Happy 2012 everybody!!! I hope your New Years and Christmas was filled with lots of love and more importantly, delicious home-cooked food!!
After a rocky, horrible and terrifying start, my Christmas was pretty fantastic considering I was not at home with my babies and family. The horrible details of traveling through Kampala at Christmas will soon follow, but let me first tell about the great time I had with my Peace Corps family in Rukungiri, Uganda.
Before heading to Rukungiri, my friend, Michelle, and I stopped off at Wakiso to spend some time with our host-families we hadn’t seen since October. Wakiso is still…well, there. Not much has changed minus the tile floor they put in at a local bar we used to frequent. Other than that, still the same little town with kids shouting at and chasing us as we walked to our homes. While walking to the atm (that was of course, out of money), we actually ran into my host-brother and favorite Ugandan, Ben. I have missed him dearly and it was so nice to see him again. Once I finally made it home, Ben had gone to inform the rest of my family I was home as I was unable to inform them of my visit due to shoddy Ugandan communication. And I think he first told them I had come with presents, cause I think they were all a little toooo excited to see me. Well, Winnie, my five-year-old sister, definitely was too excited to see me. She was always very shy and quiet, but unable to hide her excitement when I came home. And it was like that again, as she didn’t know whether to hug me or shake my hand with a bow. But after the awkwardness, I handed her the dress my mom had sent for her and my-oh-my. She was ecstatic. She held it up, looked it up and down and backwards, and had the cutest smile on her face. She kept walking around the living room just holding it up and looking at it. Finally Ben walked in the house, and once he did she stripped to her underwear so he could help her try it on. Ben laughed as he tried to help her find the holes for her arms because she was so excited she couldn’t manage to poke them through. The dress was a little big for her but fit her well enough, and she felt like a star. She could not hold back her smile, no matter how hard she tried, and she just kept smiling and looking at herself in the cabinet’s window reflection. Ben said something to her in Luganda, and all of the sudden, she put her hands on her hips and did a little cat-walk-strut. It was the CUTEST thing I have ever seen. Her mother, Josephine, also loved the dress and was so excited that I had brought the kids presents. I couldn’t understand a word she said as she only speaks Luganda, but her happiness was easily translated. I gave Ben his converse and his smile was priceless. Luckily the other two boys were home on break for school, and I was able to be with all the kids at once for the first time. Gerald, the youngest son who is 17 and the sweetest kid ever, was always away at school. I actually passed him on my way home, waiting at his mom’s shop. We did a quadruple take at eachother as we couldn’t tell if our run-in was real, and he gave me a big hug. The other boys are too shy and usually just shake my hand, but Gerald never cared and always gives me hugs. He’s the cutest. Simon came back when Josephine and my other siblings did, and had a big grin as usual and said, “Oh my God, this is a surprise.” I spent the evening sitting on the stoop with my brothers as they cooked dinner and Winnie and she ran around us, making herself included. I think the time apart had made the conversation a little awkward, but, the boys took turns sitting with me and asking me questions and it was really nice being with them again. My host-father was unfortunately out of town on business and had planned to return the next morning. So, I ate dinner with my brothers at the table as usual, with Winnie asleep on the couch and my host-mother ate on the couch. Dinner was delicious, courtesy of Ben who somehow managed to make matoke and cabbage taste like Chinese food. Man, it was good. They made up my old room for me, and it was nice being back with my family again. And, when I woke up, my host-father was there. The family had called him to inform him of my visit, so instead of waiting to come back in the morning, he left that night in order to see me before I left. He got in a 230am, and woke up at 6am to get a quit chat in and say goodbye. It was really nice seeing him again and I was very thankful that he made that horrific trip so he could see me. And, they even had my favorite tea waiting for me in the morning. Mmm, it was so good. And, apparently using the pit latrine isn’t like riding a bike—you forget how to do it. Because I somehow was uncoordinated at using it again after two months with a toilet. I think it was because I used it in the dark, and I didn’t have my usual lamp with me. So, I had to awkwardly situate the torch on my phone and worry about not dropping it in the latrine while trying to aim, and, it was just all bad. But, I still have my phone, so, there ya go.
After my sleep that felt like a quick nap, I got up early the next morning to meet Michelle for our journey back to Kampala, with no money. Well, that’s not true. We had 6,000 shillings, equivalent to a little more than $2. But, that story shall come after the good stuff, just you wait! Anyway, we finally made it to my best friend, Khayla’s, house in the southwest. She lives in a hospital compound surrounded by hills and mountains in the beautifully green covered, tropical looking yet foggy, cloudy and chilly land of Rukungiri. After two months of living in the dry, dusty, burning hot land of Kitgum, I was finally able to enjoy my new, matching sweater my sisters sent me. And, I actually slept with a blanket—too weird.
Anyway, it was really great being able to see my friends that I left over two months prior and catch up on our lives and of course, all the latest gossip. The main part of our fiesta consisted of food, of course. And we made some pretty bomb food, let me tell you. I had my first taste of fondue, in Afrika. And, it was grand. Oooh, and we made egg salad—mMmmmm, I miss that. Our visit was unfortunately short, as we were limited on travel time due to our still “newbie” status but was definitely well worth it. We sat around eating and drinking while watching Christmas movies on the projector Khayla set up for us. It was pretty awesome and felt like home. And, best of all, I got to see Breaking Dawn. Khayla downloaded it for me since I live too far from and am unable to go to Kampala. It was, AMAZING. Minus the weird scene where Jacob is in wolf form and rises up against Sam to take his rightful position as alpha dog…I was semi-embarrassed for a couple seconds, but it quickly passed. And I just realized I am rambling in my Uganda blog about Twilight, so, let me stop there. Our vacation of three days travel with little snippets of visits with our families was wonderful and so very needed. We did a lot of grubbing, talking, yelling, laughing hysterically and water fetching. And once again, I thought to myself, this is my life. And I love it.
Now, on to the good, drama-filled story of Kampala. So, we leave for the bus at 545am, early enough to ensure our seats on the bus. And after one million stops along the way, including the 20 min stop for passengers to get meat from the butcher alongside the road (totally bogus nonsense, btw), we finally made it to Kampala around noon. But, we didn’t get off the bus until 130, cause that’s how bad Kampala traffic sucks. We got dropped off somewhere, not near the taxi park that we needed but luckily near a pizza restaurant for a quick and much needed bite. As we sat eating pizza, I was dreading having to weave in and out of downtown Kampala with the Christmas “chaos” that every Ugandan told us about. “It’s Christmas, it is going to be bad. They think because its Christmas, you whites have expensive things and lots of money on you.” I can’t tell you how many Ugandans told us this, including both of our homestay families who are pretty level headed and legit. And of course, I had my backpack, loaded with my laptop, camera AND my fancy, new camera. So, those Ugandans were thinking right—this munu had a hefty price tag on her head. And if they really only knew what I had, ugh I don’t even wanna think about it. Anyway. So, I for some reason didn’t wanna travel with my handy-dandy backpack suitcase and decided to bring my small backpack with an un-carriable and unmanageable Afrikan bag that I had to hold with both arms against my chest. Therefore, I was unable to safeguard my backpack and blind to anything happening behind or in front of me. So you can imagine my surprise when we were fighting our way thru the foot traffic when all of the sudden I hear my friend yell, “HEY!! Get off her bag!” with a hand thrust behind my head. I turned around to see a guy put his hands in there air, say sorry and hide behind a taxi window, as if we could not see him through transparent barrier. I then thought to myself, (&#^&@, what did we get ourselves into. Not five minutes later, I heard Michelle scream again, “GET OFF HER BAG!!” and thrust another hand in the air to get yet another thief off my bag. Then I started thinking to myself, I sure am lucky that someone is paying attention, cause they would have just stole the 6,000 shillings I had left to get us anywhere, and who knows what else they would have taken. Michelle, the paranoid, protective genius that she is, had the sense to put locks on her bag so that would-be thieves would come out empty handed. So, after we realized I was the easy and obvious target, she walked behind me with her hand on my bag the rest of the way through the cluster &!!^!% that is Kampala. So, not only was I terrified, confused (as we had NO idea where we were going and just kept following the fingers of friendly Ugandans) and irritated from being such an easy target, I was carrying a heavy bag on my chest and sweating all over myself. My face was, as usual, bright red and burning my skin.
As if it couldn’t get any worse on that day, a matatu tried to kill me. The traffic around the taxi/bus park is always ridiculous, bumper to bumper, and only allows you to move inches at a time. So, you can imagine there are no crosswalks or space for pedestrians to walk, let alone having the right-away (legally, they do not, btw), so you have to finagle and weave your way through the matatus, pikipiki and buses. And like every other Ugandan, I went to walk through my 67th matatu of the day when I somehow pissed a driver off. Maybe it was because I was munu, I’m not quite sure. But that man did not want me to pass in front of him and get to the other side. Even though he was stuck for a good 5 minutes in that spot with no possible chance of moving, with a matatu literally one foot ahead of him, that didn’t matter. And he was NOT letting me through. I went to walk forward, and he punched the gas and scared me out of the way. It was like the hokey pokey dance, every time I put a foot in I had to pull it right out or else he was gunna squish me between his matatu and the one in front of him. He was screaming something in the car with his passenger laughing hysterically, and I became very frustrated and started yelling at him. I don’t know if it was because he literally couldn’t go anywhere and came to terms with it, or if it was the other Ugandans around looking at him like, “Dude, seriously. What are you doing?”, but finally he stopped and we squeezed through with my HUGE bag. And finally, somehow, we made it to our matatu and were on our way to Wakiso. I can’t even begin to describe the relief it felt to finally be in the matatu on our way to our old homes.
Now, previously in Kampala, we tried to get more money as we had none. We had tried loading up in Gulu, but of course, the power was out and therefore the ATMs didn’t work. So we thought, Kampala, easy-lets do it. But nope, not only was it Christmas, it was also payday. So, the lines ran outside of buildings and we could not wait that long as nighttime was approaching. So we said to ourselves, “Eh, lets just pull out money in Wakiso.” Why wouldn’t it be that easy? Well because like I said, its Christmas and payday, and therefore the Wakiso ATM (and four others in Kampala, as we would later learn) was out of money. Luckily I had hung on to that 6,000 that would at least get us back to Kampala that had to have ATMs with money. Right?
Wrong. We went to four different ATMs that were completely out of money and waiting for the money-truck to bring more. After once again weaving through the masses and jam-packed vehicles, I was nearing my breaking point. I could feel my body shaking and for the first time in Uganda, I was scared. About a minute before we got to the 4th ATM, Michelle had yet another interaction with a sticky-fingered Ugandan. We were making our way through another matatu-squeeze when we accidentally, and unavoidably, walked in front of a guy. He let us pass but immediately changed his direction and turned to follow us. (Luckily, that day,I had put clips on my zippers that made it harder, not impossible, for someone to steal and I had put my rain jacket over my backpack) We both noticed the man following us and I kept looking back to see where he was. I somehow lost him in the crowd, but Michelle saw him move to our side. So, when I went to cross the street and focused my attention on dodging matatus and pikipikis, I forgot about dude. Well, in the middle of the road I noticed Michelle was not with me and I turned around to hear her scream what I remember to be, “GET OFF OF ME!!” All I saw was a guy fly back with his hands in the air, and I waited for Michelle to cross with me. The guy that altered his path to follow us had waited until she was stuck in between two vehicles and literally tried to rip the bag off her chest. Michelle grabbed dude and threw him off, but not before he somehow managed to unzip her front zipper, which unfortunately for dude had nothing in it. So you can imagine when 20 seconds later we walk up to the last ATM only to find that it too, was empty, we were at our wits end. But, the one good thing about Uganda and Afrika in general, among all the chaos and pick-pocketing thieves, there is always someone to help you out. We managed to make friends with a woman waiting at the ATM who knew of another one some 10 minutes up the hill. We asked if we could walk with her, and as she was very aware of how blatantly terrified we, or I, was and welcomed us to join. And, instead of taking us to a closer but 100x more crowded area, she walked furter up the hill to a safe, quiet ATM that indeed had money.
After about a ten minute walk uphill, through seemingly impenetrable crowds, we finally made it to an ATM that was open and full of money. For the first time in two days, I felt relieved and like I wasn’t going to die pocketless in a crowded ally. We thanked the wonderful woman and made our way back to the bus park. But instead of walking once again through sticky-finger row, we decided to pay a private hire the ridiculous price of 15,000 shillings just to go back down the hill. And it was well worth it. We were dropped at the park entrace, immeditately shown to our bus and seated. And, we even sat next to a lovely guy named Francis. We shared our snacks with him and he shared his with us. Only, ours were better. And I’m not being rude. His were fried grasshoppers. In Uganda, it is very rude to refuse food someone has offered you, so we were very much obligated to at least try it. And it didn’t taste bad really, just hard to look at the frozen eye-balls and not imagine you were eating a whole grasshopper. I am glad it was fried grasshoppers and not fried termites, though. That bus ride was also the first time I had road-side meat-on-a-stick. And it was pretty delish. Until I had the second one, which was a liiittle too pinkish for my liking. Nevertheless, our day that started at 7am from Wakison finally ended at 830pm in Rukungiri. And, it was well worth it.
If you got through this extremely long post, hoorah to you. I hope your holidays were lovely and your bellies were satisfied with nothing but deliciousness. Happy 2012 my lovelies.
