There are plenty of vegetables here actually, but one must hike to the market (right) to get them and after work, I’m not in the mood to hike another mile through the heat and the dust field.  But that afternoon, I went out in search of closer fare.  There’s a little duka (tiny stall type shop) near me that sometimes has tomatoes, so I stopped and asked in my best Acholi if  “nyanya” is there – i.e Acholi for tomatoes.  She looked at me like I had spoken Greek – so I assumed I’d used the wrong word from my Acholi data-bank.  I said, so how DO you say tomatoes???  Again – the look – as she said “tomaaaaahtoes!”

So much for using my Acholi in town.  

And in that oblique way that my brain works, that brings me to other random thoughts, one of which is  “toilet flushing.”  Now don’t leave yet – I know those of you with fine, working-order flush toilets in the States may think you have the answer to this.  But I assure you, a simple flick of the wrist to push down the lever won’t work here.  First, to have such a devise in your home is a luxury – right up until the time you run out of water.  I will never take a flush toilet for granted again.  First, a friend was kind enough to replace the flush valve linkage with a piece of coat-hangar wire.   No, no, no there are no simple replacement parts here.  Add to that fact that the cover to the tank’s fill valve jettisons off every time the water comes back on and allows water to spew out the tank  flooding the bathroom – and the house – in the process if I’m not home when it happens.  Since there is no turn-off valve on the intake,  I’m now jury-rigging a bottle top cap for it to wedge between the valve cover and the tank lid.    Creativity here is a survival must.  In many ways, save the lack of water – it’s like living on a boat.  Everything breaks at the least convenient time and you’ll have to use whatever is on hand to fix it.

So back to flushing, one must obviously pour water into the tank, but flushing takes gallons of water  and having to buy it and haul it from down the road, one would never simply pour gallons of clean water  into the tank.  It takes one entire Jerri can to flush a toilet.  So here is the procedure:

1.  First, wash a load of clothes – or something.  There is no shortage here, as everything needs washing all the time – shoes, sheets, clothes, hair, mosquito net…. ad infinitum.     Take care to save the water – NEVER pour it down the drain unless there is an abundance of water and you can count on it being there the next day – or the next minute for that matter.  And that would be never.   Even when “water is there” – clothes washing water is used again, to clean the floors, feet, shoes, etc. – or throw on a fire.

2.  Be sure to use plenty of soap, because when you pour the water  into the tank, you’ll have lots of suds which stand in the toilet bowl and clean the tank and the bowl all at once.  Double duty flushing… We are all becoming experts in how to use resources multiple times before letting go of them.

3.  Once the tank is full (and this may take several water-using tasks before you have enough re-cycled water to fill the tank) – plunge the handle up and down several times, because there’s not enough pressure created to actually flush with one movement of the handle.  

4.  Pray that it flushes, because you can’t do this again until you’ve pre-used another umpteen gallons of water to pour into the tank.

5. Repeat process for as many days as water “is finished,” which promises to be a long time now that it is dry season.  This morning we went to refill the Jerri cans after using everything on the fire last night and half the village was there.  At times, I hear the money charged for filling a Jerri can is a little like scalping for tickets at the Super Bowl.  Haven’t encountered that yet…

Tonight is feeling a bit calmer, but then last night started off normally as well.  As we were headed to the market today, a Boda driver hit a woman in the street seconds behind us.  There was blood and much commotion and it was a reminder that in this country, some mishap is always just around the corner. But tonight as I write, I hear church hymns (How Great Thou Art) being sung in the back ground and the early evening cacophony is rather comforting.  

Something large and winged has just flown in through the window and this afternoon, a clutch of little girls was singing the the back yard of the house just over the fence ( the one that dumped the charcoal from the Sigiri next to our fence last night – starting the fire).  I swear they were singing Clementine in Acholi.  And down the block  in the opposite direction of the church, a trumpeter from the marching band is practicing.

I’m about to close up, burn a little Nag Champa incense for ambiance and to chase away the mosquitoes and settle in. The little mouse that has been inhabiting my suitcase met with his unhappy fate last night, so I think I have the house to myself tonight if you don’t count geckos.    And I think I have another episode of Band of Brothers to watch from my flash drive.  There may even be some chocolate left!

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It has been an interesting couple of weeks here at ground-zero.  Rumors fly, politics abound, diagnoses suck or don’t get made.  Really,  who knew there was so much going on?  I thought I’d left some of it behind in third grade – well – maybe high school.  Who’s doing what to whom, who said that?   who’s got what disease – you’ve been sick for how long?  You have a rash wheeeere?  is it moving?  is it alive?

Brady – thanks for your re-cap of the year.  It reminded me of how much we’ve all been through since we arrived and how well – generally – we’ve acclimated.  Some are still slogging through the mud – not to get to training, but to get site.  Many are living without any amenities (no, not without hot water – without any water that’s not hauled in) or somewhere at the edge of a prison system with no locks on the doors.  Others though, are right near Queen Elizabeth Park or the Nile or in beautiful Ft. Portal.  But all sites have their challenges regardless of locale,  utilities or the lack of same.  They range from extreme isolation and lack of basic services (aka food other than cassava and potatoes), to chronic illness and just the vagaries of learning how to live in a third-world country on a long term basis and how to get to medical in under 10 hours.

There’s been no lack of drama either:  two PCVs have been flown to South Africa with broken bones needing surgery; several have had – and still do have – thus far unidentifiable intestinal maladies often originating with undercooked or street food-especially meat-on-a-stick; one has been medically separated under a cloud of controversy that has escalated into a what sounds like a law-suit; another has ET’d (Early Terminated) in disgust;

Another (you know who) has had her foot nearly burned off causing jokes of “Run Forest, RUN!”  and another has spent a week in medical with bilateral conjunctivitis caused by allowing small children in the village to touch her face – joining still another who has had a running battle with staph.

  Those are the few I know about in our group and there are 175 of us in-country. As  I’ve said before, Africa is a veritable Smorgasbord of diseases and maladies, adventures and mis-adventures.

And yet, the majority of us are doing whatever we need to to adjust to conditions many folks don’t know exist.  We are making connections and friendships, choosing to spend Christmas with a gaggle of orphans who weren’t “picked” by any family to go home for Christmas (that’s for you Russ), or spending their first holidays without family (many of the “young ones”).  We’re devising ways to ward off holiday blues (meet-ups for Christmas),  keep ants and snakes out of houses (pour paraffin/ kerosene around the house?) and avoid other calamities met by simply walking down the street.

We are getting packages from home, wonderfully supportive e-mails from friends and family, learning the languages somehow,  baking in odd contraptions so we can have our BROWNIES, and in general we are thriving in spite of the challenges or perhaps because of them.  The thing that has always attracted me to experiences off the beaten path is that it calls into play personal resources one never discovers living in safer confines.  And as with many other life-lessons, what has been gained isn’t always apparent until later….

So here we are and there you are on the run up to the holidays.  That’s all the news from Lake Wobegone.

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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.

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I’m hoping not to have to use this particular skill. Although the chicken event might be interesting. I still remember Mom being gifted a live chicken in Baton Rouge when I was about five and not having to stomach to kill it, even though she’d grown up doing just that.  Not sure how chicken got on the menu today – I know I have fajita seasonings…  Still Spanish rice, Guacamole and bean tacos would have been just right.

The biggest excitement yesterday came when we discovered Cilantro in the Wakiso market.  It had no name – just a vague “pot-tek” (vegetables…)) or something. I’ll have to go to my notes to re-discover it.

Greens are not named in Acholi… not available enough historically I think, but animals, grains, birds, etc. all have names.  So – later in the afternoon when we were doing our buying, the cilantro was still there – no one here seems to know what to do with it  and I can’t believe it was there – it looked pretty far gone.  Still we haggled a little bit and bought it in the hope it can be revived enough to at least get the flavor.   Small tastes of home rate high on the Richter scale of excitement. Pretty soon everything here starts tasting the same.

I was able to get a Snickers Bar in Kampala the other day and it was like Christmas.   I devoured it in secrecy last night.  If something is brought into our home-stay, it’s supposed to be shared if you show it to anyone.  The peanut butter was gone in a heartbeat when it came out, so you better believe I sheltered that candy bar!  I share everything else, but a girl’s gotta do what she must to protect chocolate.

Onward to chickens and cooking over charcoal.  Keep those cards and letters coming.  Hey to your group Judy!

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A traditional Ugandan meal consists of:  white potatoes, yams (yes – both in the same meal), Matooke (plantains/green bananas usually mashed and steamed with no seasonings), posho (ground corn a bit like grits) again no seasoning, and ground nut sauce.  We get all that everyday at training.  

For American tastes, they have added some meat, and at much urging some greens (a bit like mustard or collard) and a bit of shredded cabbage – and almost always bananas.  There are LOTS of bananas here!!! Sometimes we have pineapple, and I have to say it is the best I’ve ever had.  My host family gives me a boiled egg every morning and a scrambled egg at night.  And I am OK with that, because I DON’T want posho or Matooke or tiny little dried silvery fish or…

With every meal there is what’s called African tea – a smokey, wonderful brew of boiled milk, some tea leaves and maybe another spice.  My drinking water is always boiled and this is done over a charcoal or wood fire, so everything tastes a bit smokey.  Clothes smell smokey…  Hair smells smokey…  You get the picture.

So the generalization is that men lose weight and women gain.  So far, the walking to and from class and everywhere else has balanced things out.

Other self care issues:  HAIR.  Thank goodness I learned to cut my hair when I was 13.  I did it this weekend on the front porch while it was pouring rain.  Still, I collected an audience.  I hung the 3 inch mirror up on the iron grating over the window and saw some faces peering through the trees from the road.  I waved – they waved back.    The next look revealed two sets of eyes, then three – all the while giggling at the Mzungu  cutting hair.    Several people are now “in line” to get hair cuts when the weather allows the cross town hike to get here.   Life continues, hair grows.

OK – enough.  Lights and brain are dimming.

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