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.  :)