A Few Examples of Daily Life

11/21/08 On Mondays our apartment is cleaned by a young girl named Scovia. She cleans everyone’s apartment in our little complex. She also does our laundry. For this we give her between 10,000 – 15,000 depending on the amount of laundry. It’s a really good job especially for someone her age. While she cleans we need to be out of her way so Amber and I go to the university canteen for black tea and chapatti breakfast. The canteen is like a cafeteria/pub and it’s run by a popular gentleman named Benin. There is a television and sometimes we get a little news from BBC but usually it’s set on football (which means soccer of course). They are never ready for us so we wait for sometimes up to an hour for service. This is typical in Ugandan restaurants. I’m told the restaurant industry is less than ten years old here. They’re still figuring things out. After breakfast Amber goes to her office at the university and I go to town and do our shopping for the week.

The central market is a very cool place. Often I find myself just scanning the booths trying to inventory everything there is to offer. Who has the best tomatoes and peppers and which pineapple looks best? Some stalls are very organized and full and the produce is polished to an attractive sheen. Some stalls have very little to offer and their avocados or bananas may be a couple days past ripe. In one corner of the market you can buy live chickens. It stinks over there so I try to avoid it. In another corner there are two long buildings with wire screen windows like livestock barns at the country fair. One building is the fish market. There’s really only one fish in there, tilapia. Dried, fresh, whole or fillets. The other building is the meat market. I’ll never go in there, it’s disgusting. I can see raw cow parts sitting on a wooden bench that’s drenched in old blood and other bits hanging from hooks. At least they’re in the shade. I can’t imagine what the smell would be like in an outdoor meat market. There isn’t much opportunity to haggle for produce. The sellers have their goods portioned out into even numbered price groups. Besides, produce is really cheap. A giant head of cabbage for 1000ush (56 cents), 1kg (2.2 pounds) of potatoes for 500ush, a large pineapple for 2000ush, how can you feel good about yourself if you want to pay less? I get packaged items at a regular grocery store. There are many in Mbarara and they each have a slightly different selection. We get instant coffee in a small tin can. It’s not bad. Better than Maxwell house, much better. The spices are leaps and bounds better and cheaper. I think they must be fresher because after a few visits to one store you get a feel for what’s new and I’ve noticed they go through a lot of spices. The peanut butter is local and out of this world! So is the honey. The crackers and cookies we buy come from Iran. We buy a lot of tomato paste and pasta as well as rice and dried beans. Out of this we can eat Italian or Mexican or Asian meals. I’ve even made tortillas from corn flour grown locally. It would be easier with a tortilla press though. It took me an hour to make a dozen using a coffee mug as a rolling pin and a bowl as a cookie cutter but they came out pretty good.

The haggling comes into play when we’re buying services or things for the car. The roads are bad, as I’ve told you, and we’ve taken some pretty big potholes harder than I would’ve liked to, so today I had a stabilizer and some bushings replaced. I’ve got a regular mechanic already. I’m trying to develop a relationship with him so he doesn’t automatically double the price for a muzungu like me, a standard practice around here. His name is Abas and he looks to be about 22 – 25 years old. He and a friend worked on the RAV for about an hour and the bill came to 15,000ush for parts ($8.36) and 25,000ush for labor ($13.93). When I compute the exchange rate it sounds like a bargain but compared to what I hear other people paying for work coupled with the feeling that every price is doubled for a foreigner I try to haggle with him. It’s not the price it’s the principle. Just because I’m not from here doesn’t mean I should pay double, right? There are a lot of tricks to haggling and I have a lot to learn. One thing I try to do is always get a price up front, before any work has been done. Abas told me he would do the work for 15,000 before he started. I said okay but when he was done he added the 25,000 for labor. He said 15,000 was just for parts! I felt a little stuck since he had done the work already but I told him I would need his services again and I certainly would’ve paid more than 15,000 for what he did so I offered 20,000 more for the labor. He knows his way around a RAV4 and his work is good. Maybe someday I’ll feel like I’m getting a local price.

Being here has definitely made me more of a skeptic. I was going down a city street the other day and was stopped by a man saying I was going the wrong way down a one way. No big deal, there was plenty of room to turn around. But as I was turning around he came to my window and said I needed to pay him a fine before I go. Nice try but I think I’ll just go. He was just some dude on the street, not a cop. Shortly after this incident I found a parking place and headed into the market. On the way in I was approached by a man who had just come from a lighting store. They sell light bulbs exclusively. He tells me he noticed as I was parking that my brake lights weren’t working and I need new bulbs. “Really? I’ll get my mechanic to take a look at them. Thanks.” They were working just fine. Can you blame me for my skepticism? I think it’s saving me money.

The compound we live in is really comfortable. There is a group of about 12 of us that hang out regularly. We cook meals for each other or together. Sometimes we play cards. Sometimes we all go out for dinner. Sometimes we split up and do things as smaller groups. Most of us are American but there are some Brits, some Canadians, Cubans, a few Indians, a Kiwi, 2 Belgians and a Swiss. And there is a constant rotation of guests. Every few weeks we lose a couple and gain a couple more but it feels pretty balanced as far as personalities and interests go. Danny from Santa Barbara runs yoga sessions three times a week out on the lawn. Amber, Danny, and I are helping a local man put together an aid trip to the north of Uganda. There are people there that have lived in refugee camps their whole lives because of the civil war. The war is now over and the refugees are being asked to leave the camps and start their own lives but they have nothing. No possessions and no skills. They’ve been living on handouts, they don’t know how to get a job or how to plant crops or anything. Many of the muzungus living here are doctors and are working in the hospital at the university together. Some of them work for the U.N. and the Millennium Villages Project so they go out into the field for a week or two at a time. Everyone of them has an interesting story to tell every time we get together. This Thanksgiving about 8 of us will get together for a potluck feast. The Brits, affectionately calling it “Good Riddance Day”, are still willing to pig out with us even though it’s not their holiday. I’ll be making my vegetarian stuffing with homemade bread this year because the only bread sold in the stores here is the Ugandan equivalent of “Wonder Bread”. Amber is going to make a pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin. I hope yours is enjoyable and ful-FILLING!

Just a few random facts and phrases I’ve learned……
1. The last time the highway was paved was back in the 60’s. No wonder it sucks!
2. That whole water spinning the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere thing is true. You can witness it for yourself at a café on the equator. And directly over the equator the water doesn’t spin it just goes straight down!
3. The town we’re living in (roughly the population of Bellingham) doesn’t have a mayor but they’re working on it. Also, there are no stop lights or stop signs.
4. It’s grasshopper season here. For the next few weeks you can buy fried grasshoppers, or live ones to fry yourself, in the markets and on the street. They’re legs have been amputated in case you’re worried they might get away.
5. There are a lot of bats hanging in trees around town. They only live in a certain type of tree. I think because the bark of this tree is easy to hold on to. A few days ago they all left. To where I’m not sure.
6. We experience regular blackouts. The power company can’t keep up with the demand of the country so it has to take from one area to satisfy another every few days. There are two dams on the Nile but only one is in operation.
7. The phone numbers have 10 digits and there are no zip codes anywhere in Uganda.