History of Violence

It was a few weeks ago, and it was a pretty small group of us: three volunteers (including me), two school staff, and one clinic staff member. It was Mzungus Gone Wild 3 at Club Oasis, and everything was running smoothly and merrily: I’d harassed the DJ, inserted myself into a circle of dancing Ugandan women, and was beginning to think about what greasy food item I should consume before going home. We were all sitting on some chairs next to the pool tables in the outdoor section of the club. Suddenly I heard four loud pops behind us, about five meters away. It sounded to my admittedly hazy mind like firecrackers. I swiveled around to see what was going on, but couldn’t make out anything concrete in the darkness. I felt Andrew tugging on my sleeve and turned back around to find that I was the only idiot who had not assumed a position crouching as close to the floor as possible. “Get down,” Andrew hissed. I did, slowly and incredulously, my eyes wide: “Were those gunshots?” Christie, the other volunteer nodded. There followed some choice whispered language on my part, which should probably not be entered into the permanent record of cyberspace. There was some sort of scuffle going on, and Andrew kept popping his head up over the small wall separating us from the scene of the action. It looked like whatever was going down was moving in the direction of the exit. Eventually he did a quick check that we were still all ok, and abruptly sprinted off in the direction of the showdown. I felt like the Mission Impossible theme music should be playing loudly. I remained crouched next to my chair, having a furious conversation with Christie and Teacher Godfrey. Godfrey kept insisting that everything was ok, and I should feel free. He reminded me that the bouncers frisk everyone before letting them in. I stared at him for a second before exploding “WELL THEY DIDN’T CHECK THAT GUY, DID THEY?” At this point I looked around and realized that I had once again missed the boat on the crowd’s general change of position, and I was the only one left crouching. At least now I know what my instincts will guide me to do in times of real danger: act like a moron.

But oh, we were far from finished with this little incident. The whole threat of death by bullet had kind of taken the joy out of the evening, so Godfrey and Andrew walked Christie and me across the road to our hotel. They left us outside the front door, where there was a security guard. We climbed up the two flights of stairs to the lobby section, where we were ambushed by Mr. Gunman himself. There were a couple of factors at play here: the late hour, the alcohol consumption, his accent and rapid pace of speech, and my general pissed off state. As a result I didn’t catch too much of his long garbled speech. Some highlights included the moment when he pulled back his jacket to actually show us the gun, his admission that he had to fire in the air because his pepper spray wasn’t having the desired effect on a supposed mugger, and his entreaty that we shouldn’t worry because he had been a soldier for ten years. I nodded mutely, then asked if we could please go to bed now and could he please refrain from any more shooting this evening. He assented to both requests, and we walked the ten feet to our room where I fell into a deep, deep sleep within a minute of lying down.

The next thing I knew Christie was shaking me awake and telling me I had to put on some pants because the police were at the door. It was approximately 5am and waking up felt like trying to swim to the surface of a deep and murky bog. Once conscious, I had to triple check that I was not still dreaming. But no, there was a loud threatening knocking coming from the room door. I dragged on jeans and opened it. I think my sleepiness was actually an asset here, as it allowed me to remain somewhat mellow in a pretty tense situation. There were three uniformed policemen with rifles slung over their shoulders, and one other aggressive man in plain clothes, who immediately began peering anxiously into the room as if expecting to see the gunman’s shoes peeking out from under the bed. The manager of the hotel was actually in tears, pacing up and down the hall asking why they couldn’t just leave his guests alone, just leave them ALONE. The un-uniformed guy wanted to know where our friend was. He was talking about Geraint, a male volunteer who had left the club before the gunshots. I showed him the room where he was sleeping, and then argued with him until he let me be the one to try and wake Geraint up. I wanted to prevent Geraint’s head from exploding in confusion. As I was knocking on Geraint’s door and explaining the situation, Christie was updating the police about our earlier encounter with the gunman. It wasn’t clear who was in charge or what exactly they were looking for, and the manager’s repeated wails weren’t helping anything. After another quick look around the rooms they were apparently satisfied that no, this was not a Die Hard movie and no, we were not harboring an armed fugitive. They all got involved in an animated conversation and seemed to forget about us until I actually tugged on the sleeve of one of the policemen, and asked if I could please go back to sleep now. He said that was fine.

The next morning I looked out our room window to see Mr. Gunman and his family packing up their station wagon. In fact, they had a flat tire and so spent a good twenty minutes milling around on the street about forty feet away from the club. Then they all piled in and headed off. The scene reminded of me of The Griswalds or something. Something wholesome and innocent. I heard a few different versions of what had happened. He and his family had been guests of the hotel, so one would assume the police had managed to come across him in their dramatic pre-dawn raid. So why was he joking around on the street and driving away with his family? The most likely answer is that money changed hands somewhere, and all charges were dropped.

This story could have happened to me anywhere in the world. There’s no accounting for wackos. I’m sure the probability was much higher that I would encounter gunfire as I walked home from work in the Bronx than it is anywhere in Uganda. But this incident is a symptom of an undercurrent that runs beneath all the smiling children and growing crops and government initiatives in Uganda.

In one of my first weeks here I was walking along the main road with Cynthia to go and visit a student. It was a sunny day and we entered an avenue of Eucalyptus trees that provided some dappled shade. We heard the repeated beeping of an approaching boda-boda (motorbike) and stepped over to the side of the road. The bike came whizzing around the corner. Behind the driver sat another passenger, with the body of a young man slumped across his lap. The man’s head was hanging and bobbing, his eyes closed and mouth slack. You could immediately tell that he was dead. They were obviously in a rush, and I wondered to where? For what?

Some medical volunteers had the chance to witness the birth of a baby at Bududa Hospital back in April. The poor woman was pregnant with twins, and had already delivered one still-born in a local clinic before being transported to the hospital. A volunteer described how the mid-wife asked the volunteer to answer her cell phone for her, and hold it up to her ear so she could have a conversation while her hands were inside the woman, trying to get the baby into a suitable position. The second baby died as well, and the woman was left lying on a blanket on the floor until a family member came to clean her up.

A few days ago I got an email from a friend who had come to Mbale to visit me, and then traveled on to Kampala. Her matatu from Jinja to Kampala got a flat tire at 70 mph, swerved off the road and rolled repeatedly. Several people died. She was lucky and alive and crawled out the back window and was picked up by a passing vehicle and delivered into the caring arms of the Peace Corps in Kampala. God knows what happened to the others in a country where I’ve seen a total of three ambulances.

I’ve been lucky here in Uganda, in lots of ways. I have come by absolutely no harm, not even a stomach bug. In fact, apart from the odd case of fleas, my health has been on the up and up here. I have felt safe 99.9% of the time. But then again, I’m white. This has two important meanings. Firstly, it means that I am part of the ex-pat and volunteer community that has, comparatively speaking, lots of money. We can hire security guards and buy health insurance and own cars, or can at least hire one in an emergency, and pay the hospital bills. Worst case scenario we can fly to Nairobi or Johannesburg or London or home. Secondly, due to a complex interplay of traditional hospitality, colonial echoes, and the good-natured assumption that we’re all here to help, the mzungu life is privileged here. I always have Ugandans looking out for me, Ugandans who don’t know me at all. It’s like reverse racism. Or maybe it’s just plain old racism, except I can invoke the defense that I didn’t ask for any special treatment.

But this is still a developing country, and death in all its forms is more commonplace than in the States. That’s kind of a mundane and obvious conclusion, but it becomes more dramatic when you see it up close. There are vital systems and protections missing. There is no 911. Sometimes it’s easy to forget, but it was only about 40 years ago that Uganda suffered the brutal and largely lawless regime of Idi Amin. It’s still a living memory. President Museveni recently did a tour of the country to promote his reelection for a fourth eleven-year presidential term. He’s been in power since 1986. He came to a nearby village and we took a group of kids to see him. The rally was supposed to start at 9:30am. We showed up at about 11am and endured several hours of rain. We all played the ‘how many people can fit under an umbrella’ game. The President showed up at about 3:30pm. The wait time gave me a chance to get a good low down on Ugandan politics from Thomas, the school’s headmaster, and Teacher Nelson. They were of the opinion that, even in a completely free and fair election, Museveni would win again. I wondered out loud why a country would want to let its head office slink towards dictatorship like that, and Teacher Nelson brought up the point that Ugandans are still comparing this regime to what came before. Why rock the somewhat stable boat when you are haunted by images of random gunmen shooting innocent civilians, disappearances, and torture?

Like so much else in Uganda, progress in the arenas of healthcare, road safety, law enforcement, is there, but slowly, slowly. My experience here has allowed me rapid shifts in perception between glass half empty, glass half full. I think that’s probably the nature of development, and I think Uganda’s glass holds a lot more than many other African nations. But I know one thing for sure; I’m not going to be heading to Club Oasis again anytime soon.

Another day without a dollar

I wake up every morning to the sound of a British woman telling me politely, but insistently, that it’s time to get up. She lives in my cell phone, and seems to be my only wake-up option. We have a bit of a love-hate relationship, but generally I get about eight hours sleep here, so I’m not too annoyed to hear her clipped tones. I wake up at 6am, crawl out of my mosquito net, arm myself with glasses, sweatshirt and shoes, and head out to the latrine. The hills all around us mean we exist at the bottom of a sort of bowl. At that time everything close to the land is still dark and formless, but the sky is filling with pale white light. The sun rises over a hill opposite the guest house, and I can see the imminent sea of yellow, shimmering just behind the crest. It’s one of the few perks of the latrine; I can pee with the door open and watch the sunrise.

I drag myself out for a run two or three mornings a week. I have settled on a route, and the people along it are pretty accustomed to me now. Sometimes it’s eerily deserted, with only the occasional woman bent over, digging in her crop garden, or little trails of children heading to the local spring with their yellow jerrycans. Sometimes it’s busy, with a steady stream of people heading to market with everything from giant bunches of plantains to sewing machines balanced on their heads. I give a little nod, or say hello to most people as I pass. Some jokers run alongside me for a while, grinning and looking back frequently at their friends for approval. The sun continues to rise as I run. Wisps of clouds echo across the sky, turning pink, as the clay in the road grows to a deep red in the new light.

Back at home I can now prepare my bucket bath in under five minutes. Three jugs of cold from the tank out back, and one thermos of hot, which Jennifer leaves out on the kitchen table. I currently own more shampoo and bath products than ever before in my life, thanks to the hoards of former volunteers who don’t want to carry that stuff back in their suitcases. Usually I go with the shampoo and conditioner in one because it means less rinsing time. Breakfast is oatmeal with a big spoon of strawberry jam mixed in. Surprisingly delicious—I recommend. I’ve developed my own morning beverage which involves instant coffee, Milo (the energy drink of future champions), sugar and coffee-mate. That’s a lot of artificial powder for one morning drink you may say, but it’s tasty and I live in rural Uganda, so give me a break. As I sit and eat I often have to turn around and violently shoo away chickens who are peering curiously through the back door, necks bobbing and eyes wide. Sometimes a runaway cow canters across the yard. I start a crossword every morning. I’ve done 137 since I’ve been here. Big props to Jamie and Hannah for giving me the crossword books. They have become a major source of diversion and, according to modern medical research, are protecting me from future Alzheimer’s.

The mornings are largely sunny. The sky is electric blue as I walk through the trading center towards the hulking green mountain masses. The children still indulge in the frantic “Howryooooooooooooos,’ but now a lot of them know my name. It’s pretty charming to get a little “Teacher Ruth, how are you,” shot furtively out from behind a lace curtain/front door. I glance back to see a wide white grin glowing from the darkness inside, and wave. The speed of my climb up to school varies according to the mud level on the road. Shouts and handshakes from kids, and occasional meetings with people I know from the community punctuate the journey. I’ve never lived in a place where I run into so many people I know on the ‘street.’ I guess it’s the equivalent of small-town America. There’s one little boy who lives in a house next door to the school. As I approach he sets up a chorus of desperate “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeees” that ring out through the valley and increase in volume and intensity until I stop and wave and shout “Hi” back. He’s barely a toddler, padding around in his little torn t-shirt and nothing else. His wide, pudgy face contorts with joy whenever I stop to talk. On two occasions I have been able to make him stop crying just by saying hello. I guarantee you this has more to do with the character of the child than with me.

Once I reach school I walk across the main compound to the office that I share with the Program Director on the side of the library. I unlock the padlock, slip off my gumboots and go inside to change shoes. The floor is bare concrete, and invariably gets turned a nice shade of brown from the muddy comings and goings of the day. But every evening Stephen Kuloba—head janitor at the school—scrubs it clean. I poke my head into the office next door to say hi to Andrew, the school Bursar (accountant). He usually has his radio humming out Ugandan reggaeton and a line of people waiting to pay fees, receive wages, make requisitions, confirm orders, and just shoot the breeze for a while. He’s Acholi, from the North, and stands 6 foot 3, with dark, dark skin and one of the biggest smiles around. I guess he’s the equivalent of my cubicle-mate in American terms. I generally bother him four to five times a day, sitting in the chair beside his desk, calculating food orders or asking his advice about where to order furniture, or just chatting.

At this point my adopted puppy usually bounds up to me, begins licking my legs or pulling at my pants, and generally inducing me to put myself at risk of yet another case of fleas by petting him. The puppy has made itself a little bed out of an old canvas bag in my office, and keeps me company throughout the day.

I usually don’t teach before break, so I spend the morning answering emails and doing any other admin work that comes up. I go and check in at the library, where Rachel is calmly re-ordering the stacks and stacks of library cards that represent our thin grasp on organization in the chaotic world of book check-out. Sometimes I help her re-shelve books and tidy up, a task I find very therapeutic. I’ve finally admitted defeat in the ‘put books back on the shelf with the spine facing out’ battle. Uganda has the ability to slowly erode the importance of such details. At first you feel like everyone else is crazy for not enforcing such standards, and then after weeks of whining about it, you look around and realize that you’re the one who’s crazy.

Ten-thirty is break time. The kids begin pouring out of the classrooms and lining up at the kitchen to receive their plastic cup of porridge. It’s a sea of red and white checks and bright green and blue cups and red earth and blue sky and green mountains, with the sun warming and drying everything and the many mouths smiling. Mymoona in P2 stops me as I walk towards the staff room: “Teacher, you come and teach me mathematics.” I promise her that I’ll talk to Teacher Anne and find a time to come and teach her. Kuloba Stephen delivers a tray with tea leaves, sugar, a thermos of hot water, and either chappati or mandazi to the office every break time. The privilege of personal food delivery comes standard with an office in Uganda. The puppy has become a good ally in my ‘avoid fried carbohydrates’ health kick, and I quietly feed him my break time snack every day. This is a misuse of resources and a bad idea in the context of the long-term psychological health of both the dog and myself, but I can’t help it.

I pour myself a cup of tea and head down to the staff room. We have two computers connected to the internet there now, and teachers are usually checking their emails, looking up the Ugandan newspapers, or searching for random topics on Wikipedia. Teachers drift in and out getting their tea and chappati and often something from the newspaper, or someone’s story from the morning, sparks a general discussion. These are usually loud and contentious, with a good sprinkling of jokes. Obama and American politics are a popular topic, as is the situation in Zimbabwe. Sometimes we get deep into social issues, and gender equality has come up a few times. Invariably there’s a lull in the midst of the debate, and everyone looks at me, and I briefly become the official Voice of America. I take advantage of this to promote my own liberal agenda, and while Teacher Michael looks at me as if I’ve just beamed in from the moon, I usually have a solid coterie of hardened female teachers to back me up. My latest favorite argument is that we would solve many social problems if woman and men split the risk of pregnancy 50-50. Oh man that would be sweet.

Between break and lunch I usually do some reading classes, or supervise kids in the library. We’re in the midst of the annual Reading Challenge, in which all students are challenged to read at least fifty books and keep a record of them in a little booklet. The children are going through books like candy. Our poor, battered ‘reshelving’ cardboard box overflows every library period and children routinely sidle up to the check-out desk clutching five different books. “Five?” I ask incredulously, and look at their library cards. They checked out five the day before too. That anal ‘spine-out’ side rears its ugly head, and I look at Rachel: “Rachel, don’t we have a limit on how many books they check out?” Rachel agrees, and makes a big show of forcing them to choose only two of the books, but it doesn’t stick. I will undoubtedly see children wandering around the compound with thick stacks of books later in the day. Teachers have complained that children have started reading books during their free time, instead of revising their notes. There have even been reports of students reading while the teacher is teaching. I shake my head sympathetically, but suppress a little fist pump. In the grand scheme of things these are triumphs, not tragedies.

One o’clock is lunch time, and by this time the sky has usually darkened and we can see the rain coming in from the mountains. Sometimes the rain has already begun, so I eye the compound and find the least muddy route to the staff room. Members of the kitchen staff haul huge metal bowls of posho and beans and cabbage into the room, along with a basin of plates and forks. Teachers pile their plates, and I mean pile. Huge mounds of posho, which is just corn flour that’s been boiled for a looooong time. I ate it every day for three months, until I developed an instinctive gag reflex at the sight of it. Now I settle for beans and cabbage and try to keep a supply of dried fruit and nuts handy. As the rain starts, shrieking children bound down the pathway to the kitchen and stand in shivering lines to receive their lunch. They wash their hands in the streams of water cascading off the roof. If the sunshine holds then they eat quickly and play jump rope or handball or football in various spots around the compound. The library gets busy again at lunch time. The older kids come in to read newspapers, or browse through the shelves of extra textbooks we have.

After lunch I work with a group of P7 students who are facing the imminent Primary Leaving Exam with trepidation. These are the kids who have been unapologetically labeled ‘slow,’ and sit solidly at the bottom of the ranking sheets that are posted outside all the classrooms. That’s one of the harder aspects of Ugandan culture to grasp. It’s been a definite lesson in cultural relativism, and although I’m sure it’s easy to sit in America and raise eyebrows and tut-tut, it’s not that simple.

It only took about ten minutes for me to figure out that regardless of the specific subject weaknesses of the students in the group, what we’re really dealing with is a lack of reading comprehension. Every subject becomes impossible if you can’t read. So we sit in our little corner of the library, and sound things out and re-learn parts of speech and just talk about what we read. I have no idea if it’s going to help, but it’s all I really know how to do. I’m trying to break them of the regular formal classroom habits when we work in the group. They’re loosening up, but several of them still find it impossible to respond to a question without first standing up, and bowing their heads apologetically as they mutter the answer to the desk.

School officially ends at 4:40pm. The compound fills with the roars of liberated children pottering about with their plastic bags full of books, carting basins of water to mop out their classrooms and searching for their gumboots among the rows and rows along the verandah. Some teachers end the day with wild praising songs that have the kids jumping and clapping around the classroom. The P7s get a half hour break, and then stay on for one more evening lesson. Cynthia Margeson, patron saint of the Guest House and unofficial mother of AAH, donated money so that the P7s can have a cup of tea and a snack every evening. They mill around happily, sometimes stopping by my office to see if they can use my computer, or to ask me the definition of a word.

I finish up whatever work I’ve been doing, forcibly remove the puppy from my office, put my gumboots back on, and head home. Sometimes I walk alone, sometimes I walk with children or other teachers. Sometimes it’s grey and raining, sometimes the clouds are sitting fatly like giant clumps of white cotton candy in a blue sky. The same children greet me on the way home, and the trading center is usually full of men and woman buying their food for dinner and catching up on the day’s news. I walk along the main road swinging my legs violently to dislodge the mud from my boots. The barber is shaving some guy’s head, the ‘movie theatre’ is playing an unrecognizable film at an obscene volume, the chappati man is methodically pouring and frying the dough, the bar is full of men sipping from their long straws and its music blares up into the guest house driveway.

Often several neighborhood children occupy the porch of the house, or lounge along its sides. Sometimes volunteers are chatting with them or playing with them, sometimes they’re just peering in the windows curiously, or lying on the warm concrete slab of the verandah. Several of them have developed the habit of composing letters to new volunteers, telling them that they want to be friends and they love them and by the way can they buy them new shoes and clothes and pay their school fees. It gets to be too much sometimes, with fifteen kids wandering around the compound and edging closer and closer to the doorway. I’ve become something of a big, bad witch and instituted a rule which makes all kids leave by 6pm. The savvy ones see me coming and run away now, some I have to chase.

In the evenings I finish my crossword, read, play cards with other volunteers and sometimes watch a DVD on my laptop. Jennipher, my Ugandan mother, brings in six or seven dishes of food every evening. Everyone eats together and sometimes we have interesting talks and sometimes we play Cranium and sometimes everyone just gets quiet and goes back to whatever they were doing. As new groups cycle through the same conversation topics come up over and over. David and I look at each other and one of us launches into a relevant story about that time Mike thought an avocado falling on the roof was someone breaking in, or that time the power was gone for two weeks, or that time we ran out of water, or that time the kids brought over their pet rat. I explain to volunteers how they can bucket bathe with warm water, and David quietly purses his lips because warm showers are a sign of weakness. Sometimes we mix it up, and have s’more night, or grilled cheese night, or someone heads down to the trading center to buy beers for everyone. Sometimes I go and sit with the teachers at the house next door and eat g-nuts and drink tea. Sometimes I shave David’s head for him. Sometimes I help Jennipher cook. By cook I mean chop up fruit, because that’s all I’m really qualified to do, and even that can be a challenge.

By ten I’m ready for bed. Everyone takes turns using basins to wash their faces, or perching on the high stone slab outside the backdoor to brush their teeth and spit without splattering on their legs. Mosquito nets are unfurled, padlocks checked, headlamps borrowed and returned. I finish reading and begin the laborious process of tucking my net in tightly around the edges of my mattress. Sometimes I fall asleep to the sound of rain, and sometimes it’s just a steady chorus of insect voices, with the occasional thump of a falling avocado. On good nights the moonlight casts a glow around the whole room. I get my eight hours, and in the morning little Ms. Britain is always there to wake me up.

Occasionally I get sharp, sharp waves of homesickness, when I want to be somewhere so specific it’s bizarre. In our old Ford Aspire, driving through neighborhood streets lined with piles of Autumn leaves, listening to classic rock and singing along. Then sometimes I imagine the moment when I land on American soil and wind my way through the immigration line in the polished, spotless halls of Dulles airport, and it makes me feel queasy. I guess that’s a different kind of homesickness. I’m a giant sucker for nostalgia, and it’s already beginning when I think about the specific things I’m going to miss from this place.

But it’s more than that. In the grand cliché of all volunteer experiences, I know that I have gained more than I have given in these past eight months. And now I’m hooked. It has been a slow, continuing process of knocking down doors and expectations and realizing how simple but full my life can be every day. How many millions of human habits and experiences exist that I know nothing about. How much there is to learn and do that is concrete and challenging and meaningful on a direct, human level. I’m not sure exactly what this means for my future. I currently spend an hour a day rummaging aimlessly through idealist.com job listings, and imagining my life in Washington D.C., Portland, Oregon, Sudan, rural Mongolia. I don’t know. But the standards have definitely been raised.

Ballers

It started raining pretty much the second that the last student left the shelter of the school compound and headed down the muddy path towards the football field, two kilometers away. I brought up the tail-end of the scraggly line of students and teachers—some kitted out in track pants and cleats, some in skirts and blouses, some in their school uniforms. They walked in little giggling clumps, primary with secondary, boys with girls. A group of unfortunate P6 and P7 students struggled to carry the heavy metal netball hoops down the hill. Nabutere Sarah relieved me of the plastic bag I was carrying, containing my gum boots and rain jacket, and raced on ahead. I appreciated her kind gesture until the light drizzle turned into a full-on downpour and I was left sodden and mud-bound a half a kilometer from our destination. Rachel the librarian and I slipped and sloshed our way along, and I watched my feet slowly change to a reddish-brown color and my flip-flops gain a two-inch platform of clay.

Hardy students transport the netball hoops

Many close-calls later we emerged into the vibrant green bowl of Betunia football field. We were surrounded by mist-draped mountains and banana trees which had been battered in the recent storms. Clouds hung heavily over us, obscuring any idea of the sun. The uneven field had developed crater lakes and waterfalls, and the ankle length grass was thick with rain. Rows of bedraggled students huddled under the thin ledges of the nearby houses, while others had competitions to see how many people you can actually fit under one umbrella. You’d be surprised. Apparently Ugandan umbrellas, like Ugandan vehicles, have the same magical capacity as Mary Poppins’ bag.

The occasion was the primary vs. secondary sports day, and there was no ‘weather permitting’ clause attached to it. I don’t think Uganda would survive the advent of a ‘weather permitting’ clause—the country would have to cancel approximately half of its events. This sports day tradition started last term break, when the secondary students returned for their community service hours at AAH, and were thrashed by the grade seven boys in a friendly football match. They apparently spent the last term nursing a strong sense of resentment, and were out for blood this time.

As the boys warmed up in their dripping sports-wear, doing very impressive coordinated knee-ups and squats and the like, we gave the girls a chance to get aggressive with a secondary one vs. secondary two netball game. I have vague memories of netball from my days in a British prep school in Kenya. One could compare it to basketball without the dribbling, and lots of complicated off-side type rules. I remember it as quite a genteel game, along the lines of bowls or something. Apparently, I remember wrong. It was pouring rain, and the girls were wearing an assortment of giant polyester sports shorts, traditional netball skirts, button-down shirts, t-shirts, tank tops and basically anything that would stay on. As the game got underway, so did the yelling and screaming and leaping and slipping. The girls were like Olympian athletes going for the gold, with heroic twists and turns, full frontal mud-slides, interceptions and dramatic shoot-outs. And my god, the falls! Girls crashing into huge puddles and throwing up waterfalls of water and emerging with mud running down their faces and hands still clutched tightly around the ball. I felt like I was watching a Nike commercial or something. As the rain increased, so did their sense of abandonment, and I thought somebody was going to break something, or drown, or both. I was glued to it. The game ended with a major upset: the senior ones won by a point, or a basket, or a net, or whatever it’s called.

X-treme netball

The girls then channeled their frenzied energy into becoming the secondary boys’ impromptu cheerleading squad as the football game began. The recent donation of some spiffy new football uniforms and cleats left the primary boys with the definite upper hand when it came to appearance. As the girls had just clearly proved, however, appearance matters very little in situations like this one. I’ve watched my fair share of professional football, especially in the World Cup season, and I appreciate the kind of elegant choreography of a well-played game. I’ve also watched my fair share of amateur football on various school playing-fields, and understand that the game can quickly develop into a herd of frustrated youngsters valiantly following the ball wherever it may go, and getting hopelessly tangled in each other. As the boys jogged onto the field and fanned out to take up very specific positions, and the ref called in the captains for a coin-toss, I began to understand that I was about to see something special. I swear to God I felt like I had a side-line seat at one of the British Premier League games that gets half of Uganda so riled up. It was all there; the dribbling, the tackling, the headers, the bicycle kicks, the fouls, the dives, the t-shirt-over-head celebrations. Add in the driving rain, the encroaching mist, and the several ponds that had formed on the field, and we had ourselves a game.

The secondary girls chanted and sung and performed vague dance moves. Teacher Phoebe nearly gave herself an aneurysm screaming and dancing, and Teacher Godfrey sprinted up and down the length of the pitch, flicking more and more mud onto his pristine white t-shirt, and belting out instructions. The spectators kept getting over-excited and inching forward. There were no lines to indicate where the pitch began, so we had to rely on a determined student who patrolled up and down with a stick, swatting us all back. Occasionally the ball got chipped into the crowd, and we all scattered as the players came thundering through after it. As with all teams, these had their MVPs. The secondary boys had Nabuyaka, who had earlier informed me that he was going to become a professional footballer. At the time I had suppressed my smug little teacher smile that always accompanies such declarations from students, but as I watched the game I wondered. He somehow managed to be everywhere the ball was. He seemed at ease with all the positions on the field and inordinately skilled for a kid in the equivalent of 9^th grade. He had a worthy adversary in George, a grade seven boy who stands about 6’3” and performs vicious tackles with the most good-natured face I’ve ever come across.

Teacher Phoebe = cheerleader extraordinaire

It was an extremely close game. Secondary boys scored first, and the girls shrieked like banshees and raced onto the field and there was much cart-wheeling and fist shaking and jumping onto each others’ backs. It was pretty clear that the boys had studied more than the playing tactics of their favorite Premier League stars—they had the whole show down. But, the primary boys soon retaliated, and their goal induced general mayhem on the field for a good five minutes. Adults and kids joined together in running around the pitch and I thought Teacher Phoebe was going to pass out for real. Although I had spent the last two weeks supervising the secondary kids in their community service program, my heart belongs to primary. Grade seven might also be the greatest collection of human beings on the planet, and as they made up the majority of the primary team, I was smitten. I seem to have inherited my mother’s tendency to scream obscenities during any sporting event to which I feel a slight attachment, so I had to watch my mouth. I got into it though, and followed closely from the safety of Teacher Michael’s umbrella (I believe I was the ninth person to take shelter under it).

The climax came in the second half, at one-all, when it appeared as if the secondary boys had scored again. The girls repeated their demented cheerleader act and we got another dose of the theatrical celebrations. The primary students slumped against each other under their umbrellas and shook their heads. But wait, what was this? There was some sort of commotion around the goal and Teacher Phoebe came charging up the field from her position in the thick of the action: “They kicked him! They kicked the goalie!” she cried. She was backed-up by the referee. In a callus act of sabotage, a secondary boy had apparently given the goalie a good wallop on the shins, and then taken advantage of his crumpled state to tap the ball across the line. Shame. The goal was denied, and we were back to one-all.

They played the full ninety minutes. I’m pretty sure the un-cut grass, sheets of rain, and undefined pitch boundaries made the game significantly more demanding than usual, but you couldn’t tell from the unflagging persistence of the players. The game ended in a draw, with the poor exhausted boys limping off the field, contemplating their soaked clothing and the walk back to the school. Spirits were high though. In a marked contrast to American teenagers, high spirits seem to be the default mode of all Ugandan adolescents, actually of Ugandan children in general.

Spiffy Primary Team

Zany Secondary Team

Afterwards, Teacher Phoebe and Godfrey earnestly discussed how this really was a victory for us if you think of the fact that those boys are still in primary and don’t even have a proper field to train on. I watched as the students began to leave the field, watched as everyone gallantly strode through the mini-landslides and dragged the equipment and wrung out their clothing. I think as a teacher, contemplating a day of organized sports in the pouring rain is the equivalent of sitting down in front of five class sets of grammar tests you have to grade. It could have been a terrible day. But it wasn’t. No amount of organization or planning can take the place of good spirits and a willingness to suck it up and get on with it. These kids have that in spades. After some fussing and picture taking and retreival of clothing we were ready to head back to school, and of course, as soon as we set foot off the field, the rain stopped and the sun came out.