One picture, finally

Hurray ! Here's one picture from our visit to the park. It's so good it almost looks phony.

Elephants and Warthogs Oh My

I've been trying to load pictures of the animals we saw in Queen Elizabeth National Park for days with no luck. I'm going to see if I can get them on another way.

Bye Muzungu

I hear this greeting a dozen times a day when I'm out walking. Usually it's the children who use it. "Bye Muzungu" means bye white person, but it has no derogatory meaning. Muzungu can also be translated as English or European. The children don't always put hello and good-bye in the proper context so I get bye when they mean hello.

While it's not my favorite greeting, I don't take offense to it. However, Bry'Chell gets upset when her classmates refer to her as Muzungu. Rightly so, she's not white. Her classmates don't seem to get it. There are other kids in her school the same complexion as Bry'Chell, but only she gets called Muzungu. She handles it by ignoring it. She only responds to her name.

What I'm less comfortable with than Muzungu is when people--women and girls only--greet me by genuflecting or getting on their knees and pressing their forehead against the back of my hand. While I might genuflect in church, I don't greet anyone else by genuflecting.

One girl, whose school fees I paid, thanked me by the usual genuflection stuff. I told her to stand up, look me in the eye and shake my hand. I told her that's the American way of doing things. She's a smart enough kid that she knows when to kneel and when to shake hands. She shakes hands with me.

No man or boy would ever do such a thing. That's part of why I don't like it. Of course, I wouldn't like it if a boy or man genuflected to me. It goes against my American sensibilities of equality and dignity. Obviously, that's my interpretation, but this is one of those times when I don't plan on adapting.

Small World

It has almost become a truism that the world is growing smaller each day. For better or worse, it's way too true. My first week here Bry'Chell and I were sitting in the guest house dining room having dinner when a familiar face walked in the room. Wait, I know this guy. I know him from 91st and Stony Island--St. Ailbe's in Chicago. It was Fr. Modest Odama.

He would come and say mass at St. Ailbe from time to time. He was one of the few African priests that the school kids actually liked. He's lively and friendly and fun. He made an effort to be understood. Now, he's standing in the dining room at UMU. We were both surprised.

Turns out he's a new lecturer (professor) in the education department at UMU. I would have written about him sooner, but those were the days when I was still trying to figure out how to get on the internet and into my blog.

We've had many conversations since then. He finished his doctorate at Loyola in Chicago and is back home teaching at UMU. I find him to be creative, intelligent, funny and hard-working. It's nice to have someone who knows Chicago and the US. He doesn't have trouble understanding my accent, nor do I struggle to understand his. Hurray!

He had the mass a week ago Sunday and, at the risk of offending other celebrants, his was the best homily I've heard since I've been here, even Bry'Chell said so. Just the fact that Bry'Chell didn't totally tune him out suggests that he's a good preacher.

Well, time to put together my lecture and class materials for tonight.

Kids and Animals

I'm going to try to put up some pictures. I haven't had much luck the last couple of tries. The animals are worth seeing. Of course, even the best pictures don't do them justice. Maybe they will be more likely to load if I only put up one or two at a time. Hmm...worth a try.

Lately, I've seen and heard some interesting stuff around kids. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for kids. Saturday on our way back from the park, we went past a mother with a little boy standing beside her. The boy had the big belly of that toddlers sometimes have, but it didn't look quite right. It had more the bloated look of malnutrition. I asked Mark if that was Kwashiorkor and he said that, yes, the further you get from Kampala, the more malnourished children there are. I've heard of it, I've read about it, but this is the first time I've seen malnutrition that severe.

Yesterday, one of Bry'Chell's classmate's, Joan, came over for the afternoon. She's been coming over fairly regularly on Sunday afternoons. I think she likes to watch movies on the computer. Unfortunately, I was working, so she wasn't able to watch a movie until I was ready to braid Bry'Chell's hair.

In the mean time, we had an interesting conversation. The question I remember best was--"Does the United States have a war in their country?" Both Bry'Chell and I were a little puzzled by the question, but for a child who has lived in northern Uganda, that a pretty important question. No, we assured her, the last time the US had a war in our country was the Civil War in the 1860s. That's not a question any American kid would think to ask, but for Joan, it's an important piece of information.

Queen Elizabeth National Park

Thursday morning Bry'Chell and I left for Queen Elizabeth National Park with Mark Olweny and three of his friends/former professors. It was supposed to be a five and a half hour drive but it was really more like seven hours, not counting the stops. If the roads were in better shape would have been about half the time. Fortunately, our driver was safe and careful, so we missed most of the potholes.

Bry'Chell was the only kid, but she thought the guys were funny and the animals were impressive, so she had a good time. She drank more pop in the last three days than she's had in the previous three months. When the adults are having beer and wine, it's only fair that she gets some kind of treat as well.

The park is located along the western edge of Uganda by the border of the Republic of the Congo. We stayed at Mweya Safari Lodge for the two nights we were there. Not only were the accomodations splendid, the food was phenomenal. The meals we had were by far the best I've had in Uganda, and that's saying a lot because we've had some good food.

The cool part was the animals. WOW! The elephants were beyond description. They're BIG--REALLY, REALLY BIG. When we arrived at the gate to the park, there was a small herd of elephants. We got out to take pictures. They were so cool. These were not really big elephants, but they were still plenty huge. They were juveniles and females and still they were big.

There were plenty of other cool animals. The wart hogs were funny. They look pretty fierce, but they run whenever they see anyone. Well, they run about ten feet then stop and turn around. You can't help but laugh.

The buffalo were cool with their curved antlers (or are they horns?) They just sort of hung out. Our guide referred to the small groups as the loser males--those who were kicked out of the herd because they couldn't find a female who would accept them. Oh well, poor boys. The large herds were females, calves and a few males. The sheer number and size of them was awesome.

The hippos were another sight. We went on a boat ride where we saw the hippos in the water--up close and personal. However, Friday night Bry'Chell and I were walking back to our room about 10 PM when we saw a hippo on the lawn calmly munching on grass. That's when I figured out the the staff standing around were not there just by coincidence. The young man calmly assured us that, yes, we could walk past the hippo. And no, it would not bother us. That sucker was big. In the water you can't see just how overall huge the animal is. One of her (or his--I didn't check) legs was as big around as I am. Her legs were also longer than I realized from the water view.

We were told that the hippos are actually the most dangerous animal in the park. Given that the animals in the park include lions, elephants, wart hogs, Nile crocodiles and a bunch of other large mammals and reptiles, that's saying a lot.

The birds were abundant, varied and beautiful. We saw two kinds of eagles--but I can't remember what kinds they were--sorry, bird watchers. I'll try to find out.

My First Class at UMU

Tonight I taught my first class at Uganda Martyrs University. It's an Intro to Sociology class. Ordinarily I could teach it with my eyes closed. Tonight was different. It's fun teaching in a different cultural context. Unfortunately, my accent makes it difficult for the students to understand me. That's frustrating. I put my lecture on power point so they could at least follow along. I think it helped. One of my students is a sister from a Ugandan community. I recognized the medallion she wears from some of the sisters in Nkozi.

There are 42 students in my class. It's mix of men and women, almost half and half. CSU tends to have way more women. The class is a little bigger than what I'm used to, but not that much. Students are a bit younger than the evening students at CSU, but still a few mature students. They seem a bit older than the students at Nkozi. They work during the day and attend class in the evening. I will have them again for Introduction to Social Work on Thursdays.

I might have mentioned that I'm teaching at the Rubaga campus of UMU. It's a neighborhood on the western edge of Kampala. I take the UMU bus in from Nkozi with the folks who live in Kampala. The University provides a coach bus to take faculty and staff who live in Kampala to and from work everyday. I ride the bus to Rubaga, teach an evening class from 6 to 10 PM, stay overnight at the guesthouse and ride the bus back to Nkozi at 7:30 AM, getting back about 9 AM.

While I'm out galavanting around Bry'Chell is at home. Carol, an older student from her school, stays overnight with Bry'Chell. Bry'Chell gets home after I leave, so I left her a note with instructions for heating up the left over spaghetti. She could do it without instructions, but I did leave her about 50 million reminders--all along the line of do this, don't do that. She may ignore them all, but I doubt it. She a pretty responsible kid.

Oh yeah, last night I mentioned this cool little gizmo that allows we to use the internet wherever I am. I plugged it in and now I'm laying on my bed in the guesthouse tapping away on my blog. It's a way better connection than the wireless connection at UMU. Thank God, I couldn't take it much longer. It took almost an hour to upload the SP web page. Now it just takes a few minutes. It's not as fast as my connection at home, but it's still pretty fast. I took a picture of it. I'm going to see if I can load.

It's late and tomorrow starts early. I'm off to bed.

Haircuts and shoe shines

My hair was getting in my eyes. I hate that. It usually gets to a point where I can't stand it any more so I call Carmen and he gets me for a haircut. He's been cutting my hair for almost 30 years. I meant to get a haircut right before I left the states, but things were pretty crazy and I never got that far. When I left my hair was marginally tolerable. By the time I had been here a month, it was beyond tolerable. I was told that the barber in the trading center could cut it.

Last week I really couldn't take it any more so I walked on down to the stall where he has his shop. I didn't see him so I went over to another shop where I had met the young woman who recommended the barber. She went to the his shop and woke him up. He was taking a mid-day nap since he didn't have any customers. This made me a bit anxious, but hey, I really, really needed a haircut. Besides, hair grows, right? Even a bad haircut doesn't last forever.

I was reassured when he doused the clippers in disinfectant. At least, I assume the purple stuff he pored over the clippers was disinfectant. He started cutting and I figured this wasn't going to be too bad. Of course, I'm blind as a bat without my glasses (and without the bat's sonar) so I really couldn't see much of what he was doing. When I put my glasses back on it still didn't look so bad. I paid my 2000 Ush ($1.25) and went home.

When I looked in the bathroom mirror at home and had a chance to check it out from several angles, I had a different impression. At the crown of my head--top back--it's cut quite short. Think longish crew cut. The sides were too long. Fortunately, I've spent years watching Carmen--however blurred--cut my hair. I brought a hair scissors along, a last minute purchase, just in case--of what I didn't know. Anyway, I trimmed and shaped until it's fairly respectable, as long as you don't look at the top back.

Like I said, hair grows.

Now, about shoe shines.

Last week we had the day off for the Muslim holy day of Idi Al-Fitir, the celebration that ends the month of fasting for Ramadan. Uganda handles religious pluralism by celebrating everyone's major holidays. Cool, I'm happy for the Muslims. I was even happier to have a free day with Bry'Chell around.

Bry'Chell had told me about a store that was nice--nice by Ugandan standards is nothing major. In this case it meant she could buy a Snickers bar. Anyway, I wanted to see it, so we walked down and found it. It was nice--clean, bright and organized. However, they were out of Snickers bars.

I looked around and found a few things that we needed. Among other things I found black Kiwi shoe polish and a small shoe shine brush. As I've mentioned before, things get really dusty around here--dirt roads and all. Anyway, I asked Bry'Chell if she would be interested in the polish and brush. She was pretty excited and said that, yes, she did need them. Carol, who walks to school with her in the morning had polished her shoes a couple of times because they didn't look nice. (Why did she wait until now to tell me?) Now I'm feeling like an irresponsible parent-type person. I bought the stuff and we came home.

Bry'Chell has been polishing her shoes almost daily. Today I went to Kampala and bought (among other things) a piece of flannel so she can put a nice finish on them. She seems surprised that I know how to polish shoes. I told her that my dad taught me how to use a shoe shine brush and flannel cloth to polish shoes. She was more impressed with Dad than with me.

I'm getting flashes of approaching adolescence. When Bry'Chell was nine, I was brilliant. I knew how to do all kinds of cool stuff. She was always excited to learn something new. Now that she's almost 13, my abilities have shrunken considerably. She can just about tolerate being around me. It's seldom that I have anything interesting to bring to the table, but occasionally I might have a useful tidbit of knowledge. Oh well. She still sleeps with her American Girl doll, Jasmine, and her stuffed Snow Leopard.

Shining shoes is just one little Ugandan thing she has picked up. In the past three years her school shoes never saw polish. Now they're so shiny you can just about see yourself in them.

Because of the dust, she also carries around a handkerchief to dust off her seat before she sits down. I just sit down and take my chances. Maybe I'll pick up that habit, but I doubt it.

I have a new internet connection that I can use from home. I'll write more about that next time I sign on because it's past my bedtime and I start teaching tomorrow.

Our House

I'm putting up a second post only because I could actually get on my blog. Since I haven't posted in a while, I figured I'd get on while I could.

In the last post--earlier today--I mentioned our house. It's not fancy by American standards, but it's really very nice by Ugandan standards. The floor is a cement slab without any covering or finish. It's very bright with lots of windows. I think the windows are because the electricity goes out on a regular basis. It's not a problem on campus since we have a back-up generator and a back up for the back up. When the electricity goes out we have power from about 6 AM until 11 PM.

I'm going to try to upload a picture of our house, just to give an idea of what it looks like. I think I've mentioned before that it's half of a duplex. We have three bedrooms and one bath. It's furnished. It came with four chairs--wooden frames with cushions, a coffee table and two small end tables. The dining room has a table with six chairs. We have a small stove--it's called a cooker here--and a fairly small refrigerator. The bedrooms each have a full size bed. However, the mattresses are just foam. They look sort of like mattresses at home, but trust me, there's no inner spring bounce to them.

Since we moved in I had a local carpenter build us a large bookshelf, a stool and two small tables--one for the kitchen and one for the living room. The kitchen one we use for the toaster oven and the living room one is for the computer and printer. The bedrooms don't have any dressers, but there is a closet in each bedroom. I may have the same carpenter build a couple of shelves for the bedrooms, just to have a place to put stuff.

The cooker has two gas burners and two electric burners. I believe the gas is propane. There is a tank next to the stove. Mostly I use the gas burners when the power is off, otherwise I use the electric ones. It took me a while to figure out the oven. It's electric and the degree markings are Celsius, so I had to figure out how to change my recipes from Fahrenheit to Celsius. So far I've made biscuits, corn bread and banana bread. I want to make cookies but I don't have a flour sifter yet, and I'm afraid they'll turn out like rocks if I don't sift. The flour here is less refined, which is probably healthier, but it's heavier. I have a taste for Snickerdoodles so I'm trying to find a sifter. It took me a while to find baking powder and baking soda. I now have both. Baking soda, especially, is not easy to find.

Bry'Chell has made lots of friends at school. I think part of the reason is because she's something of a novelty. She's the only kid in the whole school with hair. Both the boys and the girls get their hair cut to the scalp at the beginning of each term. Bry'Chell is figuring out which kids like her for herself and which ones like her because they think she's a rich American. She is sort of astounded by the rich American label. From her perspective, she's a poor American. It's sort of funny to be seen as rich. In some ways we are, but in other ways we're not. For example, people are surprised that I do Bry'Chell's braids. They think I would send to to the salon to have them done, although everyone with whom I've spoken admits that it's expensive to have her hair "plaited", as they say here, at the salon.

I'm trying to post a few pictures, including our house, like I mentioned earlier, a picture of Bry'Chell with a school friend and Bry'Chell walking to school. She's wearing her "house" shirt in the pictures because these are Saturday pictures when she's going to school for school functions on Saturday, in this case the Senior Six party. They still have to wear their uniform skirts, but they can wear their house t-shirts. How liberal can you get.

Geckos or Why my Mom wouldn't like Uganda

The houses here are not built very "tight." When there's a breeze it ruffles curtains--and that's with the windows closed. There are additional screens above the windows. These screens do not have any glass behind them. While it's not that hot here--despite being on the Equator--neither does it get very cold. It never gets below sweatshirt weather.

Not only is the weather pleasant for humans, it's also pleasant for insects and animals.The great variety of birds in the area is amazing and several other critters make their homes here as well. One reptile that makes its way into the house at night is the gecko. My theory of insects and animals is that if it's not poisonous and it eats mosquitoes, it's my friend. I hate mosquitoes and they like me, not a good combination. The geckos are harmless. They hang out up near the ceiling and don't bother us in the least.

My Mom does not like reptiles in any form, so she would not like it here. In our family lizards and snakes and such are usually associated with my brother, Bob. Bob would catch salamanders and name them Ralph. Inevitably they would escape and find their way to the bathroom where Mom would find them. I don't know why it was always Mom who found them, but it sure seemed that way. The result was not pretty. Mom would not like the gecko factor about Uganda.

I had seen geckos on a couple of occasions in the hallway, but kept my mouth shut, hoping Bry'Chell wouldn't notice. When Bry'Chell first saw one it was in the bathroom. One night she went in and flew out dancing (the pee-pee dance) to find me. When I went in the bathroom it was gone so she could go back in without fear. Since then she's become used to them. I think it's reassuring to her that she sleeps under a mosquito net carefully tucked in around the mattress. She figures it provides some barrier against the outside world.

I've been having email trouble lately. Actually, I've been having internet problems as well. I've been trying to post on my blog for over a week and this is my first time making the connection. My CSU email hasn't been receiving mail since September 14, so anyone who wants to reach me should try my new UMU email at jbirgen@umu.ac.ug.

Well, the library is closing for lunch, so I have to go. Hopefully, I'll be able to get my next post up fairly soon.