Bye Muzungu!

Today is my one week anniversary of being in the Nemengo District of Lugazi. It feels like I’ve been here so much longer than that. The weather here is always always gorgeous. Sometimes we get a bit of rain, but it only lasts for a half hour or so, then stops. We’ve had a few thunderstorms at night, but none yet during the day. It’s been a week and the little neighborhood kids still run out to greet us absolutely everywhere we go with a, “Bye Muzungu,” or “Oleoteya,” (how are you). We then reply with Balunji or Jendi (good or fine). Almost everyone here speaks English, except for the very old and the very young, but they just love it when you speak Lugandan to them. I’m trying to add a new Lugandan phrase to my vocabulary daily to better immerse myself in their culture. Today I had a short conversation with a local woman in Lugandan and she couldn’t believe that I could say even a few words. She was so surprised she just smiled and laughed. They tend to do that a lot here. They laugh at everything, even when it may seem to be a little rude. They never hold back their loud laughter. One time we were walking back home and this little kid ran out to us and yelled, “goodbye muzungu!’” Just as he started the goodbye he slipped in some mud and fell. All of the Ugandans surrounding him that saw, threw their heads back and laughed at him very loudly. It was pretty funny.
They don’t really have dirt here, it’s more of reddish clay substance that dies your skin brownish orange. Everyone here looks like they tried to fake and bake their feet. I usually wash my hair in the well pump with a bucket below me, but the other day I didn’t use a bucket and the red clay that is on the slab of cement kind of got in my hair and now I have orange and red streaks. I’m hoping it’ll come out when I wash it tonight. The running water got turned on a few days ago and the girls and I like to say that our “squatting” days are over, which we’re pretty happy about.
I can’t even begin to describe how happy the people are here. They have almost nothing and yet they’re always smiling and are so friendly and helpful. For example, our cook Mary, is one of the kindest people I’ve every met. She’s a beautiful tall and extra dark Sudanese woman who has quite the tragic past and is so kind to all of us. She spends hours a day cooking for us and shows us how to make some of her poor mans food into a culinary masterpiece. Ugandans are also very relationship focused. I met with two college students from Kampala who work with a youth outreach program here in Lugazi when they don’t have class. I talked with them about teaching HIV/AIDS and other health classes. After having known them for maybe ten minutes they invited us to one day meet their families and eat with them. I was so humbled and touched by their immediate desire to build a friendship as opposed to just working the American way, in a more business like manner.
The average education level of the people here continually surprises me. The orphans and the people I’ve met so far can all read and write and know more about development then I expected. One of the men we’re working with, Kiza, who as aided us in building adobe stoves and mushroom farms is a very visionary man. He understands the need for development and has a lot of great ideas on how to improve his life and the lives of those around him. Mushrooms are kind of a delicacy here and are harder to come by. Currently, there aren’t many people growing and selling the crop. Kiza has a mushroom farm of his own and has had great financial success with the crop. He has already organized a group of sixteen women who are interested in mushroom farming to supplement their income. We will be working with them in the coming weeks to build them a mushroom farm, along with teaching them how to maintain it and use basic business skills.
One of the girls on my team, Dani, is an education major and is going to be working with local teachers to improve their teaching methods. It is common here for teachers to teach by memorization and not through creativity. We will be working together in the coming weeks, as she will pull teachers away from their classes for an hour a day to train them, while I give the unoccupied children a lesson on public health. I’m hoping that their fascination with muzungus (white people) will aid us in our projects and that the mere color of our skin will keep their attention.
In Uganda they annunciate all their words and don’t use words such as “they’re” or “it’s.” They always say “they are” and ”it is.” If we don’t speak English the way they speak it, they are unable to understand us. Sorry if this blog sounds a little funny in that way. Most of us can’t help but annunciate the way they do all the time now.
Tomorrow we decided to go into Jinja (about 20 mins away) to get some American food. Jinja is more of a tourist area and rumor is that they have American food there. The food here is pretty good, just different. For breakfast I generally have a granola bar and banana, well until my granola bars run out. We’re normally in town for lunch so I’ll typically eat a rolex, simosa, or chippati. A rolex is basically an egg and tomato, sometimes pepper, cooked together and rolled up in a greasier thicker version of a tortilla and costs about $0.75. A chippati is just the greasy tortilla plain and the simosa is a fried bread with beans or rice inside at about $0.10. All the greasy foods for lunch are sometimes a bit too much for me and I just bring pack a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I then always get a piece of fruit with my lunch; pineapple, mango, or passion fruit. Their fruit here is out of this world. I’ve eaten pineapple almost everyday here and I never get sick of it. Their bananas here are sweeter and taste a little different than in The States. I just tried passion fruit a few days ago and it is amazing. It’s a circular fruit that’s hard on the outside and is about the size of a golf ball. Inside it is filled with seeds and kind of a slimy filling. The texture is kind of creepy but the flavor is incredible. For dinner our amazing cook prepares almost the same thing every night, potatoes, rice, noodles, green beans, beans, pineapple, avocado, chipatti, and my personal favorite a mixture of cabbage and carrots that has incredible flavor. So the food is great but we don’t get meat, which I haven’t missed as much as I thought I would. Maybe this trip will turn me into a vegetarian.
One of the other things that I just love here is how well I sleep. We all sleep on these semi-thin foam mattresses in bunk beds, but the cool night air and the lift in the humidity is heavenly. I know Ked, Mitch, and BJ would just love it. It’s like sleeping under the sheets with the fan on in the middle of the summer but only a thousand times better. The room I’m in has a balcony where two of the boys sleep so when the sun rises our room is filled with its glorious rays and we never need an alarm clock. If that doesn’t wake us up the rooster next door does, and if that fails our night guard David will yell at us to get up. Just over the hill from our house is the gorgeous look out spot that we recently discovered. You can see all of village as well as the sugar cane and cornfields for miles lying across the rolling hills. It’s so breathtaking it doesn’t look real. I’ve stopped looking at the pictures I’ve taken because they don’t do the beauty of Lugazi justice. It’s so green and the vegetation so thick that the green and the blue of the sky seem to literally touch.