Sarah in Uganda

The rainy season has begun. It will now rain for two or three hours every day for the next two months or so. The constant rain results in even more red dirt (well actually it’s now red mud) everywhere you go.  My flip flops have become platform shoes as the mud adds about 2 inches of height—which clearly I need since I’m already 5’9”—and there is not much point cleaning them because as soon as you walk anywhere else the mud accumulates again. The upside is that everything is turning a bright, luscious green and the people are happy because rainy season means their crops will begin to grow and they will soon have money from selling their crops.

Last week was the final game of the soccer tournament that I mentioned in an earlier blog. The grand prize for winning = a cow! The Ddegeya football team soared through all their games undefeated and made it into the final.

The final score of the game was 1-0 Ddegeya! Although in all honesty right before the game ended I was under the impression that the game was tied at 0-0. Within the first 3 minutes of the game, the opposing team’s goalie fumbled the ball and kicked it into his own net. This would have seemed to be the first goal but there was much fighting and debating, none of which we could understand, that resulted in a goal kick hence our impression that the goal was null. Then later, Francis scored on a pass and it was disputed that he was off sides when he scored (or that’s what we think they were disputing since once again we couldn’t understand anything that was going on) so we thought that goal was taken back as well. Once the final whistle was blown it was clear from the mayhem that erupted that we had lost something in translation and that Ddegeya has in fact won the game. The trophy ceremony was unlike any that I have attended as the team and the cow, aka the trophy, sat in the middle of a giant circle of everyone from the village who had turned out to support the team. The cow as then brought home but wasn’t killed until the following morning.

Watching the butchering process was an experience to say the least and I will definitely think a little differently about my favorite food, cheeseburgers, from now on. When Tom was here last year one of his projects was to build a playground structure for the kids to play on. It’s a huge structure complete with two platforms in the shape of a ship, and a set of monkey bars (and now a tire swing compliments of Elliot). Not only is the playground structure a great place for the kids to play but it was also the ideal location to become the butchering station. Sorry to break the news to you Tom, but it really did work out perfectly. Once the cow had been skinned and the insides cut out, they hung the meat from the monkey bars and then used the bottom platform to cut up and distribute the meat. At this point we still weren’t sure how the consumption of the meat was going to occur: did everyone get their one slab of meat and go home or were they going to cook it together and feast as a community? Would we be invited to eat with them or were we merely spectators? Our questions mainly sprung from watching some members of the community receive large cuts of meat, wrapping them up, and riding off on their bikes, yet then all the best meat was being cut up and put into a large bowl and a number of women were busy starting a fire and cutting up vegetables. Suddenly all the activity stopped and one of the captains of the team picked up the bowl. He walked over to us and presented Elliot and me with the bowl pilled high of their best meat and gestured “this is for you”. It’s hard to even put into words the number of emotions that I have gone through since that presentation. My immediate gut reaction as to give the meat back as soon as we got it but that was out of the question as it was a huge honor to receive it and would have been disrespectful to refuse their gift to us. We shared as much of the meat as possible with some of the guys from the team at both lunch and dinner, with the nursing staff at Engeye, and with Susan, our cook, but somehow it didn’t feel like quite enough. The majority of the community has meat once, maybe twice per year, and here they were sharing their best meat with us who can afford to eat meat at least once a month, if not more often. We tried to express our gratitude as best as possible with our limited Luganda and I can only hope that the community understands how much we value their gesture. The rest of the meat was then put into a communal pot that was cooked up and shared by the rest of the community for lunch. I think it is also hard for me to come to terms with the gift of meat because it brings up a lot of emotions of other instances where we are honored in one way or another that I’m not entirely comfortable with. From little things like being given the front seat to myself in a taxi while 7 people cram into the backseat to patients bowing as they give me their books in the Clinic. I hate when people do things like that because I hate the impression that I’m better than them in any way, shape, or form. I want to be seen as an equal but because of my skin I’m not and I am still struggling to figure out how to come to terms with this.