town – discovery

June 17, an eventful day

On our way back from lunch, we noticed a big crowd of people gathered around two men. It turned out to be a fist fight between two men, apparently fighting over a cheating wife. There were people from the town gathered, as well as children from the primary school beside where they were fighting, plus some high school students who had the day off. It was a great big show, and everyone was shouting their comments, heckling, laughing, and others were trying to pull the two men off each other. Even the woman was there, with her baby strapped to her back as women do here. The men were told to move their fight elsewhere, and the crowd kept following them. Almost 50 people would follow them as they moved the fight from place to place. I wonder if the husband was trying to gather the crowd, to shame his wife and also the man with whom she had extra marital relations with.

After the fun and frenzy moved far away, we headed back to the library. All day, the school across our workplace had loud music blaring. Apparently it was a celebration dance welcoming the new S1 and S5 students (start of junior and senior high). We were curious to see what a high school dance looked like, so we gathered around the windows to peek. We should’ve known that the students would drag us into the dance, seeing a chance to party with the muzungus.

The dance hall was really just a plain, bare classroom, with leaves decorating the window panes. We were ushered into the room, where catchy African tunes had everyone dancing and having fun. Dancing (and clubbing) here is not as awkward as it is back home, in my opinion… people here are a lot more natural when it comes to breaking out their dance moves, probably because children are brought up to learn and perform the traditional dances. When we got onto the dance floor, all the boys danced their way to surround us, cheering us on, and dancing away. It was great fun. We snapped some pictures, then darted back out because it was so hot and humid inside. On our way out, I noticed that there were several explicit drawings of men and women on the blackboard, but I didn’t ask about it. For a society where religious studies is a major part of the school curriculum, it surprised me to see sex pictures explicitly drawn onto a high school blackboard.

We had dinner plans with the town doctor, who is also an amazing cook. We arrived promptly at 6pm, as arranged, but he was stuck in theatre (operating room) as he was last time we were here. We waited around but he didn’t arrive until close to 8pm. He must’ve had a really long day, he looked quite exhausted but he was still rather chatty at that. He proceeded to ask his cousin to go out to buy some vegetables, then began to prepare the food. Being busy all the time doesn’t allow him much time for socializing, so he took the chance to chat with us as he prepared dinner. By 9:30pm, the vegetables were still being chopped, but we had learned most of his dating history. We didn’t get to eat until an hour or so later. He was an animated story teller, for sure. When we had finished, he called on a driver from the hospital to help him escort us home, which was a treat because the cheaper alternative would’ve been to ride a motorcycle home in the dark. We got home, and all fell asleep soon afterwards as it had been a long, eventful day.

Muzungu’s for sale, 5 million USD (Mbale)

There is no experience like riding in a taxi bus between rural villages. A taxi bus is a vehicle (looks slightly run down by Canadian standards) that is legally licensed to carry 14 passengers. Every day, taxi busses commute from one taxi park to another, usually situated in bigger cities. During rush hour, they manage to ‘fit’ (squish) at least 18 passengers; there were 22 people at the maximum fit in our taxi cab during our 3 hour ride back from Mbale to Busolwe. At each village, people have candles lit and have a night market theme going on, and passengers usually get on and off at those stops. In between the villages are extremely bumpy dirt roads (the same ones that I mentioned biking on), which put pot holes in Vancouver to shame. There are always many people walking along those roads, or biking on dilapidated bikes, and it’s horrifying to watch how taxi cabs swerve in and out between the pedestrians and bikers. There are no traffic rules that people follow—it’s terrifying. Plus, at each stop, we muzungus get the added experience of getting greetings from villagers (some are less pleasant than others). Or, people try to sell us snacks at double or triple the prices they sell to locals.

We got up at 5AM and left our homestead at daybreak in the back of Grandpa Hirome’s truck for Mbale. We had blankets in the back of the truck, and we must have looked really comfortable. As we sped away from our town, every person would do a double take at us: 1) owning a truck was a luxury in the town; and 2) blankets to cover us definitely marked us as privileged. Mr. Hirome (we call him Grandpa, and he spoils us like a grandpa does), drove us 90% of the way because he was attending a workshop in a nearby town. It was an amazing experience, sitting in the back of a truck, enjoying the morning stretch of sky. Into each town we turned into, all the men would stop and stare. It was really obvious and awkward. At one particular town, we had an audience of at least 30 or 40 men just stopped in their morning routine/work, staring at us and waving and offering the few compliments they knew in English. It was flattering, but little did we know the same compliments dished out in a different tone would stress us out for the rest of the day in Mbale..

Mbale is a city that is much smaller than Kampala, but dirtier and occupied by ruder men. We were in Mbale to buy supplies to supplement our projects in Busolwe, and by noon we had finished most of our errands. At the supermarket, the ‘security guy’ (just a man hired to hold a wooden stick) began to converse with our hostess Josephine (Josie). Later, Josie told us he asked ‘how much to buy one?’ referring to bride prices for each of us muzungus. This was only the beginning of a day full of innuendos, offers of marriage or purchase, and many disdainful and rude comments from women in the shops. We were so stressed out by the end of the day.

We did have a good lunch though, at a nearby resort. I was able to upload a third of my photos, and it was nice to just get away from all the rudeness and business of the city. Cities are much more disorganized, casual, and unprofessional here than back home. We don’t know the language, so we only hear the many ‘muzungu’s’ that are shouted along every single block we walk on. We are so appreciative of our hostess who is so honest with us. She is like a sister to us already. It helps because knowing that she could tell us up front what the men were saying allowed us to step back from the comments and know that they mean it in their own petty egotistical manners. Not knowing was difficult because one can always tell by the tone what kind of comment another makes… and it seemed more personal than when the insult was translated to us by a local whom we trust.

The ride home on the taxi bus was hectic, but there was something really reassuring about it… it felt like we really were being ‘locals’, living like the locals (though still relatively way well off) but we were making efforts to take transportation like they do daily, to eat as they do every day… etc. The bumpy road was a little nauseating, but also drove in the fact that we were going to be living here for the next three months… we are no longer visitors, even though we will still be perceived as the muzungus of the Busolwe village.

Tomorrow we are putting off our plans for work. We are going to sleep in, attend church with the family, and relax in the afternoon with the children. Maybe we will do our laundry and go for a bike ride, too.