July 8 part II

We continued along a small foot path, jumped over the open sewage ditch, past the outhouses, and found ourselves at Willie’s apartment. It was an all concrete structure boasting a kitchen, living room, and three bedrooms. Willie and his 5 brothers and sisters live here together with Willie being the oldest and the caretaker. His parents had fled Rwanda and have since returned leaving them behind. We have not gotten into why exactly. It was livable though, and much better than many of the places that surrounded it. We had just come here to drop off Willie’s things and get an idea of how he lived. It was yet time for “activity” to really start in the area so we headed back to the main road to have some coffee and “people watch.” As we sat at Santo’s restaurant and ice cream parlor enjoying ourselves we tried to discuss with Willie some of the differences in American and Ugandan cultures like hand holding for example. We also explained the pimp-prostitute relationship that is in the U.S. to get at our apprehension of trying to intercept this economy for interview purposes. We also had a lengthy discussion on a certain slang term used in the U.S. that white people don’t use because of its derogatory and racist undertones. The word is used freely here and it took us some time to explain the difference.
We sat there for some time waiting for darkness to fall and leaning about one another. Eventually Willie explained that he knew a pimp and we should head off to meet him. I can’t explain how uncomfortable I was with this, but also knew that if we could pull it off it would be an amazing opportunity. I willingly followed trying to keep that confident yet unimpressed air about me as to not stick out any further than I already did. We didn’t, and couldn’t, blend in no matter what we did though. As we walked the scene was something out of a movie. It was now pitch black and the only lights came from shop candles and the many “lodges” and “bars” that lined the way. Smoke billowed in from god knows where greatly decreasing the visibility and increasing one’s anxiety. People yelled, made comments, and laughed in our direction but was all done in Lugandan so we had to pretend they were not talking about us. As we reached our destination Willie directed us to walk through a covered brick ally with no lighting with a group of men and women sat staring at us. It was a drive way to a “lodge” and a single car crowded the space between the gate and the land lord’s quarters. There was a wall of the lodge that had crumbled to the ground on our left and kids jumped from brick pile to brick pile in amazement that a mzungo was in their midst. To the right was a narrow ally where a number of men sat in wait. Looking past the waiting customers there where shanty wooden rooms topped with tin sheeting. There was red light flowing through the doorway and casting an eerie glow on the dark shadows that walked quickly through. The only thing keeping you from seeing what was taking place in these “lodge rooms” were sheets and often they were thread bare. It was too real to be real. It was like watching a movie. It was honestly so much to take in that I stood awestruck, unable to process the reality of where I found myself. Willie called to one of the agents/pimps to go get his friend. We quickly found out that pimps here are referred to as agents and that there are huge differences in this pimp-prostitute relationship that we are used to. It is not one of oppression, violence, and/or protection from the men to the women. Instead the men only participate in this business by acquiring clients for the women in exchange for a small fee. That is the extent of their relationship. This fact really helped reduce the anxiety of coming face to face with a pimp/agent with no preparation. The guy was actually really kind. He talked to us for quite some time and we were able to get a lot of information from him including that he was married and yet still slept with the girls. We talked to him for a good 30 minutes on topics of HIV, condom use, problems, reasons, and all with Willie as our translator.
As we finished talking to him, Willie asked if we could talk to one of his girls that he was an agent for. We waited alone as people stared and obviously were talking about us. To pass the time the agent sent one of the clients over to talk to us, but he was reluctant to have a discussion. He informed Willie that he didn’t feel comfortable discussing this sort of things with researchers. After a little more uncomfortable waiting the agent brought out one of the girls. She walked with a lot of attitude and sat on the car hood with arms crossed. She wore a very loose fitting denim skirt that was sewn with a jagged edge at the bottom (like tinker bell’s dress), her shirt was a stripped knitted shirt of white, pink, and red horizontal stripes. She also wore a hooded sweatshirt with a zip up front that had a pink background with white stars. Around her neck she wore a plastic chain painted to look white gold from which a picture of Barack Obama hung in a clear plastic casing. Her hair was braided at the temples and the rest was held in a hairnet type thing protecting her afro-style hairdo. She spoke very little English and informed Willie that he would again have to translate. The noise on the street began to intensify and our ability to hear each other was greatly diminished. More clients began to roll in as well so we decided to sit in the small patio outside the land owner’s quarters so that we could sit out of site and actually get to be seated. Willie and the girl sat on one bench and Ginger and I sat on a bench facing them. The reality of the situation really started getting to us at this point as Ginger and I sat awestruck, unable to come up with questions and struggling to articulate our ideas. Luckily we had Willie with us. Willie got his degree in community development and this was also his third interview to witness. This allowed him to ask pertinent and worthwhile questions despite the fact that I was a little overwhelmed. We learned of the trials and tribulations that this girl had to go through. It was very emotional. She was 21, gives all her money back to her family, often gets beat by clients and thugs/robbers, and prey to faulty condoms. She talked to us about wanting to learn any kind of skill so she could do something else. HIV testing was not a reality because of the stigma and cost to get there and the Korean condoms they use break more often than not. When she began to cry it was heart-wrenching. We gave her some money so that she could go home early and then headed on our way.
None of us really spoke a lot as we walked back to Willie’s place. It was pitch black at this point and walking became treacherous. The people heckling us also increased in number and intensity. We stood under the large tree in Willie’s aunts front yard as he sent one of the orphans to grab his phone from his place. Willie began to discuss why he made such an effort to get us in to talk to these people and that he also had extreme interest in the research we were doing. He saw the importance of gathering information from the source versus the ideas other people may have on the situation. Willie would make a good anthropologist. After our little discussion we headed back to the main road. Willie had a prayer group that he had missed to be able to help us and wanted to go introduce us. That’s when I got scared for the first time. It wasn’t the going to visit a prayer group, but the bum that leaned over and coughed on me as we made it to the main road. For the first time the fear of tuberculosis came screaming back to me. Lets just keep our fingers crossed. Anyway, we walked a couple of blocks down from Willie’s street, stepped into another ally and through the gate of a highly walled compound. The house behind the intimidating door was actually very nice and built prior to the shops on the street front. Anyway, we went ahead and joined the prayer group. Willie introduced us to everyone and then we had a seat. We told everyone what we were doing here and how much help that Willie has been as to give him at least some alibi for missing his meeting. We didn’t stay for long and decided to head back home after this. Willie walked us to the nearest stage (by hand mind you) and trying to give us directions on how to get home he quickly realized that we didn’t know where we were going. He decided to hop on the taxi with us to get us to the correct taxi in the taxi park.
We really still don’t have this taxi park thing down yet. Once we get to the right park we are fine, it is just getting there that is the problem. See, there are three taxi parks. All three are downtown (very close to each other) and none of them have the same destinations. So, you just have to know which park has the taxi that goes to the destination you want. The taxi parks are also hard to find. They are just empty lots between buildings so unless you know how to get to them you won’t find them. This is why we have so many problems. There are no street signs here, most buildings look the same, streets are all crowded with people, and signs that you would normally use for relative location can often be the same on multiple streets. We usually don’t even attempt the taxi park anymore unless some one takes us there. Anyway, we got to the taxi park with Willie’s help and got on the appropriate taxi. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait long for the taxi to fill up and we were on our way. Ginger and I didn’t speak much on the way home. Our experience had been a lot to handle and left us needing a lot of time to take it all in and reflect.
I came home, had a drink, and headed off to bed. I had been quite a day!