Today (Sunday) was probably the first day I felt as if I was
treated different because of my skin color, besides people looking and shouting
Muzungu at us. We decided that it would be a good day to go to eat and ended up
a restaurant that said they served pizza (we are craving American Food). So we
get there and the chef is not there so there would be no pizza. We soon find
out from the waitress that the chef is coming to make us the food! Awesome,
right? So she told us it would be 10000 for each pizza. So if you have ever
been to a restaurant here you would know that it takes like 2 hours to do the
whole process of ordering and eating (I really appreciate the speediness of
American restaurants now and waitress… there is no tips here). So we got a bit
warm sitting inside and switched to the outside. In our boredom we start
playing word games and such when 3 young boys come up to the side fence of
where we are sitting and starting trying to talk to us. “Ma’am how are you?”
They kept asking with no response from us. We ask them to leave and they said
only if we gave them 500 shillings. Well we were not going to do that because
then it may lead for them to ask us more. They are quite persistent and we call
the waitress and ask her to tell them to leave us alone, and she looks at them
and says they are fine… Even after we explained they were asking us for money
and bothering us. So she did nothing and we decided to move back inside. Then
after waiting more than 1 hour for our food we got our pizza, but not the ones
we ordered… they were not great, but we ate anyways. When we get our bill its
200000 shillings! We have learned that it probably wouldn’t do anything to say
anything, so we angrily paid and left.
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| Kobb |
On our walk home it was dark, around 9:00pm. Boda drivers
continually tried to talk to us on each corner we passed as well as men making
kissing noises at us…. We eventually notice a car sitting on the side of the
road with its lights on. When we continue to move, it follows us. Talk about
freaky! So we stop at a place we go to buy snacks and such and it slowly drives
past. It turns around and waits about 3 minutes before it finally leaves the
area. We continue to make it home safely. It is quite uneasy the feeling you
get when your skin color defines you and people act different to you because of
it. It gives me great pride in my education classes that they stress cultural
acceptance and pedagogy.
I thought I should share some of these thoughts with all of
you.
On a different note, on Saturday we went to a pool near
Queen Elizabeth National Park, driving through we saw some pretty awesome
animals… here are some pictures.
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| Pumba! Well really a warthog |
Related to this, in my P6’s science class today they were
learning about resources from the environment. The teacher, King James,
explained how many people come to see the exotic animals, like the elephant
here in Uganda and how the children know that this is a resource. Then King
James started talking about how he would travel to the USA in order to see two
things, snow and a live bear. It makes you think about what draws tourist to
Uganda or even the USA… I think there is a misconception that many white people
who visit are here for the safaris or exotic animal sight-seeing that are
frankly costly and do not show appreciation for a holistic view of Ugandan
culture. I hope that my students know that I am here for them and to learn
about having a life here in Uganda rather than seeing exotic animals. I think
the way they view my visiting can and would affect my teaching if they do not
understand that. I am going to begin to think of a way to have this
conversation with them and would love to know about their feeling about Muzungu
visitors.
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| Babboon and Baby |
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