I'm real Karamojong now!

So my time in Kangole has been great. I am becoming more and more Karamojong every day as I gain accoutrements, learn more of the language, eat more new things, accidentally try the ‘wrong’ local beverages, “marry” more people (or at least have people plan for me to marry them), and attempt to eliminate my rat friends from my hut.

I entered my house to what looked like a hurricane. The wind is strong around here and it can come through the four inch opening where the grass roof “meets” the concrete walls, but this seemed excessive. It was dark and with no electricity, I used my “torch” to look around the room. What gave it away was the soy beans that had been strewn across the floor… coming from a sac with ragged edges around a good size hole… obviously chewed open by a rat. Awesome. I continue the search to find various things missing. I have NO idea why, but for some reason rats seem to like bars of soap for a nice snack. Two bars of soap were missing… their wrappers left nicely on the ground. Rat poop was EVERYWHERE… luckily I had had the forethought of leaving my mosquito net down over my bed meaning that it was covered in poop but my bed was not :-) I spent the next 30 minutes or so cleaning up and sweeping the whole place (with my African broom… those ladies have strong backs to stand like that so long!). I then head over to Val’s hut, which contains almost all the food, unlock the door and slowly peer in as it opens. The sight is even worse. Pretty much everything in the hut was on the floor and hair was all over from a Dik-dik skin that the rats had happily discovered hanging within their reach. I cleaned up in the dark for a while, luckily with the help of our friend Joyce who does some work for us and showed up at just the right time, then sat down to have tea. After pouring the water, brewing the tea and taking a sip, something made me turn on my flashlight . I look in the cup and see hair covering the top layer of liquid. EW. Fun night. To say the least… I got a new cup and decided to boil the water in a saucepan that hadn’t been under the dikdik skin, got a piece of chocolate that I’d been preserving from Fred’s visit a while ago and took a deep breath. The relaxing may have been ruined slightly when one of my new friends went darting by on the ledge on the top of the wall, knocking various objects back on the floor. But at least there was no more hair in my tea.
The rest of the time in Kangole involved intermittent rat adventures… including using an overdose of an intense painkiller to get rid of my friends. Only found one dead rat (as I stepped on a hairy carcass in the dark one morning)… I’m hoping a few escaped and died outside… but I know that one is still running around… Tutu unfortunately failed at catching it – we went hunting together one night and found the rat lair… but it was still a bit too quick for us. Hopefully it decided the place was no longer safe and has evacuated by the time we get back.

Much of the rest of the time there was a youth conference going on at the Church of Uganda right outside our gate. I joined in with a few friends and had a great time. My translation was intermittent, but even when it’s not there, the music is great! More and more cultural differences come out every time I’m at a function like this. It’s amazing the attention span of these people. I realize it doesn’t help that I have no idea what they’re saying half the time and that definitely makes it harder but seriously! If we have a conference at home… there may be three sessions – morning, afternoon and evening (and that’s a ‘busy’ conference)… but here, they don’t even have that. They just have CONTINUOUS sessions from 6am until about 9pm. There are “breaks” for meals of course – but not like a relaxing break… they eat and then go back inside. There’s dancing and singing going on while people are getting food because they went in shifts – so they’d always have something going on. There’s no – go back to your room and relax-time like there would be in the states. Craziness. I had to escape many times :-P But I did enjoy it very much! It was about living “a life with a purpose”. MANY people went up and were saved during the conference. It’s also amazing how they do that. They’ll make the alter call… sometimes people go up right away but other times they don’t. If they don’t, they keep calling and eventually someone will make the move. Which is a bit similar, but the difference is that everyone starts cheering for them! At home I feel like everyone wants to make it a private thing – they hardly want people to know and they definitely don’t want to be pointed out like that. But as the cheering starts more and more people will come. And they’re not doing it for the attention – they don’t even acknowledge it – just go up and kneel amongst the others – but they don’t NOT go up because of it, which I think would happen in the states. We tend to do the ‘eyes closed’ alter call where you just raise your hand and no one is supposed to be able to see. I understand it completely cause that’s more my personality – I don’t want a big deal of it – I want to just tell God and let people see a change in me. But they start clapping louder and louder at each individual person! It’s cool. They are bold and unashamed (I think that’s biblical :-P)! So anyway… great time!

Other adventures included my Karamojong accoutrements! My friend Jacinta helped me become a real Karamojong while I was there. Some of the village girls made me a super-cool skirt (see picture hopefully!). It’s very… … … Karamojong! Striped and Plaid all at the same time. Red, green and blue all at the same time. With PLENTY of pleats. And then on top of it you’ve got to wear insane amounts of beads. So I have lots of waist beads and I still have some neck ones to finish making. It was fun :-) And shoes made of tires! Still need to work on my Ngakaramojong fluency… but I’m trying! Keep moving around to Soroti and places with other languages which is unfortunate for language learning!

Otherwise… I discovered/confirmed a new allergy to simsim… or sesame as we call it in the states. Before I came here I knew I didn’t like it, but now I know why! James, our little boy, brought me some simsim balls one morning (they’re just globbed together with sugary stuff… I’m sure they’re very tasty if you like sesame!). Of course, I couldn’t refuse them, especially cause I can’t explain anything to him since he doesn’t know English, so I generously offered to share them with him (he had brought 6). We had breakfast together and I ate two of them. Felt bad leaving the other, but I could only do so much cause my tongue already felt real funny (don’t worry… no anaphylaxis). So we each had two and left two and then we headed to church (me looking “smart” in my new k’jong outfit!). As I sat there my stomach decided to ball up into a giant rock and I sat sweating trying not to leave cause NO ONE leaves (unless they have a screaming baby). I could only make it so long, though. I awkwardly left my translator sitting there with no one to translate to and went to my hut to at least move around a bit. After using the narsty latrine and opting for some pepto bismol (not that there was really anything that helped… just had to do something!) I headed back and awkwardly squeezed into my seat. My translator was up in the choir singing so I avoided any questions that may have occurred – it’s hard to explain things because everything is always misunderstood even if they speak English. I would have had to tell him I had “some malaria” which basically just means you’re sick – it’s either “some flu” or “some malaria”. Flu = sneezey kind of deal and malaria = stomach or fever or headache or a variety of things. But he just welcomed me back when he came back and the service continued. Of course it was ridiculously long anyway – we were there until after 2:00! Service starts at “9:00” – not that that’s true… but it did start around 10 or 10:30, and that’s still four hours! So that was fun. Since I was dying and couldn’t pay attention so much to the sermon (even though it was a dude from Teso and he actually preached in English!) I decided to practice my Karamojong by reading simultaneously my K’jong Bible and my English one. As soon as my translator noticed, he started helping me! (yes… it seems as if I was encouraging not listening to the sermon :-P) He made me read it out load and then the girls next to me started hearing and were laughing and LOVING it. My translator was very impressed with my pronunciation… it’s funny because since so many of them can’t read I think it’s that much crazier that a mzungu can read their language. I just sound it out with the pronunciations I know for each letter and there ya go! So he thought it was great. He told me next time he’s going to have me do one of the readings in the beginning of the service – they’ll read a chapter from both the Old Testament and the NT – cause so many of them can’t read and don’t have Bibles. So I was quite relieved that I’m not going to be around this weekend… it’s true that I may not be that much slower than the ones who do read just because of their ability level. But there would be a LOT of laughter and I’d be in front of a LOT of people not even knowing what I was saying. I feel like that can’t go well. He quizzed me and I read an entire chapter “successfully”. I understood some things? Lol. I may not get much from it, but it’s fun. Anyway… I made it through service… luckily the reading distracted me a bit from the extreme pain in my stomach. After church I went back to my hut and of course it’s not like I could just hide and rest cause there were a bunch of little kids who thought it was way too cool that I was Karamojong and had to hang out and ask me things and play around and pester me (:-P I do love them, but man they’re crazy!). So after a while I recovered… managed to avoid lunch so that helped :-)
Then… that night. Here’s a good story (hopefully I won’t get in too much trouble!). So James came into the hut when I was sitting around with a bag of liquid. It’s not uncommon to package drinks in “peels” – little “white” (clear) bags – so he asked me for a cup so he could let me try. He told me a name for it – which I promptly forgot even after repeating it with him about a thousand times to try to get it right. I quickly poured out a second knowing I was really going to want help drinking whatever this was. It was somehow white… but a bit yellow-ish. I tried to ask him if it was made of milk based on the color… thinking about the previous experience with bongo… he said yes, but after smelling it I was pretty certain that’s not what it was – I was a bit unsure of what the smell was – not terrible – but not necessarily identifiable. I think the milk answer was a translation issue. After taking a sip – still not sure what that taste was – at least it was all liquid this time. A bit of a ‘bite’ after swallowing… I smile, pretending I’m enjoying – it really wasn’t as terrible as many things I’ve had but I really didn’t want to go through the whole cup. I offer it to him and he takes a sip and I motion to have him pour more into the other cup. Unfortunately he left me with about 3/5 of it. I try to ask him again what it’s made of and he motions to the simsim balls left from earlier. OHHHHH great. Two issues with that: One: I had just recovered from my last dose and that explained why my tongue was starting to feel strange again. And two: So… given that I can’t communicate with him there’s not much I could do, but I was pretty sure that I knew what they used simsim for (other than the balls). It is a very common way to make the local brew they drink around here. I had already had a good amount of it (I mean… a good portion of what he gave me – not that it was a lot) and to establish more facts I asked if his mother makes it. She did. Well, that almost confirms it – MANY of the ladies are alcoholics (and men as well, that is) and they often make their living by selling the stuff. So I’m not supposed to drink it… as Christians we don’t like to because of all the issues there are with alcoholism here. I drank slowly while he finished his quite quickly (it’s very possibly his main source of nutrition at home – the kids usually eat the dregs, which do have a lot of nutrients, but in America we generally consider alcohol a bad thing to give a child). I was hoping he’d decide to go home so I could dump the rest out but he just sat there. Joyce came in a little later and started talking to me (in rapid Karamojong/Kiswahili… still don’t understand why people don’t get that I don’t know what they’re saying! And they seem to think it’ll help to switch to Kiswahili which I know even less than K’jong!) Anyway… in all the confusion of her arriving and her daughter coming in and things I managed to pretend to take a last sip and put the cup in the dirty dish basin. I was wondering what would happen if Joyce smelled it cause she’s very involved in the church and would be SHOCKED that I was drinking it. (Though I was quite surprised myself :-P I didn’t exactly want it!) I was actually still a little unsure if that was really what it was… James definitely knew I wasn’t “supposed” to drink it – they all know the Christians don’t drink it… so I wasn’t sure. But she didn’t notice and that was probably good. On his way out, I tried to ask James the name again and he started giggling and looking around at Joyce and people nearby and not saying anything. That’s what really confirmed it. I gave him a look and decided not to press the issue or make a deal of it or he may be too excited that he got me to break the “law”. After that, he took 2000 shillings out of his pocket and asked me if he could come with me to Soroti the next day (I was wondering if he was trying to influence my answer with his choice of beverage). I tried to tell him that his mother would miss him… I couldn’t exactly just kidnap him! Besides, transport is 12,000, so good try :-P Nah, I coulda paid but he couldn’t really explain why he wanted to go or tell me about his parents or anything so what could I do. I left the poor kid in Kangole. I think he just wanted an adventure though, which doesn’t really work because I’ll be going to Kampala and all over after that. Anyway, my stomach decided to do the same thing that night (confirming my allergy diagnosis) only this time I couldn’t get out of dinner and I sat there sweating with the pastor’s family – trying unsuccessfully to escape after eating.

The good thing is that eating with their family has been AMAZING :-) The first day, I was sitting in the circle of 15 chairs. Every one of them filled… one by the mother, Esther, one by me and the rest by a bunch of orphan children the couple has taken in. It’s crazy because the husband is the pastor and they don’t get paid anything so it’s not like they have money. But they’ve decided to somehow help these children… they’re SO sweet… they all help each other and sacrifice for each other and it’s adorable. They all sing together a few worship songs before dinner, and although sometimes not everyone can go to school each year because the fees aren’t there, and they eat posho and beans most every day… God continues to provide. They love each other and support each other through their very tough circumstances. I really enjoyed being with them. Also… that first day they were chatting and my friend Jacinta turns to me and asks me if she’s fat. There is no question here that I find harder to answer. I have no idea what to say. I gave up and told her what I thought. I said “I have NO idea how to answer that question! In America if I said yes that would be the biggest insult ever, but here… if I say no I think it’s the same deal?!” So that sparked an entire conversation – they were very intrigued – which was SO good. “why don’t you like fat people???” lol. Some fun things to explain… but in the end they understood that I’m not supposed to eat so much!!!!! They let me serve myself and take the portions I wanted!!!!! It was awesome. I did get questioned once in a while – “don’t you want more?!” And I would say “Well, I’m quite satisfied, but it was so good I may have to take a little more” and since I was taking very small portions ( :-) ) I still wouldn’t be dying of full-ness at the end! And they would know I loved them :-) So that worked out well. Unfortunately that conversation doesn’t really work out some places. Especially the villages.

Anyway… I’m going to stop here because this is SO long! Sorry!!! Thank you, God bless you, love you, miss you all!

One and a half months!!!! CRAZY. I’m getting really excited :-D