We Are One Village

by Nikki Lovell

  Early the next morning there was an intruder in Jane’s and my room. I woke to find the mysterious creature attached to the outside of my mozzie net. I looked through my net at the blackish thing above and assumed it was a rat. I snuggled down deeper into the safety of my sleeping bag and hoped it would not poo or urinate on me. I tried to make loud shuffling noises as I restlessly turned backwards and forwards in my sleeping bag, hoping that I might ‘accidentally’ wake Jane up.

  It worked. From her own bed, Jane studied the creature, but she didn’t think it was a rat. Then it started moving up the net until it was directly above my head. Enough! I carefully lifted the net up and slid out of my bed. The creature stayed attached. What was that thing?

  Lillian was not around, and I didn’t want to wake Wemusa so I scurried next door and found Robert, one of the neighbourhood boys, and asked him if he would help me. Jane, Robert and I were then huddled in the tiny bedroom with Jane and me staying by the door, ready to escape.

  Robert opened the small window in our room and then held my net close to it, hoping the creature would want to make its escape. But it remained very still. Robert poked it with his finger. Nothing. He poked again, and then some wings were flung out from what had appeared as just a tight black ball. The mystery creature was a bat! It suddenly flew out the window. I wondered if it had come with the witch doctors. There had been bats in our room many times before, but they normally sat on the high beams that supported the roof. I was happy with them there and even gave them each personal names, but I didn’t like them being stuck on my net, just above my head. Damn bats, rats and toads. Yuk.

  I was singing and dancing out the front of our house, and Victoria was in a fit of giggles watching me. I realise that this is a sweeping generalisation but all Africans (in my vast experience of the continent, ha ha . . . ) seem to be incredible dancers. The way they move their hips, with their straw skirts reserved especially for dancing, swaying and swishing about, is almost hypnotising. By contrast, I looked like a drunken baboon as I grooved about. But the wonderful thing about dancing is that it is ridiculously infectious fun, no matter how hopeless you are.

  The reason for my hilarious boogieing was that we had just received the news that Jane’s mum had done a legendary job and raised over $1000. The money was for us to buy books for the primary school library. Jane and I went to the primary school to deliver the good news. The teachers were ecstatic, and we made a list of the textbooks or other books that each of them thought would either assist with their teaching or just be of interest to the kids. While we were chatting it turned out, very conveniently, to be lunchtime and so the cook served us up some porcho and beans.

  We were chomping away when a tiny boy dressed in his pink school T-shirt and black shorts was flung to the ground nearby. Towering above him was one of the male teachers, and he was shouting at the boy. I couldn’t understand what he was saying because it was all in Lusoga. Momentarily he paused and turned to another student who was innocently walking past, directing his yelling towards this boy instead. This time he was shouting an order. The student took off, but soon returned carrying a large stick.

  The smaller boy was still in the dirt. He was curled into a small ball and was shaking. The teacher stood above him once more, this time with the stick in his hand. He shouted again and the boy obediently unravelled himself, lying flat out, with his tummy on the ground. The teacher then raised his stick and whipped it hard against the boy’s back. He whipped him again, and again, and again. The boy’s T-shirt was ripped apart and his back was bleeding in clearly defined lines where the stick had struck. He was wailing in agony.

  The other teachers ignored the entire scenario, continuing with their lunch as if this was normal—which, sadly, it was. I closed my eyes and, when I did so, I saw Kisashi who I had seen being beaten by her mother a few months earlier. When the ordeal was over, the boy hobbled away. The teacher sat down and the cook bought him lunch.

  I couldn’t help myself—I asked what the boy had done wrong. The teacher told me that he had caught the boy stealing groundnuts on the school’s land. Basically all food in Namwendwa had to be cooked, so it wasn’t like students could just bring a sandwich for lunch. Instead they were expected to bring some maize to contribute and, if they did so, then the school cook would serve them lunch. If not, then they would go hungry. Out of the 1500 plus students at Namwendwa primary, less than 200 were able to bring maize to contribute. The families of the other students did not have any surplus for their children to bring. People in the community also didn’t eat breakfast. This meant that the majority of kids were only eating dinner—if that.

  No wonder the boy had stolen the groundnuts—he was probably starving. Now he was hungry and beaten. His shirt had also been destroyed and I imagined that he would be dealt another thrashing at home for that. Students weren’t meant even to come to school if they didn’t have a uniform, and the boy wouldn’t have another one. This whipping might have cost him more than his skin and his shirt—he might end up losing his chance of an education.

  I hadn’t wanted to impose my values—but maybe it was okay to just express my opinion? I looked to Jane, and her face was covered in worry. I knew we were on the same wavelength.

  After lunch as we walked home Jane and I decided that the next day we would ask the teachers if they would be interested in a workshop on ‘alternative discipline methods’. If they were keen on the idea, then we would find another organisation to come in and run it professionally.

  Once we reached home, our conversation switched to discussing the wall displays that we planned to make for the library. Andrew and Moses had found large pieces of bark paper for us to draw on. We planned to draw different parts of the body and label them. We wanted to make the displays interactive as we thought the students would then get more out of them. Ideally we wanted the labels on the wall separate from the drawings, and for the students to be able to move them to their appropriate places on each picture. But we had no idea how we were going to do this.

  We could get the labels typed, printed and laminated in Jinja. This was a start. Jane suggested that her parents, who were flying over to visit next month, could bring velcro, which we could use to attach to each label and on the picture. I wasn’t keen on this. I had already decided that I didn’t think having anything imported (regardless of how convenient it might be) was a good idea. If the velcro fell off the labels or the pictures, it wouldn’t be able to be replaced.

  Jane thought that if this happened they would then just make do with what they had. On the other hand, I thought we should make do in the first instance. I felt that using things that we could source locally would make the project more sustainable. In all this discussion, I believed we were simply exploring various options for making the wall displays and considering objections to them, but somehow it seemed to be more than that. It turned out that we were having an argument.

  Jane went outside, saying she needed some air. I sat inside, not knowing what to do. Jane was my best friend here; we shared everything and us getting along was very important to me. But surely we didn’t have to see eye-to-eye on everything. Surely it was good to challenge each other.

  Jane came back inside and suggested we talk about things. Did she mean the wall displays or our friendship? Apparently the latter. She said we spent too much time together. She was right, but being around each other was sort of unavoidable, given our beds were about 30 centimetres apart and we also taught together.

  But it wasn’t just that. Everyone turned to Jane more than they turned to me, and they frequently compared us: ‘Jane speaks so much more Lusoga than you’, ‘Jane is much thinner than you’ and so on. I had become accustomed to Ugandan honesty but it still sometimes ate away at me. I almost feared that, if I were not constantly with Jane, then I would just be left out of things.

  It was as though my fate had been sealed from our first week, when we were given village names. Jane was called Babida and I was Kawooda. Whenev
er twins were born in the village, the oldest was always named Babida and the youngest Kawooda. The community struggled to tell Jane and I apart when we first arrived, both being white and all. What they had known was that Jane was older and so it had stuck that I was ‘Little Sister’.

  Sometimes it felt like I could have disappeared and no-one would have noticed. I knew that I was as passionate, determined and willing as Jane so it was difficult to be treated differently. Everyone would have felt awful if they understood how painful some of their honest comments were, or how hurtful it was not to feel included. I never voiced these feelings. I didn’t want people to feel bad, or for Jane to feel guilty. But I realised that perhaps I was being so strong in my opinion now because I just wanted to be heard. Maybe I was wrong about the velcro, maybe I was being too stubborn. Then again, maybe we should have been having this discussion with Andrew and Moses. In the end I agreed with Jane. Velcro it would be. I was desperate for the tension in the air to dissipate.

  Jane and I went to Kampala, the big dirty capital, to find the books the teachers had requested and also to meet up with a group that supported people with disabilities. It was good for us to be on a mission, giving us something to talk about and drawing us together again.

  We visited all the bookstores first and were happy to be able to get everything on our list. But there were way too many books for us to carry them around with us. Since we had bought the majority of them from one store, they agreed to deliver them to Namwendwa for us. This was a massive weight off our shoulders (literally) and we organised for them to be transported to Namwendwa the following day.

  Next Jane and I went to visit a disability support group, where we spoke with a man named Richard. He was physically disabled, missing the lower part of each of his arms, so that his hands were attached at his elbows. He told us his story.

  When he was born, the people of his village deemed him useless and wanted to kill him. Even his father agreed that it was the right thing to do. But Richard’s mother had taken him in her arms and stated that if they wanted to kill her baby, they would have to kill her first. The community ordered her to leave the village with her son immediately, or they would kill them both. Today Richard travels the world as an advocate for people with disabilities and for other minority groups. He has dedicated his life to fighting for a just world.

  I had goose bumps speaking with Richard. His passion and determination were unbelievable—they shone through him. I wondered what the people of his village would think if they could see him now.

  The disability support group that he worked with currently only supported people with physical disabilities who were based in Kampala, but Richard gave us a list of other organisations to follow up with. Meeting him made me think about the word ‘disability’. I didn’t like how the word instantly focused on what someone was not able to do. When I was growing up, Mum had always said ‘people with disabilities’ rather than ‘disabled people’. She always put the person before the disability. It wasn’t just a matter of words; it was a way of thinking.

  True to the shop’s word, the next day the books were delivered to Namwendwa Primary School. The car driving down the track to the school created its own momentum, with some kids even chasing it along. When the car parked, the driver got out and began to unload box after box. The teachers gathered around and were squealing in delight. Then the boxes were torn open and each book was held high in the air with admiration. So many beautiful new books. With everyone’s smiles and excitement, I had to try very hard not to cry. It was a very special moment.

  The books were carefully placed on the shelves, every space being filled. Jane and I had also put the wall displays up, and would add the labels with the velcro when her parents arrived. This really was a library now. Wow.

  It felt incredible to have had a vision and for everyone to have come together and transformed what was a dirty rat haven into a magnificent library. The school decided to open the library up to the community as well as the students so that everyone could enjoy and make use of this new resource. Far out—it was exciting!

  Life was feeling so bright and amazing. I had a smile that felt glued to my face. And then a woman was murdered.

  She was a young woman, only 20 years old, a mere two years older than myself. She lived in a house near the trading centre and we walked past her place most days. For reasons we didn’t know—maybe for no reason at all—her husband macheted her to death. He literally chopped her into pieces. It was horrifying and brutal.

  I wondered whether her husband would end up in the prison cell that I had encountered in the police station in Jinja, but Andrew told me he had already taken off. He said the man had probably paid off the local police not to chase him. It was very, very disturbing. But perhaps what I found most sickening was the community’s reaction. The woman’s mutilated body had been put on display in the trading centre for people to go and view. At the schools the teachers were joking and laughing about her death. I couldn’t believe it— how could they make a mockery of this?

  It felt very strange to be surrounded by people to whom death was so familiar. The reality was that people here were always dying. That was why families had so many children— they didn’t anticipate that many of them would actually survive past the age of five. I realised that the laughter and light-heartedness that the community were showing was a coping mechanism. People still needed to farm their land if they were going to feed their family that night. The teachers still needed to go to work because they couldn’t afford to miss a day.

  I suddenly appreciated the sadness I felt. I was grateful for the tears that clouded my vision, and the horrific images that crowded my mind and haunted my dreams. They reminded me that death was not familiar to me. I had sufficient time and money to afford to be upset. It was strange to realise that everything I felt, positive or negative, was a luxury.

  I also remembered my earlier thoughts concerning values. Perhaps family, friends and community were valued so strongly here because everyone profoundly understood how easily all these could all be taken away. God, it felt like a catch 22. Do we really have to lose the most important things in our lives for us to realise how meaningful they are?

  Shit, it was science. It was Einstein’s theory of relativity— you have to know cold to know hot, fast to know slow . . . Did we need to know death then to truly know life? This was obviously what people meant when they said poor people seem happy. Poor people appreciate what they have. But I still didn’t like that saying. I wanted to lock these thoughts and feelings inside me. I wanted to realise and appreciate all the special people and things in my life while I still had them.

  Jane and I spent a weekend away with some other female international volunteers. We visited the Murchison Falls, which were magnificent. Breathtakingly beautiful. We walked around the top and were so close to them that water sprayed onto our hot skin, refreshing both body and soul. I held my arms out like a bird about to take flight and closed my eyes. I felt so alive.

  We also went on a game drive, which was everything I imagined. We saw elephants and giraffes, and were even fortunate enough to come across an entire family of lions.

  It was nice simply being away and relaxing. Sometimes I had weird feelings of wishing Luke was there, and had to remind myself multiple times that he was a dickhead. I guess that ‘grand realisations’ don’t come with an automatic switch for your emotions.

  Jane and I got back to Namwendwa on the Monday afternoon to find the house a pigsty and notes from Wemusa and Lillian. They had both gone away—Wemusa for two weeks and Lillian for an indefinite period. I was immediately aware that this left Jane and I alone together and I worried about how this would affect us.

  Wemusa had also taken 100 000 shillings (about $60) of our SPW project money. It may not sound like much, but a teacher in Uganda earns roughly 30 000 shillings ($19) a month so it was actually a fortune. It would have been nice if he had at least offered us an explanation for his behaviour. Should w
e tell SPW about him stealing it? Or wait and see what he says when he returns? We really had no idea what to do.

  Jane and I spent all of Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning cleaning the house. All the dishes were dirty; there were maggots in our rubbish bag and rats on our beds. It was disgusting. I expected as much from Wemusa, but not from Lillian.

  We were feeling flat that night, but it was the kids who cheered us up. It was a beautiful evening, so we were eating dinner outside. We were sitting on the mat and Jane had just served us each up a large bowl of rice and beans. All of the children were around us and seemed to be in a particularly hyper mood. Mirimu was dancing around like crazy; her little head was bobbing around, trying to keep up with her body.

  Suddenly she stumbled and went face first into Jane’s bowl of beans. When she pulled her face out and plonked herself down on the ground, she was a complete mess. At first, she went to stand up and resume her dancing, but Jane dashed inside and grabbed some toilet paper to try to clean her face. Only when Jane went to wipe the bean mess off Mirimu’s cheeks did Mirimu seem to realise that she had it all over her face. She stood still, wide-eyed in horror. Her mouth then dropped open, ready for a full-blown wail. But Victoria started giggling, and we all followed suit. So, instead of crying, Mirimu laughed too, and I poured half my beans into Jane’s bowl.

  After dinner we were playing with the kids and I realised that whenever Kisashi spoke any English, she had an Australian accent. She sounded just like me! It was pretty hilarious to hear an Aussie twang from a young girl in a rural Ugandan village. I almost felt bad for her—I thought the Ugandan accent was much nicer than my one.

  While Wemusa and Lillian remained absent, Jane and I kept ourselves busy by working to organise a Community Outreach Program. The master plan was to run the program over three days in separate rural areas throughout Namwendwa. We wanted to have counsellors and doctors available for HIV testing and also to have representatives from health and disability support NGOs. The objective of the program was to provide the community with opportunities to access more information about health issues and disabilities, to offer free counselling and HIV testing, and for relevant organisations to be present for people to make connections with them for ongoing support.