by Nikki Lovell
We sat down in the main room and tried to talk but the sound of the rain smashing against the tin roof was deafening. We were forced to sit in silence as we watched the dirt outside turn to mud. But I liked watching the rain; it was as enticing as the dancing flames of a fire.
When the sky finished its tantrum, Wemusa stood up and walked to the doorway of the room at the front of the house. He announced that this would be his room—a statement, not a question. The room he had chosen was the nicer of the two smaller rooms—it had the bigger window. The other room was not only smaller but the window was only slightly larger than an A4 piece of paper, which meant that even during the day the room was dark. Wemusa expected Jane, Lillian and me to share—squash into—this room. It seemed stupid and unfair, simply because he was male. But neither Jane nor Lillian mentioned it, so I didn’t want to make a fuss either.
Later in the day, some boys brought us mattresses, leaning them against a wall in the main room. Jane and I tried to ask them where the mattresses were from but the boys looked at each other, confused. I wasn’t sure if English was the problem or our accents. The boys stood there awkwardly, both desperate to get away, and when we thanked them, they shook their heads. ‘Andrew,’ they said, and then ran off outside.
Jane, Lillian and I tried to place our mattresses in our room but they wouldn’t all fit—they overlapped each other and pushed up against the walls.
Just as it was getting dark, Andrew appeared carrying a kerosene lamp. He placed it on one of the wooden chairs in the main room. Once he had put the lamp down, I noticed that he was holding a plastic bag, from which he pulled out smaller bags, which he handed to each of us. My bag was warm and sweating. I opened it to discover beans and a chapatti (a savoury pancake). Andrew had bought us dinner! As we were still marvelling at the goods in our hands, Andrew called out to some children outside, asking them to bring more chairs, which they did. He sat and ate with us. We used our hands, tearing off pieces of the chapatti and using them to scoop up the beans.
When we finished, my hands were dirty. I tried to look at everyone else’s, to see if they had created as much of a mess, but the light from the lamp was too faint to be able to tell. But then Andrew answered the question for me. He stood and disappeared outside; when he returned, he was carrying a jerry can. Calling us outside, he tilted the can and poured water over our hands for us to clean them. Then he asked Wemusa to hold the can while he washed his own hands. After this, he carried the jerry can inside and told us that it was ours to keep. He said that he would return in the morning and show us to the borehole. He would bring us a charcoal stove and organise bed frames for us. Then he wished us a good night.
Andrew had left us the lamp. We blew it out, and climbed into our beds. Despite my earlier concerns, it was actually quite fun being squashed in the room with the other girls, although we were a bit lopsided with the mattresses over-lapping each other. Jane and I were both wrapped in our sleeping bags and Lillian had a woollen blanket. As soon as we were all tucked in, Jane giggled. ‘So, Luke?’
The three of us laughed. The girls had noticed Luke in my bed after all.
• It was exciting to wake up and be able to race outside, our first real chance to see Namwendwa. About 10 metres behind our house was the community bathing area. It was just a small area with low walls made from bricks and an open doorway. People took it in turns to wash themselves, carrying in a full basin of water, which they carefully placed on the ground. They would strip off completely naked, splashing the water onto their bodies and scrubbing intensely. The area offered little privacy and I wondered whether the village people would be amused if they realised that in Australia we have not only at least one bathroom in each house but a lock on its door!
About 20 metres along from the bathing area was the community latrine. Fortunately, it had a roof and a door. The door didn’t actually shut but this was perhaps for the best, given that the latrine absolutely stunk. It was used by about 30 people, including children who had a tendency to miss the hole. Unfortunately a lot of the children were sick with diarrhoea, which ended up in the spot where you needed to put your feet to squat.
I later discovered that it was best to go to the latrine early in the morning or in the late afternoon, because during the day there were so many flies swarming everywhere that you had to keep your mouth shut to stop them from buzzing inside. In the evenings the flies were gone, but cockroaches crowded the ground. You had to stomp your feet so they would scatter away and give you room to squat. But, as soon as your feet were set in place, the cockroaches would return and crawl over your shoes.
On that very first morning, I turned away from the latrine in disgust. As I did so, I noticed children’s heads peering at us from behind the trees. Some children snuck up to us, but none of them would come closer than a few metres. Jane and I were the first white people to enter the community and so, for most of the children, we were ghosts. The kids had seemed fine the night before, but perhaps that was because Andrew was there and ordering them around. With him gone, they seemed both curious and anxious.
One of the young girls was rocking from side to side on the tips of her toes. When I waved, she leant back on her heels, looked to the ground and erupted into giggles. Her laughter had a hint of cheekiness and was full of life. I later learnt that her name was Victoria; this first encounter was the start of a great friendship.
Standing just behind Victoria was a younger girl, Mirimu, wearing a torn navy dress. She would have only been a few years old, and she stared wide-eyed at me. I took a few steps closer to her and her jaw dropped—she began howling with fear. Victoria tried to comfort her and lead her away, but Mirimu was so terrified that her body was frozen still. I felt guilty. I wanted to pick her up and comfort her, but I didn’t want to make things worse so I walked back to the front of our house.
Across the road a boy was playing with a small grasswoven ball. As he kicked it about, I caught him glancing over at me. We exchanged a smile. Then Andrew appeared; his smile seemed to have widened overnight. He greeted us, and asked us how the night was. We all replied that we had slept well.
I had noticed that everyone in the community—Andrew and the children included—had a shaved head. I asked him about this and he told me that it was to prevent headlice. Headlice? I was shocked. In Australia, I had heard on the news about famines and the AIDS epidemic and civil wars. But what was truly devastating about now being face-to-face with poverty was that even the smallest things—things we wouldn’t even think about in Australia—were problems.
Andrew offered to show us to the borehole. He had brought us an extra jerry can so we now had two 20-litre ones. Lillian and Wemusa decided to wait at the house, while Jane and I were eager to learn how to collect water. We followed Andrew behind our house and down a little dirt path, winding between crops, bushes and trees. We passed children coming back up the path. The jerry cans were larger than the children themselves, and they dragged them along the ground between their legs, water splashing out against their legs as they walked.
When we reached the borehole, there were many women and children gathered around, waiting for their turn. Again we attracted many stares, and a few children stumbled backwards while watching us cautiously. Andrew greeted everyone as if they were old friends, but he didn’t actually know them because he lived further down the road and this wasn’t the borehole he usually used.
A small boy was filling his jerry can. The pump obviously required all of his strength, as the boy was jumping up and then using all of his bodyweight to pull it down. Water flowed out, some going into the can and some splashing onto the surrounding dirt. When the can was full, he heaved it along the ground to one of the women waiting. It wasn’t his jerry can, after all. Next he grabbed a can from one of the other women and began the whole process again.
I watched in amazement. After a while, the boy came to fill our jerry cans, but Jane and I said that we could do it ourselves. We lined the can up, and then took
it in turns to pull the pump down. It was quite heavy but it was also fun. Those standing by shared a laugh with us at our weakness and lack of technique. A few of the women and children gestured us to move to the side, as they demonstrated how we should do it. We needed to put a little back into it!
Filling the can turned out to be the easy part. When Jane and I each tried to lift one, it was unbelievably difficult. I could only carry the can about 3 metres and then I needed to put it down, rest and swap hands. Andrew found it difficult to watch us struggling and wanted to help, but Jane and I were both a little stubborn. Finally we compromised by letting Andrew carry one of the cans. We put a stick through the handle of the other, took either side, and slowly hauled it back to the house.
Once we got there and had put the cans inside, Andrew suggested we walk to the trading centre to buy a charcoal stove and mozzie nets. He had to return to the primary school to teach but he pointed down the road, advising us where to go.
The trading centre was about 2 kilometres away, and a delightful walk. It was a hot day and the ground had already dried from the downpour the night before. We walked slowly. Lillian did not like walking as the high heels that she wore sunk into the dirt with every step. Like Wemusa, she dressed quite formally or, as it was described in Uganda, ‘she looked smart’.
Clothes seemed to be a bit strange here: people always dressed at either end of the spectrum, either in little or tattered clothing, or in formal dress. It was as though everyone just wore whatever they could find until they could afford to buy a nice pair of pants and collared shirt for the men or the traditional dress for the women (gomesi). While the women wore their brightly coloured gomesis with pride, they had to be one of the most impractical pieces of clothing I had ever seen—a full-length dress, with a sash tied around the waist and short puffed sleeves. They were generally made of cotton and might require up to 6 metres of material. How these women wore these outfits and still worked on the land, or walked to the borehole etcetera, amazed me.
The relationship between clothing and status was also interesting. In Namwendwa, it was considered socially inappropriate for women to wear pants and there was also a widespread belief that women wearing a short skirt were asking to be raped. I wondered how pants related to control and eliteness, as opposed to skirts and dresses. It seemed to be a pretty common concept, not only in Uganda but in Australia too.
As we continued our walk, an elderly woman raced out onto the road, stood in front of us and reached out towards us. She shook both my hands at once, and then moved on to shake the hands of the others as well. She was a tiny woman—skin and bone, and no taller than four foot five. Her head nodded with joy as she shook our hands. The woman gestured us over to her home, welcoming us in the local language. English is the official language in Uganda, but each of the rural areas has its own dialect. In Namwendwa, this was Lusoga. Most elderly people in the village, and all of the children, only spoke Lusoga. Only those who had the chance to go to school were able to speak some English. When children started primary school they were taught in Lusoga and then slowly more English was used as they progressed up through the year levels. They had to sit for all their exams in English. This was one of many reasons why those who were schooled in rural areas were disadvantaged—they were learning in their second language. Lillian was from a nearby area, so she understood Lusoga, but Wemusa’s family was from a completely different region, so the language was as new to him as it was to Jane and me.
When we reached the old woman’s home, a mud hut, there were many elders sitting outside, the women on woven mats and the men on wooden chairs. They each greeted us, shaking our hands, thrilled to have our company. The woman who had invited us over raced inside and returned with two wooden chairs. She smiled, and nodded again, wanting us to sit. I chose to sit on the mat instead, firstly because I actually preferred the mat, but also because that’s where the other women were seated. I had already noticed that being white seemed to give me the same status as men, and it made me feel uncomfortable.
All the older people were nodding and smiling as we sat there. I felt a bit useless with my extremely limited Lusoga, and our hostess didn’t seem to know what to do with herself once we were seated. She raced inside again and this time she returned carrying a book and a pencil. She handed us the book. It seemed to be a very strange book for her to hand to us, but I later learnt that such guest books are actually treasured possessions for Ugandans. I took the pencil and filled it out.
Name Date Comment
Nikki Lovell 31/02/2005 Beautiful country.
Thanks for making us
so welcome.
5
Bad News
NAMWENDWA, UGANDA, March 2005
I’m not religious, but nevertheless I was in church. It had been assumed that I was Christian and so, wanting to be accepted and respected within the village, I had taken up Andrew’s offer to take us to the Sunday morning service. Lillian and Jane were with me. Wemusa had stayed home, which was a little bit ironic, given that he actually was Christian.
The church was a single-room mud-brick building, on the primary school grounds. All the women were dressed in their most beautiful gomesi. The service was in Lusoga, so I didn’t understand much of what was said. At one point a basket was handed around and people placed items in it, such as small bags of rice or eggs. Then, to my surprise, the service turned into an auction. It was a hoot! Everyone ended up with some food to take home later—we bought a pineapple— and the church got cash. I really liked this system and was beginning to feel comfortable, but then the priest summoned Lillian, Jane and me up the front. As newcomers to the village, he asked us to introduce ourselves. In very basic Lusoga, I said a few words. I felt like such a munzungu, but everyone still clapped and cheered.
After the service, we walked home. Andrew and Jane were chatting and I was with Lillian. An elderly man approached me, speaking in Lusoga. He was holding his arm out to me while nodding. I looked to Lillian questioningly, and she said the man wanted me to rub his arm. It was an extremely strange request, but I thought maybe it was a village greeting or something, so I did as the man asked. It was a little bit uncomfortable, but afterwards the man nodded even more enthusiastically and was smiling, so I assumed I had done the right thing.
Once he had left, I asked Lillian about it. She told me that the man had wanted to prove to me that he wasn’t black because he was dirty. I was shocked and embarrassed that he thought I would believe such a thing and realised that some people must have thought I was seeing black skin for the first time.
There were moments such as this one where I felt overwhelmed by simple daily encounters. Then there were others when I felt detached and bored. This was how it was at Namwendwa Primary School. It was a government school with over 1000 students, with class sizes exceeding 100 and most classes with no furniture, so the kids just sat on the ground. We were supposed to be teaching health, but the school had not yet included our classes in the curriculum. So, instead of teaching life-saving information, I was spending countless hours just hanging about in the school staff room and wishing time away. It was ridiculous and frustrating.
The ‘staff room’ was in fact a mango tree that all the teachers sat under. I was grateful to be outside, but still felt tense. I had spent many days under this tree by now and had already been introduced to all the teachers multiple times. But their names were different to the sort of names I was used to—names like ‘Cosmos’—and I found it impossible to remember them and so I was left feeling uncomfortable and rude, often hiding away behind a book.
Lillian fitted in so beautifully. Not only did she speak Lusoga and know this area, but she was also a qualified teacher. Everyone loved her. Jane too, seemed to slide easily into this picture. She was so friendly and open; she also had a knack for remembering names and Lusoga words. She picked things up quickly, while I sunk further into my chair.
Wemusa spent most days lying on his bed. He wasn’t interested in com
ing to the school until the curriculum was organised. And in those moments when I felt so utterly out of place, I consoled myself that at least I fitted in more than Wemusa. Pathetic, I know.
The other problem with having nothing to do was that I had way too much time to think. It amazed me (and not in a pleasing way) how I could have the same stream of thoughts again and again and again. I was constantly thinking of Jack—well, not so much of him but of my need to end things. And then I was thinking about Luke. I didn’t really know what to think of this whole situation, but that just made me think about it all the more.
My thoughts were circular and frustrating. Then my frustration would turn to irritation as I would feel annoyed at myself for not being swept up by the experience of just being in Namwendwa, a place so beautiful and unique. For years I had been craving this adventure, this opportunity to be of use; but now that I was here, I almost didn’t feel like I was here at all. I was stuck in my head.
On this particular afternoon, Lillian was chatting with one of the male teachers, Jane was cradling one of the teacher’s babies, and I had my nose buried in The Da Vinci Code. I was reading the same page for the third time when the primary school headmaster started strutting toward us. What was his name?! Damn it—think, brain!
‘Good morning, Sam!’ Jane perked up.
Sam! That was it. It actually was a common name—the name of one of my brothers, for crying out loud—but I still kept forgetting it. Hopeless.
Sam greeted us enthusiastically. He was a boisterous character, full of energy, and he loved the sound of his own voice. The shape of his face reminded me of a hippopotamus and he had a long wide nose. I had liked him immediately. He was easy to be around because he always led a conversation or situation and I could just go with the flow. Now he had strutted over in time to join us for lunch. Each day the school cook would serve us each a large spoonful of porcho and a few beans. The porcho was made out of ground maize that had been boiled into a hard mush. It made me think of playdough— a sort of flavourless gunk. We ate it with our hands. Afterwards I always imagined the porcho sitting in the pit of my stomach—it felt like it might stay in there forever.