drinkin with the boys

I can’t BELIEVE it’s already October. We’ve been here almost 6 weeks already…SO crazy. Though I can’t think too much about the fact that it’s October, because then it makes me remember that I’m missing Fall, and then I feel homesick. I hear that it’s already freezing in Noho, though, so maybe I’m not missing it too too much.

So we’re back at the resource center today and done with our slum visits. It’s been quite an eye-opening week. On Wednesday we visited Naguru slum, where a lot of refugees from Northern Uganda have ended up. Apparently this particular slum is known for its waragi, the locally-brewed alcohol made from either millet or maize flour. We got to see the area where the women (yes, it’s the women who do ALL the work almost everywhere) brew the alcohol. It almost made me throw up just watching them – this work is SO labor intensive and these women are so strong and they can pretty much touch fire. (my homestay mother likes to say that African women are fire- and heat-resistant, and I think I believe her) Then the man leading us around (he’s called a Key Community Volunteer [KCV] and he volunteers with Slum Aid Project; their structure is so amazing and effective because the volunteers live in the slums, so they actually know what’s going on and how to best solve problems from within the communities) decides it might be interesting to go into the “bar” right next to where the women are brewing the alcohol so we can talk them. It’s actually just a little hut with about 10 (very drunk) men crammed around a tiny table downing this stuff that has, like, 95% alcohol content. (they tried to get us to try it, and some people did, but even with the glass like 3 feet from my nose my lungs were already on fire, so I think I would have choked to death if I had actually had a drink.) So all of us muzungu girls (and one muzungu boy) file in and squeeze amongst these men and our leader explains that we’re there to study gender relations and domestic violence. You can imagine what kind of reaction THAT elicited. So then the men start yelling about how Museveni has overempowered women and women don’t know their place anymore, etc. etc. etc. Half the time we couldn’t tell what was going on, but they were passionate and angry enough that I managed to get the gist of it. And what was so perfect was the fact that there was a window (or hole in the wall, to be more accurate) across from where I was sitting that gave me a picture-perfect view of the women outside working their ASSES off while these men sat inside, complaining about how women have too much power and drinking the liquor that the women are making with the money that the women have earned from selling the liquor elsewhere. Beautiful.

Yesterday I came across a video store and decided to try buying a cartoon to watch on my laptop with Jethro. He’s been asking me since I first brought my laptop home if I had any movies. The only movies I brought are “V for Vendetta,” “Lost in Translation,” and “Amelie.” Finally a few days ago I figured “V for Vendetta” might work for the time being (I think you’ll agree with me that that was my best option, right?). Let me preface this story with a little info about Jethro’s obsession with violence. I don’t know if this is something all 7-year-olds go through or if it’s just Jethro, but he is OBSESSED with violence. EVERYTHING he picks up becomes a gun. He even bites his bread into the shape of a gun so he can pretend to shoot people with it. Pen caps, stuffed animals, table tennis paddles – everything is a weapon. It’s really disturbing. He mentioned something about wanting a water gun a few weeks ago and I was considering getting one for him as a goodbye gift, but HELL NO. So I put on “V for Vendetta” and let him look at the scene selection menu to see if it looks interesting. From just looking at those tiny thumbnails that appear on the scene selection menu, he was able to pick out precisely the scenes that contained the most violence, and that’s ALL he was interested in watching. So when I went to the video store and decided to buy “Finding Nemo”, I was a little nervous that it wasn’t going to be quite….exciting enough for Jethro. But he loved it, thank god. He even laughed at a few parts, though I was laughing way harder than he was through the whole thing. It was really uplifting and I think it made me feel a little less homesick. (although yesterday I was in the taxi and a Backstreet Boys song came on the radio and THAT made me feel homesick. Go figure, huh?) I think I’m going to buy “Lion King” next to watch with him, though more for my sake than his, to be honest.

Okay we’re supposed to be having some sort of briefing about the eastern excursion, though one of our academic directors has malaria and the other’s daughter just got out of surgery for appendicitis, so I don’t know who’s going to be conducting this debriefing….

P.S. seriously I love you all so, so much and I hope you know how happy your comments make me. They’re the first thing I look at in the morning when I get to the resource center. It takes 700 hours for the page to load, but dammit I wait it out.