June 13

June 13, 2009

Becky called this morning!!!! I am all smiles now. It was 6 am here when she called so I was a little groggy. It made me so happy though to get to have a conversation and hear the excitement in her voice to be talking to me. I could hear our friends Emily and Katie in the background and it really made me laugh. I do miss being able to hang out with my wife and relax with our friends over a couple of beers, but I will be back there soon and need to live in the now.
After talking to Becky I really wasn’t tired. I also found a ginormous mosquito in my net with me and had to hunt it down. Unfortunately, it splattered all over my sheets when I caught it which kind of made me uncomfortable. I then spotted a gecko on my ceiling and watched it darting around for a while. With all the encounters with creepy-crawlies while still in bed, there was no way that I was getting back to sleep. It was about 7 when I got up. I decided to make myself some breakfast and sit down and watch some Friends. I think I may have done better living by myself….too bad that didn’t pan out.
I am looking forward to running errands today. Becky told me that she sent me an e-mail and I want to upload my pictures. I am really excited.

We took our time getting ready today. It is Saturday after all and we don’t really have any obligations. I made sure that I had all of my notes typed up and pictures in order and we set out. We walked the low road, as usual, to get to our internet café. Saturdays are interesting in that you see many women running about doing laundry, buying groceries, and etc. while men sit around and hang out. This makes the walk to the internet café to be especially tense with bouts of heckling both in English and Lugandan and many more staring eyes than we are used to. This walk is always full of tension of this sort, but Saturdays are especially so. Can’t say it is something I can get used to. After many encounters, it seems that staring is not rude, impolite, or even discouraged in this culture. It is something really hard to ignore and to be honest, it is getting kind of old.
The internet café owner gave us a welcoming “hi” and seemed happy to see us again. I took my laptop this time so that I could upload pictures and get my e-mail updated. He helped me set it up and we chatted about how long we would be here and where we were from. Ginger got on her own computer because we knew it was going to take a long time to upload all of my pictures. I got to work on answering e-mails, uploading pictures, and cleaning out my e-mail boxes. Come to find out, Flickr limits the number and megabytes that can be uploaded in a one month period. I decided that Picasa was a better way to go, and the upload speed was much faster. All in all it took me 1.5 hours to get all of my pictures uploaded. I combed through the over 300 e-mails in my school account and post posts onto the blog. The slowness of the internet connection does grate on my nerves and I was rather anxious by the time I was finished. Ginger had gone to grab some tea in the attached café to wait for me to finish. The server decided to come say “hi” when she found out I was there, it made me feel welcomed/liked.
We decided to head to the grocery store on the way home. We decided that Payless may be a better bet for finding cinnamon for French toast. We crossed the gas station to take the high road back home so we could stop by the Payless. The trip takes less and less time each time we do it so it seemed like no time until we reached the store. Traffic is horrible on Saturdays. There are many road forks or 4-way intersections that would be monitored by a light in the U.S., but here it is just a free-for-all. It took us a while, but we were eventually able to cross the road and get to shopping. We grabbed some ingredients for French toast, some beer, and other essentials and headed home. The walk back was extremely stressful in that we were walking on the side of the street. There is a deep ditch on one side and stop-and-go traffic on the other. The space we were walking in was being taken over by the motor cycle taxis and left walking home to be quite challenging.
The rest of the afternoon I spent reading, alternating between the HIV/AIDS book and Margaret Atwood while enjoying the sun and breeze on the patio. After a couple of hours of relaxation, Ginger and I decide that we were going to venture out at night for the first time since we have been here. About a week ago we spotted a large outside bar and restaurant that set back off the road and promoted live music that we set as our destination. We got ready and headed out with me deciding on long pants and real shoes to minimize my mosquito bites, which worked. The quarter mile walk was an enjoyable one with the sun setting, many people out and about, and being able to move at twice the speed of traffic. Fewer stares on this walk.
The restaurant/bar set a block off the road with a gravel parking lot being closest to the road. The restaurant itself was concealed with high “compound” walls painted yellow and boasting Bell beer advertisements both inside and out. We were welcomed in by the parking attendant and as we made our way down the steps into the compound we were met by a female server that welcomed us and insisted on escorting us to our seats. The restaurant was all open air. Against the front wall (next to where you walk in) was a raised wooded platform that housed the only pool table and was covered with a thatch covered awning. The left wall was also covered and tables were set up underneath with a low wooden wall and concrete floor designating the dinning area. About six tables fit in the space and all chairs in the place were plastic lawn chairs. We were led to the 18ftx12ft tiled dinning area that probably doubled as a dance floor. Tables were at knee level and made out of tree section that had been stained and lacquered. This space was covered with a high, lofted ceiling, thatched roofed hut type structure. It was highlighted by spot lights to show the intricate thatch work and height of the hut ceiling. There were gravel walkways lined with wooden boarders and the remaining grass spaces were filled with tables. The back wall consisted of a bar lined with bar stools. The odd part was that there was only one window to order from and the rest of the bar was guarded with iron bars, more ornamental than jail bars but resembling them all the same. The right wall consisted of the kitchen which had open windows for viewing covered with more bars, and then the restroom. The restroom was the sort one would expect in a run-down campground. A winding maze to gain access (no doors), a dirt trough in the ground as a urinal leading to a drain, and then one sink that also drained into the same drain. It was different, and not in a good way. Ginger explained that the women’s restroom consisted of stalls that boasted porcelain bowls on the floor that required squatting. Different.
Ok, so our experience. We decided to stick with just the Bell beer as we already know we like it and that it was cheap. We watched as some middle school aged girls dance, and rather provocatively I might add. I am guessing that dance mimicry is something that is cross-cultural. To our left was a large group of people our age gathered together around two tables that had been pushed together. There were almost 20 people in all and they were enjoying food, beer, and heckling the performers. Sounded and felt oodly familiar. To our right sat two couples that were enjoying what seemed to be a double date. They spoke mostly in English and one looked identical to my wife’s childhood friend, Tierney. It was creepy. The other three tables that were in our dinning area were all couples enjoying beverages and food. The food smelled really good but we decided on one adventure at a time. As we enjoyed our local beer we watched as the corner stage next to the pool table began to be set up for music. By set up I mean they set up for milk crates, one on top of the other, and placed a large Yamaha keyboard on top. This was the only instrument they needed. They would program different Caribbean, reggae, or salsa style beats, add in different melodies that would play on repeat, and then play different synthetic instruments for the chorus. As the night progressed and the heckling continued, we realized that we were watching karaoke. This made it even more entertaining as people got up to sing and dance, but with much more confidence than in the U.S. I loved it though. The stage was a raised concrete platform topped with only the keyboard and make-shift stand and two microphones, only one of which had a stand. The left corner of the stage boasted a prison cell which in actuality was the DJ and sound booth. The walls of the stage were painted black and decorated with music notes and Elvis-like caricatures in red and yellow paint against a black background.
After three beers a piece we decided to head back. Six beers were only 6,000 Ug.Shs., which is around $3.00 U.S. This reality combined with the food smelling and looking delicious, and the friendly people and amazing atmosphere, we will be back. We had spotted a pizza place on the way to the bar and decided that it sounded like great drunk food. Walking along the road proved interesting since there are no street lights and the headlights from cars are the only thing lighting one’s way. The lights of the pizza place were lighting the shopping center where it was housed, the parking lot was full, and the little diner style restaurant was half full. The diner sported a bakery case, and ice cream and shake counter, and an open air pizza kitchen. We sat down at a 50’s diner style table with red plastic chairs and were greeted with 80’s Coca-Cola placemats. Placemats seem to be the norm here, we even have them at home.
The menu was remarkably Americanly modeled. They had 24 hour breakfasts of different combinations of eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, and muffins, pizzas with many different toppings or “make your own”, and different flavored ice creams, sundaes, shakes, and smoothies. We got a large pepperoni with green olives and oregano in homes of plenty of leftovers for the next day. The pizza was acceptable, but not great. It tasted like pizza except the pepperoni which tasted like that cheap frozen pizza, the cheese was highly processed and greasy. It curbed my appetite as did the Pepsi in the tall glass bottle. We took half the pizza back for breakfast, and ventured out on the rest of the pitch black hike home. We had to go much more slowly since every time a car passed it would take a couple of seconds for your eyes to adjust back so you could see. That was until we reached our road which wasn’t lit at all, and had to walk at a snails pace in hopes of making it over the loose rock and erosion fissures that plague the path home. I grabbed another beer and Ginger and I discussed our anthropological observations of the days events. With a full stomach and beer I fell asleep quickly.
It was an exciting and eventful day. I am feeling much more relaxed being out and about. This place is really starting to grow on me as well and hopefully some where I can return to in the future.

Research Possibilities
Many anthropologists have both domestic research they conduct as well as having an international site for research. With my experiences here so far and the vast amount of connections I am making, I think I may have found my international research site. There are so many research possibilities here, and I feel an odd connection to this place.
Malnutrition is a major problem here that I would be interested in looking into further. Also, during the many regimes there have been an number of mass graves and disappearances of people that individuals are wanting repatriation of to their home lands. That fact, combined with the visible variation between different tribal groups here, I think there is a vast possibility for physical anthropology work. The important part is that repatriation is not going to be something supported by the government, but would require someone who can interview the people in the villages to identify the location of the human remains and details of the missing individuals. I think this would be an amazing project and one that I will be contemplating for a while.