my hut

hey, this is the hut I stayed in on my homestay in Soroti...it was actually pretty nice inside too. The grass they use is pretty decent...it kept most of the rain out of it so that was nice. My family was decently well off so no mud huts for us...haha.

HOMESTAY

This is me and my host family. My papa, me, Catherine (who is pregnant) and my tata. It was so completely different from my other family, but still so great. I spent 5 days there, slept in a grass thatched hut, shelled and planted ground nuts for hours on end, rubbed dried corn off the cob, bathed under a lightning storm, and carried a 20 liter jerry can on my head back from the bore hole. This was obviously a rural homestay where their livelihood comes from what they plant…mostly ground nuts, cassava, millet, sorghum, corn and potatoes…80% of Ugandan’s are subsistent farmers so it gave me a little better idea what most people live like here. At times it was boring, I’ll admit…shelling ground nuts only goes so far in the realm of fun, ya know? … but I was also fortunate to have a tata (grandmother) who was willing to teach me sooo much from all she had learned and been through and seen. I can never get that anywhere else. I’ve also just realized there is so much I will never understand because I have not grown up doing agriculture all my life. The one on my left, Catherine, cooks for her husband and the grandparents, and the workers in the field, and anyone else that comes to visit. She is 8 months pregnant and she bends over all day in a smoky room with a pot and food….all day….there were a couple days that she had nothing to eat and she’s used to that cause she has no time. I spent a lot of my time with her in that hut and it gets old pretty fast. Yet, she seems content with her place in life…although she tells me she gets pretty lonely which is totally understandable. It seems so sad her place in life and what she does, but I also realize I have such different perspective as an American and might even see it as worse than it is, ya know? These Ugandan’s grow up in these roles of culture just as we have roles, yet I’m still trying to separate the cultural norms from the cultural sins. Catherine told me she cannot wait to be older (like tata)...I was so shocked by this comment, but she said that since elders are so respected here (definitely more than in America), she looks forward to being respected like that someday.(also, the bowing is either towards men or older women like my tata) I couldn't really tell from her statement whether she felt disrespected in her role as housewife now or if she merely looked forward to that kind of special respect one day. Either way, it was hard for me not to get frustrated for her and protest against how she is not treated with as much respect as I assume she should have even though she is young...yet she dutifully fulfills her role with no complaints and with a merry heart...truly, i saw an evident picture of the Proverbs 31 woman, and I don't think I will ever look at that passage of scripture the same. Still, seeing cultural norms as opposed to cultural sins has been hard enough for me to realize from my own culture let alone this one, so I don't really know how to analyze it all yet.