Do you think it’s possible the smell of America could drift idly across the Atlantic, navigate its way through a series of tricky African border crossings, fortuitously survive a harrowing bus ride down to Kisoro, waft directly up my nose and stimulate my otherwise jaded olfactory nerve? I found myself wondering this very thing on one of my long, restlessness-induced walks this week when all of a sudden, the scent of people, pleather and popcorn joined forces to create: America! Or more specifically: Target! Or most specifically: Target without the Icee machine, which, when you think about it, really deserves no exclamation mark at all.
Target came to me in this, my time of need; this week marks my official two year anniversary of enthusiastic freckling on the equator. Now that I think about it, Target should have brought over some of its fancy American Cancer Society approved sunscreen for this, my time of UVA and UVB ray overexposure. I do have six more weeks, after all- just enough time to irrevocably damage my fragile basal skin layer.
Uganda will always represent a series of firsts for me: first time worrying about the integrity of my basal skin cells, first time living alone, first time steel wool began to look like a perfectly reasonable exfoliation tool, first time being robbed of all my possessions by machete-point (Oregonians are, by nature, hatchet people), first time living without a clear understanding of exactly what’s expected of me or exactly what I expect of myself or exactly what the piece of meat I just ate was when it was alive. I’m sincerely going to miss all of it. But right now I’m at my two year mark. Right now I have cherry Icees on the brain, which, by the way, is not a bad way to cool the brain if ever you find yourself in an emergency overheated brain situation. Yes, right now I’m more concerned with experiencing all the wonderful, sweet sweet lasts of this bizarre experience. The last time I’ll get my hair cut by a male Congolese refugee. The last time I’ll drop a wad of money down a pit latrine. If my most lucrative job prospect of working the Panda Express counter in Kansas State University’s student union falls through, or even if it doesn't, maybe the last time I’ll have a wad of money. The last time a fully grown woman jogs up to me and, without so much as a customary prerequisite schoolyard quarrel, actually pulls my hair and runs away. The last time I’ll climb a volcano, steep hill, inclined plane or anything else for as long as elevators and escalators shall prevail in multistory Targets nationwide.
Six more weeks. I hope you’ll wish me and my basal skin layer all the partial protection that my trusty made in Thailand sunscreen claims to provide (see sketchy title).
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
because every season is diaper season
"[Matooke] is a good meal for infants because it has no fat, is easy to digest and very few babies are allergic to it."
-Food Scientist Umar Mutuya, Kampala, Uganda (As reported in The New Vision newspaper)
Matooke, the plantain mush staple food of East Africa, may just be the answer for the millions of Ugandan babies who are currently watching their diaper sizes and/or are concerned with the notorious nipple-allergy epidemic encircling the globe. Whereas the majority of babies in America are devoted to the high-fat, protein-rich, so-called “Breast Milk Diet” which has unfortunately resurfaced in popular culture after many years of fruitless counter-efforts made by the trustworthy Nestle Co. and workplace maternity policies nationwide, at least one food scientist now recommends Ugandan babies take control of their swollen bellies one fat-free banana at a time.
-Food Scientist Umar Mutuya, Kampala, Uganda (As reported in The New Vision newspaper)
Matooke, the plantain mush staple food of East Africa, may just be the answer for the millions of Ugandan babies who are currently watching their diaper sizes and/or are concerned with the notorious nipple-allergy epidemic encircling the globe. Whereas the majority of babies in America are devoted to the high-fat, protein-rich, so-called “Breast Milk Diet” which has unfortunately resurfaced in popular culture after many years of fruitless counter-efforts made by the trustworthy Nestle Co. and workplace maternity policies nationwide, at least one food scientist now recommends Ugandan babies take control of their swollen bellies one fat-free banana at a time.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
you can stare all you want, but i'm not taking my shirt off
In 7th grade I was forced to stare into a woman’s vagina for 27 painfully awkward minutes. The film was called The Miracle of Birth, and I suppose it was meant to be educational, but to me and my classmates it was pure pornography. Afterward at lunch, as I ate my corndog in a guilty silence, I vowed to never let myself witness a miracle, any miracle, ever again.
Twelve years later, this vow is what’s on my mind as I watch a Ugandan woman writhe in pain on a plastic sheet. The nurse-midwife tells me the woman’s fully dilated and ready to push, then leaves the room. Tea break? I stand there and fidget awkwardly, unsure of the cultural protocol. I’ve never met this woman before, but I’ve come specifically to stare into her vagina in hopes of witnessing The Not-Quite-Miracle of Science. Do I introduce myself? Ask her how her morning has been? That seems insensitive. Tell her about my 27 minute training in labor and delivery? I approach the bed and she grabs my arm; suddenly I’m her birthing coach. “Uh, hi, I’m…just…breathe! Yeah, you’re breathing really well! Thank you for, um…your work.”
The woman lifts up her gown and for a split second, I think she’s spilled a can of soup between her legs. For another split second, I think about how much I love soup, and for a third, I think about how in the future, soup will always have this association for me, how soup is probably ruined for me forever, even Campbell’s Select Harvest Mexican-Style Chicken Tortilla, and how it’s all her fault, selfish laboring woman that she is.
The woman yells; I yell louder. I pry her fingers off my arm and start running from the room, presumably to look for help but possibly to escape the stressful situation entirely. Then I hear it: a baby’s cry, or what a baby’s cry might sound like if a Campbell’s factory worker accidentally delivered her baby into a vat of soup. Campbell’s maternity leave ain't what it used to be. I glance back toward the woman’s bed and there he is: ten blue fingers, ten blue toes, delivered by nobody into nobody’s hands. My first instinct is to pick the baby up; my second instinct is to yell again, if not for help than for his pathetic blue-figured sake.
The midwife rushes back into the room and gets right to work. I momentarily consider sniffing her breath for tea. She tells me to glove up and I realize I’m officially part of this. She clamps and cuts the cord and hands me the baby. I’ve seen this on T.V., of course, but here there’s no bulb suction to suction, no warmer to warm, and no handsome doctor to stand around and be handsome. So I swaddle him. I tell him out loud that I’m sorry, and that I should have been there to catch him, and that his life will probably get better than this depending on the Ugandan government’s future response to necessary education and healthcare policy reform and/or the end result of the world food crisis. I sense this baby is a realist. I secretly name him Benjamin.
Benjamin enthusiastically spits up on me, but after that he seems fine. He keeps staring at my left breast and puckering his lips. I sense this baby’s going to be a ladies' man. I hold him for around an hour, long enough for the mother to clean up, put on a prom-worthy gown characteristic of all important, not-so-important and altogether trivial events in Uganda, step into the hallway to make a few phone calls, send a few text messages to friends, take a short nap, and only then ask to see her son. I consider telling her she’s interrupting the vital bonding period characteristic of the first few hours of an infant’s life but ultimately and regretfully hand him over.
Afterward at lunch, as I ate my boiled pumpkin in an overwhelmed silence, I decided birth is probably the most disgusting, incredible, wonderful, horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.
Twelve years later, this vow is what’s on my mind as I watch a Ugandan woman writhe in pain on a plastic sheet. The nurse-midwife tells me the woman’s fully dilated and ready to push, then leaves the room. Tea break? I stand there and fidget awkwardly, unsure of the cultural protocol. I’ve never met this woman before, but I’ve come specifically to stare into her vagina in hopes of witnessing The Not-Quite-Miracle of Science. Do I introduce myself? Ask her how her morning has been? That seems insensitive. Tell her about my 27 minute training in labor and delivery? I approach the bed and she grabs my arm; suddenly I’m her birthing coach. “Uh, hi, I’m…just…breathe! Yeah, you’re breathing really well! Thank you for, um…your work.”
The woman lifts up her gown and for a split second, I think she’s spilled a can of soup between her legs. For another split second, I think about how much I love soup, and for a third, I think about how in the future, soup will always have this association for me, how soup is probably ruined for me forever, even Campbell’s Select Harvest Mexican-Style Chicken Tortilla, and how it’s all her fault, selfish laboring woman that she is.
The woman yells; I yell louder. I pry her fingers off my arm and start running from the room, presumably to look for help but possibly to escape the stressful situation entirely. Then I hear it: a baby’s cry, or what a baby’s cry might sound like if a Campbell’s factory worker accidentally delivered her baby into a vat of soup. Campbell’s maternity leave ain't what it used to be. I glance back toward the woman’s bed and there he is: ten blue fingers, ten blue toes, delivered by nobody into nobody’s hands. My first instinct is to pick the baby up; my second instinct is to yell again, if not for help than for his pathetic blue-figured sake.
The midwife rushes back into the room and gets right to work. I momentarily consider sniffing her breath for tea. She tells me to glove up and I realize I’m officially part of this. She clamps and cuts the cord and hands me the baby. I’ve seen this on T.V., of course, but here there’s no bulb suction to suction, no warmer to warm, and no handsome doctor to stand around and be handsome. So I swaddle him. I tell him out loud that I’m sorry, and that I should have been there to catch him, and that his life will probably get better than this depending on the Ugandan government’s future response to necessary education and healthcare policy reform and/or the end result of the world food crisis. I sense this baby is a realist. I secretly name him Benjamin.
Benjamin enthusiastically spits up on me, but after that he seems fine. He keeps staring at my left breast and puckering his lips. I sense this baby’s going to be a ladies' man. I hold him for around an hour, long enough for the mother to clean up, put on a prom-worthy gown characteristic of all important, not-so-important and altogether trivial events in Uganda, step into the hallway to make a few phone calls, send a few text messages to friends, take a short nap, and only then ask to see her son. I consider telling her she’s interrupting the vital bonding period characteristic of the first few hours of an infant’s life but ultimately and regretfully hand him over.
Afterward at lunch, as I ate my boiled pumpkin in an overwhelmed silence, I decided birth is probably the most disgusting, incredible, wonderful, horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.
Monday, May 2, 2011
see guys, i'm one of you...now please wash my towels for a quarter
Evidently, all humans have this thing called “DNA”, and inside this DNA are things called “genes”, and inside these genes are things called “genetic-markers” which “scientists” can “use” to “trace” the journey of “man” back 200,000 years. And apparently, as a result of our genetic-markers, every human on earth can be traced back to two Africans known in the hippy-science world as Scientific Adam and Eve.
Far be it for me to trust a man named Spencer, but according to geneticist Spencer Wells of the Genographic Project, Scientific Adam and Eve spent their entire lives somewhere between my coffee table and the beans n' beans stand down the road, as did their inbred offspring and their inbred offspring’s inbred offspring and so on, until an extremely-inbred somebody decided to get the hell out of Africa.
Perhaps this somebody was forced out due to hilarious inbred disfigurement or perhaps they left with the correct number of toes and visions of a little thing called the instant fireplace. We can’t be entirely sure. If you can trust a man named Spencer, they probably crossed the southern tip of the Red Sea into the Arabian Peninsula just 60,000 years ago in response to scarce resources- as if scarce resources are a legitimate reason to build a raft. Please. I ran out of toilet paper last week and stood my ground. In fact, I run out of toilet paper every week and continue to stand my ground, in no part due to my lack of raft-building skills or proximity to a viable water escape-route.
Spencer and his posse claim He Who Feared Scarce Resources and his posse made their way out of eastern Africa into the Middle East via the Red Sea, shuffled up through a fabled land called Central Asia, where people love to shuffle, headed east across an alleged iceberg which we’re to believe connected the far east of Russia to the future Palin family breeding grounds, and then proceeded to trek all the way down to the southern tip of South America- all in all, the longest journey man has ever made.
Flash forward 60,000 minus two years- you do the math, mathlete- and I’m shuffling down a narrow isle at 30,000 feet in search of a bag of scarcely-salted airline pretzels. It seems like a cruel joke that an $800 plane ticket was enough to undo thousands upon thousands of years of painstaking efforts made by my ancestors to get the hell out of Africa, or that I’m back to where I started without the evolutionary benefits of melanin or blind faith in God on public transportation, but no matter; I’ve had a vision, and in five months I’m departing this continent in search of a little thing called the instant fireplace. Or whatever that little taco-shell warmer at Taco Bell is called.
Far be it for me to trust a man named Spencer, but according to geneticist Spencer Wells of the Genographic Project, Scientific Adam and Eve spent their entire lives somewhere between my coffee table and the beans n' beans stand down the road, as did their inbred offspring and their inbred offspring’s inbred offspring and so on, until an extremely-inbred somebody decided to get the hell out of Africa.
Perhaps this somebody was forced out due to hilarious inbred disfigurement or perhaps they left with the correct number of toes and visions of a little thing called the instant fireplace. We can’t be entirely sure. If you can trust a man named Spencer, they probably crossed the southern tip of the Red Sea into the Arabian Peninsula just 60,000 years ago in response to scarce resources- as if scarce resources are a legitimate reason to build a raft. Please. I ran out of toilet paper last week and stood my ground. In fact, I run out of toilet paper every week and continue to stand my ground, in no part due to my lack of raft-building skills or proximity to a viable water escape-route.
Spencer and his posse claim He Who Feared Scarce Resources and his posse made their way out of eastern Africa into the Middle East via the Red Sea, shuffled up through a fabled land called Central Asia, where people love to shuffle, headed east across an alleged iceberg which we’re to believe connected the far east of Russia to the future Palin family breeding grounds, and then proceeded to trek all the way down to the southern tip of South America- all in all, the longest journey man has ever made.
Flash forward 60,000 minus two years- you do the math, mathlete- and I’m shuffling down a narrow isle at 30,000 feet in search of a bag of scarcely-salted airline pretzels. It seems like a cruel joke that an $800 plane ticket was enough to undo thousands upon thousands of years of painstaking efforts made by my ancestors to get the hell out of Africa, or that I’m back to where I started without the evolutionary benefits of melanin or blind faith in God on public transportation, but no matter; I’ve had a vision, and in five months I’m departing this continent in search of a little thing called the instant fireplace. Or whatever that little taco-shell warmer at Taco Bell is called.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
bittersweet memories
I don't really know how it happened.
Our plan was to go out for drinks, grab some dinner and return to our shady, rat-infested hotel in plenty of time to lay awake the entire night sweating. The evening started out innocently enough: he had a few beers, I spilled a few beers and we watched a couple of prostitutes play a few clumsy rounds of pool; all-in-all, your average Sunday. Four hours later I’m in a karaoke duet with a Ugandan man, clutching a flea-ridden kitten whose rapid heartbeat suggests an inexplicably-strong dislike of our “I Will Always Love You” rendition and quite possibly all classic 90’s hits. My stomach gurgles loudly; it’s full of what I’ll later learn was liver and gristle. I turn toward the “audience” to avoid my karaoke partner’s increasingly-intense stare and see my boyfriend smiling and shaking hands with Willy, a Filipino man, in a way that convinces me he’s just negotiated the terms of my arranged marriage. I think I’ll like the Philippines; I wonder if I can bring my kitten.
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 3 hours:
We hear a familiar melody, an old American traditional tune that immediately makes us think of hairspray and Coca-Cola. American Idol! We follow the bewitching theme song into the back room of the dimly-lit restaurant and there He is: Ryan Seacrest in all his spray-tanned, Crest-White-Stripped glory, prominently displayed on the most beautiful 40” flat-screen television that ever existed. We can’t take our eyes off Him. He is America. We sit down, vaguely aware we’ve just invited ourselves into a Filipino family’s make-shift living room.
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 2 hours, 55 minutes:
New judges? Who’s that freaky looking woman sitting in Randy’s old seat?
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 2 hours, 21 minutes:
I begrudgingly go to the bathroom during a commercial break, extremely cognizant of the fact I’m missing the latest T-Mobile commercial. Meanwhile, two prostitutes take advantage of my absence and proposition my boyfriend for sex. I’m more distraught over that commercial.
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 1 hour, 55 minutes:
The show’s over; Travis is in the bathroom. An older Filipino man turns to me, introduces himself as Willy and asks if I’d like to stay and sing karaoke. I tell him I don’t really sing but then realize wherever that giant television is, that’s where I need to be. So I do what any flat-screen-deprived person would do: I tell him my friend with the bladder problem absolutely loves to sing, what a great idea! And Willy, buddy, in the meantime, do you get HGTV?
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 56 minutes:
I’m listening to Travis sing his sixth song of the night. In fact, I can’t get him away from that microphone.
I’ve finally had enough beer to boost my karaoke confidence. I’ve even chosen a song: Desperado. Not your traditional karaoke tune, but it has just the amount of vocal range I’m looking for, which is to say: not much. I tell Karaoke-Idol my plan and he decides he’s going to sing Desperado, that that song is actually his song, obviously meant for his Kansas accent all along. I halfway consider telling him I’ve decided to sing Ke$ha’s “Blah Blah Blah” instead, just to see if he’ll follow suit. Something in me wants to hear him belt the lyrics, “Come put a little love in my glove box. Want to dance with no pants on?”
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 28 minutes:
We’ve been invited to join the restaurant/living room owners in a traditional Filipino meal. I make it a point not to ask what I’m eating, but it’s delicious. I spill another beer, this time into my lap. Nobody seems to notice.
T-Minus 7 minutes:
I find a kitten. I name him Charlie.
T-Minus 6 minutes, 51 seconds:
Charlie’s fleas find me.
T-Minus 4 minutes:
Why yes, random Ugandan man, I’d be happy to sing a duet with you. But for-the-love-of-God, please stop calling my kitten “pussy”.
T-Minus 2 minutes:
Uh-oh. I’m actually starting to believe this man will Always Love Me. What was that they taught us about making eye contact with Ugandan men during powerful emotional ballads? Do or Don’t? Do or Don’t?
I decide I should probably just let someone love me before it’s too late.
T-Minus 0:
What the…? What the hell is going on over there? Why are those two shaking hands and winking at each other?
There are some magical nights when the rats in the ceiling annoy you just a little bit less.
Our plan was to go out for drinks, grab some dinner and return to our shady, rat-infested hotel in plenty of time to lay awake the entire night sweating. The evening started out innocently enough: he had a few beers, I spilled a few beers and we watched a couple of prostitutes play a few clumsy rounds of pool; all-in-all, your average Sunday. Four hours later I’m in a karaoke duet with a Ugandan man, clutching a flea-ridden kitten whose rapid heartbeat suggests an inexplicably-strong dislike of our “I Will Always Love You” rendition and quite possibly all classic 90’s hits. My stomach gurgles loudly; it’s full of what I’ll later learn was liver and gristle. I turn toward the “audience” to avoid my karaoke partner’s increasingly-intense stare and see my boyfriend smiling and shaking hands with Willy, a Filipino man, in a way that convinces me he’s just negotiated the terms of my arranged marriage. I think I’ll like the Philippines; I wonder if I can bring my kitten.
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 3 hours:
We hear a familiar melody, an old American traditional tune that immediately makes us think of hairspray and Coca-Cola. American Idol! We follow the bewitching theme song into the back room of the dimly-lit restaurant and there He is: Ryan Seacrest in all his spray-tanned, Crest-White-Stripped glory, prominently displayed on the most beautiful 40” flat-screen television that ever existed. We can’t take our eyes off Him. He is America. We sit down, vaguely aware we’ve just invited ourselves into a Filipino family’s make-shift living room.
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 2 hours, 55 minutes:
New judges? Who’s that freaky looking woman sitting in Randy’s old seat?
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 2 hours, 21 minutes:
I begrudgingly go to the bathroom during a commercial break, extremely cognizant of the fact I’m missing the latest T-Mobile commercial. Meanwhile, two prostitutes take advantage of my absence and proposition my boyfriend for sex. I’m more distraught over that commercial.
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 1 hour, 55 minutes:
The show’s over; Travis is in the bathroom. An older Filipino man turns to me, introduces himself as Willy and asks if I’d like to stay and sing karaoke. I tell him I don’t really sing but then realize wherever that giant television is, that’s where I need to be. So I do what any flat-screen-deprived person would do: I tell him my friend with the bladder problem absolutely loves to sing, what a great idea! And Willy, buddy, in the meantime, do you get HGTV?
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 56 minutes:
I’m listening to Travis sing his sixth song of the night. In fact, I can’t get him away from that microphone.
I’ve finally had enough beer to boost my karaoke confidence. I’ve even chosen a song: Desperado. Not your traditional karaoke tune, but it has just the amount of vocal range I’m looking for, which is to say: not much. I tell Karaoke-Idol my plan and he decides he’s going to sing Desperado, that that song is actually his song, obviously meant for his Kansas accent all along. I halfway consider telling him I’ve decided to sing Ke$ha’s “Blah Blah Blah” instead, just to see if he’ll follow suit. Something in me wants to hear him belt the lyrics, “Come put a little love in my glove box. Want to dance with no pants on?”
Arranged Marriage Negotiation Time-Minus 28 minutes:
We’ve been invited to join the restaurant/living room owners in a traditional Filipino meal. I make it a point not to ask what I’m eating, but it’s delicious. I spill another beer, this time into my lap. Nobody seems to notice.
T-Minus 7 minutes:
I find a kitten. I name him Charlie.
T-Minus 6 minutes, 51 seconds:
Charlie’s fleas find me.
T-Minus 4 minutes:
Why yes, random Ugandan man, I’d be happy to sing a duet with you. But for-the-love-of-God, please stop calling my kitten “pussy”.
T-Minus 2 minutes:
Uh-oh. I’m actually starting to believe this man will Always Love Me. What was that they taught us about making eye contact with Ugandan men during powerful emotional ballads? Do or Don’t? Do or Don’t?
I decide I should probably just let someone love me before it’s too late.
T-Minus 0:
What the…? What the hell is going on over there? Why are those two shaking hands and winking at each other?
There are some magical nights when the rats in the ceiling annoy you just a little bit less.
button-up blazers and whimsical anchor embellishments are out for spring
For those of you who don’t know, which should be just about everyone, I was considering joining the Navy after Peace Corps service until I discovered I could be held in much higher esteem stocking spring cardigans and capris at my nearest Old Navy retail location:
U.S. Navy: 288,501 people like this.
Old Navy: 1,756,965 people like this.
Thank you Facebook for steering me in the right direction! That was a close one.
U.S. Navy: 288,501 people like this.
Old Navy: 1,756,965 people like this.
Thank you Facebook for steering me in the right direction! That was a close one.
Friday, April 8, 2011
eat the damn fish
I’m somewhat used to food recommendations: You simply must try the goat-cheese-&-olive-stuffed chicken breast! Or, more likely given my socioeconomic class: You simply must try the Chicken Grilled Stuft Burrito Extra Value Meal!
In Uganda food recommendations are much less commonly made than back home, mainly because there’s never the guarantee a restaurant will actually be stocked with arbitrary things like food, water, waiters or other such predictable lavishes so very standard in America. You learn to ask “Is there food?” the moment you sit down, a question that’s usually met with a thoughtful expression, followed by a furrowed brow, followed by your waiter disappearing for ten to twelve minutes, followed by the disappointing news that “Food is not there. But I can offer you a selection of room temperature beers and an arrangement of three to two Ugandan pop songs played on repeat at a volume guaranteed incompatible with human conversation. If you’d like to further reduce your conversation risk, as you’re still in danger of being able to lip-read your dining companion, we can pair tonight’s pop medley with the deafening dialogue and distracting images of a homemade Nigerian film.”
I recently had the opportunity to stay in an upscale lodge in Queen Elizabeth National Park, the sort of mythical place I’ve heard about where food is always “there”, where beer is served at a temperature colder than my mouth and where one bottle of water costs about the same as my weekly food budget. For the average Peace Corps volunteer, the word ‘upscale’ can be used loosely to mean a variety of things: The mosquito net was virtually hole-free! The rats in the ceiling were really quiet! I was easily able to incorporate the 5 a.m. call to prayer into my dream! Yes, I did happen to be dreaming about teaching sign-language to gorillas inside a Muslim mosque. What about it?
Call me a snob but I try to reserve the word ‘upscale’ for the rare occasions when the toilet is actually connected to the hotel room, toilet paper or not. That is, that was my definition of upscale until my weekend at the lodge, a charming world where wake-up calls involve hippos splashing outside your window and honest-to-goodness brewed coffee brought directly to your door, a world with the sort of water pressure you long ago forgot existed, a world with a convenient turn down service that saves you the overwhelming trouble of removing decorative pillow after decorative pillow; a world where decorative pillows actually exist.
My second morning at the lodge a man brought tea to my door instead of coffee. I was pissed.
Rewind just one week and I’m back in Queen Elizabeth National Park with my sister, this time in a hotel with no electricity, an inadvertent flush-to-activate, Bellagio-style fountain in the bathroom caused by a broken toilet pipe, an interactive bedspread comprised of hundreds of ants and a single menu option of: fish. To be fair, we were told we simply must try the fish; we just didn’t realize we actually…MUST try the fish. Ever tried eating an entire whole tilapia in the dark? How I would have killed to wash down my fish bones with an overpriced bottle of water or mistaken cup of tea.
In Uganda food recommendations are much less commonly made than back home, mainly because there’s never the guarantee a restaurant will actually be stocked with arbitrary things like food, water, waiters or other such predictable lavishes so very standard in America. You learn to ask “Is there food?” the moment you sit down, a question that’s usually met with a thoughtful expression, followed by a furrowed brow, followed by your waiter disappearing for ten to twelve minutes, followed by the disappointing news that “Food is not there. But I can offer you a selection of room temperature beers and an arrangement of three to two Ugandan pop songs played on repeat at a volume guaranteed incompatible with human conversation. If you’d like to further reduce your conversation risk, as you’re still in danger of being able to lip-read your dining companion, we can pair tonight’s pop medley with the deafening dialogue and distracting images of a homemade Nigerian film.”
I recently had the opportunity to stay in an upscale lodge in Queen Elizabeth National Park, the sort of mythical place I’ve heard about where food is always “there”, where beer is served at a temperature colder than my mouth and where one bottle of water costs about the same as my weekly food budget. For the average Peace Corps volunteer, the word ‘upscale’ can be used loosely to mean a variety of things: The mosquito net was virtually hole-free! The rats in the ceiling were really quiet! I was easily able to incorporate the 5 a.m. call to prayer into my dream! Yes, I did happen to be dreaming about teaching sign-language to gorillas inside a Muslim mosque. What about it?
Call me a snob but I try to reserve the word ‘upscale’ for the rare occasions when the toilet is actually connected to the hotel room, toilet paper or not. That is, that was my definition of upscale until my weekend at the lodge, a charming world where wake-up calls involve hippos splashing outside your window and honest-to-goodness brewed coffee brought directly to your door, a world with the sort of water pressure you long ago forgot existed, a world with a convenient turn down service that saves you the overwhelming trouble of removing decorative pillow after decorative pillow; a world where decorative pillows actually exist.
My second morning at the lodge a man brought tea to my door instead of coffee. I was pissed.
Rewind just one week and I’m back in Queen Elizabeth National Park with my sister, this time in a hotel with no electricity, an inadvertent flush-to-activate, Bellagio-style fountain in the bathroom caused by a broken toilet pipe, an interactive bedspread comprised of hundreds of ants and a single menu option of: fish. To be fair, we were told we simply must try the fish; we just didn’t realize we actually…MUST try the fish. Ever tried eating an entire whole tilapia in the dark? How I would have killed to wash down my fish bones with an overpriced bottle of water or mistaken cup of tea.
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