a day in the life

a glimpse of my present life, from thursday, july 31st

I wake up to roosters crowing incessantly outside of my window. There are about five along our road, and they are completely oblivious to actual time. For some reason this morning they seem particularly overbearing. As soon as the sun comes up, they randomly crow whenever they feel like. This wake-up call is shortly followed by a few babies crying and the sound of kids playing games in the street. I slowly emerge from my mosquito net, tuck it back in (to ward off cockroaches from slipping into my sheets) and try not to disturb the five remaining sleeping girls in surrounding beds. I walk a few meters to the bathroom, flip on the light switch, and realize the power is off. Lovely.

After I make a quick breakfast of toast and bananas, I finalize the plans for my Persons with Disabilities lesson, which I will be teaching to about twenty women this morning. We all make our way up to Intercessors Church where PWDs is held, and I begin my lesson. Overall it goes well, although it takes a while to drive the point through that there actually ARE alternatives to beating and caning your kids, especially when they have disabilities. This is definitely a foreign concept, and I have to present many alternative examples. By the time it is over, I still question what was lost in translation, and how many kids will still be caned this week. The thought makes me sick.

I make my way down to the Milan hotel with Seren, Ashley R, James, and an Australian visitor named Rebeka, where we order the cheapest and greatest Spanish Omelet ever (700 shillings cheap, which translates to approximately 30 cents…) Along the way I carry a 10-foot sugar cane, which was gifted to us by one of the mothers at PWDs. We will give it to David, our security guard, tonight after dinner.

After lunch, James and I make our way back into town to meet Salama- our caretaker partner, and go to Diana’s house for a PWD visit. She has so much energy and is always smiling, although she can’t speak or communicate at all. Her family’s living room is about the size of a walk-in closet.

In the afternoon I take a boda boda ride (motorcycle taxi) up to Lusozi to help work on the stove we are building there. We pass through all the sugar cane fields during the 15 minute ride, and pass the plantation worker housing on the way. All the kids line the path and scream MZUNGU and wave as each boda passes by. I feel like a celebrity, and wonder what it will be like once I get home and no children greet my coming with shouts and praises.

After stomping clay and sand together for a few hours—we call it the African stair stepper- I try to clean my feet off, and grab a boda back home into town. I ask the boda driver to swing by our house so I can change out of my dirty stove clothes, and I reemerge in a matter of seconds with my dress from this morning back on again. I meet Ashley W and Faith at Hope Internet, and we begin the walk up the big hill towards Hillview. Priscilla’s family lives close to the top of the hill, and I love PWD visits to her house more than anything. Today we play with Priscilla for over an hour, even though we should have left much earlier, because she is just too cute to leave. We also take pictures of her in preparation for a book we are working on for her, which turns out to be a feat because she laughs and runs from the camera every time we pull it out. Eventually our mission is accomplished, and we feel we may at least have a few good ones. Before we leave, she mumbles a new song for us, and we clap and adore her with hugs.

On the way home, we say goodbye to Faith and drop by Hope Internet again. The network is still down so we head around the corner to the string of fabric shops. We ask the tailors for their spare fabric scraps for a project we are working on, and get caught up talking to Christine for a while. She is the one who made my African dress and can sew better than anyone else I know.

We get home right before dark, and are greeted by delicious smells of dinner passing through the courtyard. The family we live with has started cooking for us since our previous cook can’t anymore, and we are delighted for a bit of a change. I try matooke, a Ugandan favorite, for the first time and am impressed. The rest tell me it’s usually not as flavorful.

After dinner wears off, Thatcher and I go outside to share today’s sugar cane winnings with David the security guard. He calls us only by our African names, Okalo and Sanyu, and we go out and chat with him often. Usually David and Thatcher attack the sugar cane on their own, but tonight I decide to gnaw on some myself. David keeps cutting me pieces until I feel sick. I create a few beats as Thatcher raps, and David laughs hysterically. He loves making Thatcher rap for him, which therefore requires me to drop a beat. I feel quite inadequate considering I am surrounded by African masters of rhythm all day long, but laugh my way through it because David thinks it is so funny.

Eventually Thatcher retires from rapping, and I go inside to meet with the business group to finalize our plans for the weekend’s Gulu seminars. After we emerge from the business meeting, a Boggle game erupts in the living room and I am sure Amber is going to pee her pants before it is over. Somehow a yoga lesson is transferred outside, and I walk out to the courtyard to see a group of seven doing yoga, even though its almost midnight.

I make my way to the bathroom, happy to steal an empty moment to shower, as I’m sure it has been a few days by now. I flip on the faucet, yet no water comes. The water is out, and it looks like I will just have to deal with being dirty for tomorrow’s long bus ride. Luckily we are all dirty and smell a bit, so hopefully nobody will notice.

Finally the ruckus throughout the house dies down a bit and everyone starts preparing for bed. I read this week’s book, Buddha, for a while after Seren tucks me away in my mosquito net and then chat with the girls about today’s festivities for a few minutes. With six girls in one small room, it is a wonder we ever sleep at all. Finally someone turns the lights off (the power has returned by this point, but there is no sign of the water coming back anytime soon) and we all lay in silence. As I drift off to sleep, I think about Lugazi, I think about all the people I have met here, and I think about how much I love Africa.

Things here are crazy, and this day was merely a mild one, but I still can’t get enough. My life is amazing.