Maama and Ttata

Today is day 3 of staying with my host family. I have a host mother and father named Robin and George, and 6 brothers and sisters, although only 4 of them stay in the house right now. Their names are Roger, George, Martin and Mark. I spend most of my time with the boys and really only talk to my host dad in the mornings on the way to school. My host mom is SUPER friendly, but she left soon after I arrived for Dubai. I hope when she returns I’ll be able to spend more time with her.

A typical day for me so far includes waking up at 5:30 am to wake up my brothers who go to school, then going back to sleep for 20-30 minutes until my next alarm goes off. Then I get ready for school and eat breakfast. Mealtime is the most awkward part of the day for me because of the house helpers who serve it. I feel like I get special treatment, especially during breakfast and evening tea because I get served more food than my brothers. For example, for evening tea last night I got a rolex (Chipati, which is like Indian naan bread, with a fried egg on top and some lettuce and tomatoes, rolled into a long tube then cut into pieces like sushi…it definitely is delicious) while my brothers got popcorn. It’s uncomfortable for me to always feel like I am being served and getting better treatment, but I don’t know how to address it. I know that other students have the same issue with their familes, and I hope that maybe it will go away as they start to treat me less as a guest and more as a family member.

Oh right, but about my day. We leave for work/school/classes at 6:30 am. We drive 2 of the boys to school (the other 2 go to boarding school which starts next week) and then my host dad drives me to his shop. From there I have about a 15 minute walk through downtown Kampala. So far we have had different classes all day, learning Luganda in the morning at the resource center, then going to the University to listen to some guest lectures. Some of the professors are good – well one has been very funny, but the one we had yesterday afternoon was just obnoxious. At the end of every sentence he would say “the what?” and then finish the sentence. Even when we obviously didn’t know what he was going to say at the end of the sentence. For example, he would say “And the neo-classicalists believed in a what? A free market. And they believed that governments should what? Should not what? Should not interfere.” Listening to this for an hour and a half gave me a headache!

After all of my classes are done, I walk back to my dad’s shop (from the University it’s about a 30-40 minutes walk) and catch a taxi back home. It’s not such a long drive, but the traffic makes it take over an hour. Last night was my first night trying it by myself, and while I didn’t have any trouble finding the taxi to get on, I completely missed the stage (stop) and went all the way to the end of the line! It was getting so dark, and I had to ask the conductor when we passed the “pump stage.” Luckily he was very friendly and understood that I was a lost Mzungu, so he let me stay in the car and told me where to get off on the way back. After all of that, I still had to walk up the ENORMOUS hill in the dark to get to my family’s house – which I almost couldn’t find! It was a scary adventure, and my brothers made fun of me for getting lost, but now I think I will know what to do in the future.

When I get home the boys and I usually take evening tea (just like the Brits!), I shower, we play cards, we eat dinner, and then I’m in bed by 10 pm. I think this schedule may get somewhat monotonous day after day, but luckily we only have 3 weeks max at a time with this schedule. As it is, we only have 2 weeks until we go to Rwanda and Western Uganda, where I’m hoping we’ll at least get to sleep in til 7:30!

About my homestay family: I think that they are very wealthy, comparatively. For one, they own 2 automotive shops and 1 motel. They have 2 house helpers, a cook and a gate keeper at night. Their house is bigger than mine at home! It’s something that I feel kind of awkward about, as well. Their house is built among other smaller, slum-looking houses, which seems to be a theme among wealthy Ugandans. All of the boys want to be doctors or lawyers or priests or business men, and it seems that with the track that they are on in terms of education, it will not be very difficult. Being with this family does not really correspond with what I have learned about Ugandan culture, so I hope that maybe my rural experiences will show me a different side of Uganda.

I guess that’s all for now about my family, I’ll have more to write when my host mom comes home!

Weraba!