12 March 2007

Story, Part II

Jess had been seeing more poop and more lizards, but no more rats. This forced her to strongly reconsider her original hypothesis: Ugandan lizards poop.

Jess had been informed by a good friend that Costa Rican lizards poop, but when she tried to ask Ugandans if Ugandan lizards poop, no one really said yes. They said things like, “Hmm. I’m not sure.” Or, “Well, many things here leave droppings.” Jess was hoping for more of a “Yes, silly, of course Ugandan lizards poop!”—type answer. She never got one.

Jess had still been using loads of bleach when she cleaned, but she had often been away from her house, for various reasons- to see friends, to get medical checkups, and to give a talk to the new Peace Corps trainees. On her way home from one of her more lengthy travels, she stopped by a vegetable stand and picked up some tomatoes. When she got home, she placed the tomatoes on a tray on her counter, and, as she usually did, covered the tray with a cloth, to discourage fruit flies and other insects.

Jess’s good friend and fellow not-so-good cook Sarah came over to spend the night, and Jess and Sarah had a great time eating really good food. (But, ‘really good’ as in easy for not-so-good cooks- yummy and bad for you, not ‘really good’ as in healthy, like, oh… tomatoes, for example. The tomatoes remained untouched.)

The next morning, Jess and Sarah got up early, because Sarah had to go home and go to work. They decided that they would have a slightly more nutritious breakfast. (For this meal they would put the Nutella on bananas, instead of on cookies.) Jess had also picked up bananas in town the previous day, and was keeping them on the same cloth-covered tray as her tomatoes.

Jess pulled back the cloth to get the bananas, and noticed something odd about one of the tomatoes. Jess’s immediate thought was, “Wow, that tomato was so ripe that it just split right open!” Jess didn’t know if really ripe tomatoes could just split open like that, but, well, she lived in Uganda, land of the unexpected. Anyway, it was her first thought, and first thoughts don’t have to make sense.

However, upon closer inspection of the unfortunate tomato, Jess discovered that it wasn’t exactly just split, but that a significant chunk was missing…

Upon even closer inspection, Jess discovered…oh no. Oh no! Oh no no no no no no no! Really? NO. Yes. YES. There were, in fact, BITE MARKS on this tomato.


This tomato was not simply over-ripe, it had been EATEN.

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH. (That was how Jess felt.) Jess told her friend Sarah to come look, in case she was seeing things. Sarah confirmed that they were bite marks. Sarah and Jess looked around for critters. They found nothing, but, noticing some poop on the floor, Sarah made the side comment: “Crazy lizards and their black-and-white poo!”

Jess REJOICED!!! to know that a) someone else was pretty sure that lizards poop and b) someone else’s lizards also poop in black and white. Here is a picture of said bi-color poop, in case you yourself ever find it necessary to identify the defecation of a Ugandan lizard:

(I mean, really, you never know. One year ago, did Jess think she would be a Ugandan lizard poop expert? HECK NO.)

Jess concluded that her original lizard poop hypothesis was correct. She also concluded that a lizard had munched on her tomato; her counter was near a window, and lizards loved to hang out by her windows to catch the bugs. The curtain even hung down to the counter, enabling easy lizard access. Jess thought, “Oh well, it was just a one-time thing. Only a tomato.”

Sarah went home to work, Jess also did some work. At the end of the day, Jess came home. She was hungry. She went to check out her food situation. She pulled back the cloth from the cloth-covered tray, and what did she find?

Another tomato. EATEN. Jess recognized that this was clearly her own fault for leaving her tomatoes in the same exact place, but she was still highly annoyed. Jess ate tomatoes every week, and kept them in the same place every week. Her tomatoes had never been eaten before, and now twice in one day???

Here is a picture of one of Jess’s many lizards (this one is a baby). He is thinking, "I may look cute and harmless, but watch out! I will gobble your tomatoes and make no apologies."


And here is a picture of Jess and her second (eaten) tomato. Jess was thinking, “Are you inconsiderate, malevolent lizards TRYING to get on my nerves??? Do you think that this is a joke? That I just buy tomatoes for the fun of it? Do you think this is FUNNY?”



Then Jess realized that, well, maybe this was a little funny. She smiled:



Jess also developed a new hypothesis: Ugandan lizards have teeth. That’s pretty darn funny right there.

Jess has now decided to keep her perishable food inside a pot, with a lid. Jess is saddened by the fact that she can no longer think of her lizards as cute, friendly, helpful bug-eaters, for now she knows that a cloth-covered tray poses no threat to these blood-thirsty, black-and-white-pooping, ferocious tomato-scarfers!


WITH TEETH!!!

09 March 2007

Hello & Goodbye

You say goodbye, and I say hello
-The Beatles


Yesterday I got to go meet all of the new volunteers from the March group, it was super fun! There are SO MANY of them- 50! There were only 12 in my group, so training will be a very different experience for them than it was for me! I was on a “Homestay Experience Panel” with a couple other volunteers, where we talked about what it was like to live with our homestay families, and about life in Uganda in general. It was fun, but I feel bad because I kinda think we scared them half to death, and I hope they don’t have a bad impression of Uganda.

When you first come, you want to know the worst-case scenario. But, it’s really scary to hear about rats and bats and feeling useless for months upon months and getting really sick and lack of privacy and people beating their kids and husbands cheating and town drunkards and people suffering and dying and kids not going to school and being homesick and people constantly asking you for money because your skin is white. But, that’s life here. And when you’ve just gotten off of the plane, it’s scary. I feel like we presented the reality, but I’m afraid that we didn’t take into account that the reality is completely overwhelming.
Anyway, it was fun to meet them, and they’ll make it- PCVs always do! :)

While yesterday was good, yesterday was also very sad, because one of my very good friends left the Peace Corps. I know it's the best decision for her, but it's still such a loss... she's so awesome. But, I know that she's going to do great things wherever she is. I kinda think she’s going to be the President in about 20 years.

So, a small tribute, to one hell of a hard-core PCV:

Here's to the girl who left her family, fiancé, and career, to do something no one would have ever, ever expected her to do. To the girl who brought her blow dryer to staging, so that she could look fabulous right up until the time we left. To the girl who fully and happily participated in all the fun but horribly corny staging activities, then at night on the phone told her family what a load of kum-bay-yah-BS it was (that's when I first knew we would be friends). To the girl who, on the plane, told me how incredibly worried she was about learning the language, but then tied for highest score on the end-of-training Luganda test. To the girl who wore an unsightly traditional Ugandan dress on homestay thank you day, just to make her homestay family proud. To the girl who saved her shoe from the pit latrine by catching it with her foot! (And who has many many other crazy pit latrine stories, but I'm sworn to secrecy.) To the girl who had huge worms on her floor- worms so big she originally thought they were part of the decorative floor tile. To the girl who was marooned on her bed during a midnight flash flood, and could do nothing but watch all the cockroaches do the backstroke. To the girl who gave an awesome speech, in Luganda, on swear-in day- it sounded flawless, even though we had just written it the night before. To the girl who, when her overcrowded taxi wrecked in the ditch, just climbed out the window- and hauled her gas stove with her back to town to catch another ride. To the girl who had to clean up the mess after a goat had bloody diarrhea in her bedroom. To the girl who made friends with her incredibly sketchy neighbors- all of them male motorcycle drivers. (Well, there was one petrol station worker...) To the girl who laid on her concrete floor instead of her bed, so that she wouldn't be “the volunteer who stayed in bed all day.” To the girl who turned down an important local leader’s marriage proposal, even though it was accompanied by eggs and cabbage. To the girl who survived more intestinal problems than you could ever, ever think possible (I seriously don't know how her digestive system is still functioning). To the girl who missed her fiancé so so so much, but stayed a million miles away to help people learn about HIV through drama. To the girl who had terrifying nightmares from mefloquine malaria pills, so bad that she couldn't ever really sleep. To the girl who was so dedicated to her organization that she missed her own birthday celebration weekend at my house. To the girl who cooked outside, because she didn’t have an indoor kitchen area. To the girl who went to Sunday mass in Luganda, even though it just wasn’t the same. To the girl who danced with her organization’s drama group- and endured old women from the community shimmying all up on her. To the girl who shared whole snickers bars from her care packages, even though she loved snickers the best. To the girl who said, “Excuse me, I’m going to face my fears”—and meant it literally.

To the girl who survived the absolute worst that Uganda had to offer, but somehow laughed about it all... I'll miss you, Nalumansi!

Courtney, Nora, Me, Amanda on our last night together...

05 March 2007

Trust

And every time you speak her name / Does she know how you told me you'd hold me / Until you died, 'til you died / But you're still alive
-Alanis Morissette, You Oughta Know


Very few Ugandan men are faithful to one partner.

I shouldn’t be able to write a statement like that and have it be true; you should be forced to say, “Jess!!! You’re stereotyping, you’re generalizing, you’re being unfair!”
But, I’m not. I wish I were.

I’m teaching health for girls who are in their second year of secondary school (~8th or 9th grade). I tell them that I have a boyfriend, and—I kid you not—the very first thing my girls ask is how I know that he won’t cheat on me while I’m here.

I suppose it’s not an entirely unreasonable question—two years is a long time—but, the fact that it’s the very first question is more than a little surprising. It didn’t just happen once, either. I teach six classes, and I talk to the other students that I don’t teach, too. Upon learning my relationship status, it is the very first thing that everyone wants to know.

For my girls, it’s an initial, subconscious association:
boyfriend = someone who will cheat on you

So, they ask me- how can I deign to think that my particular boyfriend is any different? It is an honest, innocent question; they are not asking it to be funny or to get a rise out of me—they just really want to know. But, how do you answer a question like that? How can you explain trust, to girls who will never, ever fully trust a man? To girls for whom trust is not something real, but something to be scoffed at? To girls who are 99% sure that my boyfriend is going to cheat on me, but that I’m just refusing to believe it?

If a woman trusts a man here, it does not mean that she is in a good relationship. It means that she is naïve. Stupid, even.

So, what DO I tell my students?

I tell them: I know he won’t cheat because we have agreed to be faithful to each other. Because we work hard to be open with each other and to communicate our feelings to one another. Because if our feelings changed, we would tell each other. Because we care about each other and don’t want to hurt each other.

But, I can never say the simple truth: I know because I trust him. I can’t say it, because the word trust carries no meaning for them.

I have the option to trust. My girls don’t.



I’m afraid they never will.