unbecoming muzungu dinner

It was 10pm. We were all hungry. We sloped down the street to grab some cheap pork, but it was late, and pork was finished. They had the usual stuff, but because it was a popular pork joint, it was at the usual jacked-up prices. We walked a bit further and found a small unbecoming restaurant & takeaway, presuming unbecoming meant the food would be cheap. It wasn't, or at least, they were attempting to bank on their proximity to the pork joint, which we should have known. But it was late, and Alex and Gerald easily bargained down my plate of "chips chicken" (a plate of chicken, fries, and in this case, rice) from 8,000/= to 5,000/=. Then they got quiet. They weren't ordering. They weren't eating. I asked them what food they were getting, no answer. I asked them then why are we here, no answer. After a short pause, Gerald said, because you need to eat.

I said I could eat anything, we could go anywhere. When we left the pork joint with no pork, I said let's go somewhere else, somewhere that's cheap. I squinted to conceal my anger in silence for a few moments before speaking. I told them they should know that I'm not OK with getting food, if they're also hungry but can't get food. I told them they were treating me like some muzungu they had only known for a few days, and not a friend they had known for 7 months. The latter felt worse.

They only had 2,000/= to share between the two of them. They said they wanted to buy chapati off the street, but it was late, and chapati was finished. I asked them, why didn't you just tell me, why don't we just do that, no answer. After a shorter pause this time, Gerald said, because you need to eat, because a muzungu taking chapati for dinner was an ironically "muzungu" concept to them, even after I'd spent the past 7 months eating everything they'd been eating, and with abandon, or maybe the chapati was a lie and with only 2,000/=, they already knew they'd have to go without taking dinner. Which is why I was surprised when Gerald, out of some unfounded feeling of obligation, ordered 2 sodas, 1,000/= a piece, with Alex rolling his eyes in disgust at Gerald wasting their money. My plate of chips and chicken followed the sodas. I told them what's worse than getting food, if they're also hungry but can't get food, is having to eat it alone in front of them. They mustered two blank stares, but with a flicker of mild amusement concealing what I really knew to be hunger.

I had almost no appetite, but I poured the chicken broth onto the heaping plate of chips and rice, and forced myself to eat half of what was on the plate, attempting to convince myself that I was hungry, that it was my dinner, that I was paying for it, that it was respectively, their choice, my choice, that they were OK with it, and that I was making it worse by not just also being OK with it. And while some part of me wanted to believe all that, I didn't, because it was based on the idea that we could both afford "choice" that night, or that this food was "mine," and the fact that this food "wasn't mine" was not entirely untrue.

By then it was 11pm. I felt like an idiot. I know Alex and Gerald have gone many uneventful nights without taking dinner, but without any hesitation or reluctance, they walked with me for over half an hour to the pork joint with no pork. They continued walking with me, after discovering there was no pork, looking for a restaurant where we could eat. Then they bargained down the price of what I wanted to eat, speaking for me to the waiter in Luganda, and shaving 3,000/= off the cost of the plate. So the price now being 5,000/=, was it not true that 3/8 of the meal they had technically paid for, or at least, 3/8 of the meal that I wasn't having to pay for? And the sodas, shared, was another 2,000/= I wasn't having to pay for, making for a bill which would have originally totaled 10,000 shillings: 5,000/= of which I paid for, 2,000/= of which they paid for, and 3,000/= for which they bargained and none of us had to pay for. Did I mention that I felt like an idiot? I slid the plate across the table, and I told them, gwada (have), because you need to eat.

(animated)gifs...(dot)net

This is why Uganda can't have nice things:



and



*sigh*

This website came highly recommended as a great resource for finding multimedia by the 3 facilitators teaching the 2-day E-Content Quality Assurance Workshop I attended, one of a series of workshops over the past several weeks held at Makarere University's School of Education Curriculum Department's e-Learning Lab.

I walked out of the workshop on Friday with Abigail, Immaculate, both Makerere University professors, and Margaret, my old co-worker, and I felt this crazy notion of sisterhood among these 3 strong, ambitious, and youthful women I was talking with about technology and education. They were laughing and so full of as much energy as the 20-30 schoolgirls I walked by on my way to the workshop that morning. And then later, I felt sad that the feeling was so palpable for being rarely felt enough.

(In 2002, the average age of marriage for a Ugandan female was 17, and the average age of first birth for a Ugandan female was 18.)

It didn't occur to me until I was living and working in Kampala, how hard it is for women in developing countries to choose a field of study like Computer Science or Engineering, and how unequivocally amazing they usually are, and how surprisingly easy it is to relate to one another. There's subtle indicators like this everywhere, like when Janepher, the doctor at IDI who sits next to me, joked about buying a "boda" (motorcycle) to drive herself to work, but then quickly added that she can't because of "public opinion," or when Mariam, one of IDI's IT staff at the Learning Hub, matter-of-factly stated that men don't want to marry a woman that's too educated or intelligent, for fear she won't respect them.

And like animated gifs, what Ugandan culture demands from a Ugandan woman, food preparation and cooking, sometimes on a charcoal stove, sometimes fetching water in jerry cans, sometimes hand washing clothes, the power outages, the lack of computer resources, and insanely expensive Internet, its all just so... distracting.

menstruation and matooke

I think I've found the cure for cramps, and it is...

*drum roll, please*

Matooke!



So now I obviously have to either: 1) live in East Africa forever, or 2) locate a matooke supplier (aka a "matooke guy"... or girl!) back home in the US.

***

Not to mention produce obnoxious feminine hygiene product ads from which I will reap untold billions.

Free to be the Internet and Me

I've been thinking a lot lately about creating a website, which of course, means I've been thinking a lot about choosing a domain name. [Insert mixed emotions here], the possibilities!

A quick Facebook API request consisting of https://graph.facebook.com/me/friends?fields=name,website&access_token=accessToken and I had a JSON array of every Facebook friend I have along with every website listed on their Facebook profile. Yes and yes, to whatever you're thinking. :)

After a quick check on who.is, I happily breathed a sigh of relief that both susanmlister.com and suebuntu.com are currently available (for now), and although I should probably wait before I take the plunge and sink *gasp* $9.99 each into buying them, I might just go ahead and do it.

Frenglish

So after 6 years of Spanish in middle school and high school, and 3 whirlwind semesters of Italian in college (*sigh* mi piace molto la lingua Italiana), I might have to learn some French.



Bonjour!

My Samsung GT-E1087T mobile phone has a Qiblah direction app

Sometimes, in the evening, it gets really quiet in Kampala, just enough that you can hear the faint call to prayer, mixed in with the crickets and birds and the sporadic bursts of children squealing in tears and laughter.

My Mother In Three Photographs

My Mother In Three Photographs by Susan Kiguli

Her face looks out
flawless
her sexuality electric
in a mini dress and sheer satin stockings
the girls of the 1960s
beautiful beyond belief.
She is looking through the camera
like her space is here and beyond
enchanting and enchanted
by the times when dreams of freedom were young
the fortunes of Uganda
hot and sizzling.

My mother in the 1970s
More sombre but her skin
Still flawless
The abrasive years gentle on her youth.
Her body wrapped in a long nylon dress
stopping her ankles and
full sleeves touching her wrists
hooded sorrow in her posture
the flowing dress
is not because
she is a widow (which is by government action)
but it is a government decree.
Her magnificence and elegance
Seems to support the given name of the dress
Amin nvaako.*

My mother in the 1990s
neat short hair
luring in its intricate curls.
She wears a busuuti
a sign of the times
a return home, a finding of
uncertain peace
a maturing of a woman and nation
an endorsement of a recognition of the troubles
she has weathered
a sitting down to count her losses and blessings
and a hand over of the future.

*Amin Nvaako means Amin let me be or Amin leave me alone.