At the invitation of Janet Agenonga, the cleaner at the WellShare office here and the cook of my Monday through Friday dinners, I joined her family yesterday on a visit to her daughter Proscovia at St. Mary's Girls' Secondary School. The school is about a mile away from Janet's home, but the firm, loving grip of the Catholics keeps her daughter out of sight for three months at a stretch. I know this is nothing new for Catholic boarding schools, but I was a little surprised by the isolation. But who am I to say complete isolation isn't what girls between the ages of 12 and 20 need most? As far as I could gather, about 1,000 girls live and study at St. Mary's, many of them hailing from the Arua area. Parents are allowed one visit on one particular Sunday each term, so the the walled school grounds were covered with excited parents and siblings, enjoying a rare visit inside the walls.
The visit involved the four other Agenonga family children, along with Janet's husband, Richard, and a few cousins eager to see Proscovia, or Pross for short. I met the family where they live in the nearby village of Ediofe, which curiously is a sort of Christian enclave from the religious heterogeneity of the main Arua town. So, as any good Christian village sheltered from neighboring Muslims will do, Ediofe eats a lot of pork. This is kind of the pork capitol of the sub-county. In the center of the small village, you can spin around and count at least half a dozen "pork joints," many of them are walk-up shacks where you order your pork and then grab a seat at any number of bars. When the pork is fried or roasted, ready to eat, they bring it to you where you're sitting on a patio, drinking a cold beer. What a world, eh? Clearly, a case of Christian ingenuity. I toured the school with Janet's family, following Pross around, trying not to get in any trouble as a 26-year-old white man wandering the grounds of a Catholic girls school. I listened as Pross, 16, talked about her studies and doted on the siblings and cousins she sees rarely nowadays. She wants to become a doctor, which will involve another couple of decades of studying, but could eventually lead to a lifestyle a little less austere than the one afforded to her by Catholic school. Included here are photos of Janet, her husband, Richard, her children, Mother Mary, an unusual statue of the school's founder, and the imposing school gates. On leaving the school, we walked past an aging red stone church, which looked like it could've come from Italy. The sun was low on the horizon and shouting kids played football (soccer) on a wide dirt field. After seeing Janet and Richard's house, we walked a little down the hill to the center of town. There, Richard and I had a beer before I caught a ride back to Arua. It may have been a Sunday, but the din coming from the patio bars in the small town of Ediofe didn't show it. Drunks on the left, drunks on the right. Empty bottles littered the tables and you could see at least one flask of Ugandan gin (that is, not gin) passing around. This, I thought, must be the dark side of the pork joints. A different sort of Christian ingenuity. As best we could, Richard and I talked over the noise of the drinkers and beginning of the football match on t.v. We were interrupted by an especially tipsy man who insisted that I allow him to marry my sister. His words, as I understood them, were "I would like to confer with a lady like you." After making sure he wasn't propositioning me, I explained that I wasn't in a position to give away my sister. He persisted. I told him I'd get back to him.A brief explanation: I was working in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States (a full description for any of my African readers), as a coffee shop barista and a cheese monger. This was the off-season employment I had found to get me through to the on-season of leading a backpacking trip to Alaska through the Minneapolis YMCA Camp Menogyn in June to August 2010. But one can only make half-caf double soy lattes and cut aged cheddar for so long, or at least I could only do it for so long, so I jumped at the chance to volunteer in Uganda. I'm volunteering for a Minneapolis-based organization called WellShare International, formerly Minnesota International Health Volunteers. Some of the work WellShare does is with Somali immigrants in Minnesota and some of the work they do is in the East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. All of it involves public health and a particular focus on women and children. I asked where I might be of some use, and I was directed to a malaria control and prevention program they are leading in the West Nile region, in the northwest corner of Uganda. The WellShare office here is in the town of Arua, though the programming is reaching many tens of thousands of residents throughout the region.
This first photo is from the rustic, affordable front step of my "s/c" room at the Red Chili Hostel - that is, self-contained. Luxury of a certain sort. The second photo is from the passenger window of Peter Mugwanya's "Special Hire" as he drove me around Kampala on March 13th and 14th. A "Special Hire" in Uganda is not to be confused with a "taxi." If you ask for a "taxi" you'll actually get a mini-bus, also called a "matatu." At Peter's suggestion, I took pictures discreetly. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to me to find out that people in Uganda see cameras and they think money. If you take a picture of someone, they'll demand you pay, often whether or not you ask for permission first. The same rule can apply to vehicles or buildings owned by people. So, Peter suggested I take pictures without holding the camera to my eye - that way I wouldn't arouse as much suspicion. Hence, the goofy photos.
This is, unfortunately, not my house, but instead the WellShare International West Nile Regional Office here in Arua. It was not so long ago a residential building, though WellShare has converted it into an office for about ten staff and volunteers. You can see a much-welcome storm cloud was coming from the east to break the 90 degree heat and humidity. The second photo here is from the same spot, but to the left, of WellShare's head security guard, James, standing proudly near his bike and security post. Security guard, you ask? Well, here in Uganda, the distance between the haves and the have-nots is pretty unfathomable, so some of the have-nots will break into to any building and steal anything. Violence is not a concern, but the safety of property is. Keep in mind that thievery is often punished by a lynch mob, and still, people are driven to steal. But James has a job and he's smiling.
These two photos were taken on my first drive to the town of Yumbe, 90km north of Arua, where I will be doing most of my work in April and May. This shot is probably of Maracha, a town en route. This is a pretty typical shot of the main street of one of these small towns (although you should keep in mind there's nothing typical about a skinny white man in the passenger seat of a Land Rover taking pictures) - dirt road, bikers, pedestrians, yellow signs advertising the South African telecom company MTN, etc. The second photo shows a couple of bikers in the side-view mirror on the same drive. It's worth mentioning here that the roads range from okay and paved to atrocious, washboarded and full of potholes that could destroy a car or truck. These towns are also much closer to the Sudanese border, where the weather tends towards dry and hot. There is a steady stream of semi-trucks streaming north into Sudan, where there must be some serious demand for what Uganda is selling. I should also take this opportunity to describe the mixed traffic. On the highways (and the "highways") there are cars, trucks, lots of motorcycles, even more bicycles, and even far more people. No one adheres to any dotted lines or shoulder demarcations; this is truly the open road. Driving in a car means constantly honking to warn slow bikers and walkers up ahead that you're barreling through. That way, women with massive loads on their heads can skip to the side of the road, and men biking with 50lb. charcoal loads have time to swerve into the ditch.