People Postcards-Stories from Uganda

This is our fourth people postcard from Chris. Massive thanks Chris for posting these insightful and tender snapshots of this nation and its people.

United Nations Breakfast

“I get a one week holiday about every six weeks” he says. “It takes me two days to get home and two days to arrive back.” He lifts his round face and smiles his Uganda smile. It doesn’t seem a very relaxing holiday, and certainly not a very local one.

“It is enough time. To be back home and not have the sound of the bombs. The bombs, they are 200 metres away. You get used to them. They come all the time, every three or four minutes. The aeroplanes fly low over the schools and the children, they are running. They are screaming, into the bunkers.” He relives the memory as he tells us his story, in between forkfuls of fried egg and plain white bread.

We share the same breakfast table at the Guesthouse. We share the same menu of “Omolet”, banana and black Ugandan tea. But our lives are probably not on the same planet.

He works for the United Nations. A Ugandan working amidst the tensions of Sri Lanka, and his stories of the very-present ethnic tensions between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, after more than five decades, are like uncovering a long-forgotten photo album. Full of intrigue and guessing and shaking heads as you turn each page. Shaking heads in disbelief and with the gut-feeling of not being able to do a damn thing to change what you’re seeing.

All NGOs are barred, and only six different UN agencies remain, including UNICEF. “I am there to monitor the atrocities. The government deny them. We are viewed by suspicion on both sides. We know that the country is running out of food but…” and he lifts his hand again, the intensely white egg quivering upon his fork.

Is anybody listening? Is this another one of those tragedies that just went on too long to provide interesting headline news? Deafened by the bombs? Dulled by the children’s screams perhaps? We have travelled thousands of miles to East Africa for our sleeping ears to be violently awoken at breakfast by this stranger. Gentle in voice, soft in heart, rich in courage.

He is a revelation to us.

At the end of breakfast when we all shake hands and offer our best wishes, he tells us his name.

“I am Damascus” he says, and smiles generously again.

United Nations Breakfast by Chris Spriggs

People Postcards-Our third story from Uganda

A few months ago Chris Spriggs travelled out to Uganda. Chris is someone who has carried a concern for issues of fair trade. His love of people is reflected in these tender “people postcards” that he has put together. This then is the third of five.

The Big Secret

He limps. That’s the first thing you notice from a distance. But get a little closer and you see something else about him, something which lasts in the memory even more than his awkward swagger.

We greet each other in the language local to this area of East Uganda, called Lugisu. I absorb his long slow deep greeting of “Mulembe” (Moo-lem-bay). An African version of Shalom.

His name is Samuel and sometimes when he stands in front of you his height blocks out the sun. Partly because he is so lanky, and partly because I am so not. The sun that shines persistently even in this, the Ugandan rainy season.

I watch him go about his work, diligently taking the empty plastic water carrier from the school yard, down the red-dust track for a mile and more and come back with it, full. You can hear the thud-thud of the replenished barrel on the tough-African land, and notice the jerky imbalanced stroll of Samuel bringing it back, like a pet at his heels.

One’s life can look a little ridiculous in contrast. Okay, MY life can look ridiculous when placed next to his. His job prospects are meagre, his network of connections limited and his profile on Facebook non-existent. He wanders from the school yard to the water pump and back again, and then back to the pump and then back again, and that is his morning complete. Yet he has found the secret. Even when we offer him a lift to the capital city Kampala, a five hour trip through delicious bumpy green landscape in our beat-up van, so he can visit his teenage daughter making a go of education so far away, even then his secret weapon is on display.

He is more than useless at directions as we slowly penetrate the horror that is rush hour in Kampala. There are no such things as road markings, speed limits, traffic lights or rights of way. Just hell on wheels. He murmurs from the rear seat “Go left” (pointing right) “oh…no…perhaps go right here or straight on” (pointing to the ceiling of the van). So we ignore his navigational input. But we cannot ignore that most dominant feature.

His contentment with life, exhibited in his brilliant broad smile. As we cling to our seats with the van hurling itself over two foot high concrete speed bumps, he sits and just smiles at us all.

Yours, Samuel, is a life on a different planet. Can I join you sometime?

The Big Secret by Chris Spriggs

People Postcards-Our second story from Uganda

 Love Your Neighbour

I can’t quite get it straight in my head. I am just inches away from the Queen, but the surroundings don’t quite fit.

I am in a lounge of three metres by three metres. There are thirteen of us knee to knee, eating chapattis and bananas. The muddy floor beneath us blends seamlessly with the mud-brick walls upon which, a little above my head, sits a silver framed clock and a poster of our Royal Highness.

 

Nice of you to join us in Uganda, Ma’am.

 

Our host, Edward is telling us about his week. “I go without food perhaps a few days each week so the children can eat.”

 

His wife is with us, a burden of hope protruding from her. Judging by the size of her pregnancy-bulge, child number seven could be arriving very soon.  

At Edward’s feet is another woman, Nancy. Her burden is not hope, but one of the hallmarks of AIDS; the dark blotches of Kaposi Sarcoma, a skin cancer not uncommon in people with the disease.

 

Edward tells us a little of her story in his soft-but-articulate English. 

“Her husband, he died of AIDS. So she went back to her clan with her three children but they rejected her. They said she was unclean. So she had no home.”

 

She is uneasy on her feet as she slowly accompanies us on the small tour around the community. We pass children carrying stacks of runner bean stalks on their heads, the Witch Doctor’s hut, and the school about the size of Edward’s lounge with fading copies of the alphabet tacked to its walls.

 

Then he shows us the house he has been building for Nancy. It has exactly the same dimensions as his own. Estate Agents may well describe it as a “two-bedroom maisonette with intimate social accommodation at its hub”, but the truth is it is a well-made mud-hut of three tiny spaces.

 

They let us look inside. It takes less than ten seconds to survey, but to Nancy and her children it will be home.

 

For Edward, it was simple. Despite getting no salary, it was the good thing to do. He is showing how motive can speak more powerfully than money. His hands are creating hope. His family is expressing love. His community is revealing another little piece of heaven on this, our dark muddy earth.

 

Chris Spriggs

People Postcards-Our first story from Uganda

Over the next five days we are tracking with five “people postcards” from Uganda. Chris Spriggs recently travelled out there, and these are some of his memories. For those who read them I suspect they will linger in the memory long after you have moved on from this blog. Huge thanks Chris for posting these.

Let there be Light

Having left our shoes at the door, we wander across the concrete lounge floor to see the table readily laden with slightly chewy beef stew, groundnuts in sauce, posho (mashed potato) and cabbage. The standard daily diet of our Ugandan friends. Quite how Sienna has managed to cook all this for the dozen of us on just one stove, I can’t comprehend.

 

It’s when we sit on her brightly coloured patterned sofas – the sort of thing DFS would have sold in 1975 – and tuck into our hosts food that it happens.

 

As if with a click of its fingers, the African darkness snaps in on us.

 

There’s nothing unusual about the electricity supply disappearing. There is no panic among Sienna’s household. Even though the seven foot tall fridge which lives in the lounge with the sofas is the only appliance to be affected, there are no worries about food “going off”. We had spotted the entire contents of the fridge earlier – one lonely jug of water.

 

So we joke around as the candles come out to reveal the African night. We start to clap our hands as if to wake the electricity supply again. Nothing. We begin to shout “Now!” as if guessing when it will reappear. Nothing.

 

On hearing all this, Sienna, our larger than life hostess wanders in and hushes the room. Then in her deep authoritative African voice she commands “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” and the three bare 40 watt bulbs obey, immediately glaring again, unveiling the flight of insects and a room full of people in stitches of laughter.

 

Chris Spriggs

 

 

London Undressed

Hi and thanks for visiting my blog.

Last week we posted a short set of stories from the West Bank, Palestine. Next week we are featuring a series of people postcards from Uganda. For now take a look at our second short video as we continue to explore the other side of the city of London. Go to the Stories from the Street page.

As ever if you have a short story you want to post that is about people and the places they live in, then email me on stephenlowton@googlemail.com