREtrying matooke, posho, beans, karo and liking themseeing just about anything being hauled on the back of a motorbike, including a family of 4roadside coffin shops and the coffin have windows!potholes the size of a childs swimming poolfearing for my life every time we were on the road!unreliable power, no guarantee of running waterMOSQUITOES!!!extremely poor quality goods - rejects from China.settling in....learning the local language and the delighted reactions of Ugandansfeeling my severe culture shock ease considerably after meeting up with other volunteers at our first regional cluster meetingfirst trip to Garden City Mall in Kampala - wow. Stuff!!!finally figuring out the best hand laundry washing systemfinally figuring out the best system for doing dishes when water was off in kitchenfiguring out how mozzies got in housegetting comfy sofa and big chairs after 5 months of crappy and uncomfortable furnitureour first meal at a Ugandan's farm and discovering that the children read Shakespeare and classic literature -- an atypical Ugandan family -- reading for pleasure is not commoneating goat (usually good), grasshoppers (emmm...yuck)meeting all kinds of fellow volunteers--from wonderful and lovely and witty to totally obnoxious and argumentative and everything in betweendifficult....trying to explain an Ipod, washing machine, lawnmower, central heatingthe number of times we've been asked why we have so few childrenexplaining why I don't need to treat my hair--being told I've been blessed by God with such hairtrying to teach someone how to use a mouse, what a desktop/folder/menu is, etctrying to answer the question 'what is the staple food in your country' to people that eat the same thing day after day after year after yearexplaining snownot being very surprised at how corruption taints so many facets of daily lifesaying goodbye to volunteers who've become our friends and are quitting and going home earlytrying to convince Ugandans that all westerners are not richtrying to get used to the almost total lack of timekeeping and punctuality and planning headmemorable or surprising or depressing....watching a Ugandan being amazed by his first time using binocularsred ants crawling inside my shoes and biting the hell out of my feet and legs. screaming bloody murder!lions, elephants, impala, chimps, giraffes, hippos, zebras, etc etc etc.....seeing pics of our former principal in snow in Dublin and him being so excited about itwatching college students eating chocolate for the first timecoming across a group of kids in raggedy clothes with patchy hair indicating malnutritionhearing our former principal talk excitedly about being in a plane for the first time and how excited he was to look out the window at the ground and how everything looked so tinya toddler running away screaming and crying when she saw us because whites are scary-looking!finding that Ugandans put their curtains up 'backwards'--pattern facing outside and lining facing inside. getting strange looks when we turned ours around.being surrounded by chimps after they'd killed and were munching on a monkeythe poor kids in the villages and having far too many siblings for them all to be fed and educated properlyhaving our families visit and go on safaris with usstaying in posh lodges and simple bandas or tentsa mouth-watering fillet steak and chocolate mousse at Mweya Lodgethe enormous room and claw footed bathtub at Katara Lodgethe first time seeing the Great Rift Valley at Kingfisher Lodgehaving a serious drinking session at Lake Mburo with Nikki and Hillary and feeling intoxicated whilst on boat trip on the lakebarefoot kids running on gravel and dirtbarefoot kids walking to school in their pink or purple school uniformspeople eating foods like rice with their handspeople carrying just about anything on their headsbeing the centre of attention at a weddingall the thumbs up and cheers for Obamaamazing people by telling them our ages and them thinking we are really really elderly/agedthe college students realizing that Danny was a 'proper' physics teacherthe students cheering when Danny went into assemblybeing surprised at the dirt poor people who have such happy smiles on their facesgetting lost in the swamp on a game drive at Lake Mburo and being chased by a water buffalo