It's a Friday night and Gulu is poppin'. Really - poppin - I don't know if it gunfire or truck backfire. It sounds a little ominous, but as usual - after 7PM I'm in for the night... so whatever is happening will have to happen without me.
Life has settled into something akin to "normal" as the rainy season continues and mornings are cool and the spider population that created such beautiful webs a week or so ago has turned into something more like Arachnophobia. Lots of the creepy crawlies inside this week and some are just too big to ignore, so I capture them in a glass, slip a piece of paper underneath and deposit them outside... Guess I need to do a spider clearing ceremony, huh.
Some progress has been noted on the front of a gaggle of little girls that have followed me home every day for months. These are adorable little girls, but even those came become annoying after a bit. What started as good-natured and curious hello's to "Byonce," the name they have given me (have NO idea why) had become over the course of a few weeks - relentless demands for money and "where do you live." Then they would try to follow me home - as a pack. This is uncomfortable, because home is home and kids here, once they find out where you live, tend to camp out on your front porch and look in your windows. I wanted to discourage this - and the begging - before it became any more of an issue. Taking a cue from a friend, I tried to handle this casually and first explained that demanding or begging form money is considered "bad manners," something they understand. Well, that didn't work and the next time the ring leader brazenly grabbed at my open (my mistake) purse as I was walking away. Well that did it... that's just obnoxious. I knew I'd have to be not quite so nice. So many Muzungus have just handed over money here, it seems to be an expected thing and so much part of the problem. The next day it happened again and the trail of little girls had expanded into a gang of about seven ranging in age from about 5 - 9. Once again, I stopped them before we got to my alley and said that that absolutely could not follow me home, that because they were my friends and I care about them I want them to grown up with good manners. If I let them continue doing this, I would be teaching them bad behavior - etc. etc. etc. One has to choose language carefully, because some of the subtleties of English are just plain lost You have to be very simple and very direct and at the same time, you don't want to make enemies of them because - well - they know where you live. These, it turns out, live right behind me...
Amazingly, they have settled down. For a few days, just shouts from the street. And the next day - there they were following me again in a raucous rag-tag group. I stopped and said hello, and they began again - to follow me. I stopped and said "You're following me..." but they had brought their youngest member - a tiny little thing with a halo of bouncing piglet tails done up with beads - must have been all of two years old - to meet me. I knelt down and said hello - shook hands with this wide eyed child who was part curious and part terrified of the white person. And as we got to the corner, they stopped and waved bye. Somehow, they have decided that this is the cut-off point indicating that - somehow - we have communicated. They no longer demand money or follow me home, but we still seems to be "friends." We're only on day three of this new behavior - but so far so good ;-)
It seems to be one extreme or the other though. When I went to the market last week to shop for vegetables, a toddler ran terrified to his mother all the while pointing at me and screaming. Great laughter all around by the mothers. We tried to make friends, but this kid was having nuthin' to do with this scary white woman.
So life continues. We had the first pillowcase dress class today and it was fun. Great story: I finally finished the first model for the dress, having picked a pillowcase that I figured would be an attention getter and a good motivator. It's a scene with mountain peaks in the background and trees with quilts hanging on clothes lines. Looked like Oregon to me, and the words Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show was on one of the banners. So I took a chance and Googled it. Sure 'nuf - there IS a Sister's Outdoor Quilt Show (Sisters, Oregon not all that far from where Brett lives) and I had the pillowcase that had been designed for their thirtieth anniversary! Mom was a quilter and this was beginning to have the feel of synchronicity. I wrote to the e-mail address, let them know their pillow case had made it all the way to Uganda and was being used in a project to teach village women how to sew. I received an immediate reply - and get this - one of the members of their quilting group works with a co-op of women in Eastern UGANDA making quilts and handcrafts. She collects them, sells them at their annual quilt show and sends the proceeds back to Uganda! The planet is shrinking. As if this is not interesting enough, I wrote back to Brett's girl friend's mother (who spearheaded the pillowcase project resulting in 150 pillowcases) had just returned from a weekend trip to Sisters, Oregon and a friend of a friend has joined Peace Corps and is headed to - yep - Uganda! Flat Earth indeed.
So that's the story of the day and I don't think I can top that for coincidence and connectivity.
Totally unrelated to any of this: take a look at the moth I found on my front porch a few days ago. Took me a few days to identify it because it's not native to Uganda, but comes from Sudan. No wonder it looked exhausted. It's a Madagascar Moth and has a resting wingspan of 5 inches! I was so excited I took a picture and showed my Ugandan friends in the hope they would know how to identify it. They thought it absolutely hysterical that anyone would take a picture of a moth and even care about the name. I was told "we don't have time for that stuff," and thought that was pretty sad. But here it is for your viewing pleasure.
I'm lucky to have discovered this before the new clutch of chickens descended onto my front porch. Seems they like pecking for bugs that live under the papyrus door mat. Heard these rather suspicious crunching-lurking sounds at my front door a few mornings ago and it sounded like someone hanging around and kinda freaked me out. To my great relief, a big rooster and his three lady friends were just breakfasting alfresco.
And on that note, I'm getting to bed, because no doubt that same bird will start crowing early as is befitting of any self-respecting rooster.
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