As I end my journey in Uganda (eet), I wanted to share some fictional
stories of the lives of people here. Even if these stories are not necessarily
true, they are the truth.
Upon hearing the rustling in the mango tree I was climbing
one day, I turn to see a young girl, no older than nine, perched on a very thin
branch. She smiles mischievously, plucks a mango, and says hello. After one
bite, she throws it down onto the ground. That’s when I hear a young girl
sighing in very good English, “These children always waste.” Right below my
feet, stands a young girl. As she climbs up, I climb down to meet her. With
ease, she introduces herself and begins asking me so many questions about my
life. We interrogate each other, cautious in the beginning, but gaining
confidence with each answer, both curious about the other’s world. She stops
the conversation at one point stating, “You people, you people are very good.
Africans are very bad.” My mind struggled to find the right words. How could
explain that all humans can be bad or good? And that white people have been
especially cruel and conniving to the Africans? Should I delve into basic
morality? I think I managed something along the lines of no no no, we are not
good. We are both bad and good just like Africans.
At one point, I’m pulled away from our conversation to play
a game of football and I say goodbye to Mary, the girl from the mango tree. As
I attempt to play against my highly skilled coworkers, she goes back to her grass
hut, only a couple hundred feet away. She starts cooking her family dinner at
5:30 p.m. – Thursdays are her night to cook dinner ever since her mom was sent
to the hospital. As she lights the charcoal in her cook stove, her mind wanders,
joining the smoke from the fire. She thinks about her dad, and how if the
jealous men had not shot him down, then maybe her mom would not be in the
hospital. Maybe she would be able to go to school past the end of the week,
because his knack for selling cars kept their family well off. But as she adds
the cassava flour to the boiling water to make atapa, the local bread, she
knows that these thoughts will not get her anywhere. She leaves the cook stove
and goes to where the people who make cook stoves play football and watches. As
Juma easily takes the ball away from me, I catch a glimpse of her. I wave, she
waves back. After the game when I go to talk to her, she has already gone back
to finish making dinner.
You can hear Ochieng before you can see him. His laugh penetrates
your entire body, to which you instinctively join him, shaking with laughter.
His skill with sheet metal – he works in the cook stove industry- and his
willingness to help anyone, made him loved by his fellow coworkers. As he
spends his days hammering, cutting, and bending, he makes his comrades laugh by
teasing them incessantly. At only nineteen years old, he was already making the
best cook stoves at the factory.
Ever since he was about eight years old, Ochieng had been
working with sheet metal. His dad, too poor to feed him and his other children,
told him to work. He learned how to cut keys from his father, then quickly
moved from trade to trade, picking up skills as he went. He went from being a pool
connoisseur, to a welder, to a cook stove maker. When he was young he went to
school, and even got a scholarship from the school for three years for his
talent for long jump. But eventually the school fees were taxing, and he
stopped going to school.
Not going to school changed his life. He knew that he would
always need to make money by trade, so he decided to always do his best at no
matter what job he did. He wanted to be rich. He had a dream of being a pilot,
but needed money in order to get there. Without a high school diploma, he would
have to start saving up for a long time. He spent little on himself, never
buying things in excess, eating little. But when times were hard, he always gave
what he had saved to his mom or dad, so that they could use it to feed
themselves.
When you talk with Ochieng, you could never imagine the pain
that he hid. You could never imagine that when he was seventeen years old, his
childhood friend got pregnant. And that when she went into labor, there were
medical complications that required a lot of money. You would not be able to
tell that Ochieng spent days and nights finding that money, selling off his
mattress and clothes and anything he could. That he resorted to begging,
despite having promised himself that he would never do that. And you would not
be able to know that a couple months after his girlfriend got better, he would
walk home to an empty house, no traces of his girlfriend or his son anywhere.
Ochieng hid his pain away, focusing instead on his goal of
becoming rich. He no longer talks to girls. When a girl says hi to him on the
street, he will not respond. One girl told him that she loved him, and he told
her to never say that again. If he wanted to give his son a better life and to
get out a poverty, he could not be distracted by women.
Yet, even fixated on this goal, Ochieng always gives more
than he has to everyone else. He forgoes dinner several nights a week in order
to save enough money to give to the starving woman down the street. He offers
his time to help the cook stove newbies, allowing them to catch up with the
rest of the workers. He’ll watch his neighbor’s kids when they need him to. And
at night, when he has time to himself, he goes on walks, reflecting on his
life. He sits on his favorite log, looks up at an airplane flying above, and
wonders what life is like in other parts of the world.
Emma was twenty six years old when he finished college. He
was the third youngest in his class; most students took time off between
semesters, since they could not afford to go every term. He had been sick with
malaria while taking his final exams, so he waited in fear to learn whether or
not he passed.
While he waited for about a year, he needed to find some way
to make a living. So he ran into debt with a motorcycle dealership, and became
a boda-boda. Life was fair; he was grateful for the steady income that trickled
in every day, but he was restless. Waiting for hours at the boda-boda stand for
a customer to come was tedious. Sometimes he would drive around looking for
someone to pick up, but he always had to find a balance between aimlessly
driving around for customers and not wasting too much gas. Mondays were always
the worst. After the weekend, people were refreshed and often did not spend
money on a boda-boda. Them saving money, meant him losing money.
But he always made sure to look his best for his customers.
He kept his clothes very clean and his hair short. He cleaned his motorcycle
every other day. At nights when the day was over, Emma would go back to his
rented home, bathe, and go to the neighborhood restaurant. He goes to the same
restaurant every day owned by a forty three year old women named Helen. He gets
the usual of atapa and beans, winks at Helen, and compliments either her hair, her
clothes, or her cooking. After dinner he always walks around with his friends
that come from the same district as him, listening to whatever new song someone
might have downloaded.
But June 31 was a different day - Emma will learn whether or
not he passed his exams. As usual Emma started his day at six, taking his
motorcycle along the usual route. But instead of stopping at the boda-boda
stand, he continued straight towards his college. When he arrived to the
Ugandan College of Commerce, he already saw a line of people waiting to hear
their news. He parked his motorcycle, walked up to the end of the line, and did
what one tends to do in Uganda: he waited. As hours passed by, he finally
reached the beginning of the line, where a young woman smiled pitifully and
handed him an envelope. Too nervous to open it in at the front of the line, he
walked back to his motorcycle, his hands shaking. He carefully opened the seal,
pulled out the piece of paper, and read the first few sentences. His shoulders
relaxed, his hands unclenched, his spine stretched. He was a certified
accountant of Uganda.
