Back in the UG

The little lizard that took up occupancy in my absence. 

I have officially re-acclimated to Uganda.  After a month of reveling in not only a shower, but a HOT shower in the US and Ecuador, I sighed a very deep sigh the first time I had to fill my bucket (with rain water no less) to splash myself in order to feel some semblance of clean.  I also spent a week fairly dehydrated because I couldn't get  myself to remember that water isn't in easily-accessible abundance like it had been for the last 30 days, but I bought a large box of water bottles yesterday so I could stop getting headaches.  I think, finally, I have remembered what it means to live in Uganda and all that goes along with it.  That said, however, I have decided it is time for me to move.  No, no, not to leave Uganda, just to change my living situation.  I have enjoyed my time "living local" and I wouldn't change these first few months I was here.  I feel like I have a better grasp on Acholi culture, I have tried more traditional food and made friends with more every-day Ugandans just because they're my neighbor, than many expats I know that have been here for a couple years.  But, after having been back in Gulu for only 48 hours, I got what I'm pretty sure was food poisoning from eating at one of those neighbor's houses.  I threw up eight times and suffered from exhaustion, stomach pains and...other things...for several days after.  Yikes!  I don't know how many of you have experienced being that kind of sick in another country, but those of you who have can sympathize with how much you just want the comforts of home when it hits.  I just wanted to take a shower.  I just wanted to sleep in an air-conditioned room.  I just wanted a normal gas stove that I could turn on and make chicken broth right then.  I just wanted a bathroom that I felt safe using in the middle of the night when I needed it!  So I broke.  I gave in to that spoiled American side and I am on the hunt for a new room.  I have a few leads and am hoping by the end of this month I will be in a place that at the least has self-contained bathroom facilities and a kitchen with a stove (and an oven if I get really lucky.)  Besides, I really miss cooking.  I look forward to going to the market to buy the amazing and in-season avocados and whatever other fruits or vegetables strike my fancy that day.  If and when I miss eating local-style, I'm certain I will have a place right here on Mama Janet's back porch for dinner.  Around 9:00pm.  And who knows?  Maybe I'll even go crazy and start paying someone to do my laundry.  I tore my knuckles up again doing the wash today - my hands had gone soft as well.  I feel a twinge of guilt every time I think about the luxurious life I'll be leading in a few weeks.  Any cures for that?

After mostly recovering (is it possible that I still feel some after-effects of food poisoning?) I have been working on a new order with the women that are here in town.  It's in conjunction with an organization that buys ceramic beads from Kenyan women.  I don't know why it's so, but everything Kenya produces is about a zillion times nicer than what Uganda produces.  Their beads are beautiful and look like they were stamped out by a machine.  So with this first order there is a lot of pressure for the women to produce a really nice product.  I don't think paper beads - cut, rolled and varnished by hand - will ever look as perfect as the Kenyan ceramic beads stained and fired in a kiln, but I know the women are very capable of producing an awesome product.  Sometimes convincing them of that (and cutting through their complaints) is tricky though.  Generally, they will be paid more to create a string of loose beads for this project than if they had made it into a necklace, and it if they do well on this first order, it could potentially turn into something very long-term and quite lucrative.  So I really really want for them to do well.  The procedure for making these strands of beads is quite different than the way Paper to Pearls has run anything in the past though, so it's been a bit chaotic trying get it going.  Here's hoping two weeks from today I'll be on my way to Kampala with an awesome box of beads ready to ship off the the US!!

A mix of our P2P beads and the Kazuri beads.  Oh pretty!

One other thing I've been waiting to write about, and will only mention briefly here because I really do want to keep up my agreement: Concy's daughter.  Or "the daughter of Concy," as they would say here.  She's a little seven year-old girl named Patricia who goes to public school.  Concy often asks me to take her photo and ask all my rich friends in America to pay for her to go to private school.  Public school here is really awful and private schools offer a much better education.  She stays with Concy's mother during the term because it's closest to her school, but Concy's mother has HIV now - Concy's fathers fault, no doubt - so I don't know how long that will be possible.  ConcyConcy works every day.  And yet I also know there is no real way she can pay for her daughter to go to one of the expensive boarding schools.  So I've told Concy I needed her to do all the research on the school she wants to send her daughter to, find out its credentials, its price, whether or not her daughter would actually be accepted, and I said she would still have to pay for the uniform and any supplies.  I've also made it abundantly clear that I was making no promise, that even after all that it was possible I wouldn't be able to find someone willing to pay.  But since I've been back, students have been on holiday so Patricia came to stay with her mom for a few weeks.  One morning I was hammering and sawing away in my room trying to fix the crossbars my mosquito net hangs on so it works better.  She was sitting outside while her mom was in town at the market.  Just sitting there.  For what seemed like hours.  So I took all my extra wood and gave myself a nice blister sawing her some blocks.  She was so happy with those blocks (even though I am a terrible saw-er and they really weren't very great) that she just found a way into my little heart.  She's quiet and well behaved and smart and I worry that she'll end up like her mother.  Don't get me wrong, Concy is great, but she's 23, has a seven-year-old daughter, and spends all day everyday cooking, cleaning and manning the little shop.  Its fine, she's decently happy, but who wouldn't want a brighter future?  So, while I'm waiting to send out the formal request for people to pay Patricia's education until Concy holds up her end of the bargain, I just wanted to put a little bug in your ear.  If you have just been looking for something/somewhere to donate some money, this might be the place.  Maybe even a group of your friends would want to contribute a little money, which together would amount to enough.  I'll post facts and figures as soon as I have them, but, well, just think about it. 

OK, that's all for now, on to food!  Or rather, on to MANGOES!!  I came back to a very different Uganda.  It's mid-rainy season now, so where this place looked like a fairly dry and red desert before, it's now quite green and lush.  And the mangoes are wonderfully in season!  It was something my stomach did just fine handling while I wasn't feeling well and I don't like to miss a day eating one, because I know I'll regret those days when they go out of season again.  I've had a good mango or two in my life, but that's really it, a good one or two.  But here, it's pretty hard to get a bad one.  I love things that are flavored mango (such as my very favorite Odwalla drink, Mango Tango) and now if feels awesome to actually be able to eat the fruit daily like I used to an apple.  Oh how I love me my mangoes!!