Eat, Pray, Peace Corps: July 2014

The second oldest sister in my homestay family, Ruth, will be getting married at the end of August and her “introduction ceremony” just so happened to be while I was at homestay! In Ugandan culture, an introduction ceremony is somewhat like an engagement party. The man’s family comes to the family’s house of the bride-to-be, where they are introduced. Each family sits on opposite sides facing each other. All of the ceremony was in the local language, Runyankore, so I didn’t understand much of anything, but I was briefed on it later. As they told me, a woman is never “free” in their country like us American women are; the man’s family must come together with the woman’s family and settle on an agreement of what they will give the woman’s family (bride price). The main thing is cows, and they bargain on how many to give depending on what the man's family is able to afford. For Ruth, they settled on 6 cows for her family.

The day began very early and our house quickly became full of people cooking, cleaning and preparing for the day. We were “supposed” to eat at 1pm…I say supposed to because nothing is EVER on time here. We ended up eating around 3pm. There was so much food!- goat, cow, chicken, matooke, rice, beans, noodles, groundnut sauce, cabbage, fruit, etc. Earlier that morning as I was walking to the latrine, I had the unfortunate luck of witnessing this goat being slaughtered out in the banana plantations :(. After both families ate lunch, the ceremony continued on, lasting about 6 hours.. yikes!

At the end of the ceremony, all of the girls from the two families who are not yet married (therefore they are not yet “women”), walked out in beautiful traditional dresses and sat on a mat between the two families. I was very surprised when my host father called me up to sit with all the sisters and introduced to the man’s family his "muzungu" daughter. Rhoda, the next in line under Ruth, introduced all of us, then there was a word of prayer and the ceremony ended. It was a fun day filled with a lot of meeting and greeting family, sitting around not knowing much of what was happening, and of course hanging out with all the kids. Luckily I had my friend Jennifer to sit through it all with me! The next ceremony will be the “giveaway ceremony” on August 16 at my family’s house. Unfortunately I will no longer be living there but I am invited to attend and plan to make the journey! This party is supposed to be much bigger than the introduction!

Foooood time!

My younger sister Linda

My host father (right)

Jen and I with the beautiful bride-to-be, Ruth!

Family photo- Father, Mother, baby Roland, Ruth, Linda, Rose, Rhoda

Cant forget Joshua! (left)

A few weeks ago our southwest group left our training site in Kulika and headed to Kinoni (Che-no-ni) for a month of homestay. Nine of us, plus our two language trainers along with all of our luggage crammed into a taxi and made the 5 hour journey to Kinoni. The drive was beautiful, but very uncomfortable since the conductor of the taxi decided to come along resulting in me being squished with half a seat. Rarely do you ever get your “own” seat in this country. My family has been really great- my host father, Reverend Balaam Katamba, is a retired reverend, although he still works when he gets called. My host mother, Beatrice, is a teacher in a different city and is gone Mon-Fri. My host sister Linda, is 18 years old, just finished high school and will be going to university in August. She traveled back home from Kampala when she heard I was coming so that she could prepare meals for me and keep me company…..The dynamics of the household are MUCH different than what I am used to. Linda does EVERYTHING from cooking all the meals to fetching water for me to cleaning. The gender roles are definitely very defined and at times this is hard for me. I have definitely connected the most with Linda and am so happy she is around because I think if she were not, my experience would be much different. I attended church 2 Sundays back with my sister and it was basically an hour and a half of me having no clue what was going on..i guess that’s kind of the theme here lately. The service was all in Runyankore, the language I am currently learning, although Linda tried to translate some for me.

Everyone in my family speaks English well, which has made the language barrier pretty much non-existent. I use a pit latrine outside for a toilet, I take bucket baths outside in a bamboo structure, our house has no electricity and no running water….so pretty much it’s back to the basics for me! But I don’t mind and it hasn’t been that much of a struggle because I really do love my family. There are also 3 workers who live in separate quarters, 2 males and 1 female who has a son named Roland. It has taken some time for him to warm up to me but I am happy to say we are now bff’s! The dynamics of having workers is also something very odd to me. They do not sit at the same table for meals as we do and at times it seems they get the “left overs” after we have taken our share. The workers take care of the cows, goats, chickens and banana plantations, as well as walk about 15 minutes down the road to get our water.

So my family can say some pretty funny things…here’s just a few…

Linda: “ I want to be taller and FAT!” (the desire to be fat here is very real! It is a sign that you can afford to eat well)

Reverend: “ Now that you are my daughter, I REALLY hope you are planning to marry”

Me: “ Yes, I plan to get married in the future”

Reverend: “I am hoping very much that you will pro-create because I want more grandkids. And it would be so nice if you would send us tickets to come to your wedding!”

Reverend: “Eat more! By the time you leave us we want you to be very fat! Then the whole community will say ah! The reverend has fed her very well!”

As you can see, he is really taking his “host fathering” VERY seriously. This past weekend Linda and I traveled to Mbarara- a city about 30 mins from Kinoni, where you can find just about anything you need, including American food! I ate a veggie pizza and it was delicious! My meals thus far usually consist of rice, beans, cabbage, matooke and sometimes meat. Surprisingly I am enjoying the food ive been eating at homestay much more than that in Kulika during training! The whole “boot camp” model for training is really wearing on all of us. We have no free time and I feel like I have been non stop go go go since I arrived. Because of this I think, I got sick a week ago with what seemed to be an upper respiratory infection, I am feeling much better and am just waiting for the cough to leave me.

To summarize…. I am learning:

to be content with never feeling clean
to do “short calls” (pee...you can guess what long call is) in a night bucket instead of walking in the dark to the pit latrine at night
to be ok with not knowing what’s going on most of the time
to accept being eaten alive by mosquitoes despite the fact I put bug spray on all the time!
(attempting) the local language, Runyankore and hoping I pass my oral language exam next Friday!

Here are some photos from homestay…more w/ my family and I and the traditional introduction ceremony to come...