The First Few Days

Uganda is a predominantly Christian nation, but (especially in towns) there is a sizable Muslim population, and I wake early Thursday morning to the muezzin’s call to prayer, echoing solemnly in the darkness. I think of Zanzibar, and the TAZARA train, and fall back to sleep. When I rise, I shower, straighten my room, and forage through my bag for breakfast – I’ve got an emergency stash of Clif bars that should tide me over until I have a chance to go to market.

I join Ashley and Julie, who are sipping coffee and reading, in the living room. Betty is bustling about, boiling water for drinking, sweeping floors, washing dishes and tidying rooms. I am mid-sentence when I hear her behind me.

“Auntie!” she tsks. “You didn’t have to do that!” I turn to her, confused. She is shaking her head. I turn back to Julie.

“Oh,” Julie says, nodding knowingly. “You made your bed.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Betty admonishes again.

“But…I like to,” I offer feebly. She shakes her head and sighs, then disappears behind the door.

Soon after, Ashley, Julie and I pile into the Mystery Machine (seriously, this thing is straight out of Scooby Doo) and head out to run errands. We get me money and a cell phone charger (I’ve got a phone that I used in Zambia, but it’s dead), and then drive to Walukaba, a nearby village where several of the Suubi women live. We meet Nora, ancient and stooped, her tiny eyes filmy and nearly sightless, and place a special order of necklaces for Ashley. Then it’s to Santa’s, and Scovia’s; after that, Emily’s.

We bounce along a rutted dirt road lined with maize and matooke trees, and pantless children (I don’t know why it’s shirts they wear, and not shorts) chase us, waving dirty hands, their dimpled bottoms caked with mud. “Howahyooou! Howahyooou! Howahyooou!” they shout, gleeful. I wave and smile back.

Santa and Scovia live in what I’ll loosely term an apartment, or tenement, building. It is long and low, and made of cinderblock; maybe four units each, with one or two tiny rooms per unit only. We crowd into one of Santa’s rooms, Scovia joining us, and learn how to roll beads. I can untwine fishing wire for hours, so the fine motor skills and focus required appeal to me. Still, though, my bead is loose, and lopsided. Julie’s is worse.

“Santa,” she says. “Mine is all uneven.”

“Just make it straight!” Santa says, as if saying it will make it so. We laugh and roll our eyes.

Emily’s house is in a different part of the village, but pretty much the same as Santa’s and Scovia’s. She emerges from the tall grass dressed to the nines, in a long red sheath dress, with white-beaded jewelry hanging from her lobes and around her neck; the toes of her bare feet are painted a shimmery pink. We visit for a minute in her small, dark room, place Ashley’s order, then head for the markets: the Indian-run supermarket (which is really more like a corner convenience store) for things like cereal and peanut butter and pasta, and the outdoor market, for tomatoes and onions and carrots and garlic.

After shopping, we head to Bukaya, another village just outside town. There is a sort of girls’ group home there, where Julie had been living until she moved into the LGH house five days ago, and where she still goes twice a week to visit and play with the girls. Seven live there, all under age twelve: Agnes, Mary, Scovia, Margaret, Joyce, Sumini and Pross (said like “rose”, but with a soft “s”). Betty’s sister Christine lives with them, a kind of house mother. The girls are not orphaned, but their families are either unable or unwilling to care for them.

They came to live in the house when a young American volunteer first met three of the girls (sisters Agnes, Mary and Scovia) on a visit last year. Dirty, hungry, and abandoned, one of them injured from the collapse of the hut where they were living, she took them in, got them food and medical attention, then set about finding them a place to stay.

She’d come to volunteer for an education project, but quickly decided to start her own nonprofit. Since Ugandan law requires that all nonprofits have a Ugandan address, she decided to kill two birds with one stone: she rented the house, made it her nonprofit base, and moved them all in. Margaret, Joyce, Sumini and Pross soon followed.

We go there this Thursday bearing supplies for an art project, spend an hour watching them giggle and create, then head home to make dinner. I boil pasta and sauté garlic, onions, tomatoes and carrots for a marinara sauce. It is, I’m afraid to say, a resounding disappointment. Ah, well.

By 8pm, I’m doing the jello-necked head bob. I fight to stay awake until 10pm and then give up.

*****

On Friday, I am up again at 4.30am, the adhan rousing me and the neighborhood dogs, who howl in protest. I feel like howling, too, when George (the night guard who is seated right outside my door) turns on Ugandan talk radio at a volume I am certain you all can hear in America. I toss and turn until 6.30am, then huff out of bed and go for a run.

It’s a dismal, gray day, and there are no Suubi activities scheduled, so we spend much of it curled on the sofa and in arm chairs, talking and reading our books. We plan a little 4th of July celebration and head to the market for burgers and balloons. I bake fresh rolls (like the marinara, kind of a disaster. boo.) and Ashley makes sugary sweet layer bars and Betty fries the potatoes and Julie cuts the pineapple.

We find one of those “Happy Birthday” streamers in the bookcase (except ours says “Happy rthday”), the kind with the shiny red and blue and yellow and green letters hinged together with grommets, and Ashley hangs it on nearby hooks. We were going to add “...America” to it, but we get lazy and forget.

We drink wine and tell stories and laugh about the random text messages I have suddenly started receiving from strangers in foreign languages. By 10pm, we are plumb tuckered, and so call it a day.

*****

It is Saturday, and I am awake early again – only this time I have aches and chills and knifelike cramps in my muscles. By midmorning, I’m battling waves of nausea and I’m starting to worry. I text my brother: How early can malaria present? He tells me it’s unlikely that I would have contracted it while on prophylaxis, but says I should get tested. We call the American doctor in town to schedule the test, but she is in Kampala. She confirms that malaria is unlikely, especially this early, prescribes a course of ciproflaxin (which I happen to have from my last trip, thank you Denver Health Travel Clinic), and tells us to call her in twelve hours.

Several hours and two naps later, I am no better. In addition to the aches and chills, I am now vomiting and – well, anyway. You can figure it out. Julie and Ashley go for dinner at a local Indian restaurant, and bring me back a ginger ale. I sip it slowly, swallow another cipro, and go to bed, praying that I will be better in the morning.