The senses.

Smells:  The acrid smoke from burning rubbish

Cow dung

Rich woody scent of mango trees not yet in bloom

Sharp smell of body odor and sweat

Diesel exhaust from roaring lorries

Fish on the beach, minus the briny ocean breeze that I'm used to

Banana bread baking

Chemical smell of pesticide in enclosed spaces

Sounds: Roosters crowing

Muslim calls to prayer

"Sawa, sawa, sawa ye"

Ugandan dance beats

Children giggling + "Muzungu!! How are you!!"

The bleating and spitting of goats

"Eyyyyy, mami!  Your food is ready!"

Birds whose calls must emanate from some supernatural source because the noise is so impossibly bigger than the bodies they come from

Sights:  The bright orange of a rubbish fire pouring black smoke into the sky against a green green landscape

Bejeweled roosters struttin' their stuff

Women in Buganda dress, with poofy shoulders

The green.  Oh, the green.

Heavy jackfruit swaying, hanging ponderously

Red dust coating everything

Fort Portal after a fresh rain when everything is new and the wide banana tree leaves drip onto the reddish brown dirt

Quick flashes of brilliance when green bee-eaters fly by the kitchen window at the Lodge

Waxing nostalgic with Winston Churchill:

"My Journey is at an end, the tale has been told. The reader who has followed so faithfully and so far has a right to ask what message I bring back. It can be stated in three words: concentrate upon Uganda! 

Uganda is alive by itself. It is vital, and in my view, in spite of its insects and diseases, it ought, in the course of time, to become the most prosperous of all our East African possessions and perhaps the 'financial driving wheel' of this part of the world. 

Uganda is from end to end a 'beautiful garden' where 'staple food' of the people grows almost without labour. Does it not sound like a paradise on earth? It is the pearl of Africa."

Churchill, "My African Journey"

More later.  I just got back from Fort Portal and am simmering in nostalgia.  Such a sap.

You go your way an I go mine

Jack rocks and gave me 2 GB of Bob Dylan the other day, to supplement my already-large Dylan collection, so now I pretty much have the entire Dylan discography.  U jelly?  You should be.  (By the way, Bob's playing a concert in Michigan this weekend ON MY BIRTHDAY...I think this love affair was meant to be)  Anyway, song of the day:  'Most Likely You Go Your Way".

So, I guess I realized that for those of you who haven't been regularly gchatting with me, I probably confused all y'all with references to "Jack" and "Anneeth" and all those people...After leaving Fort Portal nearly--gasp--two months ago, I came to Entebbe and met up with four other UM students, all PhD candidates in the African History program there.  The guy that sort of spearheaded my whole project here, Derek Peterson, is one of their professors and members of (some of) their dissertation committees, so he lured them here with grant money to help out at the Uganda National Archives.  So, we've been here since June 25th working away at the mammoth task of cataloguing the country's entire archive.  Or most of it.

So, we've been here since July 25th (Ashley and I have, at least; the rest have trickled in) and chipping away at the collections.  It's taken a LOT of work to get where we are, but I'm glad to say that we've done a pretty solid job at organizing, cataloguing, cleaning (sort of...more on that later), re-housing, etc. a decent chunk of the collections.  We even, at one point, instituted a "stay till 6 p.m. three days/week, and then come in on saturdays from 9-1" policy...if that tells you how much we've been working...

...and if that tells you why I haven't updated this sucker in so long!

Random:  So Entebbe is on the coast of Lake Victoria, and about five minutes down the road are various beach restaurants.  They get pretty loud on the weekends, and particularly on game days (I think Manchester United is playing today), so right now there is a mix of crowd noise, Ugandan pop/dance music, and vuvuzelas in the background...can be kind of annoying at times, but I also think it's nice in that there is just LIFE going on!  All the time!

Anyway, I (once again) need to cut this short...today is my birthday and we're leaving in an hour and a half to go get dinner.  And, I've got a lot of writing work to do before we leave, sooo...I'll catch y'all on the flip side.

Love love love.
N

Wow. It's been a month...sorry, kids...

This'll be short, but I promise I'll write a solid blog tomorrow.  We took Eve and Roscoe out for fish tonight on Anderita Beach, but a lovely night turned into the biggest debacle EVER...and yes, I used that word to describe it when I was "having words" with the hotel manager.

Went to Anderita Beach Hotel, where you can order a nice big fried (whole) tilapia for approximately nine dollars (Omid informed me that such a fish--local, freshly caught--in Laguna Beach would be between $40-60...1 point for Uganda!).  Food took about an hour and a half to arrive, which is pretty typical of most restaurants in Uganda, and the waitress had me pay right before we got the food.  Now, it's fairly common here for waiters and waitresses, or store clerks, or whatever, to simply show you the amount that you owe on a piece of paper, and that's what our waitress did tonight...so I paid it.

She brought our food, and then an extra grilled fish to the table, at which point we told her we didn't order it--and thus ensued the chaos.  A co-worker came back to the table with her and asked if we would pay for it, as she would be the one to pay for it if we didn't (this is also a very Ugandan thing; waiter messes up an order, they're the ones paying for the food).  Now, we had JUST been having a discussion about how often myself (and other American friends) tend to get jacked over in food joints, where we are either brought the incorrect thing or the server brings out an additional food item claiming that we ordered it, when we really didn't...our friend Stella, a researcher at Makerere University and native Ugandan, said that never happens to her...she was actually rather surprised and angry about it.  (Case in point--went to Central Inn last night for dinner and Jen ordered a chicken curry...about an hour went by, we got our food, and she was served a hawaiian pizza.  What??!!)

SO:  Stella got mad and laid into the servers in Luganda, which was kind of an awesome spectacle to see, and very kind Ashley said she'd pay for the fish.  She went to go get the receipt itemized, and...surprise!!...the waitress had overcharged us by Ugx40,000.  So, we paid for a fish we didn't order, Ashley didn't get a salad she ordered, and I paid an extra fifteen bucks, approximately.  You'd think that the matter would get settled in a reasonable period of time, but no dice...the thing turned into an hour and a half long debacle (see?) in which Anneeth and I got incredibly heated, and I ended up saying "Listen, it's nine thirty, I hurt my back, and all I want to do is go home.  Can I please just have my 40,000?"  (I also said "Listen, we're not tourists, we actually live here in Uganda, work for the government, and need to be at work tomorrow at nine."  Really, Natalie??  You pulled that card?!)

Long story short, after an hour and a half of wrangling with eight different hotel employees and about five different episodes of writing down exactly what we got and showing them the math...the supervisor came up with my money.  :LKSDJF: LKJS:DLFKJ SLDKFJ:LKSDJF:LKJS:DFLKJSDLKFJ:SLKDFJLKSJDF

RAGE.

We boda boda-ed it home, admired the weird-looking moon, and arrived at the flat to the smell of delicious apple/dried cherry/banana fritters that Jen was frying in the kitchen.  And then watched an episode of Trailor Park Boys.  And Ashley gave me a bruise-inducing back massage, because I'm an old lady and hurt my back (slipped on the stairs carrying a box down to the archives yesterday and landed smack on my tailbone).

Alrighty, more tomorrow...I'll likely flood this thing in the next few days with posts to update all y'all on the happenings at UNA.  Work has been INSANELY busy the past few weeks, thus my absence on here.

Love to all of you!

N

My stomach is full to bursting with starchy root vegetables. Ndi mukkufu!

“Weebale nnyo, ssebo,” I say each morning to the boda boda driver who takes me to work.  I am slowly, slowwwwly picking up bits of Luganda, which hasn’t been too bad, given its many similarities to the Rutooro language that I was beginning to learn in Fort Portal.  I do heartily wish, though, that I knew it fluently—Lord knows I’d like to be able to understand what people here are saying about me!  Oh, well, I suppose it is the prerogative of locals to be able to gossip about foreigners in their native language.  I’ve begun responding to the eponymous “mzungu!” as if it were my given name, or at least bodily reacting each time I hear it called.  Nearly every time I hear the word spoken it’s in reference to me; although there are more white people here in Entebbe than there were in Fort Portal, that’s still not saying much, and so I continue to be an oddity in these parts.

Children are the funniest proprietors of the phrase “Hey mzungu!  How are you!”, and I got a big chuckle the other day from some young schoolboys who were heckling me—in French.  There’s a primary school down the road from my apartment complex and I usually encounter the schoolchildren in the early evening on my way to the market, when they get out of class.  “HEY!  FERMEZ-LA BOUCHE!”  Cue the giggling.  “HEY! HEY YOU!  FERMEZ-LA BOOOOOUCHE!”  More giggling.  “Are you guys speaking French to me?”  “Yeeessss!”  “Why are you telling me to shut my mouth?  It wasn’t even open before I talked to you guys!”  Then there was a general sense of ‘ohhhhhhh snap’ on their part, and the friends of the boys hollering started laughing at them and pushing them off the curb.  Big old grin on my face as I continued walking to town…not much difference between 10 year olds in the U.S. and Uganda, eh?

Ohhhh, man.  As much as I complain about certain things here in Uganda, NOTHING, absolutely nothing, can beat their fruit.  I just got served a fruit plate piled high with fresh mango, pineapple, banana, and watermelon and planning on cramming it all into my already-very full stomach!  (I’m on my lunch break right now, which is 1 ½ hours long…don’t ask me why)  Way better than watery cantaloupe and grapes in a plastic cup at Starbucks, and for only seventy nine cents.  Baller.

The place that I usually eat lunch at is a little wooden shack down the road from NARO (National Agricultural Research Organization, the building where the archives are located).  I think I’ve described it somewhat, but it bears summary again, solely because of the hilarious women who work it.  Apparently I am considered a regular there, because when I arrived today, one of the woman said “Ehhhyyy!! The usual?”  <enthusiastic nod>  Yep, the ush.  Matooke, posho, g-nut sauce with dried beef, pumpkin, and yams…and sometimes greens (in today’s case, slices of avocado).  I’m the only mzungu to frequent the place and am usually the first one there for the lunch rush (I arrive at 12:30, most others by 1), and so am duly greeted with the UTMOST gusto and excitement.  “Hey, mami, what to drink? Soda, amaizi (water)?”  “You be back tomorrow??”  Of COURSE!!

Well, this counts as the third Fourth of July that I have spent outside of the United States, and it was considerably less exciting than my past two (both spent in Dublin).  Ashley was at a conference in Kampala, so the celebrating was left up to myself.  I was determined to make a night of it, so procured ground beef and other necessary hamburger accoutrements to the best of my ability and set about cooking.  I had a hamburger, made sweet potato fries and guacamole, and heated up baked beans.  AMERICA!!!!  Of course, the power went out around 6:30, so I cooked/ate my dinner by candlelight.  Nothing like a Fourth of July spent in the dark, reading Ivanhoe on a Kindle by candlelight.

Alright, gotta tackle this fruitplate, finish my tea, and eavesdrop on the young Mormon missionaries seated in the café behind me.

Love to you all.

N

I also rode a bus with a chicken.

Yep, the ride back from Fort Portal was even more interesting than the first (which was relatively noneventful, aside from accidentally offending the conductor...more in a minute).  Someone had a chicken, which squawked the entire drive back to Kampala. And, too, 3 bus conductors had to bodily remove a crazy man before we set off from FP--he really didn't want to get off that bus, man, he was grabbing at every seat as they carried him out.  But yes.  When I boarded the bus in Kampala to go to FP, the conductor said "Ohhh, madame, I saved this seat for you!" And he patted the seat next to him, in the very front of the bus.  Now, experience in the past month and a half has taught me that this sort of attention is generally motivated by the fact that a) the man is excited about the prospect of interacting with a mzungu woman and b) he wants to flirt.  So, I tried to politely decline and took a seat about halfway to the back of the bus.  His friend then proceeded to find me and say, "Why didn't you want to sit next to Henry?"  SO. PERSISTENT.  I just told him I had things I needed to do and couldn't really converse with anyone, as the prospect of spending 4-6 hours fending off unwanted advances was wholly unappetizing.  Anyway, long story short, I told Brede about this that night and she said "Oh, getting a seat at the front of the bus is considered a privilege, one which they usually give to any mzungus...".  Oops.  Ugandan propriety 1, Natalie 0.  Sorry, Henry!!!

Despite the heat and discomfort of the bus rides, I have to say that I do love the fact that I can, at the various break stops, buy sizzling meat on a stick, hot chapatis, and roasted bananas--through the bus window.  I don't even have to get off  :)  AND, it's all REALLY, REALLY good.

We've been having loads of "new apartment'-type problems at our place, which makes me miss the Lodge and its lushness even more, despite the accumulated years of grime on everything...first it was tiny black ants, which we still haven't managed to rid the place of, in the kitchen.  Then, whilst cooking dinner one night, small, idiotic-looking bugs began gathering on the kitchen floor: white ants, which are really just termites with wings (that can't fly).  They flopped around and became more and more, till we swept them out the door...oooh, poem?

Then it was lake flies, tiny little gnat-like creatures that swarmed around our front door.  Trying to secure the padlock and lock everything up was...disgusting.  Thankfully those have gone away, as have the white ants, but the black little dudes are still populous as ever.  We're workin' on it.  And, too, the power has been out intermittently since we've moved in; a few nights ago the power AND the water cut out for about 6 hours.  Cooking dinner that night was interesting.

Anyway, there's more to come, as always, hopefully I'm not boring any of you guys with details of my mundane African life.  Back to my African milk tea and Ivanhoe.

As ever,
N

In which I get rejected by the CAO and drink half my body weight in Fanta Orange.

Bloggy blog blog!  Hello, beautiful people, oli-otya?  How are you?

Sorry I haven't written in over week (I know you guys are REALLY crushed by this), but I moved from Fort Portal to Entebbe last Friday, made a two-day trip back to FP from Wed-Fri, and then came back to Entebbe yesterday.  Sooooooooo much travelling.  It was sad to say goodbye to FP, but it's not like I'm not ever going back there; on the contrary, I plan on going back at least twice before I leave Uganda.  I came to Entebbe last Friday and met up with Ashley, UM PhD student, at the Central Inn in Entebbe.  I have to say, it was really, really nice to meet up with a fellow American/UM student and just chat.  Living and hanging out with Europeans and Africans has been really great, but home is just--home.  The following morning, a wonderful local woman named Harriet--the friend of another soon-to-arrive UM PhD student, Anneeth--picked us up and drove us around all day to get groceries, cleaning supplies, and various other apartment set-up sundries.  SUCH a luxury to have a car with which to do all these things!

We've been in the apartment for a week (which Harriet also helped us find), and it's very nice.  Sort of like a self-contained apartment in a small little complex of about five buildings, each one containing one or two apartment-like townhouses, with a large wall topped with barbed wire.  It's probably one of the best areas we could be in, as it's pretty safe (along with the barbed wire, we've also got a big old gate and around-the-clock security guards), and very quiet.  NO MORE THROBBING AFRICAN DANCE MUSIC EVERY NIGHT!!!!

Work began on Monday at the Ugandan National Archive, and it's very different from Fort Portal, of course.  There's only three employees other than Okello, who is the Director, two of whom have been trained in archives and/or records management.  I won't exhaust myself going into all of the details of what we've been working on there; suffice to say it's been a study in patience, negotiation, and wording things delicately.  There is an absolute abundance of fascinating materials there, but for now we're working on Series 'C' (yet another point of contention, as I believe the organizational structure needs to be totally revamped...), which consists of the government's Secretariat papers dating from 1893 to the late seventies.  Ashley is loving it, as her dissertation research looks at the history of refugees in Uganda (particularly Rwandan) and she is finding plenty of relevant material.

Funny thing--we invited Justine, the archivist, Eva, the newly-graduated records mgt. trainee, and Roscoe (Mbalire), the key-holder/security man/jack of all trades, out to lunch and asked where they wanted to go.  They got rather embarrassed about the place that they usually eat their lunch at, which turned out to be a small wooden hut built out of plants and bamboo which serves local fare to all the surrounding government employees.  Ashley and I couldn't be happier and told them so!  Just as in Fort Portal, they seemed surprised that mzungus would want to eat the local foodstuffs when other, more generic/international fare was available.  Hey, man--I love me some g-nut sauce and omukaro (dried beef) and matooke and posho, just like the next person!  And at Ugx2,500, you can't go wrong.  (That's $0.98...)

I travelled to FP on Wednesday for a meeting with the CAO (pronounced "cow"), the Chief Administrative Officer of the Kabarole District.  Evarist and I were too meet with him to discuss the status of the District's archives at MMU and try to convince him or the District Records Officer to go to the "Archives in Uganda" conference that UM is co-hosting at Makarere Social Research Institute in July.  As it happens (and as Brede had warned me the night before), I arrived at Kabundaire on Thursday morning ready for the meeting, only to be informed by Evarist that the CAO had cancelled and tentatively postponed till next week.  Gotta roll with the punches, man, roll with the punches...  So, needless to say, I did not have the expected meeting but I DID have a lovely trip to FP.  (Excepting my dinner on Thursday night at the Rwenzori Traveller's Inn, where I had tough pieces of steak wrapped in fatty Canadian bacon in gravy that looked/tasted like cat food, two cakes of white rice, lumpy pumpkin soup, and no vegetables--they were 'out'--all while reading Ivanhoe on my Kindle and half-listening to an old American Idol episode in the background.)

Ok, I'm splitting this blog post up into two so as not to overwhelm y'all.  Read at your own pace.  :)

African milk tea and chapati, tea and chapati

This is what I am eating and drinking right now.  U JELLY??!!

I'm at MMU's staff canteen down at Kabundaire, where all faculty members get a free mid-morning tea.  Pretty sweet deal, eh?  Why doesn't America have tea breaks?  We had one every day in Ireland when I was working at the National Museum.  Eleven o'clock sharp.  Interns and staff alike met in the museum cafe and engaged in witty, scintillating conversation while chowing down on chocolate croissants and individual pots of tea.  Lovely.  Here, though, half of the conversation is in Rutooro and I don't understand it (although I've made flashcards, so I'm learning words and phrases which Nino can understand when we meet again in Michigan).  In all seriousness, though, I think it's a great thing.  It really did provide us lowly undergraduate interns with the opportunity to ask questions and talk about our work with our supervisors, and I think it just breaks up the day nicely.  Tea at eleven, lunch at one!  Perfect.

Ah, well.  So, work is going well, and we are steadily moving through processing the documents.  Evarist just went to Kampala again (I think I mentioned this in the last post) and brought back 200 lid boxes, which are MUCH nicer than the disintegrating cardboard boxes in which the documents are currently housed.  This is a major success, people--he has been negotiating and dealing with the suppliers for a long while and they have been less than cooperative.  So, now we can begin re-housing the documents into safe homes.  It's the little things!!!!  :D


Mzungu pizza night was last night, again, and I was the only non-Irishman in a group of seven others.  HEAVEN.  As per usual, I pestered the ones I hadn't met about where they were from, what they thought about NI current events, the Queen's recent visit (and Obama's, too!), etc.  Did you guys know I love Ireland?  I got ambitious and ordered a regular-sized pizza instead of the "baby" size--first time!--big mistake.  My stomach still hurt when I woke up this morning.  More pizza tonight, though; I'm taking Moses and his little girl, Janet, to Gluepot so she can have her first taste of pizza :)  I'll get a calzone.


Can't WAIT to get to Entebbe this weekend.  As most of you know, I recently went off of my meds (for better or for worse), and my body has really been feeling the effects, both physically and mentally.  It kind of feels like having a hangover every day that just doesn't go away.  I'm trying to battle through it, though, and things have improved slightly since last Wednesday (first day of no pills at all; I tapered off over a 3 wk pd).  Still a grumpy witch a lot of the day, but I'm no longer staring at the wall for hours on end like I was the first two days.  Anyway, I'm really excited to go to a new city and meet up with a fellow UM student!  Apparently she's found a pretty decent flat for us to rent, with a kitchen and WI-FI INCLUDED (and hopefully hot water...), so I'm fairly optimistic.  New project, new people, new place!


So, like I mentioned earlier, my Picasa album will be inundated with new pictures sometime this weekend.  Keep an eye out!


As always,
N