Well, last night took the cake … and then threw it up. This had to be the most disgusting night in a life full of disgusting events (lancing your butt blisters no longer even makes the top ten). I get home from tennis to Sierra splashing in a puddle on the floor (she had spilled water) and John nauseous and headachy and straw from a broom strewn all over the place. (John was trying to sweep up the water. I told you he wasn't feeling well.) John proceeds to get sick all over the bathroom, Sierra gets cranky, and then it's the invasion of the white ants.
White ants are actually huge winged termites that live in these humongous anthills all over the place. They are considered a delicacy around here (not by me). They come out one night a year, after the first big rain of the rainy season. And they come out by the zillions and the whole place is alive with them, like a bizarre but miniature Alfred Hitchcock movie. They were an inch thick on the doors and windows because they are attracted to the lights from the inside of the house. The noise was tremendous as they beat their zillion pairs of wings against the screens. And they managed to get in no matter what I did. And then the house started filling up with them. They swooped around our heads. We tried to avoid them by walking in between them. Then there was no in between them. They dropped into our dinner. They squished under our feet. They were absolutely everywhere. I put Sierra in her crib under her mosquito net, where she starts to scream and flail and get herself completely tangled up in the net. Meanwhile, John was vomiting violently in the toilet. After I got John to bed and Sierra finally passed out, I swept up a ton of termites and flushed them down the toilet. When Regina came this morning, shethought I was crazy. If I'm lucky enough to get all those white ants in my house, she asked, why don't I just eat them?
Oh, gross … I just found a squished giant ant stuck to the bottom of my foot—and no, I am not wearing shoes! Do I love this place or what?
I'll keep you posted,
Eve
To Market to Market (to Buy a Fresh Fish)
John's contract was due to finish in August of 1995. But in April of that year, CARE asked us to extend our contract. I laughed at that idea at first, recalling how desperate I'd been during our first few months here. Back then I couldn't fathom how I'd survive for two years. Now they were asking us to stay for a third year, and the funny thing was, I was seriously considering it.
Sierra's first eight months had been healthy and happy. And though everyone in the States assumed that raising a baby in Arua was some kind of hardship, I probably had it easier than a lot of my friends back home. I had all the help in the world—especially since Cissie had moved into the refurnished “nursery” after a particularly ugly fight with her brother and her father. I had a husband who loved his job and came home for lunch most days and was home in time for sunset gin-tonics most evenings. Our weekends were free for socializing with a fascinating circle of expat and local friends. We never had to worry about cleaning our house, fixing our car, or even mowing our lawn! Like the Ugandans around us, we had pretty much learned to ignore the rumors about an impending war with Sudan and/or a rebel invasion of the West Nile. Life in Arua, for the most part, was calm and peaceful and we assumed it would stay that way.
There were frustrations, of course. I had once heard Uganda referred to as “the Land of Waiting.” Ugandans were always waiting: for transport, for petrol, for money, for the plane to bring the mail, for the man with the key to return. I had been known to call it “the Land Where an Excuse Is as Good as a Deed.” To put it bluntly, not a whole lot got done. And we high-strung, fast-paced, New York types could easily go bald pulling our hair out as things moved along—or didn't—at glacial speed. But John and I had slowed down enough to see and appreciate the almost imperceptible signs of progress that had been made, and much of it was due to John's project.
There were more women who were making a living by brewing beer or selling handicrafts. There were more farmers who'd been able to open stalls in the market. There was the potter who now owned his own wheel and the banana farmer who'd built a solar dehydrator for drying bananas into banana chips, which, because they could be easily transported, could be sold to a wider market. For these people and for others, there was now the chance to live above a bare subsistence level, the hope of sending a child to school or of being able to build a house out of bricks rather than mud. They were tiny baby steps toward development, indeed, but they were there. John was proud of his role in this. And I was proud of him. All in all, the good outweighed the bad. And we happily agreed to stay on for a third year.
Since we wouldn't be going home for another year and a half, John's parents came to visit us. I was tremendously excited—visitors from home were a rare thing and a cause for celebration. But I was also more than a little nervous. Arua was home to us now, and we were used to it. But would it seem like some backwoods outpost to Grammie and Papa? Would they find it uncomfortable? Would they get sick? We eased them in slowly when they arrived that May, letting them adjust to Kampala before we shocked them with Arua. But I think their first shock came when we took Sierra for her checkup while we were in Kampala and Larry Marum weighed her by suspending her from something that looked an awful lot like a meat hook attached to a grocery scale.
“Why don't you leave Sierra here with us in the hotel?” Grammie asked the next day as I was about to go on a marathon shopping trip in Kampala.
“Do you think she'll be okay with you?” At lunch the previous day, Sierra had screamed when Papa tried to hold her. It was even more heartbreaking when she squirmed out of her grandfather's arms and went happily into the waiter's.
“I know we're not black,” Grammie said, “but she seems to be getting used to us.”
We flew home the next day on one of the bigger airlines that had recently started flying to Arua. John thought his parents would be more comfortable on a twenty-passenger plane than MAF's tiny puddle jumper. But good Catholics that they are, I thought they would have appreciated MAF's preflight prayers.
“Now, don't go to too much trouble for dinner tonight,” Grammie said a few days later as they were about to go off to a village meeting with John. “Just something simple is fine for us.” She didn't get that nothing was simple in Arua. But I was determined to do my best imitation of Pauline while they were here. We'd already eaten the chicken that a neighbor had given as a gift to my in-laws. And we'd butchered and grilled a goat for the party we'd hosted the night before so that our friends and colleagues could meet them.
I know, I thought, I'll get some fresh fish. Luckily it was Friday, one of the two days that you could get fresh fish in Arua. Besides, you get extra points for serving fish to Catholics on Fridays, don't you? Normally I avoided the madness of the market on fish days by sending Regina or Cissie. But Regina was cleaning up from last night's party and Cissie, with Sierra on her back, was washing the nappies. So I set off on my bicycle, aiming to get to the market when the fishermen did, sometime around 3:30 p.m., and before they were completely sold out, as they always were, by 5:00 p.m.
“Hey, you mzungu! Ife mani sende!” I looked over my shoulder at two young boys at the side of the road, selling chewing gum and cigarettes. What? Did they really think that one day I would finally break down and start flinging shillings around just to shut them up?
Behind the boys' rickety table was an old tree with a cross scraped roughly into its huge trunk. The tree had been there forever, but the cross had only recently appeared. Some people thought it was a sign from God. But most said it was the Seventh-day Adventists who'd recently arrived in Arua. One of them had come to my gate to bring me the “good news.”
“I've heard the news, madam,” Mzee John warned me. “And it is not good!”
I locked my bicycle up in front of a shop where I knew the shopkeeper would keep an eye on it for me. Then I walked past the beggars and lepers, emptying my pockets of my five- and ten-shilling notes as I went.
“Hello, madam,” shouted one of the ladies who sold sugar, salt, tea, and coffee in h
alf-kilo bags and in pencil-thin tubes.
“How is your husband?” someone else yelled. I recognized her as one of the women who had recently taken a business class at the bank.
“Where is the baby?” someone else called. “Is she walking yet?”
“Oh, we are all fine, thank you,” I answered the whole group. Aside from the woman I recognized from the bank, I knew nothing about these women who I'd greeted several times a week for the past year and a half. Yet they knew so much about my life.
I walked quickly past the rows of stalls, waving and shaking my head as everyone tried to get me to come over to buy their wares. “Just fish today,” I called to them. “I'll be back tomorrow,” I said. With my mother-in-law. And I thought back to my first trip to the market. Wasn't I freaked out by the begging lepers; overwhelmed by the noise and everyone vying for my attention; grossed out by the fried termites? Now it was hard to remember what it was like not to shop like this. Yet I couldn't help but wonder: What would my mother-in-law think of the cow carcasses?
“How is my husband, Solomon?” a woman selling potatoes asked. Constance had been living with Solomon, when he was Terry and Pauline's askari. “Will you take me and the baby with you to Kampala the next time you go?” Constance had recently given birth to the tiny baby girl who was now tied to her back.
“I thought Solomon told you to stay in Arua.” I knew he had another wife and several children down there. I wondered if he told her never to come to Kampala and that's why she named her new daughter Never.
“Well, then, can I marry your husband?” she asked. I didn't know if she was joking or not. Polygamy was perfectly acceptable to many people in Arua. And there was no shortage of women who wanted to marry John. He was, after all, an excellent husband.
“No,” I answered. Joking or not, I wanted it understood that I did not wish to share John.
“Hello, Eve,” shouted the young ladies who sold cooking oil.
“Hello, ladies,” I shouted back although I didn't know their names. I wondered how they had learned mine.
I hopped over the trench of dirty water and walked over to where the Banana Ladies sat on plastic sheets covered with bunches of bananas. Our little banana plantation hadn't matured yet and I still bought bananas from Zila. All the Banana Ladies cheerily told me who was overcharging me for a papaya or which pineapple would be ready today, which one was good for tomorrow. They all let me stow my shopping bags with them when they got too heavy to lug around and I still had more shopping to do. But none of them except Zila had ever tried to sell me bananas.
“You are my customer,” Zila explained when I'd asked her why none of the other ladies ever competed for my business. Then she looked down at the obnoxious pink pants I had been wearing that day, part of my dead mzungu maternity wardrobe. “Will you give me your pants?”
“Well, I'm using them right now,” I had told her. “But I'll give them to you when I'm done.”
“Karibu,” Zila said today as she clapped me on the shoulder. “Where is Ascienju?”
“I'll bring her when I come to do my regular shopping tomorrow. But today I just came to get fish.”
“There is no fish yet,” she told me. But I knew this from the relative calm of the market. “The rain has delayed them,” Zila offered. It had indeed rained that morning. “They will come soon. Sit down and wait.” She scooted over and offered me half of the empty crate she was sitting on. I knew that “soon” had an extremely broad definition in Uganda that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Western definition. But if I was determined to make fish for dinner, I had no choice but to wait.
The Banana Ladies all whooped and clapped as I sat down next to Zila, and pretty soon word spread that a mzungu was selling bananas and a crowd gathered in front of us.
“Karibu (you are welcome),” I said. “Abuaaaa (bananas),” I yelled. “Turu alu (one hundred),” I said, pointing to the smallest bunches. “Turu iri (two hundred),” I said, pointing to the medium-sized bunches. “Turu iri kalitowi (two hundred and fifty).” I pointed to the biggest bunches. A woman with a camera pushed her way through the crowd and snapped a photo of Zila and me selling bananas. I wondered what kind of commotion I would cause if I rented my own stall and started selling the mzungu vegetables from the garden that Erneste helped me plant.
“The fish has arrived,” Zila announced as a line of raggedly dressed men appeared and spread huge plastic sheets between the rows of vegetable stalls. “Go,” she said and pushed me to where the fishmongers were now pouring out buckets of wet fish onto the plastic sheets. Suddenly, I was surrounded by a mob of people and was pushed, pulled, and jostled toward the general direction of the fish. I seemed to be carried along by this wave of people, although I wasn't actually walking.
For the first time in Uganda, I was just one of the crowd, and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. But I resigned myself to the Ugandan way of waiting, and eventually, as if by peristalsis, I was spit out in front of one of the fishmongers where whole tilapia were strung together like odd necklaces and hunks of Nile perch were piled up on his wet sheet.
I bent down to inspect the fish and the salesman ruffled a finger against the gills so that I could see the deep red color. “Fresh, fresh,” he said.
“I'll take a kilo of the tilapia.” I held a plastic bag out toward him. He cut two big fish loose from the twine that bound them together and gingerly dropped them into my bag. I handed him 1,500 shillings, about a dollar fifty. I turned around and was immediately absorbed back into the stream of people. I moved my feet in the direction of the edge of the crowd, although I was not making any discernible progress. I kept my bag and my head up and reminded myself to breathe. I kept making persistent rhythmic motions, like swimming, until eventually I could make my way out of the mob.
I congratulated myself for how far I'd come since that first trip to the market with Pauline nearly two years ago. Now I could buy the buggy meat at the butcher shop. Now I knew how to bargain down the already ridiculously low price of tomatoes. (All right, I was still overpaying, but it was my way of sharing my “wealth.”) And as of today, I could buy my own fish. Today, I told myself, I am a Ugandan! Well, sort of.
I looked over and saw Zila sitting calmly behind her bananas. I thought about the pants that I had never given her and about the many bananas that she had given me, always as a gift for Sierra. I turned around and dove back into the mob and slowly, persistently made my way back to the fish. I asked the man what he could give me for 500 shillings. He pointed to a moist white hunk of Nile perch, still attached on one side to its shiny black skin. I nodded and handed over the 500 shillings. He dropped the fish into a second plastic bag, and, once again, I dove back into the maelstrom of shoppers.
“A gift for you,” I said when I'd made my way back to Zila.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She took the bag and put it beside her crate.
“It's a fish,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” she answered. “I will cook it for supper.”
I turned to leave. “And maybe next time,” she called after me, “you will give me your pants!”
“I hope you didn't go through too much trouble,” Grammie said that night after we'd all devoured our supper of poached tilapia with pasta on a bed of sautéed spinach.
Oh, no trouble at all!
Dear Grammie and Papa,
We were glad and relieved to hear that you made it home safe and healthy after our wonderful safari together in Kenya. We, on the other hand, all got sick within a week of returning to Uganda. On the Sunday of our return, Sierra awoke with a temperature of 103. She had never had a fever before and I would have been much more nervous had we not been staying at the Marums' house. But Larry quickly diagnosed an ear infection and gave her antibiotics and she recovered so quickly we were able to fly to Arua on Monday morning. I, on the other hand, came down with malaria shortly after getting home, and then John and I both caught a particularly nasty stomach bug. Thankfully that only la
sted twenty-four hours and we are all now healthy once again.
Sierra is doing wonderfully. She's recently reached three benchmark achievements: She stood by herself, her first tooth began to make an appearance, and Regina saw her take her first steps! I told her that in my family the person who sees a baby's first steps has to buy their first pair of shoes. But she's off the hook since my mom has already sent enough shoes to last a lifetime! (Don't tell my mom, but I gave half of them to Regina's kids.)
We really enjoyed having you visit and you were great sports about all the usual African discomforts. Sorry about the overnight train. They assured me that a second-class compartment would fit five comfortably. But perhaps they meant five Pygmies! And who knew it could get so cold between Mombasa and Nairobi? But I agree with Papa: Where else can you see elephants while a waiter is pouring hot coffee onto your lap?
Now we're getting ready for a visit from Susan and Brad. They've probably already got their nonrefundable tickets. Should I tell them about the cholera epidemic?
When we were in Kampala, we watched on CNN about the bombing in Oklahoma City. Then we missed our flight back to Arua, and John was fuming and huffing around the airport because the airline changed their schedule without bothering to tell us. “This is terrible,” he said. “No, it's not terrible!” I told him. “Our daughter wasn't blown up in a day care center in Oklahoma City! That was terrible. This is merely an inconvenience.”
I'll keep you posted,
Eve
Go White Team!
In Arua, I was always being asked for something. Would you be so kind as to offer your generous assistance with my school fees? Can you buy me a bus ticket to Kampala? Can you inject my dog with this medicine? Will you give me your bra? Can you fly the plane? Okay it was actually John who was asked to fly the plane so that the pilot could eat his lunch. Being about the same weight as the pilot, he was already sitting in the copilot's seat. And out of the five passengers, we all agreed that John was the most qualified since his brother is a pilot.
First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria Page 26