Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

 

(I forget to mention it, but last night in the bathroom was the biggest spider I’ve ever seen.  It wasn’t too fat, but it just had huge spotted legs.  I took a picture and posted it.) 

 

This morning I woke up with some stuck on my leg.  I felt it and tore it off while the lights were still out.  Not sure what it was, but it felt living.  It’s funny because friends and family used to say, “You’re scared of daddy-long-leg spiders and YOU’RE going to Africa???”  For the record, I still hate them – I just don’t have a choice anymore. 

I woke up to the sounds of blasting music and an emcee screaming into a microphone.  They have these weird trucks that roll around town with speakers affixed to the outside – I don’t know what they’re saying, but it sure is annoying. Furthermore, whenever I hear someone yelling into loudspeakers I am scared its riots or something – lol.  Thankfully that didn’t happen.

When I finally woke up I took a very cursory shower for the hotel doesn’t have hot water.  Who needs coffee?  A cold shower woke me up like someone injected espresso into my eyeballs.

I wasn’t meeting Solomon until 1:00 so I decided to walk around Hoima myself and check the town out.  I was secretly hoping to find an internet café where I could check emails and post my blog writing…but I knew there was a fat chance of that happening.  I found a little store that sold pasty-looking-things – I got myself a piece of dry, wannabe corn muffin tasting bread and a bottle of water.  In the store there was a little girl who was TERRIFIED of the mzungu.  I asked her mom why she was so scared and she said the girl had never seen a mzungu up close AND I was the tallest mzungo she’d ever seen – haha.

I walked past a guy ironing his pants with, get this, a wrought iron iron filled with burning charcoal.  Hows that for stone age?  Most people don’t have electricity…so that’s what they do.

As I walked around I noticed something else (that I’ve actually noticed a few times before) every single shop or merchant or artisan sells the exact same thing or offers the exact same product as the chap down the street.  There is no differentiation or strategy with their businesses…the only reason I’d imagine they can stay in business is because people here seem very localized – so even though the lady 5 steps away is offering the same SIM card as the lady 20 feet away, they’ll go to the closer lady thus keeping her in business (and vice versa for the 20 foot away lady).

These are the common businesses of Uganda:

- MTN Shops (pre-paid cell phone cards that everyone here uses).  A post-pay cell phone is almost unheard of here.  I am guessing it’s because of a lack of enforcement, credit history, physical location of payee…etcetera.  You basically buy a cell phone one place, a SIM card another place and finally you load your phone with minutes from a lady on the street.

- Grocers

- “Pork Joints” – food places

- Health Clinics

For lunch Solomon and I went (sigh) back to the same place.  It’s the cheapest restaurant in town and the only that fits his budget.  Naturally I don’t want to make him feel bad about his budget so I agreed to go back.  For the THIRD time in a row I had matoke, rice, beans and a coke.  Yay.  While we were eating Solomon told me he’d “lost count the number of times he got malaria.”  I felt bad because he seemed to think malaria was gone once the symptoms disappeared…in reality it’s a chronic disease like hepatitis.  He said everyone in Uganda got malaria multiple times.

I asked Solomon if he thought the 38-year life expectancy was really the average age people lived to (sometimes those statistics can be greatly skewed for one reason or another…i.e. infant deaths).  He said a more realistic life expectancy was 50.  50?!  I was closer to being dead than alive at the ripe old age of 27.  But that’s what the people here face.  Solomon’s dad is 45 and according to Solomon only has a few more years to live.  I couldn’t even imagine that reality – but it made me take a closer look at my own mortality.  Would I live my life any differently if I only planned on living 23 more years?

That day we went to Sir Tito high school in the countryside.  We took a 40-minute boda boda ride through the most rural section of Africa I’ve ever been to.  I mean – it’s like the stuff you see in movies.  I had to pinch myself to remind myself it was real.  There were people walking on the side of the dirt road carrying things on their heads, children playing with sticks in the mud, a lady carrying a large (gulp) machete.  I was wearing my helmet, and it’s a good thing, but not for reasons you may think.  I had the shield down and bugs kept splattering against it!  Gross – I felt like I was in Dumb and Dumber. 

“You hungry Harry?”

“Nope…Swallowed a June bug a few miles back.”

When we got to Sir Tito I was introduced to the headmaster, Harriet.  She was a sweet woman who greeted us with warm Mountain Dew Sodas.  She told me her daughter is a 19 year old student at St Johns in Queens, NY.  I asked Harriet how she liked it.

“Oh, she doesn’t like it.  She says there is no place to get anything that tastes like food.”

What?!  I’d gladly trade culinary locales with her daughter.  I guess it’s just about what you’re used to.

Harriet also told me she’s the oldest of 25 kids.  25!!!  Her father is married to 3 women…polygamy is rampant in Uganda.

Harriet also told me:

- The school used to have 1,360 students…they now have 460 and are at the risk of closing.  I asked why the decline when most of Uganda is below age 18.  She didn’t have an answer.

- I was told to be careful as cobras and pythons and very common there.  She suggested I do some research on both snakes before coming back.

- Told me they have lots of monkeys and baboons there.  Monkeys are apparently nice…Baboons are VERY destructive and violent.  Hmph.

After meeting with Harriet I went to the class where Solomon was teaching.  I introduced myself and when it came time for the kids to ask me a question – the first one was (not surprisingly) what’s your favorite football team?

ARSENAL BABY!!!  (Sorry Brendan).

Afterwards I got a tour of St. Tito.  It’s set on 350 acres of land outside Hoima.  In the 1950’s it was an agricultural college so they needed a lot of land.  The school was surrounded by beautiful, verdant hills that stretched as far as the eye could see.  I took pictures but there is no way to capture the beauty.  Breathtaking.

The students wanted to show me the eggplant and cabbage garden they were starting.  We hiked up the hill behind the school…through dense forest and tall grass.  All I could think about were the pythons and cobras that frequented the area, but the students assured me I should be fine.

The field where they are going to plant the vegetables had been burned to kill all the snakes and other creatures that might have lived there.

On the way down the students showed me the pig farm on campus.  Okay – I have never seen PIGS or SWINE this big.  WHAT?!  The thing was literally as big as cow.  Never in my life did I think pigs grew to this size.  When the pigs snorted the room shook.  The students were trying to get the biggest one riled up for me.  I was like, umm thanks but no thanks.  The thing could have easily trampled through its gate and literally ate me.

Shortly after visiting a SWINE farm it dawned on me that it might not have been a great idea considering SWINE flu. But the students told me it was at the next town over, but hadn’t infected their pigs.  Hope they’re right.  Sweet.

Tired now…

On the way home we found a car acting as a matatu – it was a 1970’s car with broken windows and a backseat, doors, dash that had been stripped to the metal.  The worst car I’ve ever been in.  The people were nice though...they were very concerned about the comfort of the mzungu.

P.S.  It’s been two full days and I’ve only seen one other mzungu.  Crazy.

For dinner we went to the SAME restaurant.  Wow.  Matoke, posho, rice, beans and coke.  I want PIZZA!

 

Few other items I forgot to mention…

- On the way home someone in an alley demanded I give him 500 shillings.  “Give me five hundred mzungu!”  I ignored him.

- I would say Solomon and I spoke for at LEAST an hour about airplanes and what it feels like to be in an airplane…what it looks like when you look out the window…can you open your window…etcetera.  Its just really funny – Solomon is a VERY bright guy, but just hasn’t experienced much in his life.