Locals, transport, language

Locals, transport, language

About a third of a mile down the dirt road from the college is a small village with a handful of shops in mud huts. The shops are all tiny with an inventory to match. One has beer, pop, aspirin, plastic basins, etc. The shop next door offers a few vegetables. Across the narrow road is a seamstress with a pedal-powered sewing machine. The farmer sells goat meat and chops it up using a machete on a blood-stained block of wood after the customer selects the desired section of goat. English is limited. The young female shop clerks giggle when they don’t understand our English. Barefoot children run around wearing torn clothing.

One of the college’s teachers walked with us to the village one afternoon soon after our arrival and when the kids saw us their faces beamed with big smiles and a wee boy about 2 years old ran up to me and hugged my leg! I’m anxious to take photos here but think it wise to wait until they know us better and I’m able to ask ‘may I take your photo’ in their language. It’s not necessary to ask children for permission but always ask adults.

Transportation
Boda boda – motorbike taxis which are unsafe. Drivers rarely wear helmets and passengers are not provided with one. VSO instructs volunteers never to use one but many still do. Motorbikes get chased to the side of the roads by passing cars and trucks. There must be hundreds of them in Mbarara, and they are common transport all over Uganda.

Taxis – 15 seater mini-buses with cheap fares. There is no schedule—they depart the main taxi station when they are full.

Special taxi – same as a taxi in the US or UK. Much higher fare than the above modes, of course.

Buses – long distance transportation somewhat like Greyhound

We have quickly learned how to be pedestrians here. Never, never assume a car or motorbike will slow down or stop if you walk in front of them. Pedestrians must be extremely cautious and run.

Rain!
This is one of the rainy seasons but most of the time there is lovely sunshine. However, without warning the sky will suddenly blacken, open up and the rain comes down in buckets. Sprinkles seem to be a rarity.

The language in southwest Uganda is Runyankole. VSO provides language training at the in-country-training, but since we came on our own outside the group we were not provided with any. We have to find a teacher on our own and VSO will pay the fees. So far we know two words – agandi which means ‘hello, how are you’ and wongi which means ‘excuse me, I didn’t understand what you said’.

Everyone on campus speaks English and classes are taught in English. Primary school classes are taught solely in English after primary 3. In markets where we bargain there can be limited English – merchants always know ‘how are you’ ‘fine’ ‘how much’ and amounts of money.

I guess we’ll get used to being the centre of attention when we walk down the street. Although we are often spoken to politely or asked ‘how are you’, and 99 times out of 100 will get a friendly reply when we ask ‘how are you’, I can now empathize with the female volunteer who stated on her blog that she’d love to feel anonymous just for a day.

It’s depressingly unfortunate that our internet time is going to be limited. The internet is slow but at the internet café we use it’s not as slow as I expected. Uploading photos is time-consuming and high quality photos will probably be impossible to load. A webcam is out of the question so it’s packed away for the duration, unless there is a miracle. Neighbouring Kenya seems to be currently improving with a faster connection.

We listen to the BBC World Service on the short wave radio we bought in Michigan. It uses rechargeable batteries or can be cranked up to recharge the batteries that were included. Very handy. I brought loads of rechargeable batteries and two chargers.

Electricity
Pre-departure research informed us that electricity would be roughly every other day. This is apparently the case for large cities, like the capitol of Kampala. Fortunately that is not true for our area. We’ve been told that when electricity goes out it is generally on weekends. During our 2 weeks here it went out on a Sunday evening and came back on Monday morning. It was then out for a short time on Tuesday. It also went out for about 10 minutes a few nights ago. All the college buildings have back-up generators, but not the housing.

Mosquitoes
There are tons of mozzies here! I’ve had a lot of bites already because somehow the wee bast***s are getting into the house after dusk. The anopheles mosquito that can carry malaria only comes out late at night, at which time we are in bed with the mozzie net tucked snugly around us. Our research on malaria shows us that those who take Mefloquine (the one we take) rarely get malaria. Thus far we’ve been taking the weekly pills for about 6 weeks with few side effects—no horrific nightmares like we were expecting but my dreams are more vivid and Danny feels a bit queasy for a few hours after taking his dose.

Sunday mass
Since we are part of the college community we attend the services and gatherings we are invited to. There are quite a few Catholics on campus, including our next-door neighbour who is one of two Deputy Principals and in charge of Outreach Services—one of Danny’s main areas of responsibility. We attended mass one Sunday with the DP and his wife as several of the college students were getting confirmed. The Bishop performed the mass that lasted nearly 3 hours. It was conducted in a wee bit of Latin, but the rest was in the local language, Runyankole. Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, the mass was unlike any I’ve experienced…..happy clappy, lots of singing, some dancing, lots of speeches, applauding. We were introduced to an overflowing church in English. After mass there was non-stop hand shaking and many parishioners wanted to meet us.

As ‘special guests’ we were invited to attend lunch with the Bishop and about a dozen others. I was absolutely famished by this time as it was nearly 2pm! Lunch was delicious—rice, matoke, 2 items of food whose identity I’m still clueless about, spinach, beans, beef in a gravy, cabbage, chapatti, a fruit I couldn’t identify.

The Bishop informed us that the Archbishop for Western Uganda was educated at St. Andrew’s in Scotland. It’s kind of cute how everyone says Scot-land as 2 words.

You may be wondering about volunteering opportunities for me. It appears that due to our location it will need to be on-campus. I offered to tutor anyone who required help using computers—students or staff. The computer room for the college has ancient computers, old versions of software, a miniscule amount of memory on them….in other words, they are complete rubbish. There is only one secretary for the entire college and she uses a decent desktop and laptop. I have offered her my help in figuring out some of her software questions, and it appears I’ve volunteered myself to help her when she has a large amount of typing. Ah well…looks like at least half of each day will be housework anyway. Laundry takes ages, the floors are always needing swept, the house must be kept very clean to keep the critters to a minimum, water is always being boiled for something – to filter for drinking water, to do any washing, cleaning, laundry, dishes, etc.

A cleaning woman costs about 25,000sh/month for full-time. This is a pittance! Unfortunately, it doesn’t look likely that I can get someone to only do laundry—it’s all or none. And I don’t want a full-time maid. We’ve been told that since the cleaners earn so little that they generally supplement their income by helping themselves to their employers’ belongings. No thanks.

New photos have been uploaded to my Flickr album (see sidebar for link).

A personal note: Eugene in Dunoon—please send us your email address via the email posted in the sidebar of this blog. We fondly remember the Scottish-themed bon voyage meal at your home.