Transitions

I just spent my last night in the house I’ve been living in since I arrived in Masaka. I will be spending tonight in Entebbe and departing for South Africa early tomorrow morning, where I’ll spend a week on a bit of a holiday. As I write this, my sister is probably checking in at the Vancouver airport for a flight that should get her to Durban about half an hour before I arrive. I am so excited that she decided to come visit and that I’ll get to catch up on all the news from home!

If all goes according to plan, (a tall order around here, we realize!) upon returning from South Africa, we will be moved into our houses on the Timothy Centre and my first night back will be spent in my new home. It will be very nice to be able to unpack all of my belongings and settle into a more permanent situation; the construction process has taken longer than expected, and we have all felt like we’re living in limbo over the last few months. It will have been worth the wait, however, as these houses are really lovely!

So, a lot to look forward to in the next couple of weeks—an opportunity to explore a new part of the world, a visit with a much beloved sister and the chance to settle into a brand new house situated on a beautiful piece of property. Then there is possibility of enjoying a Christmas Eve barbecue in the near future—a unique experience for any Canadian! Transitions aren’t easy, but things are looking pretty good at the moment.

Keys

In the house where I’m currently living, we go through a rather elaborate locking and unlocking procedure each morning and evening as well as any time we go out—a procedure that requires four different keys to leave the place locked up. At night, three padlocks are used to secure the main gate, and in the morning three different keys are used to unlock them. There is a key in each of the bedroom doors and a key for each of the two post office boxes we use. Each vehicle has a couple of sets of keys. There is even a key for the fridge. There are some padlocks we can’t open because we don’t have the key, and extra keys on the key ring that don’t seem to open anything.

December 1 is the date I am anticipating moving into the house located on the property where the school is to be built. Construction has been slow on these houses, but gradually they are being finished and the furniture arrived last week—a sign that completion is very near! On the weekend, we went over to clean up a bit and even move a few of our things there. If I thought that in the new house I’d enjoy some freedom from the Tyranny of the Key, I’ve since realized this is not to be.

The front door has a different key from the back door. The wardrobe in the bedroom has 4 locks on it, each with its own key and the top drawers of the dresser each have locks with separate keys. The bedroom has its own key and while I haven’t seen the fridges yet, chances are pretty good that they’ll also have a locking function. And that’s just for my house—there are six other units on the compound so far, each with the roughly the same number of locks! The situation will be further complicated by the different locks on the various buildings that house the laundry facilities, the storage areas, the generator and the vehicle parking. Of course, we definitely don’t want these keys to fall into the wrong hands, so there will also have to be a locked locker to hold all the keys for all the various locks...

Do all these locks make things more secure? In some ways they do, I suppose, but each night as I engage in the elaborate ritual of locking out intruders while locking myself inside at the same time, a vague thought often lingers at the back of my mind: “I sure hope the house doesn't catch fire tonight!”

Rubbish

In cities at home, you hear lots of news stories and public service announcements about reducing waste so as not to add to the landfill. The problem with these and the reason that the landfill continues to grow is that “the landfill” is largely a theoretical concept. Few people ever see this mythical “landfill” with their own eyes, so it is pretty difficult to get worried about something that may or may not actually exist. As far as most people are concerned, you put garbage in a can, take the can to the curb and it disappears by the end of the day. Where has it gone? Who cares? It’s garbage!

Garbage does not disappear here; it continues to pile up until someone eventually sets the pile on fire with little regard for the toxic fumes created by the burning of plastic. Mounds of tattered plastic bags and squashed water bottles develop at various places around the city and even spill out into the road at times. (If it were feasible to fix potholes by filling them with garbage, this would be a different place, let me tell you!)

As if the piles of trash weren’t unsightly enough on their own, these dump sites tend to attract flocks of marabou storks which are quite possibly the UGLIEST creatures on the planet. I imagine that at some point, marabou storks must have lived in some green and natural habitat, but I’ve only ever seen them picking through overflowing dumpsters in urban environments. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the phrase “you are what you eat” originally referred to marabou storks.

As someone who has gained a slightly different perspective on garbage over the last few months, I would urge you to consider leaving your garbage man a token of appreciation for the valuable and vital work he does. Having garbage that disappears on a weekly basis is cause for great celebration, believe me! Oh yeah, while you’re at it, you should probably reduce waste as well, so as not to add to the landfill. If you’re not careful, the marabou storks might hear that if the garbage picking is good in Africa, North America is a regular carrion-eater’s Valhalla and a marabou migration is about the last thing anyone should want to encourage!

Fruit

Any produce market here offers juicy pineapple, delicious mangoes, exotic passion fruit, sweet watermelon and mouth-watering papaya. The flavour of these tropical fruits far exceeds the paltry imported versions you can buy in Canada and once you’ve tasted pineapple that has been allowed to ripen in the sun and picked that day, with its bright yellow colour and its sugary sweet juice, you can never really be satisfied with the slightly tart and rather tough “pineapple” sold in the Safeway produce section.

Yes, one can get rather spoiled having all of these fresh tropical fruits so readily available, and as those in the Northern Hemisphere head into the doldrums of November dreading the “fresh produce-less” winter months ahead, one can imagine that heaven’s gardens are cultivated solely with mangoes and passion fruit.

I would likely have believed that myself a few months ago, but I had an experience yesterday that showed me how easy it is for the “exotic” to become mundane. I was invited to a birthday party that was attended by several members of the ex-patriate community here in Masaka; there was a delicious spread on the buffet table and we ate on an outdoor patio with a stunning view of the surrounding area. It was a really lovely time; the chocolate birthday cake was served with ice cream, but then a fruit salad appeared on the table...

This salad had cubes of fresh mango and pineapple and was elegantly served in an emptied out watermelon. It was received politely until people noticed that mixed into the local fruit were fresh blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. It was quite the sight to witness what happened next. Within minutes, the berries had disappeared from the salad leaving only the tropical fruit in the bowl; the British, American, Danish and Canadian guests couldn’t scoop those berries fast enough! I don’t even think the Ugandan guests got the chance to taste the foreign fruit.

It became clear to me that depending on the context, the “familiar” can easily become the “exotic.” (and by the way, I didn’t get any berries either! Guess I’m stuck with boring old papaya and guava....sigh.....)