Rural Homestays

March 4, 2009, Wednesday

Rural home stays were absolutely incredible. I just spent the last week in eastern Uganda in the region of Soroti, in the village of Serere. I was with a wonderful family who became very close to me. My Papa was an Anglican priest, and my Toto (mother) was a wonderful mother who taught me so much about simple living and living a traditional Ugandan life.

I’ve learned much of their language during my short stay. They loved bringing me around to other families and neighbors to say hello in their language and carry on a very short conversation. Yoga = hello. Eyalama aanyun = It is nice to meet you. Ejokuno = likewise. Sometimes they would test me on words and see if I knew them. It was really hard for me to hear their words and repeat them and then remember them at a later time. I’m a very visual learner and need to see how something is spelled before I can pronounce it the way they pronounce their words. I was also given an Ateso (local language) name. I was sitting in church, in the front row, and the entire congregation asked me to introduce myself. They had great difficulty saying my name and therefore decided to truly make me a Teso (the area I was in) child and dubbed me Atim (ah-team) which means mercy. So now, if you add my Lugandan name to my Teso name and my American name, you can now call me Ashley Kwagala Atim Rodriguez, Ashley Love Mercy Rodriguez. I must say the sound of Atim sounds much better than Kwagala, though both have great meanings.

Church was a fascinating experience; I missed most of the message since it was in Ateso, the local language. We sat right in front, and of course were about 15 minutes late. My Papa was the head priest of the congregation and he was also 15 minutes late. We spent the first half hour in praise and worship, my Toto (mother) shared her Teso hymnal with me and I sang some familiar hymns in Ateso. We sang Rock of Ages and other hymns but they were just in a different language. After the praise and worship, I was asked to introduce myself. Everyone was fascinated to have a white person in their village. I was the second white person to ever stay for a week in their homes. We then moved to the sermon, my Papa gave the sermon which I completely missed since it was in Ateso. After the sermon was more singing and offering. Offering was very interesting. There were three baskets and we were to place our tithes into the offerings. Well, I walked up and put mine in along with everyone else, however it was a little different than I had seen before. Along with literal coins and bills, there was a chicken, bags of nuts, bags of cow peas (a type of veggie), and other bags of food and spices. After everyone was done, a lady walked around the congregation selling the chicken and bags of food. The money was then given to the church. It was so cool!

The food was a little hard to handle sometimes, not the actual taste of the food, but the amount and the timing. Much of the food was absolutely delicious, and then there was some that I had to force down my throat with a smile. I ate a plenty of cassava, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, beans, beef, pork, fish (with the bones, tail, and head still attached), chicken, atap (millet bread), millet porridge, and more. Millet is their version of wheat. They make millet bread (which is more like a big lump of play dough but with a slightly better flavor), they make millet porridge (which was absolutely wonderful), and more things made out of millet. The timing and the amount was pretty hard to handle. We had breakfast/ tea around 9/10 every morning. Lunch was between 1 and 3:00. Evening tea was usually at 7/8:00 pm. Dinner was usually around 9/10:00 pm, sometimes even 11:00. I was told often that I “feared food” because I couldn’t eat very much. It was really hard to eat at night when I was exhausted from the day and had just had tea an hour before dinner. Now tea is not just a cup of tea and cookies. Tea consists of a full cup of steaming cows milk with cocoa and sugar. We also have a full dish of Irish potatoes, a cup of g-nuts (similar to peanuts), and sometimes pork. This is tea, dinner is about an hour later. Dinner was usually atap, some type of fatty meat, rice, matooke, and something else. It was so hard to eat. It was usually good, but just so much. We also ate everything with our right hand. I’ve burnt my fingers a couple times but it was fun to have everything as finger food.

I almost butchered a chicken. I was standing on its feet and its wings and had its neck in one hand and a knife in another. It was still conscious and moving slightly and I could feel its pulse under my fingers. I have no problem with other people killing chickens and me eating them, but when I’ve held a chicken for a while, then have to stand on its wings and neck, and then saw through its neck with a dull knife, I just couldn’t do it. I don’t think my family really thought I would do it; they just wanted me to have a picture of me almost slaughtering it. But we had chicken one night and it was delicious. I also ground several foods on a grinding stone, made Teso cookies (pretty much fried dough), and shelled ground nuts/g-nuts (similar to peanuts) until my fingers almost bled.

Overall it was a wonderful experience. It was fun to disprove much of the Ugandans thoughts about Americans. They thought that we couldn’t do hard work, they thought the sun would literally make my skin peel off if I was in it too long, they thought there was a machine to do all of our work so we’ve never worked before, they thought we never needed to wash our hair, and so much more. So I basically worked like crazy to prove that Americans were not all lazy bones and that if we wear sun block our skin will be just fine. I was so surprised at some of their beliefs about America.

I also learned a lot about simple living and being truly content with what you have. This family had very little, but they were so generous with the little they did have. For example if someone were to come by the house, my Toto would immediately pull up a chair for them and bring out some tea or a little snack. They did not have much food, but believed God would care for them so they care for their neighbors. They have never been rich and had even been without food sometimes. But they have never gone hungry for a long time (besides when the insurgency was happening several years ago). They have such a deep faith in God; it was so inspiring to live with them for the short time I was there.

Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my rural home stay. This weekend I’m going to visit with my real American sister Amanda who is doing the peace corps for the next 2.5 years. We’re meeting in Kampala, hopefully going to eat some American food and maybe some ice cream and then I’ll head to her training home in Wakiso district where I’ll spend the night with her and head back to UCU in Mukono on Sunday. The following weekend about 30 of us are heading to Jinja to go white water rafting on the Nile. It should be incredible. We then have about 8 weeks left at UCU. One of the weekends we’ll head over to western Uganda to go on a Safari. Our last one and a half weeks we’ll spend in Rwanda learning about the genocide. I’ll then spend about 10 days with Amanda in her rural village, then head home. It’s hard to be bored in this place!