Acholi Living

This was my first official week alone in Gulu.  And by alone I mean not knowing anyone from my previous American life.  I assure you, I have been so surrounded by people I haven’t had even a small chance to feel lonely or homesick yet. Not to say I don't miss you all, I just have many many distractions.

First I should tell you I have successfully moved out of JoJo’s Palace.  Barbara has a good friend named Liz Olyero who is a few years older than me.  She’s a highly educated woman and received her law degree here in Uganda and then won a couple Fulbright scholarships which took her to Ireland and then Boston for a few years and even New Jersey for a bit.  She’s now teaching at Gulu University.  (Well, right now she’s in Kampala waiting to have her baby any day.)  All of this is to say Barbara introduced us and I liked her instantly.  I was asking her if she knew of a place I could stay while I was looking for a permanent living situation.  The next thing I knew I was moving all my stuff over to her mother’s house last Sunday.  Her mother lives just outside the city.  It’s not quite like living in a village, but not exactly like living in the city either (the electricity goes out more often out here.)

Living in Mama Janet’s house has come with quite the education.  I won't include the entire education in this post, but I'm sure most of it will unfold as time goes on.  The house is actually meant to be offices or stores, but people don’t really let buildings go to waste around here.  So Janet rents out one of the front rooms to a born-again musician (who blares American Christian music very very loudly,) she uses the middle room as a small neighborhood store and has her room in the other.  In the back, one room is mine, the middle is the kitchen and where Concy the hired-girl sleeps (is there a PC term for hired-girl??  I have no idea, but that’s what she is; she does the cooking, runs the store, washes laundry, etc. etc. etc.,) and the third room is a living room of sorts.   

Mama Janet in her store.

Janet's background is in public health and she worked in Sudan for years.  Now she’s working at a nursery school, trying to help get it off the ground.  They aren’t making enough money yet for her to get paid, so she's working full-time for free.  She has the store in front, and a ways down the road has another small (small) drug store.  But this woman is very busy, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she has a few other cards up her sleeve as well.  

The charcoal stove.  Can you imagine??

 I come home in the evenings to Concy and Amony (who is Janet’s granddaughter….she also lives with us, though I have yet to figure out exactly where she stays.  Maybe in Janet’s room with her?)  and Concy gives me all kinds information.  She goes to the market down the road at least twice a day.  I’ve gone with her a few times and she knows that crazy, discombobulated, open market place as well as you know your local grocery store.  And everyone knows her by name.  She comes home and starts making dinner around 5:30 or 6:00pm over the very tiny and very impractical charcoal stove.  It’s ready by around 9:00 or 10:00pm.  Yes, you read that right.  With this one little stove she makes all manner of crazy Acholi food (which has all been really good,) but it takes the poor woman hours to make anything.   And she does it all in the dark.  The stove is just outside the kitchen and it starts getting dark around 7:00pm.  If there is electricity, the light from the kitchen makes things a little lighter, but still, everytime I can't help but think how impossible it would be for me to cook like that.  (Though they keep telling me I will cook for them soon and I keep telling them I will, I just have to figure out what I can cook with one burner that won’t take me four hours.  Because I am not an Acholi woman, I cannot cook for four hours unless it’s going to turn out to be Thanksgiving dinner.  So if anyone has any of those great camping cast-iron recipes, please share them.  Seriously.) 

After dinner Concy starts scooping out passion fruit and proceeds to make bottles and bottles of passion fruit juice to sell in the store the next day.  The first time I saw how much they made I asked how long it would last, thinking at least a week.  "It will be finished tomorrow."  And so she makes it every night.  Well, every night there is electricity because she does part of it with a blender Liz brought back for her.  It's pretty funny to walk into this totally rural kitchen and see a blender.  It looks a little out place, but I think it saves her at least an hour every night.  Most nights I help her strain all the seeds, which is a long process.  

Yes, I did all this.  Proud?  You bet. 

The aftermath.  Yikes.

They've also taught me to do my own laundry.  I was quite proud of my work when I was done, but I managed to rub my fingers raw in process.  Most of the expats here hire a professional laundress to do it for them.  I think I will be following suite shortly. 

The next section of my blog is entitled My Life With Chickens.  The first morning I woke up in Gulu in JoJo’s palace, it was about 7:00am and off in the distance I could hear a rooster crowing.  I thought, “Oh, how quaint and rural.  That's so nice.”  The next morning, starting about 5:00am they put that rooster right outside my door and that sucker cock-a-doodle-doo-ed it’s head off for two solid hours.  Needless to say, I no longer found it quaint or nice in any manner.  I don’t think it was actually right outside my door, but it was close and it was LOUD.  It welcomed me to Africa every morning, the hospitable gent.  That first week, once the cock crowed, my sleep was done.  By the time I got to Mama Janet’s place I had become accustomed to hearing them enough that when the neighbors rooster would go at it, I would stubbornly lay in bed for another hour, refusing to let that stupid thing get the best of me.  

Every Thursday night there is a pub here that does a trivia night and a bunch of the expats go.  I went to see if I could make some friends, which I did (though, unfortunately, most of them are here very short-term) and we stayed out fairly late.  The next morning, 6:00am sharp the dumb rooster was at it again.  Consequently, I was exhausted all day yesterday so when I came home I went into my room to take a nap.  As soon as my head hit the pillow, guess who started warming up his pipes?  Yep, you guessed it, Mr Rooster himself.  It was 5:00 in the evening for crying out loud!!  I went out by the water tank where he and his lady friends (the chickens) hang out.  I chased him around the yard yelling and threatening him.  He ran away, terrified.  As he should.  I went back into my room.  In silence.  Until 45 seconds passed and he started up again.  Sigh.

The guilty party.

Last night we went out for Indian food (isn’t it weird to think there are pubs with trivia night and Indian food restaurants in Northern Uganda?)  and I was telling people how I hadn’t slept a ton because of the stupid rooster.  Someone mentioned that I needed to get some earplugs.  Genius!  I don’t know how or why it didn’t dawn on me before, but I HAD earplugs!!  So, last night I went to bed with them in and slept until the golden hour of 9:00am this morning and didn't hear one peep out of my friend, The Rooster.  Ah, lovely.

One of my first days here I was in a village nearby and was so confused by all the chickens running around everywhere.  All the huts in the village are really close to each other and the chickens just had free reign, bustling about, fighting with each other, scavenging for food.  On the way out of the village I asked Fiona (my interpreter) how people knew which chickens belonged to them.  She explained, "You buy a chicken from the market one day, put it in your house that night, and the next night it knows where to come back to."  Who knew?  And so the chickens roam.  All over.  In the villages, in the city, in our back yard.  They are everywhere.   

Yesterday I was at the office, it was the middle of the day in the city, Fiona and I were sitting there talking when she gestured to a chicken that had just walked into our office and I looked at her like, “Yeah, so?  What’s the big deal?”  And then I realized, there was a chicken in our office!  I had become so accustomed to seeing the little things everywhere I was somehow completely unmoved when she walked in.   Unbelievable.  I tried to grab my camera, but she had only come for a short visit and was no where to be seen by the time I got back.   

Here he is, the poor chap.

This morning I was in the kitchen and I looked behind the door and there was a very sedentary, but very live chicken sitting there.  “Janet!  What IS that doing here?” I exclaim.
                “Oh, that is our dinner tomorrow night,” and she picks the thing up by the back of the neck and tosses it onto our porch. 
                “You’re going to kill it tomorrow and eat it?”
                “Yes of course.  You can do it.  You cut it.  You pluck it.  We will teach you how.”
                “Aahh!!  No! I cannot kill that chicken!”
                “Yes, you can.  Even a child can cut a chicken.” 
                “An Acholi child can, Janet.  I am not an Acholi.  I buy only plucked chickens.”
                “You want to learn native ways.  This is it.  You cut the chicken tomorrow.”
Thankfully, she was joking.  I think.  Nevertheless, we will be eating that chicken that is currently hanging out in the garden for dinner tomorrow.  I am all about buying local and from a source where you know how it was raised and how it was killed…..but this….this is something else. 

Alright that it’s for now.  More later, of course.  I have to admit I am thoroughly enjoying keeping this blog, so I hope at least a few of you are enjoying reading!  

All About the Food:

Sugar Cane: I was in one of the villages and saw this kid just ripping this yellow thing apart with his teeth.  I asked what it was and they told me, sugar cane.  "You must try it, it is SO good" everyone says.  So I'm walking through the market a few days later and there are some young men gnawing on the sugar cane.  I ask how it is and they offer me some.  Who am I to turn down them down?  So I try to do as they do and rip the outside off with my teeth, but I get no where.  They must have teeth of steel.  Or maybe that why most of them are missing half their teeth.  (Truly.)  Anyway, they cut the outside off for me and I started chewing away at the sugary goodness.  Suddenly, I've sucked all the juice out and am left with this wooden-ish stuff in my mouth.  I keep chewing, wondering if I am expected to swallow when, much to my relief, one of the guys tells me to spit it out.  So you chew and spit.  Like sunflower seeds, which I love.  Only it tastes like liquid sugar.  Well, because it is liquid sugar....

Concy washing the water bottles to be filled with passion fruit juice.  The neighbor-girl Katherine is helping.

Passion Fruit Juice.  I mentioned Concy makes it daily, but I didn't say just how good it was.  I knew passion fruit existed, sort of.  In America, we have passion fruit candy and even passion fruit juice, though I've never seen a real passion fruit.  I am here to tell you, this juice surpasses anything you have had that called itself passion fruit.  I could drink a gallon a day.  Instead I drink 20 oz.