The Best Christmas Present Ever

When I was a child I would sometimes dread gifts from relatives, especially the ones that didn't know you very well. Was it going to be new socks, or an ugly knit sweater I would never wear?

This Christmas was different. I actually wanted new socks, and thanks to Tyler and Hannah today, safely back in Uganda, I am wearing a new T-Shirt, new underwear, and new socks. I feel like a million bucks and couldn't have asked for anything better!

The Other World

When my dad contacted me at the end of November and asked if I wanted to come home for Christmas as a surprise to my family, I told him that I needed a few days to think about it. Having the opportunity to go home was an unsuspected surprise, but I really had to think whether I was mentally ready to do it. In the end I reasoned it was too good of an opportunity to pass up: not only would I be able to spend Christmas with my family and see my 16-month-old nephew for the first time, but I would also be able to attend my good friends' wedding.

Keeping my homecomming a secret was difficult. I couldn't tell any friends or make any plans to see anyone in case the secret somehow slipped. But luckily it worked; my dad was also able to get my brother to take a week off work in LA so that we could spend some good family time together.

Surprising my mom was perhaps the best part. My dad and I arranged to have her friend take her out for coffee. Once there I walked over to her table and casually asked if I could sit down. She had a blank stare on her face for at least 10 seconds and I could see her brain going through the filing cabinet, processing who I was and if I was her son, what I was doing there. Finally it clicked and she started to cry, and didn't stop for a good three days.

The Family spent a traditional Christmas at home, then went to Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast for a few days. New Years was spent at our cabin on Mt. Hood with 6" of snow - so cold for a guy who hasn't lived in weather below 68 degress for the last 16 months!

After the family time I was off for the Northlands - first to visit some friends in Seattle (lunch with Anna and Leslie - Celine you were missed!, then hanging with Karli, Erica, and Brian) - then northwards to Bellingham for three days of wedding preperations and hanging out my awesome friends.

Being back in America was a lot different than I was expecting. I fell into my old routine easier than expected, but I was stressed out at the pace of life and more socially retarded than I usually am, especially in groups larger than two. I'm now more excited to come home after Peace Corps, but the experience has given me a greater understanding and appreciation of what I'm doing now in Africa. The next ten months are going to be more productive and focused, and I'm sure will be finished before I know it.

Thank you everybody for the great time back home. I missed you more than I thought. Unfortunately I didn't have time to see or talk with everyone, so I do apologize but I'm back for good in October and we will definately catch up then.

This is My Normal

I’ve lived in Uganda since August 2009 – just over 16 months now. The more time I am away from the United States (and indeed, the more time I’m here), the more normal living here seems and the more at home I feel. The idiosyncrasies of daily life no longer throw me or surprise me, and for the most part I have adapted to this African way of life. When things go wrong, which they commonly do, there is a saying: This is Africa. I’m trying to spread a new one: This is my Normal.

• Being stared at, sticking out like a sore thumb, and constantly being hassled by kids: this is my normal.
• Haggling to purchase just about anything, including posted beer prices: this is my normal.
• Constantly living in fear of being hit by one of the limitless motorcycles: this is my normal.
• Seeing sick people and malnourished kids, and parents generally not caring about their children’s safety (i.e. two-year-olds with razor blades): this is my normal.
• Dodging ditches and random holes in sidewalks at night because there are no streetlights: this is my normal.
• Having to ask “What food do you have,” even when handed a menu: this is my normal.
• Issuing commands to get anything (“You bring me coca-cola.”): this is my normal.
• Speaking the strange Ugandan dialect of English (“I am footing,” or “It is somehow near.”): welcome to my normal.
• Getting sick when you eat Western food and actually craving the local diet: this is my normal.
• Seeing goats run along the main highway as I write this and that not seeming unusual: this is my normal.
• Having only eight people in a Toyota Corolla and feeling like there’s room to spare: this is my normal.

Christmas is in a few days, and as I hear news reports of record-snows in Europe, rain and cold in America, I can’t help but enjoy the 85-degree days here (it’s the beginning of dry season, so no rain either), and am happy to be where I am. That said, the holidays are always a difficult time to be away from friends and family, and this year will be my second in a row and no less difficult. I’ll be spending it with friends here in Uganda, most likely in the mountains on the Rwanda/Congo border, admittingly looking forward to next year when I’ll be reunited with my family and that dreary Pacific Northwest wet season. After all, listening to Bing Crosby sing White Christmas just isn’t the same in Africa.

Maybe another to add to the list:

• Sunburns on Christmas Eve: this is my normal.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Market Day

The social highlight in my area is the monthly market day in a village called Rukunyu, about 4km south of where I live. The event brings hoards of people from distances as far as 15km (when they walk), and even farther afield when they take a motorcycle or taxi.

You start to see people walking by as early as eight or nine in the morning, babies strapped to women's backs, men with walking sticks. In the afternoon they come back with their loot: sacks of potatoes on their heads or pulling a reluctant goat.

The market doesn't get going until one or two in the afternoon, when the soccer field is filled with mix of vendors and villagers. The village of Rukunyu itself is bustling, the small restaurants full of patrons and drunks spilling out into the street from the overcrowded bars.

One aisle in the market area is the vegetable bounty from the surrounding area, typically beans, onions, bananas, tomatoes, and cassava, all layed out in neat stacks and piles on blankets or brightly coloured fabric. I ran into the fee-collector for the market - to set up shop costs 50cents. One stack of tomatoes (about 5 or 6) costs a quarter.

A few cows and goats are tied up on the side of the field, watching the action from the periphery.

Beyond the food lays the expanse of clothes and fabric vendors, some vendors leaving their products in heaps on a tarp, others setting up wooden poles and hanging them. The nice stalls even have a tarp roof for shade.

All of the clothes are used and come from America, Europe, and Japan. The labels vary from the typical (Stafford and Van Heusen shirts are usually over-sized and are ill to fit, but sometimes you can get treasures from Ben Sherman, Tommy Bahama, and Lactose). Since a lot of the clothes have been discarded several times before coming to Africa, styles and time-periods vary. Button dress shirts go for about $2. Some even have price tags from their previous thrift store (Value Village - $4.99; Goodwill). What doesn't sell at these second-hand stores comes here: Third-Hand for the Third-World!

T-Shirts are fun, and cheaper - they typically go for 75cents, but there's room to negotiate. The most popular shirts are from charity events (I've seen Portland Race for the Cure), political campaigns (Vote Smith!), and community sports teams. The shirt I just bought is priceless: Fischer Family Reunion 1990, surrounded by the outline of Alabama.

Fabric dealers have walls of prints from Kenya, Tanzania, and Congo. The hardware guys are out, too, selling locks, bolts, rat traps, and local metalwares.

Anyone who's anyone comes to sell, buy, socialize, and just pass the time. It's the only event in the area and you're bound to see something, or someone, interesting.

A Fuel Crisis in Perspective

Uganda has been in a "fuel crisis" for the last two or three weeks. The country uses 3 millions litres of petroleum per day, all of it imported from Kenya by truck on one two-lane road from Nairobi. The port in Mombassa, through which all of the oil for Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and eastern Congo flows, had been shut down for repairs, and now the Kenyan government revoked the importing license for Kenya's main oil importer (the company has since paid its taxes and its license is being reinstated). The price of gas has increased 21% from about 2800 UGX to 3400 UGX per litre in the past two weeks.

Transportation prices have increased and, most importantly for a Peace Corps Volunteer, the local price of beer has also increased.

This demonstrates the volatility in prices here, and in most of the developing world. If one thing happens to the transportation network, the entire country is directly effected. One thing in the US that I didn't quite appreciate before was a constant supply of products and stable prices. I knew that a gallon of milk would cost me $3 at Safeway today, tomorrow, and next month. In Uganda, what's available now may not be available later tonight.

This concept directly plays into personal finances among local Ugandans and why there isn't a strong culture of savings here, and elsewhere in Africa, and impulse buying is so prevalent. For example, when I want to buy a beer, one of four situations can occur:

1. The store might be out of beer,
2. The beer might not be cold (because of power outtages, etc.),
3. The beer might cost more (because of transport increases and other reasons),
4. The beer will be cold, cost the same, and be available.

It's a 25% chance that tomorrow I'll pay the same price for the same product. So, as a good consumer who knows his products and has particular tastes, I'd bet in favour of my odds and get another cold one right now.

Public Transportation

In previous entries I have attempted to convey the chaos, the struggles, and at times the seemingly insurmountable task of public transportation. Last week I rode the bus with my friend Hayley and we were talking about the arduous process involved in public transportation which inspired me dedicate an entire entry on the subject.

America: Land of the Free, Home of the concept of Personal Space and modern conveniences like toilets. At home the prospect of a 5-hour bus journey would usually be met with a groan at the inconvenience. You go to the bus station, sit on the bus, get off. In Uganda a 5-hour bus journey begins the day before.

A general lack of toilets anywhere mandates a limited liquid consumption on the day of travel. In 85-degree heat on a stuffy and overcrowded bus, you must be mindful of dehydration, which is why you begin to pre-hydrate the day before the journey. Two litres per day is normal, so the day before a trip it is best to drink at least 3 1/2 - and be sure to pee in the morning!

When you're with your friends drinking is always a popular activity, but be careful not to drink too much the night before - two beers should do it. Being hung-over on a bus trip is one of the most miserable experiences! And be mindful of when you go to sleep the night before, a trip on public transport requires you to be fully rested because it constantly tests your wits, sanity, and motivation.

What about food? You want to be well nourished, but because the buses usually leave at early hours it isn't always possible to eat a balanced meal. Again, planning ahead helps. A package of crackers or peanuts is always good, and half-way through you can usually count on some roasted bananas or cassava: not quite a breakfast of champions, but then again, who's keeping score? (I wouldn't advise going for the roasted goat, be mindful of those pesky parasites!)

In my personal opinion, the best thing the West ever invented was the concept of the single-file line. Sometimes in Africa is surprises you when you see it, but instead of an every-day occurrence it's more like seeing a polka-doted unicorn: get your camera ready! With all the pushing and standing your ground, you need to bring your A-Game.

Finally, what do you wear? By the end of the first hour you're guaranteed to be sweating so much your back sticks to the seat. In this situation it is best to wear travel clothes, usually the ones you came to town in - they're smelly and dirty, but when you have to finally throw them away you aren't at a loss.

If all goes well, and usually it does, you reach your destination dusty, dehydrated, and short of spirits. An immediate stop at the nearest bar helps rekindle at least one of those requirements, and you can almost certainly relieve any pressure that's been building up (although, as Mamma Kuhl complained, you may be thanking the Gods for the toilet, but you should have also prayed for a toilet seat!). And then, freshly watered, newly hydrated, you throw your stuff and yourself into a bush taxi and prepare for the two-hour onward journey, for you aren't there yet!

Apartheid

I have always enjoyed political history and learning about different political situations around the world and am continually amazed at the extent people will go to reach their selfish ends. It's usually out of fear or ignorance of other people, other cultures, other political beliefs, and more often than not to retain a non-legitimate hold on power.

The history of South Africa is marred by harsh inequality, a history that I knew little about. What I had learned about apartheid was by watching The Power of One in middle school, and that was that. My friend Derek, whose family is from South Africa, talked about the situation there off an on throughout college, but I never grasped the reality or the extent of what happened and what humans are capable of doing to eachother.

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, an amazing museum not to be missed for anyone traveling in the area. It told the story pretty much from the start: an influx of migrant workers in the 1880s, Afrikaners settling the area, and a native population who were viewed as a nuisance. Fast forward through independence in 1910 and the development of segregation, to full-blown racial apartheid by 1960 and a government run by a party whose official line was white supremacy.

The thing that keeps getting me, and that I enjoy learning about, is the extent the state went to keep power. Creating an apartheid state meant all of the official bureaucracy that went along with it, including an entire appeals court to appeal the racial designation you received (interestingly, no "white" person petitioned their designation be changed to "black"). In the 1970s citizens and students began protesting and the state cracked down, and by the time the 1980s came South Africa spent three entire years under martial law, literally keeping power by military force. The government even went to the extent to invade/influence politics in neighbouring Mozambique, Namibia (controlled by SA through a UN mandate), Zambia, and Angola, bombing and assassinating "state enemies."

We learn about similar events throughout history, from Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and East Germany, to Chile and Argentina, Rwanda, and beyond. The United States is still getting over its history of segregation and Brown v. Board of Education was only 50 years ago. Studying history is to learn about the past so that we don't make the same mistakes in the future. It's funny though how history tends to repeat itself...

The Kinjura Club

Before Uganda gained independence in 1962, the British had established large tea estates in Western Uganda to satisfy their tastes for the brewed leaves. Thousands of acres of farmland and forest were cultivated to grow tea, supported by cheap local labour, and supervised by colonial ex-patriots.

On Sunday I had the opportunity to visit an old colonial tea estate - the largest in Uganda at about 9000 acres and currently managed by TAMTECO (Toro and Mityana Tea Company Limited) - and the colonial clubhouse established by the ex-pats before Uganda gained independence.

The Kijura Club is about 30 kilometers north of Fort Portal near the village of Kijura, reached by an often-muddy dirt road that weaves its way along the Rwenzori foothills, through banana plantations and small villages. Although in disrepair and no longer a functioning exclusive club (though to join it will cost a whopping 60,000 USh - $30 per year), it is still a meeting place of the ex-pat community to drink, eat, and watch the great African pastime -- football.

The England-Germany game on Sunday was the perfect occasion for such a gathering, and the doors were opened by Norrie, a pleasant Scotsman with an amusing accent and a squinty face, who organized a pork BBQ with all the fixin's.

The clubhouse had seen better days, but the dilapidation certainly contributed to its charm. Outside were two tennis courts, the nets long missing and a ball rack rusted over, the concrete courts supporting more weeds and wildflowers than gameplay these days. An empty swimming pool and a long overgrown airstrip also served the patrons a generation ago.

Inside the parts of the ceiling had fallen away exposing the simple corrugated metal roof, but the lack of formal aesthetics all but made up for the nostalgia that seemed to plaster the walls and remaining decor. The bar had been redone since the 1950s (see original picture), adding 60s-esque stonework. But the original wicker flower-chairs survived the years, as sturdy as the day they were built. A cork dartboard finished off the bar.

In an adjoining room was table tennis, perhaps a recent addition, sharing the room with the old "library," containing volumes from London, their bindings deteriorated, their pages with the slight odour of mildew.

Finally, in the rear room, stood a giant Snooker table. A full-sized Snooker table measures 12x6 feet, and is a type of billiards. The story of this particular Snooker table is a story within itself, and without any actual information one is left to wonder about its past: First being manufactured in London probably sometime in the 1950s, then transported on ship through the Suez Canal on its way to Mombasa. From there it was most likely put on a freight train and shipped via the Uganda Railway to Kampala (made famous by the Man Eating Lions of Tsavo in Kenya).

Somehow the slate slabs, woodwork and felt then made the 300-kilometer trip to its current location. The balls are, in good colonial tradition, ivory. To complete the story, during Idi Amin's reign in the 1970s, the table had to be hidden from looting by Amin's troops.

With its decades of colonial and local history, the Kijura Club has recently found money to begin repairing the facility so that it can be enjoyed for many decades to come by the new colonialists, ex-pats, volunteers, and yes, even locals. As Norrie said, "Originally it was black people behind the counter serving the whites. Now I'm the one behind the counter serving the blacks!"

Check-Points

Businesses in Uganda haven't quite figured out competitiveness yet (most stores sell the same products at the same price and are located right next to each other), but it's refreshing to know that the spirit of entrepreneurship does indeed exist. Take for example the police check-points along my road:

The traffic police are quite corrupt, and stop taxis that are overfilled with passengers (my personal record was 9 adults and 4 children in a Toyota Corolla). According to law, only two people are allowed to be in the front seat, but typically taxis don't leave unless there are at least three - if not four - passengers up front with the driver. At the check-points (there is one between my site and Fort Portal, about 90 minutes away), instead of ticketing the driver, or revoking his license, the driver pays the "fee" of 2,000 Shillings ($1), and we continue on our way.

Now, an extra passenger gets the driver about 6,000 Shillings ($3), so there is an incentive to over-load the car because the driver still makes money in the deal.

Today was an interesting turn from normalcy in the traffic check-point story. As usual, our driver was warned of the up-coming traffic stop by passing cars. At a bend in the road about 300 meters before the check-point, the driver stops and two passengers in the front got out, leaving the driver and myself (four more remained in the back seat). The two men hopped on a waiting motorcycle, and took off down the road. We continued, got pulled over, talked to the police, didn't have to pay a fine, then continued about 300 meters to another bend in the road. Our two passengers were there waiting, got back in the car, and all eight of us took off again.

The price for the motorcycle was probably 500 Shillings, and the driver didn't have to pay the 2,000 Shilling fine. Everybody wins today, and corruption was stopped cold. Thank you, Uganda's finest!

Football

It had been a rather quiet day, not too much going on and admittedly, I was bored. In the late afternoon two of the girls from my vocational school passed by my house (both of them called Akiiki - so goes it when there are twelve possible nicknames in a culture) and told me that all of the students were up playing football; come join.

Football - what a great game. It's so simple, the rules are easy and you can play just about anywhere. In American golf is the game of the elite and basketball the game of the lower classes. In the rest of the world, football is the game everyone plays, and indeed World Cup begins on Friday (the most watched sporting event in the world). Every village has a pitch, some with timbers demarcating the goals, others with rocks or jerri-cans. They're a type of village park and town commons (grazing the cattle here keeps the grass low, but makes navigating through the dung piles quite difficult).

The balls can be as cheap or expensive as your resources allow - black and white imports from Kenya or China, to plastic sacks bound together with banana fibre.

And here you don't "play football," instead you "kuzina omupira" - dance football.




A student from our vocational school out playing on our village pitch. The other students play behind.










Students from our vocational school, taking a break from the game.