A Week In Uganda

Olyo tya!

I’ve been to Uganda and back. The trip was incredible – journey was too long and the stay was too short but it was definitely worth the effort. David, Sean and I went to school on Thursday morning to proctor our last midterm exam and went to the bus stand that afternoon. Sean and I were under the impression that we’d take a bus all through the night and arrive in Uganda early, early morning. We traveled from about 1pm to 11pm when our bus pulled into a bus terminal for the night. The truth: it’s really not very safe to travel at night in Tanzania because sometimes robbers (armed) put up roadblocks in the middle of nowhere and the bus has no option but to stop. It is really expensive to carry guns, so bus drivers don’t have them. The Tanzanian police have now restricted night time driving and put up their own roadblocks for cars and buses who attempt to go on, which is a good thing because our bus may have tried to continue. I didn’t particularly want to extend our trip for a six hour layover, but I guess that’s better than the alternative. Sean, David and I got out of the bus, found some dinner and enjoyed the outdoor scene there for a while. Eventually we went back to the bus and tried to sleep in the same spot we’d been sitting for the past 10 hours. My “rear end” was not happy, but I was able to sleep a little. We left around 5:30 am the next morning. David bought some fried grasshoppers from a lady out his window along the way, a delicacy in Uganda. I ate two –after a quick chew and swallow, I realized it just tasted fried. But I can’t say I’ll ever eat them again.

We arrived in Masaka, the city near David’s village, around 7pm Friday evening. David wanted us to stay with his aunt there for the night and go to a dance club that he used to frequent when he lived there. His aunt has a really beautiful home in town, a three-story place with lots of rooms. Though David came from very little money, this aunt married a man who made some very wise business decisions. We had our first Ugandan meal there – the housegirl (not an uncommon thing for families to have) cooked us up matoke (cooked green bananas), a delicious peanut sauce, ugali that takes much better than the kind we eat in Tanzania (after boiling it, they cook it again over fire wrapped in banana leaves), and some greens. It was de-li-cious! I can’t wait to try cooking it back in Dodoma. After showering, eating, and having a “Bell” at a local bar, we headed to a little club called Ambience to “shake our bodies” (David’s words). Though at first I could hardly keep my eyes open from our long journey a few hours before, it was a fun night. I had my first pikipiki (motorbike) ride that night – I loved it!

Uganda is much colder than I had expected. I had goose bumps on top of goose bumps that night. Who knew! It felt like a fall night when you should have worn a heavier jacket and closed-toe shoes.

The next morning David, Sean, David’s cousin Maria and I walked into town, got a taxi into the direction of David’s village, Chagunda. The taxi cars there are used more like buses because the driver squeezed a fourth and fifth person into our backseat. We took another pikipiki through the village to get to his Jeje’s (grandmother’s) house. The view was beautiful – everything is so green there and there are so many hills! Uganda is rightfully nicknamed the “Pearl of Africa” because it truly has beautiful weather and beautiful fertile land. We surprised Jeje – she was expecting us on Monday, but it was a wonderful first meeting. We sat together for maybe 10 minutes, then she brought tea and disappeared for the rest of the night. We realized she went to prepare rooms for us to stay and food for us to eat. David showed us photo albums of his family and we saw pictures of him when he was in high school.

Saturday we shared our whole afternoon with Jeje, Maria, Innocent (Jeje’s housegirl – she’s 19), and Ivan (Innocent’s boy – he’s 1). Innocent stays with Jeje because she it is getting too hard for her to keep up her shamba (Kiswahili for large garden/farm). After breakfast matoke, they showed us around the shamba – Jeje has many banana, coffee, and orange trees, groundnuts (peanuts), strange little orange eggplants and many other things. We went searching for monkeys because apparently there are many in the fields there, but we had no luck. Sean helped Innocent chop down a banana tree – I guess you chop it to get the bananas. We helped them prepare lunch, pealing bananas, chopping things, and stirring things on their outdoor wood fire stove (which is essentially three rocks to mount the pot and a small fire underneath) in the back of their house. Jeje and the others just thought this was the funniest thing to see us “bazungu” (the Ugandan way of saying wazungu) working in the kitchen.

They have all sorts of fruits growing around their house too, so we ate guavas, jackfruit, and had freshly squeezed orange juice. The oranges there are green on the outside and a little orange on the inside and are a little sour. Jackfruit is this strange fruit about a foot long with a spiky outside; it takes like bubblegum. I couldn’t eat too much because it was so sweet it was making my stomach upset!

Later in the day, Sean, David and I took a walk to a nearby house where another of David’s Jejes live. She was this tiny old lady, hunched over from age, with an incredibly sweet smile. We sat on a palm mat and she kneeled before us and we had an beautiful conversation (David as translator). She was shocked to see us in her village. She kept saying “bambi” (said, baum-bie), which is an expression something like “wow” in a genuine awed way. She kept thanking David for being a good person so that we would want to be his friend, and then thanked us for being good people to want to visit David’s home. She kept saying things like this over and over; I could just feel how much it meant for us to be sitting there with her. It was an incredible feeling. After a while, she walked us to a spot behind her home where David’s family cemetery lies. Grandmothers, grandfathers, young children who didn’t make it, and David’s sister who just passed this past year all lie there. It was interesting to hear about each one. The cemetery had an area for the Catholics and a little off was were the Muslims were laid. Sometimes family members change religion when they marry. But there they all were, lying peacefully on land this family has probably owned for many, many years.

We went back and had dinner with Jeje, Innocent, Maria, and Ivan. Jeje pulled out one of her best dresses – she looked lovely. We ate by candlelight because they don’t have electricity that far out. I really enjoyed sharing that time with them. Jeje’s house is beautiful because her daughter (the aunt where we stayed the night before) and son-in-law built her a new house next to her old one. It has tiled floors and many rooms, but like most homes there is only enough furniture that is necessary. That night I slept in on a mattress on the floor in my own room. But being so far away from any city (and neighbors!) the night was a restful and peaceful quiet.

Sunday morning we went to Mass at Jeje’s church, a simple building down the road. Jeje’s legs ache her so she was unable to come with us, but she sent with David an envelop so we would have an offering to give. The building was immaculately simple with concrete floor and concrete walls and a tiny altar. It could fit no more than 50 people. We arrived and many Jejes were sitting on the floor, and others sat on the tiny benches used as pews. They all looked wide-eyed at us as we entered, but their eyes and faces softened when Sean and I greeted them with big smiles and silent waves. A few came to greet us, saying how odd but wonderful there were buzungu in their church. We waited a little for the priest to arrive – he has to come from town. It was an extraordinary experience. At the end, we greeted the priest and other men and they asked us to introduce ourselves to the group. That was a little difficult considering we don’t know Ugandan, but they appreciated our failed attempts.

I remember one of the first things Jeje asked us was if we were Catholic. When we said yes, she literally jumped a little for joy. She was always wearing her rosary around her neck (almost all Catholics in Uganda and Tanzania wear them that way). She asked where mine was! She is extremely devoted. We could hear her saying aloud her night prayers before she went to bed. And many of the things she told us were how she has been blessed so much all her life just because she trusts in God. Actually, at one point she found out a letter from one of the grandchildren she took in and helped support her education. The end of the letter wished Jeje many blessings and good things, and she attributed our coming to this blessing from God. I learned a lot that weekend. Funny how grandmothers always have such wise things to say.

This is getting long… I’ll continue tomorrow.