Listmania

19 Nov 2010 3 Comments

by danrennt98 in Uncategorized

Animals I kill in my house:

Ants (sometimes, but where there’s one, there’s many)

Fruitflies

Mosquitos

Odd, unidentifiable bugs

Bugs that crawl on my wall and/or scare me

Moths (I kill them if they don’t take the hint to get out the window when I swat them nearby)

The green kind of bug that looks like a praying mantis that clicks when it flies and can only fly short distances (not a grasshopper, though the ants usually get to this kind quicker than I can)

Animals I don’t kill in my house:

Ants (sometimes, when they’re eating a bug that they’ve killed under my bed or in my dish drying rack [a broken down box with a newpaper on top], I just let them be, they’ll leave eventually)

Flies and Bees (they only stay for little under a minute before they decide they’re better off outside)

Mouse (only seen 1, I think he left after I threw out my rotting papaya that I was procrastinating on eating)

Spiders (unless I see more than one in a minute time span)

Lizards (they eat the other bugs)

Things I now like that I didn’t before:

Tomatoes

Beans

Goat meat (not amazing, but dealable)

Eggs without cheese on or nearby

Doodo (like spinach, but unique to Uganda)

Cassava Fries

Things I still don’t like:

Fruit (this includes some but not all of bananas, sweet bananas, matooke, jackfruit, papaya, oranges, lemons, apples, guavas and excludes watermelon)

Peanuts/Nuts/Peanut butter (here, g-nuts, including g-nut sauce, especially including g-nut sauce with fish on matooke, gross)

Posho (minus beans) and Matooke

Funny things I’ve seen but happen probably too quickly for me to take a picture:

Two men with two goats in between them each goat facing the opposite direction, all on one motorcycle, flying down the road

Since picking your nose here is somehow okay.. when I see someone pick their nose and then shake someone’s hand. It’s hilarious. And reminds me of when I was on a soccer team and we had to slap each player’s hand on the opposing team in a line and we would all lick our hands before.

The lady that lives next door throwing rocks at 2 ducks (there is no pond nearby, think princeton arms) that were drinking our of her washing basin this morning.

The ice cream man on his motorcycle with a cooler of ice cream playing “Jingle Bells” as his song.

Funny Things:

One of my American friends (a girl) stayed over my house a week or two ago, and when we walked out in the morning to take her to lunch and the taxi park I heard the little kids nearby saying *Gasps* “Muzungu has a wife!!!!”

Sometimes when people are riding past me (going the same way) on a bike or a motorcycle, they will see me and turn their heads and stare for about 5-8 seconds while they are riding down the road. They’re not even looking at all in the direction they’re riding. It’s completely unnecessary, and I’m just waiting for the day when one of these people stares for too long and stops paying attention to where they’re going and gets into an accident.

Sometimes at my SACCO, I’ll ask people “How are you?” and they’ll respond “Terrible” and I’ll say “Well, I’m sorry, why is that?” because “I have no money.” (implying that I should give them some) and I’ll say “Oh, well, that withdrawal slip in your hand tells me that you’re about to take some out, you’ll be fine.” or “Sorry, I don’t have any either we can have no money together.” Now, I don’t feel bad for people when they ask me for money, because I don’t have very much either.

I always want to pet the cows that are all over the place, but I know I will get weird, weird strange stares if I do, so I just talk to them when I walk by.

The taxi drivers always ask me “Muzungu, where are you going?” and when I say “just around here, or just home” they get mad because I’m not going to Jinja in their taxi so they can rip me off.

People say “Well Done” here for no reason as a greeting, I think it’s the english equivalent of a greeting here “Gybale” or Thank you for your work.

Things I need (as requested per my Aunt Sharon):

Spices (Onion Powder, Spicy spices, cilantro [is that a spice?], Chili powder)

Degree Ultra Dry Deodorant

Magazines (Newsweek, People, Time, Entertainment Weekly, *National Geographic*, Star [any other trashy ones as well] , The Week)

Books (note: I found most of these on amazon, but some you can definitely get in the bookstore):

Pretty much any book by Paul Theroux (The Happy Isles of Oceania, Sunrise with Seamonsters, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Kingdom by the Sea, The Mosquito Coast, Fresh Air Fiend, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, The Elephant Suite, To the Ends of the Earth)

July’s People by Nadine Gordimer

The Price of Stones: Building a School for my Village by Twesigye Jackson Kaguri

The Day Lasts more than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe

Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra

Silent Steppe by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov

Apples are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared by Christoper Robbins

The Railway by Hamid Ismailov

Glimmers of Hope: A Memoir of Zambia by Mark Burke

Or any book that is set in a non-European/USA country, or travel writings from non-European/USA countries

—

A British electrical adapter

Index Cards/Flash Cards (for memorization of Lusoga verbs)

Cash is always spectacular if hidden inside something and not declared at customs

Candy

Any good movies (sent on a flash drive, my computer can’t read DVDs)

Chips (any kind will do, but not plain)

Anything flavorful that can be sent in the mail? The food here has no flavor.

Dunkin Donuts coffee!!!!!

Fast Food (I will give $100 dollars upon my arrival in America to anyone who can successfully mail me a junior bacon cheeseburger, no tomato [it really is better without even though I like tomatoes now!])

Send some phone cards to my American friends in America too since they suck at calling me!

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Anyways, to sum things up! I’ve been here for about a month in Kamuli, almost 4 months in Uganda! So I’ve almost been here for half of a year! Craziness.

So things are moving along at work, I really love the people that I work with! I proposed the ideas for the three new financial products to the Loan Committee this week and they loved it! The full board meeting is going to be next week sometime.  (The Fixed Deposit Acct., The VSLA/SACCO Acct., and the Student Account) So I was doing write ups for all three and designing ads for them at the beginning of the week. But now towards the end of the week, things have slowed down and at work I’ve been playing spider solitare, scanning photos of members, and reading the National Geographic magazine that my Aunt Sharon sent me!

Ugandan time has plagued me and boggled my mind.. though I don’t mind it that much, I just adapt to it.. I’m a slow moving person anyway.. most of the time. My Lusoga teacher is the perfect example of this .. every meeting she’s been an hour or more late. She’s totally missed 2 meetings like the one on Friday. Then this week she’s come on Wednesday and Thursday.. without calling me to tell me that she was coming.. so I wasn’t there. And no one bothered to call me and tell me that she was there. But anyways we had no plans for this week. I’m going to get a new teacher.

I’m going to be travelling to Masindi around the 18th of December to teach life skills to youth at their World AIDS Day with some people from my group! That’s going to be fun especially to see another part of Uganda — Mid-West. Otherwise, I’m trying to find some cool people around Kamuli to hang out with outside of work. Have only met one that I get along with well, but haven’t quite ventured to hanging out after work. Otherwise, I just have been chilling at home reading, watching movies, talking online when I’m not working.

Well I hope all is well at home! I miss you all! I miss America sometimes especially when I think about random American things, ideas, ideologies, and hear American music in Uganda! I was telling my friend Amanda (from Winnipeg, Canada) about the Jay Leno/Conan clips where they go around American cities and ask them obvious questions that they should know (Who is the president of America right now? Which state is this [on a map]?) and they don’t and she told me they have a show in Canada called “Talking with Americans” and it’s pretty much the same thing!!! I think that’s hilarious that Canadians have made a whole show about American’s ignorance/stupidity.

Have a good weekend!

With Love,

Dan