That $8 hotel

What’s the big deal? Everyone wants to know about the $8 a night hotel. Actually, it was a “guest house,” had a bed, and a mosquito net, and an actual bathroom. The big red bug that scurried under the bed when I first arrived in was included in the price. Eventually there was light, once they got petrol for the generator. So no problems.

The bug liked to whiz out from under the bed and hide under my sandals, which was his downfall. I whacked him with a Teva and he went to that big bug heaven in the sky. (No, Sarah, it wasn’t a “palmetto bug,” just some 3-inch African bug with lots of legs.)

Oh, yes, and it had a cold shower, which was just a shower head on the wall of the bathroom, but it WAS a shower, and cold is relative. And a window that I had to have open because it was so hot inside the net, no screen, so I kept the whacking-Tevas close by. Good for intruders of all species.

I took my flashlight and went looking for bottled water one evening in the row of little oil-lamp-lit booths that make up the shopping center. Ha – you would think I had said, “Do you have any Evian water please?” They looked at me both in awe and with something like amusement, and then I saw them selling people water in little plastic bags. (We’ve seen this before, people using straws to sip water from bags; the poor man’s Nalgene carrier.)

So what was I doing in this place? I jounced along the roads with a group of people from an organization called StraightTalk that does AIDS education. My assignment was to document a teachers’ training program that they are doing in neglected districts. In this case, it was Mayuge, in eastern Uganda, about three hours from Kampala. They offered to put me up in the one mzungu hotel in Iganga, where we stayed, but I decided that would be, well, mzungu-like.

I was there for three days of meetings – out in a lovely village set in lush, flat fields. The meetings were held in school classrooms, and there was the usual crush of students wanting to look at and touch the white woman. I don’t think they’ve ever seen this color skin before. In their fuchsia-pink uniforms they swarmed around me like mosquitoes and at first it was fun, then became a little alarming because there were so many and they were all trying to touch me. Except for a few, they did not speak English (they begin teaching in English in P5, which means the fifth primary grade). They were adorable, as are all the children here: barefoot, smiling, big huge eyes just full of questions.

The school served them a breakfast of maize porridge in little blue mugs. The porridge is cooked by a woman in traditional dress in the brick kitchen in a huge pot over a wood fire. The man in the picture brought the firewood on his bicycle. And during the day the students performed lots of tasks around the grounds: dumping garbage in a pit (where it is later burned), using hoes to widen paths, cleaning the classrooms. At the entrance to the school are dozens of signs about avoiding AIDS: “Virginity is healthy,” “Delay sex,” “AIDS kills.” (Yes, this is a primary school. AIDS has touched everyone.)

We ate matoke (bananas steamed in banana leaves), cassava, rice, boiled chicken and beef for lunch, all ladled from big pots by the local women. Everyone ate with their fingers, scooping the matoke up and licking it off; me too. The leader of the workshop introduced me as a “very down-to-earth person – she eats what we eat.” I think it helped that I wouldn’t take any special treatment, including sitting on someone’s lap with my head smashed against the roof as 8 of us squeezed into a truck meant for 4 for the roller coaster ride on the red-dirt road.

Okay, so I pulled one mzungu thing. They were sending me back to Kampala by matatu/taxi. I watched the taxis on the way and thought, “Oh my gawd, this will take about 4 hours and they are filthy and crowded.” (Not to mention the carcasses of dead taxis you see everywhere.) So I pulled the age trick, told them how old I am and they insisted I get a driver home. I kind of like this being honest about age bit.