On the Wall at Pece Stadium
When the three of us arrived, there was a commotion going on at the stadium. It seems there was a soccer match being played. Much of the wall was lined with boys and young men, all watching with interest the game on the other side. I snapped a few pictures and then joined the crew on the wall. I hadn't been up there but a minute when a man in a security uniform with a very large stick began running along the wall and beating the legs of anyone sitting on the wall. Since being caned was not on on my list of Ugandan "to-do"s I jumped (along with everyone else) to avoid getting hit.
Laura and Blake Peeking at Pece (pronounced Peh-Chay)
A few minutes later, all of the locals had taken their place on the wall again. The security guard can only beat so many legs at once, I suppose.
Following the excitement of soccer, we were picked up by Ron and Denise who walked us into the Pece area, past the hoctagon (not hexagon, not octagon) house that the PeaceCorps volunteers stay in and to the compound we were to meet at. Inside, a group of women were doing yoga as the men outside relaxed from having taken a run. We pulled up chairs, tables with delicious home-made hummus and fresh veggies, and began to engage in conversations about USC football, various research projects, various grants, Luo language training, and other random tidbits. The group began to thin out slightly as the sun went down and the stars began to come out.
There have rarely been clear nights since we arrived in Gulu but this night was completely open. The house lacked electricity (they have a generator but it is noisy and they didn't want to turn it on) which left us in a blissfully walled in paradise with open star-filled skies like the ones in the dead center of the Nevada desert. I found the big-dipper. Speaking of constellations -- since I arrived I've occasionally noticed what I thought was a cross in the night sky outside of my hotel window. Turns out that I wasn't making it up. I've been under the gaze of the Southern Cross the entire time, according to Denise.
The Southern Cross (also called The Crux).
In this shot its a little slanted with the head pointing towards the top and the right.
I didn't take this picture.
The conversation soon turned to dinner plans and what was left of the group made their way to vehicles and then to an Ethiopian restaurant near the stadium. I would like to put this place up as quite possibly the best food I've had since I arrived in Uganda. Not to offend local sensibilities, but most of the food here is some form of a bland starch. This food had spice and kick.
The restaurant is mostly outside (as is much of the dining around here) on wicker couches that have cloth covered foam pads. In various stages of recline one eats from the coffee table height table in front of them. There were candles on the table, and a small fire going behind us with the clear Gulu sky above us. It was incredible. We ordered large group trays that held a little of everything offered: meats, chickpeas, sauces, etc. These were eaten with paper thin pieces of a sour bread (that tasted like a thin soggy sourdough), picked up with the hands. I wish I could've taken some pictures of the food -- it was SO delicious LOOKING...and then tasted like heaven.
Our conversations continued on various tangents until one of the better known academics in the group began a debate with one of his advisees (student researchers) about the implicit meanings of toe-rings.
"Its a slippery slope," he said, in exaggerated seriousness, "first a toe ring, the next thing you know you're sniffing glue on the street corners of Nairobi."
One of the Ugandan NGO workers was asked his opinion and he responded that when he saw a woman with a toe-ring he felt that she was "exposed."
The student laughed, "So its a slippery slope from toe-ring to wanton hussy-ness, huh? What about ankle bracelets? What do those say?"
"There's a historical connotation to those," piped in one of the other researchers next to me.
While we were all cracking up, the Ethiopian woman who ran the restaurant brought a hot cannister that she'd been holding over the fire. She carried it on a long wooden stick and waved it over the tables. We realized that the contents of this cannister were freshly roasted Ethiopian coffee beans, and the smell was intoxicating. Of course, several people requested a small cup of freshly brewed coffee (I stayed well away...that stuff would've kept me up all night!) and even that smelled too delicious for words.
Our small group took the pause in conversation as the opportunity to take our leave, paying, and piling into the vehicle of a researcher who is staying near the Catechist Training Center. She offered to drop me off at Acholi Ber and I dragged myself up the stairs. In all, the night had been entirely amusing.
Somewhere around three o'clock in the morning I woke up to cracks of thunder and rain that sounded as if God Himself had opened the sky and then turned on a Heavenly fire hose. It is the first time I can ever actually recall being afraid of rain. I texted Blake, who lives down the hall, "Have you seen any arks lately?" The rain was shaking my windows and every few seconds the deafening roar of thunder cracking would be heard followed by a piercing shriek of heavily falling rain. I'm still not sure where this rain came from, since the night had been so clear that we'd been stargazing not five hours earlier. Never going to understand the weather around this place.
You'd best not come home wearing any toe rings haha.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny? In the US, beating people on the legs would be considered police brutality--and everyone would scream about their rights.
We are so spoiled here!