Life in Uganda

Since everyday is filled with a different activity, I thought I would take a moment and just give you a synopsis of what life is like in Uganda. We have reached the half way point, about 2 weeks, and we are in a pretty good routine. Hopefully this is a good idea of what our life is like on the other side.

We live in Ft. Portal – a small community in the far most western part of Uganda that is the closest town for the many adjacent villages that border the Rwezori Mountains along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ft. Portal has long been regarded as a beautiful and friendly place – the scenery and people certainly match the reputation. As you know, most of the people live in the rural areas, but they have the most amazing plots of land covered in endless crops, from bananas to coffee to tea, which are the most common exports. The market is bustling everyday with fresh fruit, meat and anything you might need. Everything is green. We are here during the short dry season but it is still lush. The rain comes again in August just before we leave and the intensive farming will begin again.

Like all towns in Uganda, Ft. Portal faces many challenges. The electricity is probably the biggest – it usually goes on and off at least once a day, and may stay off for five minutes or five hours. My adviser said that if the power goes out in one place, it goes out in the entire country because the electricity comes from one source in Kampala, the capital, which is about five hours east. Another challenge is the garbage/air. There is no municipal trash system, and so people just burn their “rubbish.” This makes for a very disappointing haze that covers the skyline most days, which means we can hardly see the mountains that surround us. If we are lucky the clouds will wither and the haze will let up for a little while so that we may steal a beautiful sunset view or glace at the moon and stars before bed.

If you have seen the pictures you know we are staying in a ridiculously nice house at the top of the Njara Hill just north west of town. Rumor has it the president of Uganda has a residence on the same street as us for when he visits the area. We actually only found the house about a week before we arrived thanks to the real estate lady, who helped us work with the “stubborn” landlady who jacked up the rent and took forever to get us a refrigerator. It is gated and protected by fence and barbered wire like most of the houses on the hill. It has three bedrooms in the main house, two bedrooms in the side apartment where we live, living quarters for our helpers, a kitchen, dining room, large living room, and a patio and a terrace overlooking a beautiful yard. The bathrooms are somewhere in between the developing world and those found back home. If the electricity is off there is no hot water, and there is no shower curtain in our bathroom which is pretty gross. The toilet handle must be held for a flush and the water takes forever to fill up. We drink water that is boiled and then filtered, but must rinse our toothbrushes and mouths with the filtered or even bottled water.

Betty boils a large container of water for us twice a day, and we have tea and coffee about a million times. The thing we miss most is our millions of other flavored beverages. Coca-cola is all over the place, and it only costs anywhere from 33 cents to 50 cents a bottle. On the drive into Ft. Portal I saw the “drink Fanta, stay bamoocha (cool),” and when we went to the grocery store the first day I saw the Fanta, and since then I have developed quite an addiction to the sugary orange deliciousness.

The food in Uganda is pleasant, but at times can get bland. Bananas are the staple food – you eat them with every meal and as snacks in between. There is also matoki, which is just mashed bananas, and millet, a strange concoction that comes from grounded up millet seeds. I’m not a big fan of either of the two, but they are what most Ugandans eat, so when we receive lunch as a gift from people in the bush we definitely eat it. They do have a few sauces to put on them which helps. Other than that there is plenty of fruit – the biggest avocados I have ever seen, which also come with every meal, as well as tomatoes, delicious pineapple, apples, and the more bitter passion fruit (which does make great juice). Potatoes are also common and remind us of home. The chicken is very good and is usually a treat, so we may have it once a week. I have not had much of the beef because on the first day we definitely saw a cow’s head just sitting there at the market, plus I usually only eat organic beef anyway. We do have tilapia which is to die for, but that is an expensive treat we only eat once in a while. For breakfast we have eggs and all the fruit, plus toast, pineapple or strawberry jam, and lots of peanut butter. We also discovered “chipatis” – the Ugandan equivalent of tortillas, and they make for a good dish somewhere between french toast and pancakes if you douse them with honey and cinnamon. Betty does a good job of mixing it up, and makes very good stew/vegetable melodies and makes spicy curry from time to time.

We are well taken care of to say the least, and the cast of characters in Uganda has been amazing. There is Betty, a young women about 25 who works nonstop cleaning and cooking three wonderful meals a day. She has an 8 year old son we haven’t seen yet, and she speaks very good English because she worked at a hotel with a lot of foreigners. Now matter how hard we try she won’t let us clean up or do dishes. We have all befriended her in our own little way and we try and pay her back with little gifts and beer from time to time. She gets paid $1.75 per DAY, which is also 75 cents more than the going rate in Uganda. Unbelievable. She says she is going to use her earnings to buy a cow, since we have also paid her son’s and her sister’s school fees.

Next up is Joseph, our guide, bus driver and protector. He is 62, has lived all over Africa and is an invaluable resource. Although he doesn’t speak Rootoro (he speaks Swalili), he knows the people and the culture very well, and is happy to drive us to town and back or wherever we need to go. He is an old friend of Father Tom McDurmont, the priest in Uganda who is responsible for pretty much all of this and the Holy Cross work all over the country.

The house also came with a guard, Bashir I think his name is, who has watched the house ever since it was built. He is a nice young man who comes about dusk and stays until we leave to town the next day. He walks back and forth across the fence with a flashlight and radio to keep him company, and he told us that if anyone tries to break in he’s got a bow and arrow to take care of them before he calls the police, which are quick to respond to those kinds of calls. He gets paid $1.50 a DAY, which is 50 cents more than the going rate in Uganda.

The woman Margaret I mention frequently is the lady who runs Mary’s Craft Shop in town – the business we help with our purchases from the holiday craft sale at St. Edward’s. In two weeks of selling we raise an average of $5,000, and to date we have totaled $30,000. They have used the money from everything to building a day care center, wells at the Kirinda Family Center, buying sewing machines for all the students there, paying health and education fees, and also to support the store and bring in crafts from all over Uganda. We are doing much more than the government, which primarily focuses on roads and security, or at least that’s what we’ve seen. Anyway Margaret is so great – beautiful and smart, and so thankful for all Sara does for her. We have made friends with her son Paul who hangs out at the shop after school.

There are countless other individuals who guide us on our journey, and we meet a new set of hard working and dedicated individuals everyday. We have met most of them through Sister Eddie Ann and Sister Lilly, the Sisters of the Holy Cross who have lived in Uganda since the 1970s and have secured their place and reputation in the hearts and minds of the people. They live just outside of town in a beautiful compound next to a school, where they have living quarters for 10 people, whether visitors or people they have taken in.

Daily life in Ft. Portal is simple, and everyday we do something different and intensive. Some of the people wake up at 7:30am to do yoga, but I got off that train after the first couple of days when I started writing at night. We all start the day together with a delicious breakfast and tea. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we begin the days with Rootro lessons and then go on to whatever activity it is we have scheduled, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we volunteer at the Kirinda Family Center and teach at St. Joseph’s on the Hill school in the afternoons. We stop in town everyday to check in with Margaret at the shop, and also to get drinks and snacks at Andrew’s, the local grocery store, and finally visit the Internet café to connect to the world. The “main street” is pretty small so everything is right next to each other. At first we were an excitement, but by the end of the first week we were just the Bazoongs in the big bus who have come to town to spend money.

After going to town, we visit people in the outskirts, or even “the bush” – the most rural parts of Uganda. It is either a Holy Cross entity we visit or most times small communities of people. These people don’t get any attention other than from the Holy Cross, and let me tell you, they are so honored to have visitors.

At night we are exhausted, and we shower, rest, write and chill before a big dinner. We chat it up over tea, talking about what we did during the day and what we have to look forward to the next. The days usually begin about 8:30am, and by 10pm we are usually spent, although I usually read and write until 11pm or so, but never later than 1am (which is very good for me!).

So that’s about it. We have a few more excursions on the weekends before the final trip east to Lake Victoria and the falls, which is where the source of the Nile River is. We are going 4-wheeling, rafting, and I may or may not decide to bungee jump! We all can’t wait for that one – the final going away present for all the long days. Until then, we will teach, learn, grow and change more and more every day in the Pearl of Africa.