Lira At Last

It is morning and I am huddled under my mosquito net and have my lantern on but thought I have to catch up on what happened yesterday or it would quickly fade into what will happen today. 

We left the training program in Kampala behind yesterday morning and traveled to our sites. I came along with three others who are going on to Gulu. The driver up here was interesting. It is a two lane highway that in most places was quite smooth with large vehicles. The driver was able to get up to some speeds that I am quite certain I have never traveled at in Viet Nam or India, we were moving.  Along the road side we saw the children walking to and from school and all were dressed in colorful uniforms. Less then half way here we ran into ‘road construction” which seems to be re-paving the road. Traffic is blocked for 15 minutes while they work and then left to flow from both sides. Mysteriously some traffic was able to pass on by.  These were government vehicles from as far as we could tell. There was not crowding around the vehicle or kids and people staring in at us as I might have expected. There were plenty of people carrying buckets with ice and water, and yes, even coke.

The vegetation is lush, very green with pine trees and fields of corn. We crossed over the Nile and the water was rushing across the rocks. It was quite beautiful.  It did almost seem as though we had past over that marker that divides North and South Uganda. Once we had passed we saw monkeys along the road which brought back memories of trips up to Mussoorie although there was no mountain. Still things are very green.  We made a right hand turn onto another major road and were hurdling forward to Lira. Peace Corps requires that we wear seat belts which seems like a pretty good idea. They are looking into how to buy personal ones for people to use on public transport. Can't imagine that happening but there is a definite need. There is none of the swaying and beeping that is so familiar, not a bunch of motorbikes out there but the speed could prove to be very dangerous to anyone who got in our pathway, or in the case of the little game of chicken that we played with a fast moving truck, if a driver had lost even a second of concentration. I have had so many thoughts of this place for so long that arriving was all that was on my mind. We stopped at a hotel to meet with the people who had come to receive me. As could have been predicted noting seemed to have gone “as planned” but after some time my counterpart at the hospital, Agnes, arrived. She came in the hospital ambulance along with the driver Jackson who I have been hearing so much about. My homestay “mother” and her son also arrived and I was brought to their home.  I've asked what her name is a number of times and am told, "she is your mother" .....okay! I greeted the man at the hotel who came to drink orders as I had been instructed with “Kope a nga” and he replied, “I’m from Kampala” ….with 40 languages at least and most likely 50 there will always be that problem.



Agnes from the hospital is younger than I had expected, she is much taller than I am and stately she seems easy to talk with and eager to get started tomorrow showing me around. Some of the students are currently in town working, I have no idea how that goes but I will see them  tomorrow she says.

Host Mom Felicia 

The University Driver, Jackson

This family has hosted another volunteer here last year, Mary who is also from Colorado and they had many memories to share about her and I felt immediately welcomed and accepted in their humble and clean home.  The floors are concrete and there is a bathroom which is always locked up and I seem to be the only one who is allowed to use it. It is quite simple but adequate and I will have a bucket bath for the next week while I stay here. I began to meet the family members and there was a Paul, Janet, Beth, Steven, Dan, Elvis, and Deo. We loved the fact that we I have a Daniel, Elizabeth and Steven as well. We sat outside and talked as though we had known each other for many years. The house parents lived in Australia for two years and studied there as teachers. They had stopped by in Mumbai on their way to Australia in the early 70’s so we had a great place to start, they were appalled by the poverty in India and saw the crowded cities as very different from their own. So far everyone I have encountered speaks good English.

The family confided their worse fears, how to feed a Vegetarian? I told them I would eat whatever they eat but only the vegetables, they promptly told me that they don’t really eat vegetables! Oh. As for fruit, I have been told that fruit is usually for children, not for adults but they were happy to rush someone out to get delicious avocado for me. In all they provided me with a great dinner. Beth, one of the daughters seemed to be in charge of most of the cooking and is sweet, shy, and easy to talk to. We sat outside by the charcoal stove as she cooked up the food. She boiled ome potatoes and along with the fruits it was some of the best food I have had since reaching. I tried to go to wash my hands prior to the meal but they told me that the bathroom was not acceptable and brought a towel and large bowl to the side of the table where I washed my hands, then Janet asked if she could wash my feet, which I promptly declined, even if they did need it. Mom and I ate alone and she seemed in pain over a boiled potato! Almost everything at the hotel was fried and I just wasn’t in the mood for that much fried food at one meal let alone three per day so a bunch of boiled veggies made me extremely happy. I also had not had a bite to eat since leaving Kampala in the morning where all I took was a slice of bread. Our lunch stop over never seemed to materialize.

My room has the obligatory mosquito net. There isn’t a fan so it was quite hot when I went to bed but I woke up in the middle of the night and it had continued to pound and I mean that sincerely, the roof is tin but the rain is very hard and it was quite a storm last night but nothing could have kept me awake. I had my best sleep since departing Colorado.

The Peace Corps have sent us up to our homestay with language instructors, mine, a man of about 30 named Steven is quite reserved. He looks as though he would rather be any place but here most of the time. I have learned a great deal from him about Lira, how the system of government is set up, how the language evolved and a bit about his life. I haven’t learned anything in actual language past How Are You but in part that is due to language lessons after the end of our long training days and probably a bit of my personality and Steven’s thrown in, the fact that he is teaching a class of one doesn’t make it much easier.  The language has a great deal of sounds in them that just more or less mean that you are paying attention. Steven had told me about this when we were in Kampala but it took some time with the family for these to become so familiar. Humm’s and Awww’s and that type of thing which are obligatory, yep, I hear you noises. I already had much of that in my vocab. I love the way the English flows and there is some particular linguistic twists that I am enjoying, like the way “what?” keeps coming up in almost every explanation. As in, In Uganda adults don’t eat What? We don’t eat fruit. In Uganda the women don’t wear What? We don’t wear trousers. It took me some hours not to stop answering What? Realizing that the speaker was going to fill in the blank. Great fun!

Steven will meet me this morning at 8 and take me to Agnes. If all goes as usual this means I will be ready to go at 8 and he will arrive at 9. We arrived at the outskirts of the town and stopped at the hotel and the family house is near to that so I haven't actually seen Lira yet.  It rained yesterday I am told so the unpaved roads were quite muddy . I am fine here and looking forward to going to the University today to meet with students and faculty. It is time to merge into skirts. If I have any hesitation or questions at all it is how to navigate the streets in skirts and sandals with all that mud. The day will tell.  I asked several people if I could possibly wear anything else and my host mom said, “but can you teach in those?” While looking at my comfortable what?  slacks. Humm maybe not.

Elvis the grandson who lives here in the home where I am staying, too cute!