First Challenges

Dealing with the loneliness has been the biggest challenge. It feels like I am under house arrest. I have a very limited circle I can travel beyond and I have mostly kept within those bounds. I can navigate a taxi but the twins impede my movements. Even when we walk the short route to the supermarket, one or the other doesn’t want to walk and I end up carrying them. So, there is the issue of movement which doesn’t allow me to travel to meet someone that might want to talk to me.

Then there is the issue of understanding. Most people speak English here, however, they don’t pronounce things like I would. My maid, Sophia, was talking about “pads” the other day but somehow the way she pronounced it and it sounded like she was saying “pots.” I tell Sophia that we will have macaroni for lunch and I go to see what she is cooking and it is rice. So, I guess we will be eating rice. In all of this mis-understanding I am eager to work through it and arrive at a better understanding but it seems that most Ugandans I have around me—they look embarrassed and then shyly drop the conversation. Stephen says that they often transliterate their Lluganda language structure and just use English words on the Lluganda structure. So, usually it is I that doesn’t say things in a way they would expect.

I think the most significant conversation I’ve had since I’ve been here was with a woman while I walked along the road, near my house. I stopped to speak to a mother feeding her child from a thermos. The little girl was about 3. When I greeted the mother the first thing out of her mouth was, “Do you want to give me some clotheses?” I didn’t know how to answer, so I just didn’t and instead asked her about her child and where she lived. So, then she was more persistent and asked me for food. I decided to just bring her to my house and feed her what we had for supper. I realized this was likely a situation where it is assumed the white lady’s purpose for existence is charity but I didn’t really care. I tried to make small conversation while she ate in my back yard and I held her child. She freely asked for a whole list of things and I gave it to her if I had it and I told her I didn’t have it if I didn’t. When she had finished eating I blessed her and she went on her way and I am sure she used and was much appreciative of the things I gave her. Most people don’t have much and use the things they have far beyond when the usefulness of it has ended.

The girls are faring much better than I, now that we have landed on a few meals that they can and want to eat: chicken, rice and sometimes beans, macaroni and spaghetti sauce. They are very happy that I am at home with them all the time. They are very excited when Daddy comes home every day. They run and play inside and outside and in the mud puddles with sticks and rocks. They climb the veranda poles and peek through the hole in the back yard wall to watch another world of Ugandan kids playing in their yard. We go for short walks down the road. We walk across the street to run freely on the concrete in front of the store that sells us the occasional soda.