Interview with Lydia

I actually meant to write about my interview with one of our students, Lydia, yesterday. But with rapidly diminishing internet time, I ended up writing about the People interview.

And like yesterday, there is little time left for me online, so let me say this, and you will learn the rest of the details when I return to the States:

Lydia was abducted at age 15. She was forced to be a wife to a commander in the LRA, had a child and lost a child in the bush, and lost a leg to a land mine while fighting with the LRA. I knew most of those bare-bones details of her story going into it.

But what I didn't know (and neither did Steve or any of the other students) was this bomb she dropped mid-interview: She lived next door to Kony (the leader of the LRA) for five years. She said that the man in the news photographs of "Kony" is never Kony. The real Kony does not have dreads or the signature crazy look in his eye, but is a slender, intelligent man who always wears his hair short. She knows that this is the real Kony because he is the person that everyone answers too... including others who sometimes claim to be Kony. He also has fifty wives... far more than any of the other LRA commanders. I asked Olee if her description of Kony was accurate, and he insisted that he had met the same man Lydia knew... not the man from the newspaper photos.

More later...

Interviews

A reporter from People magazine (the London desk, which covers less Hollywood and more actual news) is here in Kampala to do a story on Steve and Outside the Dream. After trying to arrange an interview time with me for the past couple days, the reporter and I snuck out to the neighborhood watering hole for some warm Krest cola. (There has been no electricity here for almost a week.)

Nothing all too interesting was said in the interview; but afterwards, we sat on our 20-cm-high stools for a good hour, discussing his other work. It sounded facinating: a story on Afghan women war refugees in Pakistan, the tumult in Sierra Leone, and four stories on Iraq before and after the war.

The last was fodder for a long discussion on his experiences covering Iraq. Needless to say, he had no compliments for how the White House had waged the war or for its decision to go to war in the first place. He was in Iraq until the day before Shock and Awe (does Sony still own the trademark on that phrase?), and he made it clear that things were more-or-less safe under Saddam for those who could keep their mouths shut about his innumerable flaws. But, what surprised me was just how dangerous things had gotten for reporters since 2004 .

Yes, the blagh-osphere has been 'buzzing' about this for a long time, but he described the situation in 2004 as fairly safe for a cautious reporter. He explained that in 2004, he did a follow-up article on eleven subjects whom he had written about before the war began. He said that he was able to find nine of them (some outside Baghdad) using only local taxis and a translator. He never used any kind of military escort. Now, he says, hardly anyone leaves the Palestine Hotel. If they do, interviews are never longer than nine minutes. Nine minutes is considered enough time for an ambush to be set up for the reporter.

... I never knew People magazine covered anything beyond the sex lives of Hollywood's most pathetic. But, maybe there are some interesting stories beyond that picture of Jennifer Aniston snuggling with Vince Vaughn on the cover... maybe.

Gulu

After we arrived at the UNICEF Night Commuters shelter in Gulu, we pulled the camera from the boot, and I reviewed with Wasswa how to use it. He and Olee set off with the camera while I discussed with a few aid workers about the security situation.

While the statistics for driving around Gulu are frightening (you are more likely to be killed on a two-hour drive down the roads to the camps outside Gulu than on a one-month deployment in Iraq), the violence is seasonal. In the dry season (now until March), there is not enough greenery to shield the LRA soldiers from helicopters of the Ugandan army and the UN. Also, during the dry season, food and water is scarce and most of the soldiers head to Sudan or the Congo. It was during these periods, that many of my students survived off the piss of older soldiers.

The Loa north is much quieter than the Buganda south. But, everyone in and around Gulu was anxious to talk about the civil war. Despite the armed-to-the-teeth military presence, Museveni is held only with contempt here. And most people I talked to believed that he is intentionally prolonging the war for personal profit.

The argument goes like this: By allowing the civil war to continue, Museveni garners military equipment and support from other nations and can continue to build his army, and the horrors of the war inflate foreign aid to Uganda, which is syphoned off to his friends and other government officials by at least 50% before it reaches those it is intended to help. The other half of the argument is that it is difficult to explain why it has taken Museveni twenty years to catch one person. Yes, Bush has dropped the ball on Bin Laden several times, but most people know more-or-less where Kony is (some of my students have even met him), and he is despised by surrounding communities and protected only by his soldiers.

So, Kony's soldiers continue to kidnap thousands of children (one place we went to had lost on average ten children a week during the last rainy season) each season and force them to fight or be 'wives'.

In the drive from Gulu to the Otwal IDP camp, we passed by a school, where a few years ago, LRA soldiers had entered and captured every student from. In Otwal (the camp Olee was living in when he was abducted at the age of nine), we met Olee's family and hundreds of others displaced by the war. We even ran into a boy Olee had abducted when he was a soldier.

Since being in Uganda, I have met at least two hundred children from the north, and although my work here has been focused on those displaced by the war, every single child I have met has either lost family members to the war or has been abducted. After having traveled to Gulu and seen what the terrain was like in the surrounding areas, it is even more difficult to understand how this war has gone on for 20 years. No one lives in the bush but soldiers, and even with the most modest of infrared systems, it would be easy to protect most of northern Uganda from the LRA.

The most far-out of conspiracy suggests that Museveni delibeately funds and arms Kony (perhaps that was what my Loa friend at the party meany by 'there is no Kony'), but even Museveni most ardent admirers cannot explain why he has failed to end the conflict in the twenty years he has held power.

- - - - -

One last story:
On the second day in Gulu, I worked with a fourteen-year-old girl who had watched her parents killed when she was abducted five years earlier. Her father had been tortured before he was killed, and they slowly chopped off his body parts with a panga in front of her. She lived in the bush with the LRA for three years. When she finally escaped (many of these kids escape... there is little organization or morale in the LRA), she found her grandmother living near her home village with her two younger siblings. She has taken care of them since she was thirteen.

Now, they are all Night Commuters, people who walk from their villages into Gulu at night for protection from the LRA. Every night, thousands pour into Gulu to sleep in Night Commuter centers, hospitals, and the streets.

After taping her story, one of those running the UNICEF center suggested we go with one of the kids to see where they lived. We piled into the car. But, neither Olee nor Wasswa would go. This was daytime during the "safe season" on a trip only a few kilometers from town, but even Olee, who had fought with the LRA and knew that this was the safest time possible to go, would not venture toward this girl's village.

Specious Cognates

Learning Luganda was at first an incredibly frustrating undertaking. It is the first prefix-based language I have studied, and I still have not found anyone who can break down the various parts of words for me. But once over the 'hump', it really isn't so bad. People speak very slowly, and the language sounds similar to other languages I have studied.

My mnemonics for vocabulary have all been based around what I originally called "specious cognates", cognates of foreign words that I thought were coincidental rather than related to any actual language loans.

For example, one of the first phrases I learned in Luganda, was "Guangi". The way it is pronounced with a raising of the voice at the end, it sounded to me almost exactly like this Japanese phrase:

"Ima Nanji?"
Ima nanji means what time is it in Japanese. In Luganda, "Gwangi?" is what you should answer when someone says your name. A: "Blake" B: "Guangi?"


This was a cognate of the most specious variety indeed. But, there were other 'cognates' that I was not so sure about. For example, "table" in Spanish and Luganda are both:

"Mesa"
Now, in Luganda, table is pronounced with a "z" sound: Mezza. But, it seemed almost impossible to me that this was not a borrowing from Spanish or Italian. I asked around, but there was no Italian colonial influence here like in Ethiopia or Eritrea. And, there were numerous other words that sounded like Spanish to me too, that I knew were not cognates, so I wrote this one off as a coincidence.

However, while driving back from the Otwal camp on Thursday with our "let's get out of here fast before we get shot" driver, Deo, I had a conversation with him about Ugandan names. In Uganda, most people have an African name and a Christian or Muslim name. For example, "Ojok Charles" or "Josephine Hilda" or "Ochen Mohammed". But, many of these names are spelled wrong... all the time. ("Michael" is always "Micheal".) I asked him if these mispellings were also in Ugandan Bibles. And then, I hit on the most obvious linguistic influence from Italian that I had for some reason not considered.

"Deo," I asked. "What is your full name?"

"Deo Gracias" he answered.

"Thanks to God?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "It's Italian." (I didn't have the heart to tell him it was neither quite Italian or quite Spanish.)

"Deo," was there a strong missionary influence in Uganda?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "Many Italians."

Now, here's my confession. I wrote my specious cognate post (below) before I left for Gulu. So, I did not try to seperate the real cognates from the fake ones. In fact, I tried to emphasize what I thought were humorous or particularly unlikely to be real cognates. And while, I am 90% convinced that "mezza" and "zaboni" (Lugandan for soap, almost idential to the Italian word, sabone), the rest are pretty much a private joke that I thought I would let you in on.

SPECIOUS COGNATES of LUGANDA, Volume One

Gato
Many Luganda words are homonyms, or near homonyms, with Spanish words. One of my favorites is "Gato", which in Spanish means cat. In Luganda, "Engato" means shoe. "Hold on!" I enjoy screaming. "I need to tie my cat." To the untrained Luganda ear, it sounds as if I am tying my shoe, when I am really giving Pussy's tail a difficult time.


Niu Bi
"Niu bi" is a very common Chinese slang, particularly in western China. It means "cow cunt," or "cool and surreal." It was explained to me this way when I first heard it in Kunming:

Li Mian: "You don't know 'niu bi'? It means 'cow cunt' but also 'cool and surreal.'"

Blake: "Ah."

Li Mian: "Have you ever seen a cow cunt? If you had, you would understand."

(Blake had seen many cows, but could not remember seeing the vaginal orifice of any particular cow.)

Blake: "I am not sure."

Li Mian: "Well, when you see one. It is very surreal because it is big. So, when something is really cool and surreal, we say it is 'zhen tamade niu bi" ("real fucking cow cunt")

In Luganda, a homonym of 'niu', Chinese for 'cow', means 'very' or 'extreme', and is often added on after an adjective for strong emphasis. I often find myself thinking of 'niu bi' rather than simply 'niu' because of the extra volume and weight of the word.


Mwa mwa
In American culture, parents and their young children, often say "mwa mwa" instead of kissing. It is the kind of thing a disaffected father might say when (or instead of) kissing his young child when s/he comes home from school.

As I walked through Kibuye market, holding a live chicken and a bag full of fly-infested produce, I heard a Ugandan say, "Mzungu, o-mwa mwa" or what sounded to me like "Mzungu, you mwa mwa." What he really said was more like "Whoa! A poor Mzungu" In Luganda, mwavu means "poor" and "dejected."


Shibuya
Kibuye, the aforementioned neighborhood on the edge of Kampala, is a stark contrast to Shibuya, a neighborhood in Tokyo. The Ugandan Kibuye neighborhood is full of old motorcycle parts, an enormous meat and vegetable market, and enough Malwa to inebriate a young George Walker in New Orleans. The Tokyo Shibuya is home to teeny-boppers and the "shibuya-kei" style of Tokyo Pop. Both are pronounced identically, and both are covered with Japanese characters (as all Ugandan cars, motorcycles, and mechanical parts are relics from 1970s Japan. For the Kanji romantic, it must be very nice to come to Uganda and be able to read right to left again.)


Dooka-Doo
This phrase from an endangered subculture previously known only to exist in the "South Slope" region of 16th street Brooklyn originally was this subculture's cognate of the English word "deodorant". But, it soon morphed into new semantic values, including "Nani-nani-boo-boo," "I don't understand what you're saying," or "Blake, shut the fuck up!!!"

I never expected to hear the phrase again outside of obscure linguistic monographs, but at a student's baseball game in Kampala, at the first crack of the bat, everyone began chanting, "Dooka! Dooka! Dooka! Dooka! Dooooooo!!!" In Luganda, it means "Run! Muthafucka, Run!"


There are many other "specious cognates" I could bore my readers with. ("Abuelo" in Spanish means 'grandfather' whereas in Luganda, it means 'outside' is another favorite.) But, I am going to assume that if you've read this far and are still curious to hear more, you can just buy me a warm cup of malwa (french cognate of "Bad shit"?) when I get back to New York.

From Kampala to Bollywood to Gulu

Kampala Karaoke most definitely does not fit in with any notion of Karaoke I was previously familiar with. First, Kampalan karaoke is not a participatory event. Everyone drinks at their tables or dances, while a troupe of semi-professional dancers lip synch pop songs.

Between songs, there are dramatic and comedic interludes in Luganda, which are amusing even when you understand nothing the performers say.

The entertainers at the karaoke club last night in the university district were "The Sober Royals", who are among the better karaoke groups in Kampala according to my friends who had brought me out of Zzana and back into the city. As the Sober Royals shook their asses, made out on stage, and some of the men partied in drag as pregnant women, I couldn't help but suspect that their definition of "sober" was different from mine as well. So, I reached over the web of empty beer bottles on my table and tapped my friend Dora on the shoulder.

"What does sober mean?" I asked.

"Mmmmm." She thought. "Here it means that they don't drink or do drugs and have a very calm mind," she answered.

Oh well, I thought. I guess their definition is the same as mine.

Throughout the entire show, I tried to figure out why the format seemed so familiar to me, but I couldn't place where I had seen anything like it until after one character, having won the heart of a fellow dancer, lipsynched "You are my inspiration" with such sincerity that a woman stepped out of the audience onto the stage and refused to leave the lipsynchers side for the rest of the show.

Yes. There was something familiar to all of this... and it wasn't just Courtney Cox's stepping up onto the stage in Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' video.

This was to me a live version of a Bollywood movie. It had the drama, the comedy, the suggested sex, the dancing, and the lipsynching... And Ugandans' facinations with India and Indians made me wonder if the connection was not something more than a synchronicity.

So, what my friends called Karaoke, I called my first live Bollywood show.

I woke up this morning to the sound of lowing cattle... in the same night club district I had fallen asleep in with a group of four other kids crashed on the floor of my friend Barbara's Kampala apartment. Even in the night club district, their is grazing to be done.

I headed back up to Zzana where I learned that tomorrow is the day that Steve, myself and a few other kids will be heading up to Gulu. I believe we are going to visit Olee's home and the area where he was abducted by the LRA. Then, we will be heading up to Gulu. If there is time, we may be going to the Pader IDP camp outside Gulu as well.

We should be back to web-friendly urban environs Friday.

Cinderella's Long, Hot, Festering Winter

Ah. It's Sunday morning, and it's a beautiful day to burn some trash.

As I walk down to Zzana today, giving less and less attention to the "Bye Mzungu" cat calls, I try desperately to get Ja Rule out of my head. Ja Rule, according to most young Ugandans, is really Tupac. Nevermind that he doesn't look much like Tupac (shorter eyelashes for starters) or doesn't necessarily sound like Tupac, and of course nevermind that Tupac is dead, telling a Uganda "Gangstah" fan that Tupac is dead is a heartbreaking conversation that should be avoided at all costs.

If only Kampalans knew another Ja Rule song beside the (avec Ashanti) "I'm not always there when you call/ But I'm always on Time..." then Ja Rule's popularity here would not be so grinding. For some reason, even radio stations (not to mention kids with their Chinese "Ju Xing" boom boxes) enjoy playing that song on repeat ad infinitum.

So, what song saved me from the Ja Rule quagmire? Nothing less than the apotheosis of butt rock, Cinderella's "Don't know what'cha got 'till it's gone" followed by another two powerhouse tracks from their 1988 career apex, Long Cold Winter. (The other two songs in my head were "Gypsy Road" and "Long Cold Winter.")

As I passed by the piles of burning trash, the children screaming "Bye, white man" to me, and the children screaming because their mother was beating them in the middle of the "fu fu" (red dust) road, I reflected back on a few of the days previous events.

Just when I thought I had figured out how to navigate my newfound celebrity, yesterday brought a number of further difficult-to-digest adventures in whiteness. There were three people yesterday who felt my hair and skin without asking, only then to comment on how soft I was. "No," I said. "Your skin is softer. That is your idea rather than your hands talking. You put vaseline on your skin multiple times a day. My skin is dry and sunburned." But these protestations never convinces anyone.

I had dealt with the hair rubbing before, and it wouldn't have bothered me if only thirty minutes before, a man my age, completely naked from the waste down and hacked half-to-death by a machete only handful of moons before had not grabbed my arm and refused to let go during my walk home. He didn't say or ask for anything. I think he thought I was just lucky, or maybe his insanity was too much... But, he did not have a necessarily crazy look about him. Pieces of his one remaining ear fanned out of his skull like peacock feathers. And I stared at the ear as I, with increasing force, disentangled his fingers from my arm.

I also got blood on my shirt when I broke up a fight yesterday, which perhaps would add to the tension I felt later that evening but had nothing to do with whiteness or an American passport.

Actually, I had a wonderful moment in the evening before things slid downhill. I showered when I got home, worked with the children for a few more hours, then headed around the corner to the neighborhood watering hole. I slunk into the store's garden and opened my beer. There were a number of western Ugandans there (from Besigye and Museveni's home district) who had traveled to Kampala for the elections. They were all well educated, and I was able to have a conversation about politics and language and never had to discuss Tupac's death or how I was going to help them to America. Things seemed good.

I headed home after the conversation, where I was greeted by Jerry, one of the Outside the Dream students, who reminded me that I had told him I would visit his sister sometime while I was here. He, Jjuko (another student), and I traversed the hair-thin trail through the trees, over barbed wire and breadcrumb trails of plastic bags to his sister's house for half an hour. Though it was much longer than the five-minute walk he had promised, I was looking forward to meeting his sister. She was married, had a professional husband and a child, and I thought there was a much better chance of another interesting conversation than a half-hour haranguing to ensure my transport of her to America.

I could not have been more wrong. She was more insistent than anyone I have met that I take her to America, and there was no way I would be able to navigate the trails home in the dark. We stayed five hours, until I finally agreed to look into what it would take to get her to America when I got back to the States. I told her the odds of my actually finding a way to get her to America were no better than one in a million, but she seemed either satisfied with that, or much more likely simply annoyed with my stubborness.

But, the attention my passport (white skin? or tiny blue portfolio?) brought yesterday still had more to offer. When I arrived home, I found a present on my bed accompanied with a long letter and poem about the importance of friendship. It was from Isma, whom I'd met twice, the first time for less than twenty minutes, the second time for less twenty seconds. I opened the bag to find a wonderful pair of 501 Levi's, which I now must return to him.

Excepting my superficial promise to look into immigration for Jerry's sister, I have never made any hint of a promise to help anyone here except for my students (and then only by teaching and educating them), but I can't help but feel some guilt when someone gives me a present that I do not inted to repay.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I still think it's better to talk to people than ignore them. And if they buy presents of their own volition, it may bring with it valuable lessons of its own. I don't want to ignore everyone and only leave the compound with Steve's private driver. But, it is increasingly seems to my benefit (time-wise and sanity) to focus only on what I need to be doing here and little else.

Mzungu Ali Wa: Celebrity of Whiteness

Being different always brings a certain amount of attention. And for those on the streets in Zzana, my whiteness makes me very, very different and extremely conspicuous. Despite the fact that there are at least five other white people in this area, no one seems to get tired of crying out "Mzungu, mzungu! Bye, Mzungu" when I walk past.

The celebrity of whiteness here is worse than it is in China or anywhere else I have traveled to. I often find myself surrounded by more than ten people at a time who want to talk with me about being friends, how I can help their football careers, or if I am a "tu-a" (tourist). Today, I counted 173 "Bye Mzungu"'s in the twenty minute walk to Zzana. Almost all of these people have seen me many times before. Most have a vague idea of who I am and what I am doing here. I have introduced myself and talked to many of them as well. But, there is still a great excitement for them at saying "Bye, Mzungu."

The phrase "Bye, Mzungu" has been puzzling to me. Why do most people say Mzungu when it is a Swahili word rather than the Luganda word (omuntu omweru)? Why do they say "Bye" instead of "Hello."

First, very few Ugandans whom I have met know that Mzungu is Swahili. Most think it is Luganda. Of those that have discussed the term with me, their definitions have varied widely. Most insist that the word is for any non-Black, including Arabs, Indians and Chinese. However, they admit that they would primarily use the term for white people.

Another person told me that the word was Swahili for "brown" and it meant brown people. This made a great deal of sense to me, and I asked if the term grew with the spread of Swahili during the Omani kingdom, a time at which it would have made a great deal of sense to refer to the Arab outsiders as "brown". He said he thought that made sense. But, a quick internet search later on would show that Mzungu did not mean brown in Swahili. It meant "trick" "skill" "ruse" and "white person", but not brown.

So, I have come to the conclusion, that despite many Ugandan's insistence on Mzungu meaning outsider, it basically means white person.

But, what about the strange greeting I face each day, "Bye, Mzungu"? I asked my friend Naomi about this. She said, "The white people are too proud and will never stop to talk to us blacks. So, we always say 'bye' and never 'hello'."

That didn't entirely make sense to me since most white people I know here do stop and talk or at least say hello to most "Bye, Mzungu" calls. Also, that logic seems beyond the main perpetrator of the "Bye, Mzungu" fad: very young children. Most adults add, "What's going on?" or the occassional "What's up?" to "Bye, Mzungu." Occassionally, I here, "Bye, Mzungu. Hello!"So, I have not yet found a satisfactory answer for why people here are always saying "bye" instead of "hello" to me.

I have found, however, one satisfactory response to children's "Bye Mzungu"'s. While I treat all adult "Bye Mzungu"'s with a "hello", "how are you", or an occasional "sivi-otya", I have tried very hard to come up with an amusing response to the kids. Answering in Luganda is always entertaining, but it seems rude to me to say goodbye to them (an early response of mine). Answering Hello Ugandan in Luganda and English was greeted with blank stares and more "Bye Mzungus". For some reason, "Who is the Mzungu?" (in Luganda) didn't go over well either.

The only amusing response I have found is "Mzungu? A-li wa?" (A Mzungu? Where is he?) . This response is usually met with sincere responses from the children. The mzungu is here they say in Luganda pointing at me. One has grabbed my hand and pointed at it, saying "this is Mzungu" with great enthusiasm. Parents often laugh and offer me a seat, malwa, or in one case a bride.

With the exception of the bride (she is very nice), I have not taken up many of these offers. Most people are not interested in getting to know me, and many have absurd ideas of what kind of power I hold. I do not know Tupac. I cannot help them with their dance, football, or singing careers. And, I don't want to go visit a stranger's family (Though I actually did this once.) Usually, I am satisfied with the superficial "Mzungu? A-li wa?" or "How are you?" and I keep walking.

However, I have made two Ugandan friends in the neighborhood who are also in their twenties and whom I met first through a "Mzungu! Mzungu!" yell. They are dancers who spend most of their days drinking beer or vodka out of plastic bags at the store around the corner. They are both smart and interesting, and it's nice to have found some Ugandan friends my age in the neighborhood. Somehow, they never seem to get drunk. And, they both got over my whiteness fairly quickly and we are able to talk about much more than America, which is nice.