and they saw that they were naked

It seems unfair that Adam and Eve, in a fit of rebellion and with all the different patterns and sizes and styles of fig leafs to choose from, condemned the rest of us to a seemingly never-ending struggle to clothe our bodies. Fig leafs are hard to come by in Uganda. My stand-in Eden is a place called Owino.

Owino is a clothing market in Kampala, a sort of Goodwill meets mudslide, a magical place where the poignantly named and fun to watch “pre-grabby-grabby-warm-up-time” is necessary preparation for buying Diesel jeans that cost three dollars and are 100% guaranteed to fit depending on how much weight you’re willing to lose or gain. Peace Corps Volunteers emerge from Owino like children from an underwater breath holding competition. I lasted three minutes! Oh yeah? Well I lasted FIVE minutes! AND I kept my eyes open!

The pre-Owino warm-up basically consists of a friend grabbing at you until you become physically unaware you’re being grabbed at all. I think it’s designed around some principal of psychology, the same one that says you stop feeling the sensation of your t-shirt a few minutes after putting it on. Which is actually a useful phenomenon until you suddenly panic and think, hey man, did I forget to put on a t-shirt or what? Because I’m noticing a definite lack of t-shirt sensation.

The worst part about Owino is really not the grabby-grabby time. Who couldn’t use an extra bit of human touch? It’s not the slipping around in mud or the intense feelings of claustrophobia or the people yelling “Baby muzungu (foreigner)!!” or “Ireland!!” or “Michael Jackson!!” in my direction. I didn’t really mind that time a stranger/reverse baby snatcher suddenly handed me his baby and then disappeared for half an hour. I smiled when a vendor told me, No Germany, you’re too fat for that one….try this one. I really was too fat for that one. I blame the hearty, carpe diem diet of my German people. No, the worst part about Owino is when you actually find something you like, meaning, at least for me, something that’s stain-free unless the stains enhance the pattern, hole-free unless I can think up a good use for the hole, and not made for children or life-sized dolls. Of course if the life-sized dolls were especially stylish, that’s another story.

The problem with finding something you like in Owino is you can’t let on that you like it and you have to be willing to walk away from it. The problem with me is I need Botox, not just because 17 months of living on the equator has created quite a storyline on my face but because when I like something it’s completely obvious and I absolutely have to have it. So while other volunteers walk away with good deals, I find myself paying ten or more dollars for a dress with an authentic $1.99 Goodwill tag and a hole that, fingers crossed, will holster my Pez dispenser. Ten dollars! Keep in mind ten dollars can buy you a lot of great and useful things on this side of the world, be it ten pot leaf belt buckles or twenty hair extension ponytails in whatever shade of black your heart desires. Like I said, useful. Oddly enough, upside down pot leaf belt buckles do resemble fig leafs. Maybe this is Eden after all.

what ever happened to predictability?

When I was ten or so there was a certain television commercial which mainly aired during Full House breaks when all you really wanted to know was how Uncle Jesse was going to get himself out of yet another crazy antic and what tender lesson he might learn in doing so. I guess you’d call the commercial more of a public service announcement because it seemed to be commissioned by no one and didn’t make me want to purchase anything except perhaps cable, where I’m told public service announcements with shoddy camera work and poor lighting are less prevalent. If you’ll allow me to set the stage, the scene opens with an unattractive older man in a clean button-up holding an important looking file. You the viewer, whether by design or a simple lack of plot development, receive no clues as to the file’s contents. For our purposes we’ll say the file holds confidential photos from a recent double homicide involving the man’s first grade teacher, Mrs. Farley. As the scene progresses you notice the man laughing about something, apparently able to keep his sense of humor even in the face of tragedy. You pause to reflect on the resiliency of the human spirit. There’s some witty banter among the men of the office, the sort where you can’t actually hear what’s being said but you just know it’s funny and you wonder why you can’t be in on the joke. You’re reminded of that time you ate by yourself in elementary school because Alicia made fun of your nail polish and all the other girls were eating laughing without you. The man turns his attention to a female colleague and refers to her as sugar pie or hotcakes or some other nickname that inevitably makes you feel embarrassed yet hungry. You lose focus for a moment as you consider making your way to the kitchen in search of a hot or even room temperature cake when suddenly the woman, outraged, loudly declares, “THAT’S sexual harassment, and I DON’T have to take it!” End scene.

A few days ago I was being eagerly molested by a female security guard outside a mall in Kampala and I, outraged, thought loudly to myself, ‘THAT’S sexual harassment, and I’m going to stand right here and take it because you, lady, have a small scowl and a large rifle and I really want the coffee served on the other side of that door, but I DON’T have to like it!’ I walked away feeling somewhat strange, not ashamed really but similar in feeling to the time last November when I was slapped on the butt with a metal detector outside my hotel. Taken aback. Maybe even a bit amused, though my counselor says this is a defense mechanism. Is sexual harassment in the name of safety still sexual harassment?

Things have changed in Kampala since the September bombings. Bags are poked and prodded, butts are slapped, and untrained german shepherds lick strangers and pee outside buses prior to departure all in the name of highly fallible safety. Everyone knows a strategically placed pair of women’s underwear on the top of your bag is enough to embarrass and deter even the most rule-abiding of security guards from digging deeper. I’ve heard the same is true of condoms. True, someone who carries both a deadly weapon AND an inordinate amount of ladies underwear and/or condoms runs the risk of looking like one of those really weird, creepy criminals but I suspect this is a risk the individual would be willing to take.

German shepherds are Kampala’s most recently adopted safety measure and frankly the most amusing of all, though my counselor would say this is a probably a sign of my resentment for any and all German ancestry. The overly-friendly german shepherd outside my bus a few days ago was brought in to sniff bags for either bombs or Pringles but, tiring of this no-doubt tedious task, had created an entirely new game for himself out of cleaning his private parts. Is there such a thing as sexual self-harassment? In any case, I imagine the little guy would have taken a break from his escapades to help me assemble a bomb piece by piece in exchange for a pat on the head. Hopefully safety is a mindset.