EuraFrique: Uganda

Back around the first of august, we posted the following message about Africa, thinking we'd have time (and money, given $6/hr. rates at internet cafes) *in* Africa to do more work on the blog...

Hey, it's been a while since we've had good internet access, so this is just a quick note to say soon we'll catch up with photos and stories of Libby's weeklong trip to Uganda to visit her friend Erin, Billy's trip to Croatia, and our eventual reunion in South Africa to meet some incredible new friends and to visit the University of the Western Cape, where Billy's been accepted to a Master's in History program. Now we've joined our 40-person strong group tour of Southern Africa and survived over the past two days 22 hours of bus riding. Our group of folks is a dynamic and funky mix of mostly Chicagoans. Stories coming soon!
Love,
Libby and Billy

Now, mid-september, Libby finally shares her stories of her visit with Erin in Uganda...

When the skies break open, the road becomes a red river, the “matatu” taxi bus a raft, and the bumps in the dirt road turbulent waves, throwing us about. But the dirt road and the countryside speckled with thatch huts are a welcome reprieve from the exhaust, grime, and chaos of Kampala. Somehow Uganda felt immediately familiar, as soon as I landed. I guess the feel of people walking alongside dirt roads, carrying bundles the size of small houses on their backs is the same whether you’re in Uganda, Mexico, or Ecuador. Still, once my friend Erin and I had reached the backpackers’ hostel, we were not in Uganda, or even Africa, but within some secret haven of 18 years of friendship, and it was not until we pulled into Kampala the next morning that my heart thumped faster and I felt awkward and more visible than ever, a pale skinned ‘mizungu’ weaving amongst hundreds and hundreds of dark-skinned Africans, trying not to step on the numerous blankets of vended items crowding the sidewalk, and trying to look the proper direction before dashing across the street between speeding bikes, motorcycles, and minibuses.

I always thought I would be the “perfect type” for the Peace Corps, but the first few days of being in Uganda had me incredulous and unable to imagine myself ever feeling able to “assimilate” into the culture, which seems like a critical component of building relationships and learning from those in one’s village or town. It seemed impossible to escape the attention brought by my racial and socio-economic demographic, and I realized I don’t know how to be a race traitor when all the blacks around me are celebrating my whiteness. Erin and another white female volunteer and I attended “Speech Day” at her village’s primary school, where the various grades of schoolkids sang songs to the visitors, welcoming them and demonstrating their knowledge. We were told Speech Day would begin at 10 am, so we went at 10:30. Tens of kids in bright purple uniforms were drumming and singing as we walked onto the school grounds. Immediately upon spotting the 3 of us, a collective scream of delight rose among the children and they rushed across the lawn, swarming us and laughing and serenading us with songs. There were so many complex layers of feeling in it for me – delight to be surrounded by so many exuberant kids, discomfort knowing they would never rush across the yard to greet a black person, shame that I enjoyed being the focal point of their attention, frustration at a system where white people are cherished because of the stereotype of their economic and social status (Uganda relies heavily on a steady flow of foreign volunteers, so white people are generally recognized as comparatively-rich aid workers)… When Speech Day finally DID kick off around 2 pm, we 3 white guests were asked to take seats of honor in the very front row, ahead of all the Ugandan parents who had come to see their children. Again, I felt the sting of unwanted privilege and wondered how to fight it.

Erin and I talked a lot together about how it figures into her daily life in Ntenjeru, her village of a few hundred. “People will try to walk with me through town, not because they want to know anything about me or want to have a relationship, but because they want other Ugandans to see them walking with a white person and to think they’re important.” Only after she waged a massive p.r. campaign to establish that her name is Namata (the Luganda name given her by her Ugandan advisor) was she able to escape the incessant “Mizungu! Mizungu!” called out by children and adults alike in her village. In the taxi park in the town of Mukono, a full hour away from Ntenjeru, she is recognized by a taxi driver, who calls to her from 20 meters away. Still, nearly every interaction with non-acquaintance Ugandans (and even with many acquaintances) was formulaic and money-related. Though eventually I came to see that with a great deal of time and effort, one could begin to have a semblance of relationship with one’s neighbors and co-workers, in most cases it was obvious that transcending capital relations ranged from extremely difficult to impossible.

An unexpectedly incredible interaction happened on my last day in Ntenjeru. Erin and I walked 30 minutes through the tea-covered hills to the nearest village. A woman named Rachel who wanted Erin’s input on a women’s collective project getting off the ground in the area and had arranged the meeting. We weren’t sure what to expect, as often Ugandans solicit advice or money from volunteers, but we were blown away by Rachel’s outlook and project. They are a group of 48 women who started with 50 chickens and now have 250 chickens, 22 goats, and enough food growing to feed them all. They sell chicken eggs and put part of the money back into animal feed and group expenses and then split the rest for school fees for their children. “We women are a collective force. For what a man can do, so too can we women,” she chuckled. She wants to train young girls on how to work together, take care of each other, and be self-sufficient. Her group would like to expand their business so they have enough not only for them and their children but also other vulnerable children in their care. “In Uganda, it is we women who must take care of the children. We need to feed them, get them school fees, get their uniforms. We women care for the children. But it is not enough to care only for our own children; we must also care for the children our friends have left behind when they died. If I see the orphans in the street, not going to school, how can I ignore them? For when I die, will it not be my own children who are orphaned?” Anyone interested in providing solidarity to the women’s group can contact Erin: elarsencooper@gmail.com