"We are not fine"

Alright. Well, as promised, here is my first blog about Africa! I think I've been putting this off because I don't even know where to start. The  longer I stay here the more daunting the task seems. How on earth can I summarize the marathon of stimuli, joy and exhaustion that is Uganda?

I guess I will start at the beginning: I got off the plane.

As I exited the cabin into the fresh air of an early Friday morning, I was bombarded with an overwhelming smell. I couldn't even describe it. Was it sweat? Heat? Pot? I had no idea. But it was Uganda. Most people have trouble with the humidity when they get here- well, coming straight from St. Louis, that's not really a problem. The smell was a bit to take in, though. It wasn't necessarily overwhelming, just pervasive. The air smelled. And it was a scent I knew I would smell for the next two months.

I stepped down the steps of the plane onto the pavement. There was no tunnel leading us into the terminal. Just a porous wall of dark human bodies. They stood at interviews guiding us into the airport where we waited through customs. There was neither time nor energy to feel nervous. I paid the man at the booth 50 u.s. dollars for my visa (a piece of torn paper stuffed into my passport) and was officially in Uganda. The luggage carol spit my bag out almost immediately and I made my way to the exit. This wasn't super hard as the luggage carol was, as near as I could tell, only one room. And, as promised, the program director, Peter Caroll, was sitting right at the entrance waiting for me.

I had meet Peter before, we had been in a class together, but I didn't really know him. What does one say to the first familiar face after 36 hours of travel? Do you hug? Shake hands? Nod? I just said hi. Pretty anti-climactic but there you go. He took my bag and we walked to the parking lot where a man introduced as our driver, Alfred, was waiting for us. Peter told me to take the front seat for a better view and I made to open the passenger door only to discover it was the driver's side- traffic laws in Uganda are the same as England! So, slightly embarrassed, I crossed around to the other side and we were off.

It takes an hour to get from the airport in Entebbe to Kampala, the capital. Along the way I saw all sorts of sights you would expect to see in Africa. People walked along the side of the road and I stared at them in amazement. I had come to Africa, and these were real life Africans living their real every day lives which neither start nor stop when a new mzungu like me shows up.

We pulled up to the complex and Peter carried my stuff up to the apartment on the second floor. Even though the program hasn't started yet, there are a few people already here. I came in, again unsure how to greet these people who were both strangers and the closest thing I had to home. I was put at ease when one of them stood up and gave me a hug immediately: everything was going to be ok.

 The apartment was humble and cramped but much nicer than I had expected. It was just the interim house before everyone else showed up and each time a new BYU student trickled in, it got more cramped. I was the straw that broke the camel's back apparently, because we moved to our new place that night. When I arrived there were 7 people sleeping in a two bedroom apartment, and one of the beds was in the living room. To be honest, it looked really fun. Everyone seemed really tight already and they were very welcoming.

Corine in the front living room that doubled as her bedroom for a month

the kitchen

the study/room for the married couple. Outside is the porch

yay for drying your own laundry where everyone can see it!

view from the balcony to the left

and to the right

ok...I don't know why I'm including so many balcony pics...I didn't even live here. I just spent the afternoon

the boys room: a sea of mosquito nets. 4 people slept in there.

I took a nap in the boys room, feeling quite conspicuous under the mosquito net. There was also a pervasive smell of boy in there. It took awhile to fall asleep and it was off and on, but when I finally got up I was alone in the apartment with the two girls, Corrine and Jordan. Jordan is a nursing student here with her husband. We ate lunch and chatted. It was fun and they were easy to talk to. Like I said, the longer I hung out with everyone, the more at ease I became.

I finally ventured out from the apartment in the late afternoon as I helped move everything over to our new apartments. Yes, that is apartments plural. There is one for the 10 boys, one across the hall for the 7 girls and another downstairs for the married couple and the professors when they arrive.

And let me tell you: these apartments are nice. We all came in sort of suspicious, especially after the cramped communal conditions of the last place: it was almost too nice. Corrine, the anthropology student, was actually pretty annoyed about it. Here are some pictures of our shiny new apartment before we started tracking dirt and dust in. We are the very first people to live here.

view from the front door taken later that night

another view from the front door

and again from the front door. pretty ritzy eh?

our bathroom

water heater. If we want a hot shower we have to wait 30 minutes at least for it to heat up

my bedroom...there is another bed in there now. It's kind of comforting to have my home sheets. And I'm really glad I brought my own pillow.

view from our balcony: men play football in that field at night a lot which is fun to watch

other side of the balcony view. There is a little hut with a table under it and a patio with chairs if you want to hang out outside

all the nice houses are surrounded by walls with barbed wire

the front gate. Our porter's name is Innocent

Up and to the right on that field is a little footpath. We follow it up to get to the food stand, our Uganda version of fast food. More on that later.

The food stand is across from a little market. When I first spied this through  my camera, I didn't know what to make of it. Turns out there are business in there: food and salons and clothes etc. 

That night we went to our former landlord's house for dinner. This was really fun. We got traditional African dinner (don't ask me what this consists of because I pretty much just ate what was on my plate without asking too many questions) and sat in the living room and talked. The landlord is a doctor who was educated in Germany and travels to Europe and the U.S. often. His two daughters and wife were really funny. Witty. And, as is typical of most people  in Uganda, they are a very religious family so we had an inspiring conversation about God and marriage. They could have been Mormon. Seriously, it was like he was giving us a sermon or something that was at once solemn, hilarious and spiritual. After we left late that night we all just turned to each other and were like "that was celestial, man."

Oh yeah. So the people here. There is Peter the program manager who just graduated as well as Matt an IR student and sort of right hand man- they are both engaged. Brady and Wayne, econ students. Tyler and Jordan, the married couple. And Corrine, the other single girl. We are sharing this colonial palace right now just the two of us. We stay up late having dance parties.

That night, half of us walked back to our new place while the other half stayed at the old one since the mosquito nets were already set up there. Wayne explained things to me as we went, shining the flashlight of his phone while we walked the dark dusty streets teeming with people. Everyone loves to say hi to mzungus (white people). So we wave and say 'hi, how are you doing?' To which they reply 'fine' and then we say we are doing fine too and move on. I was getting the hang of this routine, occasionally stubbing my toe as I struggled to keep up through the rough hilly, uneven and unpaved 'sidewalks,' the excitement of such a foreign place slightly muffled by the calm certainty of my more established companions. Then we passed a family on the side of the street next to a small fire.

Someone made eye contact and the pleasantries began:  'hi, how are you?' etc. etc. then keep walking. The automatic response is fine. I think one of the children said that. But the man behind us, probably the father, called out, "we are not fine! we are not fine! we are not!" in his exotic accent but we hurried on, leaving them to the dark streets.

It was a harrowing moment. And I wish I could describe it with the words it deserves, but I can't. I don't mean to be cheesy or ignorant as I comment on this novel poverty. All I know though is that though I am a tourist or at best a traveler,  this is someone's life. This poverty is million's of people's lives. Its horrible and overwhelming and humbling and mortifying. And it's real.

That's the only comment I have on the subject so far. It's real, and I see it, so I am a witness. While some people are much better off than others, almost everyone is very very poor according to my middle class American standards. This doesn't mean they are sad or lazy or angry- quite the opposite. But it does mean that I need to ponder over the relationship between money and welfare, and between happiness, family and success. I don't want you to think that everyone is sad and suffering. People smile so much here. But that man and his comment had a powerful affect on me.

Well, anyway, we got back to our new apartments, I spent the night in the girl's mansion by myself, I wrote in my journal, and I slept quite well.

That was Day 1 in Uganda.