This House is Not a Home
It might only be of interest to a few readers, but I thought I should mention my living arrangement. In the town of Arua (pop.50,000), I live in a leafy "suburb" about a 20 minute walk from the center of town - or 1,000 Ugandan schillings by boda-boda, a common way to measure distances) occupied by wealthy Ugandans and mzungu, or white folk. It's fair to describe the concrete house within a barbed-wire compound as, truly, in the "colonial" style. It looks like must have been built about thirty years ago. Hard to say if that's pre-Amin or post-Amin construction. As with a lot of the European-influenced homes in Uganda, this one has large veranda where I spend most of my time, as long as there's daylight and no mosquitos, which is to say not much of the time. Heavy-duty barbed-wire fences or broken-bottle-topped concrete walls, along with guards is pretty much standard in Uganda. If there's no guard, thieves will do just about anything to break in.
Next to the main compound (on the right) is the servants' or boys' quarters, as they're called. This is also standard. The boy's quarters are small, the bathroom is less pleasant, etc. Debby, my boss lives there. I share the house with John, the program manager for the West Nile office. Despite the appearance in the picture, it is a large house. There are three bedrooms, a very spacious living room, a large dining room, a large kitchen and two bathrooms. Aside from the two beds, there are two small couches and an easy chair. There is no dining table, no chairs, no furniture in the kitchen, the dining room, one of the bedrooms or most of the living room. Nor is there hot water, an oven or a fridge. Kind of like camping, but with the addition of a large, concrete fortress. It is a strange, empty place, where sometimes, as I'm lying beneath the mosquito net, I feel as if I'm living in a modern art installation or museum. The only lights are compact fluorescents on the ceiling, so a kind of blue, clinical light fills the place. I've made things homier in my room with the addition of a kerosene lamp.
The sun here bursts vertically out of pitch-blackness at about 7am, and plunges back into the same a little after 7pm. This is, like many things, a contrast to life in Minnesota.
Here, Ojile eats dinner in front of the building. Ojile is one of the six guards who rotate between the "residence" and the office. He is also a charming, good-natured man, like many of the Ugandans I work with. It goes against my American sense of egalitarianism and self-reliance, but having guards seems to be pretty much a necessity here.