Had a lovely day yesterday – went to the market, got veggies; went to a kitchen store and bought some mighty fine – and expensive cook wear – more than I need because it’s a set – but I’ve scalded the skin off one hand using the local stuff with no handles. Handles are not done here – I’m not sure why, but the local cookware looks to be molded from a piece of tin or aluminum.
My first step out the door should have been a “heads up” to expect the unexpected. Walking outside to go collect a friend new to the house, I encountered a bull – a young one with shorter horns than the more mature and mean tempered long horn cattle, but a bull nonetheless. Seems he had taken off at a trot, escaping his herdsman, hooked it down the alley and threaded the eye of the needle otherwise identified as the small door opening part of our gate. He was looking pretty wild-eyed (ahead of the curve I’d say on getting that mean look), so I stepped back inside and watched from inside as he circumnavigated the yard. Finding no exit and looking more crazed than ever – he dodged the herdsman who tracked him down. As I walked into town to find my friend, the herdsman was still chasing him with rope in hand. Where’s a good cowboy when you need one?
Thinking my tale was unique, I shared it with a group of other PCV’s at lunch. A more seasoned young woman told one better – and there is ALWAYS one better here – truth really is stranger than fiction. She had heard some rustling in her house, waking up from a nice afternoon nap. As she rolled over, there was the snout of a bull inches away from her face. Instinctively, she smacked him on the nose with a book she’d been reading before she dozed off and he ambled out, no doubt put-off by this unwarranted re-buff.
So back to cooking – the multi-piece set of non-local cookware deserved a good Christening, so another friend spending the night and I whipped up a mean pot of spaghetti that didn’t just taste “somehow like” spaghetti, but the real deal. We even had electricity to see how to chop veggies and eat. Used a package of vanilla pudding mix and found boxed milk to make pudding and rescued smashed bananas sacrificed in transport from the market yesterday. The universe was clearly smiling on us because we also got to watch what is no doubt a bootlegged copy of Midnight in Paris. In short – it was a stellar evening.
Payback: This morning, with a house full of PCV’s I awoke with the usual Call to Prayer from the Mosque in the next block and got up to make coffee. The other shoe has dropped – paradise interrupted. There is no water. In the local jargon: “water is finished.” I had water – it quit in midstream. It is a mystery explained by any number of anomalies: there is no electricity at the Gulu pump station that feeds the city; there is no water in Gulu (a certainty in the dry season – but it is NOT the dry season yet), my tank did not fill – for any number of vague reasons… Fortunately, a strapping young male PCV from near here (yes Cowboy Dave – that’s you and no he’s not the calf-roping kind of Cowboy) crashed on the floor last night and carried two jerricans of water from a local bore hole. Too bad CBD doesn’t wrestle cattle… But apparently he can fix nearly everything else ‘cuz he fixed a door and has built a huge water tank on rollers he’s going to loan us. This Texas girl says God bless cowboys…
Water is purchased here (this is a business man who owns this bore hole) – so I will have SOME water this week. I’m hoping this was not the price we paid for one really nice day. And I know it is just a reality of Uganda I have not had to face just yet. Still, I have been practically rationing water – trying to make what we have go as far as possible. Water used for washing clothes is saved for mopping the floor, washing muddy shoes, flushing a toilet… watering a garden maybe.
Takes me back a bit to living on the boat when we paid to fill water tanks… But the presence of water or the absence of same changes the game in every respect.
In the process of helping and conversation, Cowboy asked if I could direct him to a tailor who can make a shirt. Yes – yes – I’ve met an expert tailor who can do the job. He explains that in the process of washing his shirt and leaving it out to dry for a second day, a storm came and blew it onto the ground. In the few hours of being on the ground the termites, recognizing a good lunch when one fell on the ground, ate most of it – the shirt. I have not really encountered termites in that way – and I hope there’s not a YET in that statement.
So moving along through the day, I’ve negotiated the purchase of a couch, some repairs have been made on the house and some have not. Night is here and with it mosquitoes. Water is finished. Electricity is finished. And the day is almost finished… and I need to go close windows to fend off the gathering cloud of blood suckers.