We are somehow XTREME!

I caught my reflection in the glass of a notebook store the other day. We have no mirrors in my house so I’ve developed a ‘pretty pretty Peggy Moffit’ complex over the last month or so, eyeing myself in mucky sewage puddles, windows of supermarkets, car doors. The short glimpse set me into a mild self-centered fit; I looked fat. There is no doubt that I’ve put on a few subsisting off an entirely carb and starch diet, but it was discouraging none the less. I asked Samwiel, my new friend and trusted late night boda driver, if he thought I was fat. “Em, no.” he said, “You are somehow…medium.” Brightened my day a bit I suppose. Better medium than fat. Ugandans will also comment on how I’ve “increased” since arriving… also flattering.

It also highlighted one of the many quirks of the Ugandenglish vernacular, the use of ‘somehow’ instead of ‘somewhat’…I think.
I may ask, “Samweil, how was the day?” He replies, “oh, it was somehow ok.”
I think I have mentioned “the what?” before. This is a convenient tool employed to encourage audience participation during a conversation as well as stall your fellow converser so that you may think of what you are meaning to say next.
For example: “To make amagi amafumbe, yes please. First you do what? You go to buy eggs. You move from where? The Ivnamba trading center. Then you put them in the what? The boiling water. That you do what? You eat them… and they are somehow good.”
I’ve found myself parroting these techniques recently in order to communicate more efficiently, because in Rome you do what? As the Romans somehow do.

The Fam. Mama Rose on my right and sister Edith on my left.

We rafted the Nile yesterday. What I really mean is, we rafted the $%&!@*&^% Nile!!! It was a 12 rapid, 6-hour extravaganza; complete with three raft upheavals and subsequent passenger spewage, a guide who kept saying things like, “Oh god! We gonna die!” and “Here comes the shit falls!” and, as far as I’m concerned, my closest encounter yet with death. The run we did consisted of 2 grade II, 2 grade III, 4 grade IV and 4 grade V rapids; I was the only one in my group who’d ever even been in a raft before, needless to say there was a lot of screaming, panic struck faces and lost paddles. It was a really fantastic day though, one of those indirect sunlight days; pleasantly warm with thunderheads always looming just beyond us. I didn’t run into much difficulty or mental chaos throughout the day, until the last rapid. Itanga Falls, its called, “the bad place”, a massive 300-meter froth bowl famous for its “washing machine” maneuvers. We were the only raft out of 5 that decided to go down; of course we didn’t know this until the end because we went first. Two of our group of 7 removed themselves from the boat pre-rapid with a pleasant smile and a “yeah, hell no.” The first wave didn’t topple us, but we got stuck and there was this fleeting moment when I thought, ‘Wow, we didn’t flip, that’s incredible’. Little did I know that within seconds I would be toppled beneath the raft spinning in violent head over feet flips, one after the other after the other, I didn’t know what was up, who was down, if I was alive… my breathe had been knocked out of me upon contact with the wave so having to hold it wasn’t really a concern. I surfaced for a brief moment coughing, only to be sucked back down, it was this second round that ripped off both my shoes and jammed water so far up every orifice I think ill be crying Nile water for a month. When I was finally spat out centuries later a safety kayaker, I like to think of him as my guardian angel boater, pulled up along side of me, shouting at me to swim quickly to the raft so he could find my shoes… find my shoes, in this hell hole? Ok. I choked and spat my way to the raft only to have the guide say, “Hold on, feet up, feet up! Lots of rocks, lots of rocks!”… By this time my head was pounding so hard from all the water pressure in my nose and ears that comprehension and listening skills were rendered moot. Sometime after that and before sun down we made it back to land. It’s all kind of a blur of forced juice boxes and compulsive attempts at popping my ears. Two hours later after spending a crying fit in our dorm room shaking my head to one side, plugging my nose and blowing, tugging on my ear lobe…I had surrendered to the unbearable pulsing pain. My girlfriends came and got me and told me a raft guide knew just the trick. He heated up some olive oil, soaked two cotton balls in it, twirled them up and jammed them into my ears. He motioned for me to leave them there and then disappeared. Slowly but surely the pressure subsided and I was granted the privilege of having a chit chatty night at the bar reliving the rapids and telling the tails of my brush with death with my cohorts… we were Team Extreme. Our shirts are going to say, “TEAM EXTREME: We are somehow extreme.” Oh, and my guardian angel boater found my shoes, both of them…