Day eighty-seven. If I was a LGH volunteer, I’d be packing up my things and preparing myself to board an airplane bound for Germany this week.
If I was a volunteer…
I'm not, though. Instead, I really need to remember to renew my visa on Monday. Apparently, not only can you be deported, but you can also be arrested and held unless you bribe the police with a generous sum of money. Oh, Uganda...
I get to continue to bare witness to East Africa life as it plods on, steady and methodical as usual, as if acutely aware of its marathon being run in the stifling heat. I’m one-third of the way finished with this Sub-Saharan adventure. That’s a sobering thought. What have I learned? Have I given this my all? Have I loved well? Am I an asset or a burden to this organization? Am I realigning and reconciling my current world perceptions to the old ones in a way that reflects truth? Have I consistently chosen hope over a myriad of other common mindsets, including (but not limited to) bitterness, apathy, indifference, and pride? What is the nature of my influence on the community in this area? Am I investing enough? Is there more I could be doing? Is that even the point…? And if the answers to any of these questions are anything other than positive, what is it going to take to change things?
The reality of being here is that on a daily basis my answers change drastically. And even the fact that this is true so frequently throws me for a total loop. I’ve always been known as an even-keeled, mellow, steady individual. I may still look like this on the outside, but my thoughts and feelings since arriving in Uganda so much more often seem to have been put on the world’s most ridiculous rollercoaster.
Despite that being the case, there’s a deep sense that feeling cool and calm all the time here would require ignoring issues—insulating myself from a big part of Uganda, so to speak. No, thanks. I prefer being a secretly emotional nutball to being numb. Even if sometimes it is only a slight preference.
Anyway, my emotional equilibrium (or lack thereof) aside, today was a good day. Fridays mean Breakfast Club, and I love Breakfast Club. Typically, when a volunteer goes to visit a Suubi lady, they’ll get treated as an honored guest and served all kinds of (usually) awesome Ugandan food. These women dote on us, honestly, far more than they ever should. Breakfast Club is us turning the tables and serving them food—muzungu style. We’ve divided the five different housing estates where the ladies live into smaller “neighborhood groups” of sorts, so we usually serve between ten and fifteen women at a time. The LGH house wakes up a bit earlier and turns on music and goes to work. We cook about forty pieces of French toast (each person gets seconds). It usually takes us about an hour and a half by the time everything is cooked, we’re packed with additional goods (the women LOVE syrup; Natalina actually poured the leftovers in a cup and DRANK it before we could stop her), and out the door. At ten we arrive and for the next couple hours we eat and lounge in the shade and chat with the ladies about anything from how they’re doing with their necklaces to the weather to their children’s school fees (which they struggle with a lot).
Today’s Breakfast Club was enjoyable because it was a bit quieter (the volunteers hadn’t returned from their trip to Burundi, so it was just staff—Amber, Andrea, and myself), and because the new necklace design that’s being worked on either isn’t as complicated or these women are just picking it up more quickly. Our last design looks cool, but was a bit of a nightmare for some of the women to put together. Amazingly, others did really great at it, and we’re not sure where the discrepancy was. Regardless, not so with this design (knock on wood). They’re picking up on it quick. After most of the ladies left, Amber and Andrea took off to their respective agendas for the day and I remained to help Helen with her necklaces. Two other ladies stayed too and we sat under Helen and Doreen’s tree.
Something I didn’t discover until several weeks into being here: we actually have two co-wives in our Suubi group. Adong Doreen and Acan Helen are both wives to one husband, who I vaguely remember meeting once when dance was temporarily rained out (we sat inside on a couch next to the guy and watched terrible Zimbabwean soap operas in badly-dubbed English). It’s difficult for me not to get indignant and zealous over the topic of co-wives in Uganda, but this is one of those highlighted realities of the disparity between our culture and theirs—polygamy not only exists in this country; it is both common and socially acceptable. In cases like this, when my westernized ideals and concepts of morality are questioned, I find that my first reaction should always be to listen, to remember temperance, patience and understanding as much more effective methods to reconcile the differences on our moral opinions, as opposed to pointing fingers and demanding change outright. Same goes for my opinions on the homosexual bill—but that’s a huge can of worms and this sidebar doesn’t have the time for that right now. I might comment on all that mess later.
