I sit now in a white plastered room in the village of Bujugali. An empty doorframe leads into a smaller closet space; this casket-sized structure serves as Soft Power Health Clinic’s Pharmacy and Dispensary. Two adjacent blood colored file cabinets sit bulging awkwardly with precariously stacked medications in some sections and one lone pill bottle in others; aging masking tape reads ‘syrups’, ‘analgesics’, ‘P2 Agonists’ in order to denote the spaces where the drugs ought to go. I reside in one of three makeshift consultation room; the largest room in the building serves as the laboratory where John Bosco “the boss” and a large gentle man called Livingston sit all day ceaselessly handling blood samples. They look for typhoid, yellow fever, syphilis, and our number seller here in Uganda: Malaria.
It overwhelms me to speak of work right now; I have a project design budding in its early stages. Just germinated. A seedling I’m so eager to watch sprout, I run the risk of leaving it pale and withered as my over attentive torso blocks it’s sun. In any case, I’ll report back soon.
I moved into my host family home last Friday. My room is two meters into the front door, 7 paces to the right, past the living room and right on till morning. Cool worn cement floors and walls adorn the whole structure. The outside has a brick façade, but I know the truth…the village is warm.
I live in an agrarian jungle; a banana plantation right outside our back door, coffee plant volunteers seeding everywhere, each home equipped with its own durable sweet potato field and as I look to the west to watch the sun set from the main road I look past an ocean of sugar cane.
beautiful beautiful kawa...coffee bean
My mother, Rose, is dark and strong, with speckled honeycomb eyes and hands the size and texture of a baseball mit. My older sister, Silvia, is small and waif-like, and yet incredible durable and grounded; she gets stuck in quick sand Christianity too often for me, but her intentions are good. And the last of our humble abode is Edith, she is 10 and has boyish facial features, from what I can tell she has 1 dress, 1 skirt and 1 shirt…all beyond repair. Her status in the family seems to be dangerously close to house servant and she is so soft spoken I’ve all but given up trying to hear her quiet obeys; I found out just this morning that her constant hacking cough is because she has malaria…there is a sever lack of communication in my house.
The 25 or so children that reside on my street alone are priceless. The day I moved in, I had an audience of about 10, just peering curiously into my window for hours…they didn’t want to chat or beg, they just wanted to see my things…things are a rare commodity out here.
My mom had snuck a baseball into my suitcase and that provided them with hours of entertainment…a baseball. Oh, and my poor bear Oliver (many of you know him, some even look on him with detest, but alas…) he spent the day getting thrust high into the air only to plummet to the dust wherein groups of 4 or 5 would pounce upon him and pull violently at his ears and paws until one victor arose with him as a captive. I’m particularly taken with an 8 year old called ‘Jamali’, his English is good and he is as curious about me as I am about him. His family is Muslim and as it is Ramadan, him and his 5 siblings haven’t yet been blessed with gift of the foul chocolate covered protein bars I’ve been distributing desperately to distract and quell the band of ragamuffins. I met Jamali outside my house early this morning and asked if he wanted a walk to school, he said no, he didn’t have school… “Why?”… “No money”. So much for Musevini’s Universal Primary Education Program.
I’m still learning, still absorbing…nowhere near a place called familiar or normal. But this place and these people are good. They are pearls, silk, cinnamon and silver.
