We Are One Village

by Nikki Lovell

  Paul stood up and, with a white stick of chalk in his hand, proceeded to write his name on the blackboard. Then he wrote ‘Health Education’. We were to learn the basics for the material that we would be teaching in the local primary and secondary schools once we were sent to different villages for our placements. I glanced around the room. Strangers surrounded me. I had met some of the girls from my room earlier that morning but now, as I looked about, I struggled to remember anyone’s name.

  Paul began talking and I had to concentrate. I was not used to the Ugandan accent or their way of saying things. I had noticed immediately when I arrived in the country that a favourite Ugandan means of expression was to use ‘and what?’ mid-sentence. It was not intended as a question, but more as a conjunction, a joining word, like ‘because’.

  The staff started to go over basic information about AIDS and we did a session on facts and myths, such as If a boy does not have sex then his penis will shrink. The SPW staff asked us whether we agreed with this statement. One of the Ugandan volunteers said that he disagreed. Then, as his grin grew, he glanced down before exclaiming, ‘Some things are just naturally big. If you are small, you are small; and if you are big, you are BIG!’

  I couldn’t help myself from smiling; Irene noticed this and gave me daggers. I bit my bottom lip and turned away from her to face one of the other Ugandan volunteers, who actually agreed with the myth and was unselfconsciously elaborating on his own experiences. He didn’t seem to realise that the penis is always smaller when not erect; he thought his penis was permanently shrinking. Luke, the only male international volunteer, was sitting next to the Ugandan who was talking. Luke’s teeth-displaying grin seemed to take up his whole face. When I saw it, I suddenly felt ashamed of my own little smile.

  The Ugandan volunteers were being so honest and it was interesting how uncomfortable that made us international volunteers feel. Health education was a part of our school curriculum in Australia, but not part of the school curriculum in Uganda. Yet here I was blushing like a little schoolgirl at the mention of the word penis. I felt embarrassed for feeling embarrassed! How ridiculous. What made such honesty all the more amusing was that all the Ugandans pronounced penis as pen-is (as though to rhyme with Dennis). If one of the international volunteers spoke and pronounced the word differently, Paul would correct them. Which was another reason I wanted to keep my mouth shut.

  I sat very quietly and began to observe the intriguing little critters that seemed to be appearing all around the room. The lizards, in particular, seemed to be having a blissful time crawling along the bricks before disappearing outside.

  Our training was at a boarding school, so there were kids everywhere even though it was school holidays. The kids loved the international volunteers and found us hilarious. They could not understand a word we said—perhaps that’s why they found us so funny. They would call out to us and wave, gesturing us over to play with them. They loved having their photo taken and were fascinated to see their image in the digital camera. I got the impression that many of them were seeing themselves for the first time. Pretty crazy.

  I began to learn the children’s names; recognising them was made easier because they wore the same clothes every day. It made me think about when I had been packing, about how I had spent so much time trying to work out which of my zillions of things were appropriate. In the end I had actually bought new tank tops and shorts to bring. Now I played with children who literally only had the clothes on their back. Poverty slapped me in the face wherever I looked.

  The food was different to anything I was used to. It was all very heavy but most of it was vegetarian, which was a relief as I didn’t eat meat. I tried bits of everything and liked a dish with beans the best. We ate all our meals together in a large room with big pots of different things up the front for us to help ourselves from. Breakfast was my favourite as we got fresh fruit—the pineapple was the sweetest I had ever tasted. Mealtime was also the most social time. There were many different characters in our group but, while I was enjoying everyone’s company, I missed Jack a lot. When my mind went wandering, it often found its way back to him.

  One morning, a group from The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO), the largest AIDS support organisation in Uganda, came to speak with us. There were five women in the group; all were HIV positive. Obviously I had heard about HIV and AIDS before, but I had not really understood it clearly until now. In a nutshell, HIV is the virus that attacks the immune system, and AIDS is the series of diseases and infections that occur as a result. I could have googled these facts on the internet, but it was different when someone who was living with HIV was sitting in front of you, telling you their story.

  The women were just skin and bone, and their colourful clothes hung off them. They looked fragile and vulnerable. The women were all softly spoken and their words came out slowly, as if speaking was a struggle. They spoke in their village languages and Irene translated. One woman explained how her husband had died of AIDS. She said that they were from a poor village and he had been scared to be tested for HIV because he would not know what to do if he tested positive. He became increasingly ill, and she ended up persuading him to be tested. His worst fears were confirmed. The local medical clinic was supposed to provide him with antiretroviral treatment but the clinic was under-resourced and he never received the treatment he needed. His wife, as well as looking after their four children, had cared for him selflessly until he passed away. She was then tested herself. When her results were positive, she knew she could not rely on the local clinic so she had left the village with her children and found TASO and had been receiving treatment and support since. Her body shook slightly as she spoke. Her skin was shrivelled and she looked quite old, but perhaps her body was just weathered from hardship.

  Once the woman had finished her story she asked us to stand up and form a circle. We clambered over the tables, and formed a circle in the middle of the room. The five women from TASO joined us, and we all held hands. One of the women was holding one of my hands. I was surprised by how firm her grasp was. I knew it was not possible, but it was as if I could feel her heartbeat through her hand. And her heart felt strong.

  The women started singing. Their voices were much louder now than when they had spoken. Through their words earlier, I had felt each woman’s anguish in trying to survive on her own. But when they sang together, they formed one voice and it was unbelievably powerful.

  On another day we were learning about teaching techniques, and again I was spending more time watching the various bugs crawl and in and out of the room. I wanted to pay attention but Paul would tell us what he was going to tell us, and then he would tell us, and then he would tell us what he had told us. And he seemed to go through that whole process about three times every time, just to make a simple point.

  I was getting agitated and bored but then Luke raced into the room, looking dishevelled and anxious. He announced that he was late because he had been looking for his phone but hadn’t been able to find it. And then he had realised that he also couldn’t find his wallet. He had finally concluded that both had been stolen. Irene instructed Luke to take a matatu into Jinja, the nearest big town, and go to the police station. I was surprised that none of the staff offered to go with him, but he didn’t seem bothered and went on his way. Paul then went back to explaining the same point that he had been making for the last half an hour, and I sat wishing I were outside playing with the kids in the beautiful sunshine.

  When the training finally ended for the day, we all retreated to our rooms. I sat on my bed, exhausted from doing absolutely nothing. Suddenly I realised that my money belt, which had previously been in my bag, was lying on the floor. I grabbed it—the zip was open and all my money was gone. I had probably lost about $500. A sigh of disappointment then came from the other side of the room as Jane realised that her camera was missing. All the other girls started searching through their stuff, but they all seemed to be okay.

  Jane and I ca
ught a matatu into Jinja and then walked to the police station. By the time we got there, it was about 7 p.m. They were not impressed that we had turned up at such an hour, but they agreed, rather hesitantly, to speak to us anyway.

  Luke must have already completed his statement as we didn’t see him at the station. Jane and I followed a plump little policeman to the interview room. Walking down the narrow corridor we passed one of the prison cells. There were only boys in the cell; they had little clothing, and they were shouting and reaching out to us through the metal bars.

  I hadn’t anticipated there would be a prison cell inside the police station and it caught me off guard. The boys would have been my own age or younger but when they called out to me, their hands twisting through the bars and reaching out towards me, I felt anxious and I hurried past them. But any anxiety I had quickly turned into amusement as Jane and I took our seats in the cement block of an interview room. The policeman plonked himself down behind his wooden desk on which bits of paper were scattered about. The walls were bare except for a large piece of brown paper. On it was written a guide for how to proceed with an interview. It looked as if a child just starting to learn to write had written it:

  A Guide for Interviewing

  Just remember the 5 W’s WHO?

  WHERE?

  WHAT?

  WHEN?

  WHY?

  The policeman, who was dressed in simple black pants and a shirt, began to ask us the 5 Ws and I tried to focus and answer him sensibly. He seemed to have a twitch and his head kept jerking to the left. He was also intently scratching his right ear. I felt disconcerted and distracted. Then everything went black.

  Blackouts were a common occurrence in Jinja and probably in every other town in Uganda too. The policeman informed us that we would have to come back in the morning. Almost as soon as we left, the power flicked back on. However, the policeman had firmly shut the station’s door, so Jane and I decided to make the most of being in town, and found a small shop where we could use the internet. I couldn’t help noticing heads turn as Jane and I entered and asked if there were any spare computers. Jinja was the hub for white-water rafting expeditions or for tourists passing through on an East African tour but not many foreigners actually ate local food or went into local shops, such as this one. Jane and I stood out like snow in a desert and people seemed both curious and sceptical at our presence.

  I took a seat in front of a computer and tried to ignore the man sitting next to me, who was not at all embarrassed to be staring directly at me. Instead, I focused on my computer but the internet connection was painfully slow. My heart was beating fast as I waited for my email account to open. I was desperate for news from Jack; I wanted to know anything and everything. Hurry up! Hurry up, you silly thing! I mentally abused the computer—imagining Jack’s emails appearing in my inbox, I was beginning to get excited. Finally, my account started to open. Everything was downloading . . . and then: ‘No new mail.’ Nothing. I felt like bursting into tears. It had been a weird day and I just needed to feel some connection. It wasn’t there. I emailed mum, logged out, and waited for Jane.

  The next morning Jane, Luke and I made our way back to the police station with the aim of following up on our statements. The policeman from the previous night told us bluntly that we needed to wait. He didn’t elaborate on what exactly we were waiting for. We waited for three hours, but nothing happened.

  I was grateful to have Luke and Jane for company. Jane was English and Luke Canadian, and both of their accents amused me. Both also had wild curly hair, which I was quite jealous of. Other than that, the two couldn’t have been more different. Luke seemed rough and arrogant and out of place. Jane seemed gentle, kind and intelligent. The three of us were chatting away when the policeman finally appeared and said he wanted to come to the boarding school to check things out. This seemed reasonable so we followed him outside. He announced that he didn’t have a vehicle and called a taxi. He then sat in the front, while Jane, Luke and I piled in the back.

  We were cruising along, the policeman chatting to the taxi driver in the local language, when suddenly the taxi stopped. I was squashed in the middle, so I peered around Luke to look out the window. I had no idea where we were. The policeman spun his head around to face us and as my eyes retreated from the window they were met by the policeman’s intense stare. The night before, he had seemed almost vulnerable, with his head twitch and his ear scratching, but now his eyes looked different, darker. He demanded money. It was for the taxi fare, he declared. But then he added that if we did not hand over the cash for the taxi fare he would leave us here in the middle of nowhere. Blackmail. We reluctantly handed over some money, and fortunately the taxi driver proceeded to drive us to the boarding school. I began to wonder whether I would end up losing more money to the corrupt police than had actually been stolen.

  During the policeman’s investigations, I retreated to my room. I collapsed onto my bed, put my earphones in and let Missy Higgins calm my soul. A short time later Luke appeared at the door to our girls’ room. ‘Guess what the police found!’ he exclaimed.

  I pulled my earphones out and sat up. Luke came and sat on my bed, and then went into a ramble. He said the policeman had not discovered anything useful to help solve our theft, but he had found 12 passports hidden in the home of one of the women who lived at the boarding school. He had taken her back with him for questioning. Pretty bizarre—but nevertheless I hoped her journey would not be interrupted by some sly blackmail along the way.

  Luke then asked what I was listening to. I gave him one of my earphones, while I put the other in my own ear. I handed Luke my iPod and let him flick through my various tunes. When we were alone together, I found him to be gentle, open and fun. But I had definitely sensed arrogance earlier, and wondered how he could be such a contrast of traits. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Luke could not be as easily defined as I had initially thought. We sat together until dinnertime, when we went and joined the others for beans, rice, matooke (squashed green bananas) and ground nut sauce. I sat next to Jane and Lindy, and we laughed about the day’s events. As we were talking, a bug crawled out of Lindy’s beans. This caused further outbursts of giggles, but we all still went back for seconds.

  The next morning we were informed that there was a suspect. On the day of the theft, a woman, claiming to be looking for a nurse, had entered the hallway to which the girls’ room and the nurse’s house were attached. The children had told the woman that the nurse was not in. The woman then clenched at her stomach and said she felt extremely ill. She asked the children for the key to the girls’ room so she could lie down. The children, wanting to help, had fetched her the key. When the nurse arrived home, the woman had gone. And so too was my money and Jane’s camera. We still didn’t know how the woman also gained access to the boys’ room to take Luke’s things. The children recognised the woman as an SPW volunteer from the previous year, but the police were hopeless.

  In the end it was Paul who played detective and solved the great mystery. He showed the children photos of all of the volunteers from the previous year and the children identified one of the Ugandan women as being the secret visitor the week earlier. Paul still had her address so he rocked up to her place; even from her doorway, he could see Jane’s camera. Her theft plan had started brilliantly but she was quickly uncovered.

  Jane got her camera back, and Luke his phone, but she had already spent my money and the money from Luke’s wallet. To have executed such a plan, she was obviously desperate for cash so, even though I condemned stealing, I wasn’t going to demand she give up the few things she owned in an attempt to pay me back. To me, a few hundred dollars was a safari; to her, it was probably paying for a younger sibling’s school fees.

  Luke’s reaction was different. He was extremely pissed off and wanted to press charges. I have always thought that you can tell the most about someone not by how they treat those they love but by how they treat a complete stranger. His react
ion was quite unsettling—he showed no empathy at all. He seemed set in his mind about what was right and wrong, and there was no room for shades of grey. I tried to tell myself that we each decide our own values and that Luke was entitled to feel the way he did. But, no matter how much I tried to understand his view, I still thought he was being unreasonable. I found his behaviour difficult to accept.

  I was also struggling with the training. I found myself challenging everything, and this was causing problems with the SPW staff. Irene, especially, didn’t like me. When she was teaching us, she would express her own opinion as though it was a fact; she talked as if there was only one way to teach and as if she wanted us to go out to our various placements as Irene clones. But I didn’t want to be a robot. I actually wanted to use my brain and exercise some creativity. Irene wasn’t interested in new ideas, however. She took a defensive position, which naturally made me the enemy. But sometimes when I questioned her, I was shocked by my own tone of voice. Was I now the one being arrogant? Was Luke’s behaviour bothering me so much because I saw traits of him in myself and I didn’t like it?

  One afternoon I was relieved when the training was over for the day and decided to take my mind off things by washing my clothes. Grabbing my dirty things, I filled a basin under the shower and stood there scrubbing. This was the first time I’d washed all my clothes by hand. It proved a much-needed release of built-up frustration and was extremely satisfying. I had nearly finished this task when something hit my back. I felt water seeping through my shirt and cooling my skin. As I turned around, I came face to face with Natalie (a volunteer from the UK) and a grinning Luke. Both of them were armed with more water bombs which they hurled towards me.