Walk back to homestay after school, 28-7-09

A blog about my walk home from school:

Our walk to our homestay from UCU each evening was a beautiful adventure.

We left campus usually around 6pm, but I want to tell you about one particular walk that was just the epitome of a Mukono Town experience.

It was a Wednesday, I think, the 2nd to last walk of our homestay experience, since we were leaving on Friday. It was a little after six, and unfortunately Christine and I were both really hungry, having suffered through a particularly fishy lunchtime experience. Days like this one were never designed for success, because the period between lunch and dinner seemed to stretch interminably. One could justify “grabbing” a snack on the way home because we knew dinner wouldn’t be until after 9 at night. However, such rationalization conveniently failed to include the fact that we would also be served evening tea at about 7:30 or 8, which was usually a fairly large pastry or pile of the local nuts. But anyways, this particular night we persuaded ourselves that tea would probably be small and dinner late, so we had better help our hungry tummies out while we still could.
So we went out the Old Gate at UCU on purpose, to pass by the Rolex stand. I can’t believe I haven’t described these before, because we probably eat three a week, but they are an amazing piece of street food. Basically the guys operating the stand have piles of chapatti (that is finally the right spelling), fairly hot off of their tiny charcoal griddles. The griddles are flat, round pieces of metal that slope towards the center with hot charcoal underneath. When you say, “One Rolex, please,” the Rolex-makers crack two eggs and chop some onion, tomato, and cabbage all into a plastic mug. They then make a sort of un-folded omelet on the charcoal griddle and when it is cooked through, throw a chapatti on top. The whole pancake is then flopped off onto some newspaper, rolled like a jelly roll, and popped into a small paper bag or tucked into a scrap of paper. Hm this is making me hungry.
Ok so the point being, Christine ordered a Rolex, but I was trying to hold out. Not for any righteous motive such as “Saving room for dinner,” but because of a higher street food purpose.

It was my intention, upon this night, to purchase: meat on a stick.

Unfortunately, but predictably, I got too hungry watching Christine’s Rolex being made and bought two sumbusas (pastry triangles with a yellow-pea paste in them, much better than they sound) from the stand next door. They were awesome, and renewed my determination to make it to the meat stand without getting over-full, let alone have room for dinner. So since we had gone out the old Gate, we had to walk for about 15 minutes down the main road from campus to town, with cars whizzing by and boda bodas (motorcyclists with passengers) competing with us for “sidewalk” space. However, it really wasn’t that bad, the only dicey moments were when a particularly stubborn Ugandan (there’s no such thing as courteously walking off to the side, to let someone else pass, here, it’s always a competition!) would inadvertently force us to tight rope walk the edge of the drainage ditch.  But by this point we were used to all this and could bully along with the best of them.
Actually getting into Mukono town was always fun, but always overwhelming. At 6:30-7pm the big tractor trailers are out in full force, filling the air with diesel fumes. I used to be pretty intimidated by how close cars will come to you, without a second thought, but now it just seems normal, once you understand how little road space there is to be had. Pedestrians can jump, for goodness sake! What car could do that? Naturally, those who can jump the most nimbly must give way first. There’s also dust in the air, the smell of the guy walking in front of you wafting back, the occasional hot breeze, and the tantalizing scent of street food.
Oh and let’s not forget the boda boda men and Matatu (taxi) drivers. Every boda boda man (the name for the motorcycle drivers, insane, the lot of them) is convinced that you are a damsel in distress and he is your knight in shining armor, mounted upon a glorious steed, ready to carry you off to wherever you wish for a fairly reasonable fee. The worst part is, they are convinced that you are also laboring under this delusion. Thus, winsome smiles, friendly hands, courteous addresses usually to the tune of, “AYE MZUNGU! YOU COME WITH ME! I TAKE YOU THERE!” are without cessation thrown your way. It takes some getting used to, believe me. They really don’t mean anything by it, though, just looking for any new customer. Plus, unbelievably, they are a completely acceptable mode of transportation here (not for USP, though, of course). I personally will never trust them because of the UCU student I went to shake hands with, only to find his right hand looked like a cantaloupe with little nub fingers, due to a nonchalantly expressed, “boda boda accident.” Yeah…
The taxi drivers just go, “Kampala Kampala Kampala Kampala Kampala?” But they have enough people looking to catch a ride to pretty much leave us alone. We did learn not to walk between the taxi stand and the taxis, though. Large crowds are never a real comfortable idea, especially not when you are between them and their object.
About 5 or 10 minutes after getting into Mukono, if we went the long way to get Rolexes, we would pass by our host father’s work. He’d greet us, ask, “How has been your day?” (the grammar is on purpose, and this particular syntax is the only thing most older Ugandans understand) and ask us if we would like to buy milk for tea. We’d say yes, of course, and then he’d promise that if we successfully made the tea, he’d sing us a song upon his arrival at home. Enough motivation for me –I’ve yet to hear an African who couldn’t carry a tune. We would take the milk money (haha… oh elementary school) and go a bit further down the street to probably the only guy in town who owns a refrigerator (except for the restaurants and supermarkets). He kept a big bucket/vat/tub of milk in this fridge (one of the ones that opens from the top), ready to ladle out. He got to know us after a few days and it was nice to have him greet us with a smile and an, “Olyotya?” (how are you?). Our father would usually have given us the all-too-frequent black plastic bag (they’re all over the ground here), and the milk man would ladle our two litres into a clear plastic bag which he would carefully place in the black plastic bag. If you’re starting to think there’s a lot of plastic bags here, there are. On the plus side, they’re reused like a million times. But when they are thrown away, they’re burned, which is awful for the air quality and the environment. Then again, they burn all their trash, and have probably not a single landfill, though I don’t really know.
Carrying our milk, we would proceed to complete the first of two street crossings. These were seriously harrowing affairs, though more to my mind than Christine’s. Every time I said a prayer, convinced that I might as well be ready for the inevitable. But every time we made it without a scratch, the only close calls being when those stinkin boda bodas snuck out from behind a semi. But really, it’s not that big a deal, we’re just very careful. As I said in my other note, things became easier once we learned you can totally stop in the middle of the road, sometimes it’s actually safer than the curbs. Nobody wants a head-on collision, go figure, so they leave the center alone. My strategy was usually to stalk a Ugandan for a little while who looked like he/she wanted to cross, then follow them from a bit downstream. Then you were guaranteed a fairly wise timing.
After the milk, on this night our next goal was the meat-on-a-stick stands. This was just something I had to do, having walked past the tantalizing smell of just-butchered, grilling meat so many times. The meat here may be tough, but it’s certainly fresh and I have yet to have any unpleasant side effects. I know, Mom, I know, but that’s not gonna stop me.  So we approached the long-admired stands of chicken, beef, and some other unidentifiable varieties laid out in steaming rows on newspaper. I asked about the prices (really stupid move, but sometimes you can’t help it) and decided to cough up the 700 shillings (about 30 cents) for some chicken. Much to my dismay, the guy made me remove the stick from my piece of chicken! That seriously was like the whole point, to eat this chicken right off the stick. But I had a big enough challenge as it was, with the bones and ligaments and whatnot. I think it was probably a thigh/breast type piece, but honestly I don’t really remember. It was really good, though, much better than our dining hall chicken. The best part was the outside, all crispy and charcoal grilled. However, probably not a do-again, because I can buy a Rolex for the same amount and those are more filling.
So at this point we’re still carrying the milk and fending off the boda boda men (which means pointedly ignoring them), about two-thirds of the way home. We crossed the street for the second time, but this section was usually quieter and thus less intimidating. Once we got to the other side, we had a difficult decision. Walk in the street, boda bodas and cars whizzing by too close for comfort, always looking over our shoulders, or walk up by the stores, feeling all the while like we were walking through someone’s front yard. We usually (this night included) chose to walk up by the stores, because it was quieter. However, there were always little kids playing and women cooking and men moving around rebar or bunk beds (both very common items to be just laying by the street) that we had to pick our way through. It felt intrusive, but that’s pretty African in itself. On this night (the night of being so full, though that may not be as poignant throughout this account as it should be), for the second time we heard a man behind us, speaking Luganda. Again with the, “aye, mzungu, olyotya? Mzungu? I am your friend, how are you?” We always ignored this, but we were getting worried because he wasn’t going away, like usual. But then all of a sudden we heard with an American accent, “Jeez guys, turn around!” And it had been our USP friend Jeff, the whole time! He was walking home the same way and doing a really good Ugandan man impression. He felt bad, though, when he heard that that had actually happened to us for real before.
Jeff got to accompany us on the best part of our walk –Sumbusas! There’s this one stand on our walk home that makes really big, bean-filled sumbusas (there’s meat, pea, and bean varieties) for 200 shillings each (about a dime). Our father buys them for us for tea, sometimes, but they’re not his favorite. He said he likes something that “occupies his mouth” for longer (aka takes longer to eat, like tiny little sim sim seeds). So this night, it being one of our last, we decided to get them for ourselves in case our father didn’t pick them up on his way home. They’re so awesome, how could we not? So we did, and ate them while walking with Jeff, who had a chapatti. Actually, eating while walking is really taboo here, because is shows a lack of respect for food. Drinking or eating in class is also a faux pas, for the same reason. But at that point we didn’t really care, so we chewed happily while talking to Jeff about his family.
You have to keep in mind that at this point I had had two pea sumbusas, chicken off a stick, and a large bean sumbusa. Definitely not set for success when it came to dinner that night. We finished our walk home in peace, with the remaining 15 minutes or so being in our “village” and off the main Mukono road. The best part was at the end, when our little friends from the village would run out to grab our hands, try to carry our bags for us, and clamor loudly, “How are you?” If we by any chance tried to say, “Hello,” first, it was almost always responded to with, “Fine!” As if there was only one acceptable line of greeting and the proper answer would be given whether we behaved correctly or not.
Despite the massive quantities of street food, at dinner I ate like a champ. I believe our father did, in fact, bring home sumbusas and we enjoyed them with tea of my making. Father sang a “thank you Emily, thank you Christine” song to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” a classic. Then about an hour and a half later, we had smoked fish, matoke, and rice. Somehow I was just still really hungry, and ate a respectable portion of everything. And that is no laughing matter. Here, a respectable portion is about 5 lbs. No kidding. And to eat anything less (as unfortunately Christine usually did, not her fault) was a crime of the most insupportable nature. Our poor Mama would be convinced we were sick and our father would rack his brain for menu options that would be more suitable for us. Needless to say, the people pleaser in me made me eat way more than I wanted or needed every night. I was getting pretty good at shoving it down, though, until we came back to eating dining hall food all the time. It’s just not the same.
Anyways, that was our walk home, an incredible cross cultural experience, the vividness of which I don’t ever want to forget!

--Emmes