Boda-Boda Valentine

“Does anyone have a rubber handy?” My boss asked the room.  I froze.  Then Boniface, another employee, handed her an erasure.  “Pretty fitting start for a Valentine’s Day in Africa,” I thought to myself.  In Uganda, the HIV rate rose to 6% again after recent legislature began pushing abstinence-only education, I was horrified to read before traveling here, and is now down to 5%.  There are bulletin boards and street signs urging people to get checked—one boasting, “I am proud my husband is circumcised, because we have a lower chance of getting HIV.”  That one sends a few mixed messages, if you ask me.

Views from my balcony.

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In more selfish news… I never truly realized what an insecure, nervous person I was... until now.  The level of anxiety I experience on a daily basis here can feel almost unbearable.  Saturday night consisted of me sitting in the middle of a mall, at a cafe with free Internet, hoping anyone I love would be on Skype at 10 a.m. Portland time.  It seems an Internet connection is my false security blanket right now.  I say false, because I recognize that no one can really help me from back home.  Just knowing that if someone messages me, and I have the ability to receive that message, helps.  Even though I want to get settled and unpacked, have my own food and kitchen space and everything, I didn't feel ready to leave my 100% reliable Internet connection at the office.  The big boss is coming to town next week, and I didn't really have a suitable excuse not to move into the apartment I will share with a girl from Washington DC, who has been living here for eight months.  Telling my boss that I was scared shitless to be stuck in a foreign neighborhood where I am essentially lost, out of power for random hours at a time, and disconnected completely from the entire world I know... it seemed weak.  So I said Saturday would be a great time to arrange moving my belongings. That very night I had to resort to public mall comfort, and it was quite uncomfortable.  When I went back to the apartment, the power was still out, and I puttered around in my headlamp, trying to make my room livable, and hang the mosquito-net over my bed.

Self-portrait, in the bathroom.  

My tiny bed--3" foam mattress and mosquito netting. 

Goats, just chillin'.

The "yard" and "dryer"

Even simple things here like going to the supermarket feel like a huge task. You have to figure out where you are going to catch a boda-boda, how hard you are going to haggle your price for where he will take you, pray to avoid running into or being run over by a taxi-bus, truck full of cows, or another boda, or hitting a random pedestrian, chicken or child while getting there. You hang on for dear life, white-knuckled, thighs squeezing the seat as your boda jumps the occasional potholes, sometimes up over the curb onto the sidewalk—weaving through traffic coming in all directions to get you to the damn store.

A trip to the grocery store. 

Then you enter said store (if it happens to still be open that day) only to find that it is fully stocked of every type of white flour cookie/cracker imaginable and not a tortilla, edible apple or recognizeable protein in sight. Needless to say my eating habits have suffered thus far. I’ve been living inordinately off of bread, peanut butter and g-nuts (ground nuts similar to peanuts,) and therefore could be contracting scurvy any day now.

My lunches at the office consist of traditional Ugandan fare.  Starch heavy, we usually have matoke (boiled plantain mashed into a potato-like consistency,) "Irish" (your standard potato, either boiled or fried,) rice, beans similar to pintos, a small piece of chicken or beef, and maybe some sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, or cabbage slaw in white vinegar.  Other days we get Chapati, a cassava meal flour that’s made into fry bread, then served with beans, again.  One special day we had pasta.

Lunch at the office.

My coworker cutting Chapati before adding beans!

I’ve now made two meals at the apartment in the evenings, last night by headlamp since the power was out for the third night in a row.  It consisted of bread, eggs and onion cooked up with a bit of Parmesan cheese that I bought “special” (and now have to eat quickly since it was un-refrigerated for two days.)  Tonight was pasta with cabbage, onion and tomato, spices and white vinegar.  It was weird, but somehow delicious.  I told my friend Kate that I will either be losing 10 pounds while living here or gaining 15—but there’s no way I’m staying the same.

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On the way back to the apartment, which I fiercely negotiated to a 3,000 Ugandan shilling price, I practiced my new Lugandan phrase, “oly otya?” which essentially means, “how are you?” (and is what people say here to each other as a greeting instead of hello.)  It worked like a charm.  Between that and “weebale, ssebo” (thank you, Sir,) I will finagle my way into a veritable daily boda-boda discount.  My boda then asked me where was my Valentine, to which I explained that I had somehow lost him, and he was not not be found, to which he asked if I would like another, and I politely declined.

Now, seeing that I managed to find a way back to the apartment, and feed myself a couple vegetables, it seems I have survived another day.