Americanization, or lack thereof.

Before I came to Uganda, I never thought that I’d hear Beyonce’s “Drunk in Love” coming out of a thatch roof hut in the slum, or that I’d hear more country music in Africa than I’ve ever heard in America. One of the most immediately surprising things when I arrived here was the near constant music that plays everywhere and the wide variety that made it half way across the world. The first shop I went into was playing an old Kelly Clarkson classic, Top 40 hits from the past 10 years play on every radio station, and country music is surprisingly very, very, popular.

What continues to surprise me is the abundance of American t-shirts that could have come out of any Goodwill. They’re discarded tourist souvenirs with maps of Hawaii or the Vancouver Canucks logo. Some have American colleges on them or are promotional t-shirts for past events. The oddest part is that none of the wearers know what their shirts signify.

When people talk about globalization, they often mean the proliferation of one image across the world or the spread of one type of lifestyle. In many ways, Uganda has felt the spread as much as anywhere else. Coca-cola and Pepsi advertisements plaster the shops and Pringles and Colgate toothpaste are imported. Numerous shops and street vendors sell bootlegged American movies and TV shows. However, images of America and the lifestyle there haven’t quite reached Namatala and the women we work with everyday.

After numerous conversations with the women, a few things that surprised them….

• No one carries things on their head in America. When we exclaimed at how impressed we were by how they carry everything on their head, one woman was shocked to find out no one transported anything that way in America.

• In our stores, every item has a set price. We don’t haggle for anything, and no one receives a higher or lower price, regardless of whether you’re from America or not.

• We don’t have bodas. Our primary transportation is cars, and although I tried to explain public buses and subways, I was embarrassed by how it sounded to say that nearly every single family in America owns at least one car.

• We don’t each have plots of land by our houses where we grow crops. Very few people sustain themselves on their own food, or grow food to sell, or even have the space to plant a garden.

The women have no idea how radically different America is than any area of Uganda. Even their capital city, Kampala, does not have any tall glass buildings or skyscrapers. In talking to the Namatala women, I don’t know if I was more embarrassed by how America’s differences show our excess or that I assumed everyone had seem movies or images of America. We’ll see what other differences I notice when I make it back to the States in a few short days.

A day in the life.

Now that I’m ending my fifth week in Uganda, I’ve settled into a relatively consistent daily schedule.

My mornings start early. The roosters don’t wake me up anymore, but because my room is right next to the kitchen, club music often starts playing before 8 a.m. and there’s a lot of chattering as the cooks prepare our breakfast. I often get up before breakfast at 9 a.m. and either begin my work for the day, write blog posts, or just take advantage of the decent internet connection.

At nine, all the fellows have breakfast, which usually consists of two pots of tea, two pots of hot milk, a pot of coffee and some type of dough-y item. We’ve had pancakes, french toast, nutella crepes, donuts, fritter-like items, and a potato egg scramble. I also have my first banana of the day. I’ll be excited to return to my usual yogurt with honey in the U.S. – yogurt here comes in bags and you drink it with a straw.

Breakfast initiates the slow and steady start to the morning. I begin writing and editing my articles and transcribing interviews until around noon, when I get ready to walk to Namatala to work with the women.

Kapkwata Restaurant.

Sometimes I go out for lunch, but between the heavy breakfasts and dinners, stopping for fruit and chapati is often enough. Our regular restaurant is Kapkwata, a traditional African restaurant that’s a little shocking by any American standards but provides good, cheap meals. I avoid the meat and fish and get either beans or cowpeas (basically peas and carrots in a sauce) with rice or chapati. A full meal costs around 3,500 shillings, or $1.40.

On our walk.

Further along the walk.

Entering Namatala.

Brittany, Maryann and I walk through the heart of Mbale to Namatala everyday. I’ve become accustomed to the walk, the varying levels in the sidewalk and the transition from concrete to dirt. Before we leave the main downtown area, we stop and buy bananas from the women sprawled out on the sidewalk for 200 shillings each (less than 10 cents each).

In Namatala, we pass through a second downtown-like area, this time less formal and more run down, less crowded and anonymous and more familiar/personal. I often stop for an avocado and chapati in the market here if I didn’t get lunch, both for 500 shillings each (20 cents).

One of the many cows.

Kenneth, our chapati maker!

At Child of Hope school, our partner organization, we work with the women in a tiny school room with benches made for skinny four year old limbs. Although we’re supposed to start at 1 p.m. each day and go until 4 p.m., due to “Africa time” the women arrive anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half late, so we often finish later as well.

We have three orders of business: product making, business class, and story interviews. I am assigned to one woman from each year to work with on product making and three women from each year to profile and write about, so each day I juggle monitoring my products while also snagging the translator to interview women with me.

After class, one of the photography fellows and I sometimes meet with a woman at her home or business.

On the way home, I run errands like pulling money from the bank, buying airtime, or stopping at a shop for snacks or souvenirs. Back at the Casa, I collapse on one of the couches, check my phone on the first wifi connection in hours and hope that by some stroke of fate, the internet, electricity, and water pressure are all at sufficient levels for the evening.

All of the 1000 Shillings fellows are required to be inside the Casa after sunset, so from 7 p.m. onward we’re all here, showering off the days grime, socializing with other visitors, or ordering snacks. One of my favorite things to do is order a pot of African tea and attempt to get some reading in. Dinner is hopefully at seven, and consists of rice, potatoes, and usually a beef stir fry type dish. If they serve bananas, my banana tally goes up to four for the day.

After dinner Maryann, Brittany and I retreat to what we call “The Cave” (our room) and work on our respective assignments until we go to sleep.

Child of Hope students.

The days feel long but simultaneously have gone by incredibly fast. I have a lot of work to finish before I reach the end, although that doesn’t change how quickly it will come. Walking away from Child of Hope next Friday will be so surreal.

Coffee’s origins.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

One of the many people who hang out around the Casa invited us to the coffee plantation where he works. The organization works with thousands of farmers in the region – after growing season, the farmers bring their coffee cherries here to process them, then they’re sent off to be roasted and shipped to the U.S. They also grow vanilla. It wasn’t the processing season but we saw the huge room where the vanilla is kept and it smelled amazing. The process is really long and involved and too complicated to go into here, but basically explains why vanilla is so expensive!

Article on gorillas & tourism.

This article popped up on my Yahoo homepage today so I thought I’d share. It gives a basic perspective on how the famous gorilla trekking expeditions benefit Uganda. Obviously this is just one opinion on the matter, but I was excited to see something about Uganda in the news!

 

“Ugandan gorillas under threat but tourist dollars protect”

Follow 1000 Shillings on social media!

Follow 1000 Shillings on social media!

Our social media fellow, Maryann, is updating all the social media accounts while we’re here! She’s posting pictures and more information about the organization and fellowship.

Here’s their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

On Ugandan “sister wives.”

Sometimes when we are talking with Ugandans, it’s hard to tell whether something is lost in translation or truly foreign to Americans. Today while interviewing Irene about her family for this week’s story, she told me about her husband: his name is Peter and he’s a carpenter. I vaguely remembered hearing about a Peter the Carpenter husband, but lots of the women’s husbands have generic names like Peter or Sam.

Moments later, another fellow, LuLu, made the connection. Hadijjah, one of our 2013 women, also has a husband named Peter who is a carpenter. Namatala is big, but there aren’t two Peter the Carpenters. Irene and Hadijjah live next door to each other and share a husband.

Polygamy isn’t unheard of or even uncommon in Uganda, and some of our other women are second wives as well, but we didn’t realize we had women in our program who shared the same husband. Neither had mentioned it to us, and it wasn’t until a Child of Hope teacher, Susan, confirmed for us that we knew. It puts me in a weird position as a journalist. I’m assigned to write about both of them, but if neither volunteered the information to me, should I ask them about it? It’s obviously an interesting part of their lives that I’m sure they both have a lot of feelings about it, but as a white stranger, asking them questions in general is a little invasive. It’s an area I’ll have broach carefully.

Both are pretty reserved in general, but many of the women in polygamist marriages whisper when they talk about the other wives. I’m not sure if it’s because they know polygamy is taboo in America or because they’re ashamed for other reasons. In some cases, one of the wives receives a lot more of the husband’s time, money and attention while the other wife and her children go hungry. They acknowledge that polygamy part of Ugandan culture, but are still hesitant to admit to us how prevalent it is. Regardless, I’m pretty sure the polygamist marriages aren’t as happy-go-lucky as the TLC show has us believe.

The women are more open when talking to us about general marriage practices, regardless of whether they apply to the first, second, or third wife. They’ll share how they met, how long they’ve been married, and if they’re happily married they’ll say so.

Dating doesn’t seem to exists in Uganda, because whenever one of the fellows talks about their own boyfriend, the women ask if he’s their husband. Marriages aren’t exactly arranged, but from what I’ve gathered, when a man and woman meet and decide they like each other or that they’re a good match, the man proposes. The families are sometimes involved in the decision, but I think if the family is far away in the home village, it’s mostly up to the couple. The decision might be as much about practicality as about love. Compared to America, it sounds incredibly casual and laid back.

Many practices don’t exist here not only because they aren’t culturally common, but because they assume a certain level of privilege. For a country with varying levels of poverty, dating is frivolous and unreasonable. The concept of dating is primarily made up of going out to eat, doing fun activities, buying presents and other costly aspects. Combined with the fact that many people start having children very young here, an early marriage is most practical. The people in Namatala probably couldn’t imagine American dating culture just as much as we’re baffled by their seemingly casual marriage proposals and multi-wife households.