Peace Corps Update
from Paul in Uganda
“If you have come to help me you can go home. But if you see my
struggle as part of your own survival, then perhaps we can work together.”
- Australian Aborigine Woman
Hi Everybody!
Here’s hoping that the Grace and Light that brings Peace and
Joy is guiding you with Warmth through the first season of this cold New Year
For those of you who didn’t get my pre-Christmas update we
did a real quick luggage split during training in which half of my stuff (many
e-mail contacts included) were sent to a storage room in Kampala. Beyond that the internet and whatever chance
may be decided that half the e-mail list I actually did send the letter to
would result in postmaster failure. All
Apologies. I have a blog, paulybenz.blogspot.com,
which hopefully all my Updates from Uganda will go to but my internet
connection while in country has been frustrating to say the least so right now
the only thing up there is the post I made just as I was leaving Philadelphia
for a long drive to New York and an even longer flight from JFK. We did have a nice sunrise in Belgium though
before our flight to Entebbe, Uganda.
You can send me email and it’s not too difficult to view,
but internet is so slow I have to travel to a hub to reply. If you really want to call me let me know and
I’ll send you my number out here is +256787690497 on MTN and +256790518268 on
Orange. Think it’s weird that I have two
phone numbers? Some people here have five.
You get airtime on a little scratch card and there are different
providers with different promotional deals and different areas where one network might have no service and another
will.
Jan 26 2014
The drums start just before 7. I later learned that the drums were for
church in Africa similar to what bells are for church in the states and much of
Europe.
Somehow I’d slept beyond my usual wakeup time and this is my
second morning here in Buyanja Village.
I opt out of my typical prayer and meditation, which tends to become
prayer and whirling extended thought period.
I hope Hue Shou, the good-humored monk back in Taiwan wouldn’t be too
disappointed, but I haven’t given up on listening just yet.
I step out side into the mist and birdsong air to glimpse
the splendor that is dawn through the maize sugarcane and banana trees that
stand between our house and the green hills of Southwestern Uganda on my way to
the latrine. I have hacked a bit of the
avocado tree away from the roof to limit easy access to rodents. Never would have thought “sharpening the
machete” would end up on my list of things to do before I moved to Africa. We haven’t put a lock on the latrine yet and
despite my kneejerk reaction from being told over and over to keep things
inside under lock and key at night the toilet paper has not been stolen… just
moved.
I came back and lit some incense purchased by our Indian
neighbors in Mbarara who taught me how to say thank you in Hindi (which I forgot) Man I'm glad they are here there food is the best.
My desire for self
discipline would have me restart the morning routine, but I’ll pray in church
today and there is so much I want to tell you.
So with the candle on the table I improvise and as the Bible holds down
some incense I sit down to chat with you.
After 11 weeks of training 42 of us were sworn in at the Ambassador’s
house in Kampala that third week of January as Volunteer Education Officers with
the United States Peace Corps. We
repeated the oath as read by the ambassador in unison with our right hands
raised and swore to protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and
domestic so help us God. It was all very
official. Honestly made me feel like I
was apart of something much greater and stronger than I in a very good way.
Funny how ceremony and ritual offer that kind of grounding structure. We were reminded of the importance of
education in Uganda with 80% of its population being under age 30, 50% under 15
and 36% believed to be under age 9. We
were reminded that a country’s economy is directly related to its
education. Our chief mentor and leader
from the night we landed in November reminded us to work with people who wanted
to work with us, that if something doesn’t make sense it probably isn’t true,
and that when hunting an elephant it’s best not to throw stones at birds. We represented Washington, Oregon, California
Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri,
Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Vermont. What we look like as a representation of
Americans you’ll have to see the photo. =) We were reminded that Our group had
reconvened 3 days before at a lovely Conference Center with monkeys playing in
the foreground as a large banyan tree oversaw the whole affair from the middle
and a quaint, grass-roofed gazebo that I never actually sat down in offered a
view of Lake Victoria between the trees.
We hadn’t all been together for just over a month where we had been
separated by region for Language Training and cultural immersion where we
stayed with host families.
It was here I heard a description of myself I’ve been
excited to tell you about since the day I heard the story.
Word travels fast in the village.
We stayed at a place called Kyamugasha. 5 of us each with a
different family and we all walked the same road to language classes through
the village. The village children would
always chase after us and call out, “Muzungu, Muzungu!” meaning “white person,
white person.” After days of
introductions and a few sing-a-longs of “This Is the Day” (harkening back to
Sunday school with Dad at St. Peter’s) though it the cacophony became “Paul!”
(pronounced ‘Pa-ool’). Funny how being
called by your name just feels better than a nickname, however non-malicious,
that denotes the color of your skin how being called a name. The walk, which started with me at 7:30,
added Matthew, being furthest out, then we usually sat down at Cody’s for a
while and then went on to pick up Amanda. One particular day Amanda was excited
to tell me that her host father had mentioned me in conversation saying, “Paul,
yes I know that one. He is the one wearing spectacles who loves God and is fingerless.” “Fearless,” I miss-repeated to myself with a
smile beginning the internal self-congratulation. “No, FINGERLESS,” Amanda repeated. “Oh FINGERLESS,” I chuckled to myself; yeah
that too. I can just imagine Kaare Haga laughing
in his chair after hearing that story.
I can show
you the many pictures of the green rolling hills we looked out on our walks to
class and where my family farmed and I can show you their faces. I can tell you what I know of their story,
but really theirs is not so different from ours in the most fundamental aspects
of hard work to better one’s own life and that of one’s family, to ensure a
decent home and education for one’s children.
I learned how to milk a cow from them and the pictures are there. But what I can’t show you in pictures are the
sunrises I saw over the steep ridge that encircled the farm tucked in its nook
as it spread out to the vast valley below like some giant divine
horseshoe. I can’t show you how the
stars looked when I took my bucket bath every night before supper but I can
tell you that the word ananooze means both firefly and stars in
Runyankore/Rukiga. I can’t show you how
the full moon looked between the acacia trees over that same ridge but I can
tell you it was a cinematographer’s dream come true let your imagination go to
work and keep the rest for my own memory.
I can’t show you what my shadow looked like in the moonlight on the
grass and hard pack path returning from fetching water as it trudged between
the large banana leaf shadows on the ground under my feet but I can tell you it
was quite something to see and know that my 17 year old host brother was
several paces behind me. If I ever make
it to frail 70’s I’ll smile on that memory, those jerry cans from the waterhole
are heavy. And after 30 years of
processed high fructose corn syrup and plastic packaged granules, my host
father took me into the planation to harvest sugarcane with a machete, carry it
home and cut it up and enjoy. Dusk never tasted sweeter.
And late at
night several days later as Thursday becomes Friday this last Day of January I
should like to tell you a few things about life here in Uganda. While by western standards a new calendar day
begins at 12 midnight or 0000 hours, here the day starts at sunrise. Clock Time
also begins then, as does the day. So 7AM for us is 1 here and if it were 12
noon the Ugandan time it would be 6. And
here just below the equator the sun rises and sets at 7AM and 7PMevery
day. It is considered very rude to eat
while you are standing up or walking, but picking your nose in public even
while in mid-conversation is quite normal and is done often. People walk slower, listen better and
therefore talk softer and more quietly here.
Often to say ‘yes’ they will not speak, but only raise their eyebrows,
so if you are not giving full attention or at least looking at the person you
are talking to you will not know they have heard you. It is also common to hear a closed mouth “hhnnnhh”
for an affirmation of sorts similar to what I encountered in Norway. English is their official language, but it’s British
English so they eat “biscuits” not “cookies” and if your are dressed well and
looking good you are “smart.” I love the
British influence of Break Tea in the morning at 10ish and in the evening at
5ish but as for the steering wheel on the right and driving on the left hand
side of the road… not so much. But don’t
worry we’re not allowed to drive and that’s a rule I don’t intend on breaking.
As I’ve
observed before and have likely stolen the description from literature or
cinema, “people are people wherever you go.”
In the best here, there is among Ugandans a deep and overflowing joy and
readiness to laugh that I doubt I could ever tire of: the kind that gives you
hope for humanity and inspires you to give thanks. A hospitality and a generosity matching the
best of my country. Rev. Sam who studied
at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena for 8 years told me on a car ride home one day
when talking about American and Ugandan hospitality said, “No one is better
than you.” We had talked about how the
two countries were equal in their peoples’ hospitality as we had just left a
baptism and graduation celebration where I experienced some of the very best
that Ugandan village hospitality has to offer.
Greetings
are of great importance here. It is
considered rude to approach someone and ask them for something (even if they
are on the job and you will pay for what you seek) without first greeting
them. If you are walking and see someone
on the path and you fail to greet them, it is thought that you are either not a
good person or that you do not like the person you have failed to greet. Sometimes if you see them passing by a
Ugandan’s exterior demeanor may seem, austere, stern, detached or even slightly
intimidating, but all you need do is smile and try to greet them in their
mother language to bring a full and beaming smile to their face and your day
that I can not adequately describe. And
as people are people while those in my host family and the Peace Corps Uganda
employees who overwhelmed us with their near angelic grace, the dignity and
perseverance with which they worked and generosity to their guests that match
any I have known others, well, are reactive and opportunistic like people
anywhere can be. The sense of personal space is very different in that it is
really nonexistent here which translates into a persistence that sometimes can
seem pushy or over-crowded and very unsafe taxis with up to 24 people in a
Toyota minivan. I’m not exaggerating and
it was one of the more miserable 3 hours on a road whose pavement has been
utterly neglected since the British left in the mid 1960’s. I doubt I’ll ever be comfortable with the
insects but I sleep under a mosquito net and take Malarone daily to stave off Malaria
and honestly the mosquito’s here are nowhere near as bad as Taiwan; I’ve only
put on bug dope 2 or three times during my first week in country and I‘ve
rarely been bitten. They eat very large
portions at lunch and late in the evening.
And I mean large. As my friend
Kenneth who lives right behind us on the compound put it today, “For us
Africans, we are very good at eating.”
The diet is higher in starch than anything I’ve ever seen or heard
of. Potatoes (which they call Irish
Potatoes) rice, beans, matooke, cabbage, a green leafed vegetable called dodo,
and boiled beef, millet, and posho are the most common main courses. Then for
desert fruit, usually pineapple or for lunch breakfast and break tea it can
also be mangoes and banana. The fruit
here is amazing similar to Taiwan and the taste is several notches above what
I’m used to in the states. (Although here instead of saying “used to” they drop
the “to” and just say “used” to describe when one is acclimated to something.
And they are incredibly sharp dressers in Uganda. A
people so keen with style and fashion and united in taking pride in their
personal appearance, I would put them second only to the Italians for fashion
consistency. The exception here would be those working hard labor or found deep
in the village without means or concern to adhere to fashion and sharp personal
appearance. In my duties as a teacher I have to honor this sensibility to be
respected and show respect. I do my best. Never in my life have I worn such
snazzy shoes as part of my daily work attire. Ironing clothes, I do hate it.
There is
here a toughness and durability among the people the likes of which I’ve never
seen before. It sometimes reminds me of
the toughness I saw in my Grandpa Benz but even he as a midwestern farmer
raised out of the American Depression, even he wore shoes when he worked the
fields. It is very common to see people
ranging from young children to people into their seventies digging or other
hard farm labor in bare feet. As my host
father said more than once, “Here in Africa, everything must be tough, the
plants are tough, the animals are tough, the people are tough.” And he’s right even the grass is sharp and
can cut like small knives; there is a plant that has leaves that come to a
point and poke good if your not paying attention; these are a favorite food of
the goats who often roam freely from yard to yard but have a system where they
are herded and kept which I haven’t quite learned yet, but many are simply tied
with a rope by leg to a cluster of grass.
But the toughness of the flora and fauna of nature here are reflected in
the people who lived and work directly in with it and depend on it for
sustenance. A common perception of white
people, and we are called “Muzungu” by nearly everyone who sees us walking by
on the road, is that we are incapable of doing any physical labor at all and
that we all have a plentiful reserve of money at our disposal. As for the former I had a hilarious and
wonderful moment when one day after language training I was going for a jog
with a friend from Nebraska and while waiting for my friends to grab jogging
shoes I was chatting with the neighbor next door who I’d greeted on days
before. She was well past 60 working
with a heavy garden hoe in bare feet.
“You, you help this,” she said playfully. I proceed to take the hoes from her and go to
it after figuring out that she wanted topsoil cleared of the weeds and did a
small patch in here garden. She howled with laughter and said with great
surprise, “This one, he knows how to dig!”
Some of the skills developed here are strange in their reconnection to
the individual human experience. I know
by the liter how much pee will fill the night bottle in a go and roughly how
much water I use for drinking, laundry, bathing and dishwashing as I carry it
from the borehole (waterhole) in 20 liter jerry cans. I can aim well enough to poop in a small hole
in the ground without missing or soiling my pants and feet in dim light… very
dim. I held a duck with a red rooster’s
mask before I watched it slaughtered and helped pluck its feathers. This was Christmas dinner for our
region. One of my goals while here is to
slaughter and animal myself that I will later eat. We also watched a goat slaughter and learned
that here in Uganda Muslims generally slaughter animals that are sold to the
public as Muslims are not permitted to eat animals slaughtered by
non-Muslims.
So we went from an organic farm outside Kampala called
Kulika for 3 weeks to a Primary Teacher’s College compound called Shimoni for
another 2 weeks. This was the first
phase of training also known as teacher boot camp. Then we were split up by
language groups and sent to 5 different regions to stay with host families and
take language and culture classes for phase 2 of our training, which lasted
roughly 5 weeks. In my group for
southwestern Uganda there are 9 of us and 5 went to the village of
Kyamugasha. And now with the midnight
oil burning, the electricity and internet fickle and floating in its tease
between available and frustratingly slow I enter my 9th day on
site. I wish I could watch the Seahawks
play in the Superbowl, but the game will end hours before I walk to my first
day of school at Nyakaina Primary as Teacher Paul for the next 2 years. I hope I do well, that the prayers of the community
that I be a blessing will be answered. I
have spared you my trepidation but I know I am in the right place.
Peace, Cheers, Blessings and Until Next Time, Farewell from
Uganda just under the Equator,
Paul
Matsiko
Mbabazi
Benz
