Rain in Bundi

Ever wonder what a rain storm looks like in Africa? Much like a rain storm looks in the States. Ever wonder what a rain storm sounds like in Africa? Nothing like a rain storm in the States! Today there was torrential downpour for a little while just after we got back from a bit of singing and prayer together in English. I was reminded again of the deafening roar of rain on a tin roof...pretty much if you're watching a movie or having a conversation you have to turn the volume up twice as loud or start shouting in order to hear/be heard. But you know what rain means?! The arrival of cooler air! Praise the Lord!

open mouth...insert foot

So, the "glamorous" day I mentioned I was going to have yesterday – it got progressively less and less glamorous as the day went on, culminating in a less than stellar and actually most embarrassing personal performance in a riotous, very fun game of “Bowl Full of Nouns” at the girls’ house last night. Grammar has never been my strong suit and this game was no exception but it sure was fun, and I think I laughed more last night than I have since I got here (save the night Pat and I starting laughing hysterically like junior high girls after a table full of dinner guests left and we couldn’t stop). The fact that I just said that grammar has never been my strong suit only makes the story to come that much more ironic…It might be that kind of story where “you just had to be there” or else it doesn’t quite make sense or seem at all funny, but I’m gonna give it a whirl.

So, this game (which, from the title, sounds way more nerdy than it actually is) consists of three rounds, the first one is like a mix between Taboo and Catch Phrase where you describe nouns with other words trying to get your team to guess as many as they can in one minute. The next round you use the same words but this time you only get to say one word to describe the noun you’re trying to get your team to guess, and again do as many as you can in one minute. The third round is charades with again the same “bowl full of nouns.” Now, I’ve never been good at charades…but I love taboo and catch phrase. It’s much easier for me to use words to describe things than it is for me to use my body to describe a word…It’s the same reason for which dancing has never been a skill I’ve obtained or really even tried to obtain. So, keeping this in mind, here’s the rest of the story. As we’re counting up points for each team after round two, Ashley was saying that she was more hopeful for her performance in the last round as compared to the first two, that she was better at acting things out than describing them. I was trying to express that my experience was in fact the opposite, and I opened my mouth and out came “I’m better with words than with my body.” Gasp! As soon as it came out I thought, “yeah that didn’t really come out the way I intended” as I realized just how much it could be misconstrued from my original intention. Shoot.

One of the guys looked over at me with a kind of puzzled/surprised look on his face that had “did you just say what I think you said?” written all over it! He says with a smirk – “Heidi, what if I said I’m better with my body than with words? As Ashley and Jesse are laughing in a “I can’t believe you just said that?!” fashion…I immediately said, between my own hysterical laughs, something like “okay okay, so that didn’t quite come out the way I intended it to…I’m better at describing things words than I am at acting, okay?!” Which is, of course, so very IRONIC considering how my words had come out so wrong in trying to say how much better I feel about my use of words…oh Heidi…open mouth insert foot…

Okay, so the thing is, that’s not the only ironic thing that happened during the game that caused those in the room, especially myself to laugh…I think it will be enough to say that my name became synonymous with Interpretive Dance! I don’t think you can get much more antithetical than Heidi and Interpretive Dance! Let’s just say I’m way better with words than I am with my body ☺

the docket for the day

I guess dockets really only apply to courtrooms, but it seemed like the right word...

Patient/supply reports to UNICEF
Kwejuna project database updating/data entry
ART clinic ARV register data transfer
Bundi Nutrition bookkeeping revision
market
dinner/fun with the other single missionaries and interns

the glamorous life of a missionary nurse :)

Is it the pants?!

Wednesday I wore my pants with one of the very nifty salwar tops that Court brought me back from India - the lightweight shirt comes down to my knees pretty much. I was expecting to go to Busunga via motorcycle with Basime, and it's much easier to ride on a motorcycle when wearing pants as opposed to a skirt (especially since Basime drives a *bit* faster now that he has some experience under his belt) - but as I walked by the "bike tree" - a big tree in town under which men fix bicycles and motorcycles – and one of the men yelled "dirty woman, dirty woman" in English (which sounds like “dah-ty woo-mahn, dah-ty woo-mahn” with the accent)...he could only have been talking about me, and I wonder if it was because I was wearing pants...I asked my friend Olupah at the health center and she said he was just making fun of me...that much I'm aware of. And then a bit farther another group of men started making "smooch" noises as I walked by...I don't really know how else to describe really obnoxiously loud lip-smaking kissing sounds...and shouting “hello madam! how are you! I love you! Weh! Weh! (You! You!) And surrounded by laughter and lots of Lubwisi I obviously couldn’t understand.

I don't know if you can imagine the internal monologue I have as this is happening..."Shut the &*@# up! You are so obnoxious! I'm walking down the road, what is the big deal?! I walk this way every day - twice. Is it because of the pants? Or is it just the color of my skin? Is it worth just wearing a skirt so you don't act like this? No, because you do crap like this even when I wear a skirt! I’ve seen Ugandan women wear similar things and not get harassed…so it can’t be the pants…White women have lived here, in this village, and walked this road, for about 20 years! Get used to it! Is it just because you’re male? Are you drunk? What in the world could be your excuse?!”

Certain days they behave worse than others. I guess I’m the same way, certain days I behave worse than others.

People in the minority the world over have experienced behavior like this for centuries I suppose, different words, different skin colors/eye shapes/body shapes/disabilities/deformities/opionions/politics/religions/etc. but I don’t suppose the tone of voice has ever changed…every country I’ve been to, the derogatory tone of voice is unmistakable.

One day, we will only appreciate and love the differences we have amongst ourselves as people. One day I will be able to walk down the road/street/path/boulevard without being harassed. One day our love for one another will be perfect. One day I will love and be loved perfectly.

A little bit about a bed...

As you have read here, sleep is really important to me, whether in the USofA or in Africa or anywhere else in the world. And sleeping here has a few extra features added in, namely the mosquito net...now, if you’ve never slept in a bed covered by a mosquito net, there are a few things you need to know to make the most of your sleep experience.
1. It’s really helpful to have a frame of some kind to provide some tension/structure to the net, otherwise it drapes/falls however it pleases all over you in the bed.
2. If you are a mobile sleeper, such as myself, moving around quite a bit in the bed throughout the night, and you have no frame/tension for the net, the net can often be mistaken in your sleepy stupor for a sheet or other light cover. It obviously cannot serve this purpose and therefore clearly leads to tangling, which leads to frustration, which leads to waking up, which clearly is not good.
3. If you plan to stay up and read or do anything inside the net before going to sleep it is helpful to take everything you need in with you in the first place. For instance, if you’re going to read and take your book in but forget your glasses, you’ve gotta flounder around with the net to find the edge and reach out to get the glasses, then you get back in and realize you’ve forgotten a pencil to underline noteworthy portions of whatever you’re reading, so you go through the whole process again of finding the end of the net and reaching for whatever it is you need…then if it’s not in arms’ reach you’ve gotta climb out of the net and then climb back in…really, I’m not as lazy as it sounds but if you get me on the wrong day, it gets a bit frustrating. Much like lots of other things in Africa this requires planning in advance and being prepared for things to change ☺ It’s kind of like my work as a floor nurse back in St. Louis. When we have kids in droplet isolation, or TB isolation is even worse…you get all gowned and masked and gloved and into the room, and then you realize you’ve forgotten a small little connector piece you need for the appropriate IV tubing, or the linens you needed to remember to change while you’re in the room…so you’ve gotta take everything off and go out and get it(or to stand in the doorway and look for Pam and hope she's in a good mood and is willing to get it for you :) and then put all the garb back on and then go back in only to realize the patient has changed their mind and they really do want a straw with their chocolate milk when minutes before they said they didn’t…aaaaaaahhhhhhh!

In addition to the mosquito net, the beds themselves are an extra feature to be reckoned with, not necessarily a “bonus” feature. Now, the Babwisi, and people in Bundibugyo in general are known all over Uganda for being short. It seems rare that I speak to anyone, male or female, taller than I am and I’m not that tall. But it seems to me that the beds all over the country are made for short statured people…how unusual. I’ve never noticed this before but my bed had both a headboard and a footboard, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a bed with both before. I sleep on my stomach and like to dangle my feet over the bottom of the bed, which when you have a footboard is impossible, but may be tolerable if the bed is long enough to stretch out in…not so in Bundibugyo. I’m not sure but I think I sleep also with my arms above/under my head, so that adds some length also…needless to say, a 6 foot long mattress is too short, and I’m only 5’6 ½” tall ☺ I only know because I’ve been having low back pain that cleared after 2 weeks of not sleeping in my bed, and returned after we got back, and it’s worst when I’m just getting up in the morning…Pat has been super generous and traded me my bed for the bed in her extra room and now, not only do I have a longer bed, but no footboard, and a frame for my mosquito net…jackpot! I’m very much looking forward to going to bed here in a few minutes…and stretching ALL the way out ☺ -written 3 June 2008 at 10:30pm my time :)

this week thus far in pictures

This morning, just as we were packing up to go home, this little guy Bwambale arrived with his mom for a nutrition distribution. He's memorable for a few reasons, first that he showed up at about 2.6kg and 4 months old or something like that a month and a half ago or so, spent several weeks on the ward as an inpatient and is now a whopping 4.5 kg...second - he has one blue eye :) I don't really remember the whole genetics square calculation of the likelihood of having a child with blue eyes vs. brown, etc, but Jennifer says that this kid has to have had some caucasian blood in his history to have one blue eye...somewhere way back, there's a muzungu in this one's lineage...this is another one though who has grown into a big boy face from a "little man" face when he was underweight (thin and wrinkled)...And he was flirting with Pat :)
I know you're all probably tired of pictures of these Ankole cows, but this one I took yesterday out of one of the panes of my screened front door...they don't usually come this close to my front door, but today their keeper was a little bit of a slacker so they were just wandering wherever they pleased and I guess the grass was greener on my side of the driveway :)

a few photos

Susana ("sus-ah-nah") and her mother, Ada ("ah-da") - Susana is a really delightful woman who works in my house once a week and speaks about as much English as I do Lubwisi - makes for lots of laughing on both our parts :) And I think we both like to laugh, so it works out just fine :)
I think Pat took this the day after we got back to Bundi last weekend...Kymigisha is on my right, Lydia on my left and Akiki in the striped shirt (Kym and Lydia are Pat's unofficially adopted daughters of sorts - their mom, a good friend of Pat's, died of AIDS this past August)....I'm showing them pictures from our trip...they love looking at pictures, especially when there's animals or people that they recognize. Yes, that's me showing skin above my knees - shhh - only in the privacy of my own home...had to wrap a kitenge around my waist to go out to the bathroom...
Heidi vs. the tilapia - our first night on the Sesse Islands after a long day of travel and my disappointment in our accomodations - it tasted soooooo good :)
A scenic overlook of sorts in Kabale - you can see the teracing of the crops better than in the other pictures I posted...that's Sarah and I in the foreground.