A week ago we piled into vans to start the 5 hour drive to Kapchorwa, a rural village in the Mbale district towards the East. It was a week I will never forget, and a week that is not easily put into words on a blog. Everyone in the family that I stayed with was really nice, but the week was still hard and made me miss all of you and my family in Mukono more than I ever could have imagined. My Dad, Patrick, was great—he actually talked to me, asking questions about America and sharing cultural stuff about Kapchorwa. The only problem was that he was gone working a lot of the day, and I was left at home. My Mom’s name was Violet, and she was also very nice. She had just had an operation for goiter, though, and was still recovering, so I didn’t really have very much of a chance to get to know her. My little brother was one of my favorite people in Kapchorwa. His name was Jeremy, and he was 3. He didn’t know any English, but that didn’t even matter much. All day he would say “Liw-a-beff, choo,” which translated means “Elizabeth, come,” and so I would follow him random places around the compound. I also had two “sisters,” who were actually my Dad’s nieces that were around to help out while my Mom was recovering from the operation. There names were Rachel and Phyllis, and they were both about high school aged. Sometimes they seemed talkative and we would talk and laugh, but most of the time they just talked in Kupsabiny to other people who stopped by for a few hours.
A few crazy things that I did in my week that I NEVER thought I would do/ a few things I could have imagined but were pretty interesting anyway…
1. I slaughtered a chicken. For those of you who are weak in the stomach skip the details and go down to the next bullet… but for those of you who are interested here’s a little bit more. I literally stepped on its feet and its wings and sawed off its head with a dull kitchen knife. Sick. I never thought I could do it, and my family thought it was REALLY funny that I was so scared. But I did it and I even helped pluck off the beak and feathers at the end.
2. I ate the gizzard of the chicken I just killed. That was interesting too. It wasn’t too bad, just a little too chewy. They always serve the gizzard to guests. Hospitality is huge in the culture, and I am pretty sure that if chicken’s had ten gizzards they would still give them all to the guest. I thanked God in my prayer for dinner that night that he made chickens with only one gizzard.
3. I ate. A lot. Like more that you could possibly imagine. Remember the part about being really hospitable? Yeah, that definitely came in to play with the food. My family served me sooo much food all the time, and I would try so hard to eat it because it would be really rude to refuse. Sometimes I wanted to cry when they put food in front of me! After I would eat a huge meal, my dad or sister would ask, “I add you more?” But sometimes it wasn’t even a question, it would just be, “I add you more” period. End of discussion.
4. I helped “smear” our kitchen hut. Houses/ huts in Kapchorwa were generally made out of mud and dung. So I guess every once in a while as upkeep you have to re-smear the floor of the hut. This consisted of hiking up the giant hill that our house was on to the cows and collecting some nice fresh (still warm) cow poo, mixing it with some sand-type stuff, smearing it all over the floor, and waiting for it to dry. Definitely an experience I will never forget! The amazing thing is that once it is dry it doesn’t even smell.
5. I carried things on my head. Lots of things in fact… well, mainly just two—jerry cans of water and matooke (aka giant bushels of plantains). As far as the water goes, I would go with one of my sisters nearly every day, and most of the time 3 or 4 times a day to walk about 20-30 minutes up and down this big hill to get to the well for water. It was definitely tiring, and they wouldn’t even let me carry the biggest jerry can! As far as the matooke… my dad, like most in Kapchorwa, grew lots of matooke, a lot to feed the family but some to sell also. One day it was really windy and the wind was knocking over all of the trees. “Come, we go,” my dad said, and I followed him to go and harvest some of the matooke so that it wouldn’t fall off in the wind. We chopped at the tree until they fell and carried them to the road on our heads. They were going to take them all to Mbale to sell.
6. I listened to the radio 24/7. This was definitely something I did not expect, due to the fact that there was no electricity, but my family LOVED the radio. It began blaring at 4 or 5 in the morning, and usually didn’t get turned off until 10 or 11. (I don’t think my family ever slept). The music was definitely interesting… my favorite sequence consisted of a song in Swahili, Point of Grace, Lion King, and Kelly Clarkson, all in a row. No one but me thought it was funny.
7. I milked a cow. I wasn’t very good at it, but I had several times to practice. We milked our three cows twice a day, which provided enough milk for #8.
8. I drank the same amount of tea that got thrown into the bay at the Boston tea party. Ok, this might be a slight exaggeration, but I don’t think it is by too much. Literally anytime was tea time in Kapchorwa! (The milk mentioned above is because African tea is different than we think of in the States. It is loose tea leaves brewed with milk an tons of sugar). One day I counted how many cups of tea I drank…. 9! The main reason that you always drank so much is because every new home you visited served the guests tea. The day that I drank 9 cups of tea happened to be the first day that I was there and my dad paraded me around to visit nearly all of his family.
9. I talked American politics. This was kind of interesting, because I honestly don’t talk politics that much even in the States, but in nearly every conversation (at least with the men, not so much with the women) it came up. It was kind of funny the range of knowledge that these men had about America. Some of them knew more than I honestly did about the election; others of them asked me if Switzerland was close to where I lived in America.
10. I was present. This, really, is the biggest thing that I did. Looking at all of the above things, it looks like I did a lot with my week, but really, when it comes down to it, life in the village (especially during the dry season like it was when we were there) is far slower than life in America or even in Mukono. There is an African proverb that says, “Presence is the debt that we owe to each other.” More than anything, this is what I learned in Kapchorwa, and while it sounds incredibly easy to sit and do nothing but just “be present,” I learned that it is one of the hardest things to do. Some of the time we chatted in English, which was GREAT, but most of the time my presence in Kapchorwa consisted more sitting than chatting—either because they all spoke in Kupsabiny or because we just sat without even saying much of anything. More than anything else, this is what made my time in Kapchorwa so difficult. It is hard to be so close to an incredible community while being so far removed from it. During my time that I was missing all of you so much, I was praying hard as well—thanking God for all of the relationships he has given me.
I tried to upload pictures... only three worked. Hopefully I can get the others up here soon!
Carrying Matooke.
My Mom, Violet (left) with one of my Dad's mom's (center, explanation-- my Dad's dad was polygamous), and a neighbor (right)
My little brother Jeremy with my Dad, Patrick, in the cave that was behind our house
1 comment:
"I thanked God in my prayer for dinner that night that he made chickens with only one gizzard."
Thank you for the laugh!
Post a Comment