So perhaps I spoke to soon. I am truly feeling more “at home” but then days like yesterday just come and knock me backwards. I got a real whammy on Tuesday morning, that sent me reeling back to my feelings one month ago. I was about to head out to school when I passed by the living room in my house and saw a young woman who I realized must be our cleaning woman, Sophie who I had yet to meet (or so I thought). I introduced myself saying, “Hi, you must be Sophie, I’m Laura—I don’t think we’ve met yet.”
“Yes, we have,” she said. Well, I thought (and said) I don’t think so—maybe we had passed on the street when I had been walking on my street and she had been come to work by boda, but otherwise I was fairly certain we had not met yet.
“At Lugogo,” she said. I was confused. “There were two guys with you, following you.” I was even more confused, but the only time I had been at Lugogo was when I went to a trade show on Independence Day (Oct. 9) and my wallet and camera were taken. “You were with some friends. A muzungu.” Now I was going from baffled to slow anger.
“Wait you saw me that day?” I asked.
“Yes, there were two guys following you from the gate. They unzipped your bag to take your things.”
“Yes, but then I zipped my bag again,” I said.
“But then the other one came and unzipped it and took your camera, right?” she said.
“Yes, and my wallet,” I said in total shock. “You saw it happen?! Did you know them??!?!”
“No, I didn’t. I’m so sorry. I wanted to warn you, but they said she’s white, we are black and so are you, don’t help her. Otherwise we will beat you up.”
I couldn’t even believe my ears. Here was my housekeeper, the woman who has washed my clothes and cleaned my room for over a month, telling me that she saw me get robbed in a sea of thousands, when she barely even knew me. Moreover, she considered THAT instance to have been a time we had “met.”
I wasn’t really angry at her, just at the circumstances. I knew full well that those guys really would have beaten her up, and even worse, they probably would have gotten away with it--just slipped the police a few thousand shillings to keep quiet about it. There’s the ugly corruption rearing its head again, and frankly, it just gets really old really fast.
Tears were welling up in my eyes and streaming down my face at this point. I had a meeting to go to regarding a paint donation for murals that I am planning to paint in the orphanage house and around the school. I grabbed a boda ride to the meeting, which was subsequently rescheduled for the following morning. So I walked back to Shell Bugolobi (my neighborhood landmark is a gas station—sad, I know) and waited for Kanyamo, the school driver to come pick me up. I walked the whole way back sobbing, like a huge baby. Well, a baby wouldn’t curse I guess, and boy, did I curse. To myself, to the dirt road, under my breath to the boda drivers who harassed me for a ride (“Muzungu, how are you?” “NOT GOOD!!!”).
I was in a funk all day, I tried really hard to get out of it, but there was definitely a hefty dose of despair—those same feelings from last month were back and felt even more painful this time around. I felt like a huge target with a big bull’s eye painted on my white forehead. Here I am in a country, sticking out like a sore thumb for being muzungu—i.e. white and rich, which is funny, because I don’t consider myself to be either in the least. The other volunteers I works with are Danish, or German, or Italian—not just white. I think of myself as American or Jewish, but here that doesn’t register as much or at all. I’m just white. Also, I am supporting myself on my savings while here in Uganda, trying to help the children of this country on my own time and money, and it hurts like hell to feel so mistreated in the face of this circumstance. While it’s true I have more money than many people have here, I quite frankly, still don’t have that much—and thanks to theft, supplies are dwindling rapidly.
The other volunteers were really sweet and expressed what I felt to be the right amount of outrage that I hadn’t really seen some others muster over such a bizarre situation and coincidence. Noelina (the school director) happened to walk in on me sobbing in the volunteer office, took me into her office and gave me about 10 hugs. I was feeling fine for a bit, enough to get me through a nursery dance lesson (yes, you read that write, I am helping to teach a dance!) and an art class for P-1 on making paper monsters (i.e. fortune tellers with out the fortune and with googley eyes!), but at lunch the feelings returned.
I almost didn’t want to go anywhere, but I made myself take the afternoon (the vocational students were in exams so we couldn’t teach them) and organize the volunteer office and hang some art work. But it’s amazing how even a short amount of time can make everything seem brighter and better. You have to move on and move up—in the end it’s just the only option.
It’s Pia and Medde’s last week here, so we (the five volunteers) went for dinner at this great little restaurant in Old Kampala called Tuhende. It was a beautiful night and we sat down at dusk and had a terrific meal of steak and lamb, and a three course meal for about $6 each. We chatted and tried to understand each other in 4 different languages in the middle of East Africa. As I took my (long) boda ride home across town and look up at the stars as we whizzed down my avenue (okay, it’s not as romantic as it sounds—there WAS plenty of car exhaust inhaled!), the day was ending on a much higher note than on which it had begun.
Today, we made paper airplanes with the Primary 1 class (um, to say they loved it is a definitely understatement!) and then I watched the children dance and rehearse for the big party they are putting on for the vocational school graduation on Friday. The children are just so lively and gleeful, and faced with their ever-present smiles, it is hard to stay angry for long.
I promise there will be picture posts and hopefully even a video to come in the next few days. Internet is quite slow at the moment…apologies from Uganda, all you get is my rant! ;)
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