Rainy Season Begins

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Caught in the Rain

Unlike in Zanzibar where when you ask people they will confidently tell you that the rainy season begins on March 21st, there is no official start date for the rainy season in Uganda. However, everything said that it started near the beginning of March. So it was that this fine day in February that my tale begins. 

Our little home of three had run out of toilet paper, and as this is something which can only be bought in Masaka, Heather and I went out to get the toilet paper. Dropped off at Smart Shoppers we made our way to the man around the corner who sells toilet paper at 13,000 Sh instead of 15,000 Sh and made our way back to Smart Shoppers to oggle the junk food. There were Oreos and Pringles and sweets and even drinking chocolate; things we rarely saw. We bought the Oreos and the Pringles and even some chocolate. Real chocolate, not drinking chocolate. More importantly, however, I also bought myself and 18.5 L jug of water. As we made our way out of the checkout, we noticed a bit of a drizzle. It was the very first we had seen of rain since we had left Vancouver. 

“I hope Joseph is still coming,” I said to Heather as we looked outside. People were heading for cover and bodas were rushing frantically to find somewhere dry to stop. I told her that we should just find one and go. 

“Uh… I don’t really want to go in the rain. We should take a cab,” she said. For a couple minutes I argued that we should just take the boda and bear it; after all, taxis were expensive and what was a little rain? We were from Vancouver. 

A while later the rain was a bit harder. “Yeah, we should just go,” Heather said. A moment later I said I was fine with a cab. We went to one of the staff hanging around at the entrance with us and asked them if they would help us get a taxi.

“Eh…” the man said, “No one is driving right now. You can’t get a taxi.” 

Looking out onto the street, we could suddenly see why. The streets were running with a river of brown water and rain beat at windshields. The rain was intense, like I had only seen once before. Rain in Uganda is not like rain in Vancouver. In Vancouver rain is a constant presence. If it’s not trickling down from the sky, its clouds are hanging overhead to remind you that the rain will soon be trickling down. In Uganda the rain comes fast, and it comes hard. If you have ever seen rain in a Bollywood movie you know what rain is like in Uganda. If you have ever even seen rain in a Hollywood movie, where they turn on giant taps in the studio’s ceiling so that the rain will show up on film, but where it’s clearly raining too hard to be real, that’s what rain is like in Uganda. Thunder crashes and lightning flashes and rain is hard and everywhere. 

So, because everyone was hiding under shelter and not a vehicle was on the street, we stayed in the supermarket. We sat down on upside down cartons that the staff pulled out for us and began eating our Oreos and our Pringles waiting for the rain to end.

Leila was waiting for us to get back for the kid’s program, so we watched on guiltily, but there was nothing we could do. When we finally did get back we took a taxi as the bodas weren’t yet running again, and it made it far easier to lug around the 18.5 L bottle of water. On a sidenote, we both got stomachaches from the Oreos and Pringles and I don’t think I could eat either ever again. Okay, maybe a Pringle, but Oreos make me want to puke.

P7 and the Wimpy Kid Problem

For our Primary 7 class on Friday, we thought we would try reading a different novel with them. We had been reading Akimbo and the Lion in previous weeks, but as we had reached the second chapter and nothing was happening still, we worried that the kids would be bored. Akimbo and the Lion is a story about a little boy somewhere in Africa (the exact location is vague and not mentioned) whose father is a ranger and who takes him on an adventure to help a farmer whose cows have been killed by what the farmer suspects is a lion. Instead, we decided to read A Diary of a Wimpy kid. However, we found that despite our enthusiastic reading, the story was meeting far too many blank looks and bored stares. Cooties? Assigned seating? A diary (and what was the difference between a diary and a journal?)? And why did this little boy care so much about whether he was popular? Clearly that especially, at least in the way in which it has been constructed in North America, is quite foreign. The story just had absolutely no cultural relevance. It was a great story, a story that is very funny, but for kids back home. After all, the reason for its hilarity is its pitch-perfect way that it mocks and understands growing up for North Americans. 

This, I’ve discovered, is an important problem for the library. It’s important to find books that are not only good and engaging, but which are books which are close enough to the real lives of the people who are here that they can connect with them enough to want to read them. After all, that’s why we read, isn’t it? We read to understand different dimensions of our world and to learn and feel. And yet, it’s so much easier to do these things when you are seeing your own world and not the world of someone else.

What is the point of this? I suppose, maybe, it’s a request that if you donate a book to somewhere in Africa, make it relevant. Additionally, a request that you understand that just because it’s your world doesn’t mean that same world is even the slightest bit familiar or relevant to someone else, or more importantly, that you don’t assume that it should be.

After, we asked the kids which book they liked better. Their answer was unanimous: Akimbo.

Weekend in Jinja

That weekend we went to Jinja. It was mostly a chill weekend, but a lot of fun, and it didn’t turn out anything like I expected it to.