Fireflies

Fireflies

By Cecilia Woloch

And these are my vices:
impatience, bad temper, wine,
the more than occasional cigarette,
an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed,
a hunger that isn’t hunger
but something like fear, a staunching of dread
and a taste for bitter gossip
of those who’ve wronged me—for bitterness—
and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart
to children whose names I don’t even know
and driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house
or those cute little toylike mice
whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps
I carry, lifeless, out to the trash
and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book
to a human being, and humming
and living inside my head
and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt
at twilight across the lawn
and learned to catch fireflies in my hands,
to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering
onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels.

Hello, again.

Well...um...it's been over three months since I posted here. I've been in the States for a little over two months now, although I think about my clients and friends in Uganda daily. No reason I can't keep writing here -- maybe I'll post some poems, thoughts, stories. Right now, if all goes well, I'll be going to the Netherlands in April to meet my Ugandan friend James, and give a presentation at the International Federation of Hard of Hearing Young Professionals. Amsterdam, whoo!

For my Ugandan friends, this is what mother nature has delievered to DC this week! We are the son of Snowmaggedon.

My new mailing address:

6428 22nd Road

Arlington, VA 22205

Quick update from Zanzibar

I haven’t updated this in ages. Yikes! So much to share. Right now I’m on the beach in Zanzibar. Heading back to Uganda (Bushenyi) in a few days. More to come!

Some common Ugandan Phrases:

“Ok, please”: used interchangeably used for yes and no
“I am on my way coming”: estimated time of arrival anywhere from 5 min to 2 hrs to never.
Up/down instead of left/right when giving directions
”Very fine”: if you’re more than fine, aren’t you good?
Pick and drop: not pick up and drop off
“Excuse”, not excuse me
”Push off”: to get a ride somewhere
”You are lost!”: not to be confused with actually being lost, but meant to ask “where have you been all this time?”

“Do you want to be more than friendly?” LOVE THIS ONE.

Some English words have a peculiar meaning widely understood within Uganda but mystifying to foreigners. The origin of these usages may be obscure. The best known example is probably to extend which in Uganda means move over on a seat to make room for someone else. Other words used include "pop" and is used to replace words like bring and come, for example Dan, pop that bottle here or Bobby, pop to my house.

How boda-boda got its name: The term “boda boda” originated at the Uganda–Kenya border crossing at Busia, where a kilometer separates the downtown area and the border post on the Ugandan side. Travelers dropped off at the bus/taxi station by buses or taxis or those coming to Uganda from the Kenya side were ferried over this distance by enterprising cyclists, who would attract business by calling border, border."

Cell phones in Uganda: A person finding himself with inadequate prepaid time to make a call will ring up the intended recipient of the call and hang up immediately. This has happened to me numerous times. The receiver of the call, hearing the phone ring once and seeing the number, understands himself to have been beeped. The understood message is, I wish to talk to you at your expense. HAHA!

The Vagina Monologues had a brief but notorious appearance on the Ugandan stage before being banned by government censors. The brouhaha led to the entry of the word monologue into Ugandan English as a euphemism for vagina. The newspaper Red Pepper popularized the use of the word kandahar for vagina, and whopper for penis.

Apparently everyone leaves work here (district office) at 5pm on the dot...at 6:45pm I got up to leave and found myself locked in! The doors lock from the inside!! There are no lights here either...ooops. I think it's time to pack up and find an exit somewhere. There is always the roof!

Been thinking of these lines by James Agee:

In every child who is born,
under no matter what circumstances,
and of no matter what parents,
the potentiality of the human race
is born again.

Happy weekend to all! I'm heading to Kampala on Monday...12 hours in a fifteen-seat bus (usually packed with 20 or 25 people).

Sugarcane: every child's favorite snack

Sugarcane! The kids love this stuff.

A few more pics: M.A. bartering for green bananas, Esther between the trees, the massive "African meal" described in previous post, and more pics of the children.

Mama Africa's Orphanage

These are the children at Mama Africa’s orphanage. As part of an expressive therapy technique, I asked them to draw something that made them happy. Well, at first I asked them to draw something that represented themselves, but that went over Esther’s head (she’s the one teacher who speaks some English). I expected them to start drawing in frenzy, fighting over the colored pencils, but many just sat there dumfounded. About five or six of them had never drawn before, much less seen clean paper and bright pencils. I should have thought to get clipboards to put the paper on, but they seemed content using the ground. For the children who didn’t know how to draw, I drew a cluster of green bananas on a tree, which they recognized. Slowly, a few of them began to draw. The activity took about three hours, and the end result was awesome (most popular drawing were flowers, football, and bananas). The kids presented their drawings to each other and then I hung them up around their sleeping quarters.

The owner, Mama Africa – she won’t reveal her given name – always insists on feeding me when I come. Yesterday she prepared a HUGE “African meal”, consisting of matoke, yams, Irish potoates, beans, fatty beef, pumpkin, mazie (a kind of dough you use to scoop up the beans), and spinach. I expected her to invite the two teachers to eat, but it was just me and Esther (the one teacher that speaks a little English). M.A. sat there while we ate, all smiles, and of course I couldn’t eat more than a plate or two of all those carbs, so I suggested we give some to the other teacher or to the children. She said the children had already eaten, and I wanted to protest but thought better of it. She even insisted I take take home the leftover yams, which felt so so wrong. The children eat a small bowl of oatmeal for breakfast and a huge bowl of matoke for dinner. And whatever snacks I bring them that day. The children – mostly around 5 or 6 yrs of age -- don’t speak a word of English yet (they are in P1 and P2; children here don’t learn English till P4), but they always seem happy to see me. On Tue I went out in the fields with M.A, a two hour walk on a narrow trail studded with cows and goats. We had tea with a very old lady who lived in a small mud hut, very neatly decorated. They asked me questions (through Esther) about marriage in America, Obama (of course), and family. Everything I said seemed hilarious to them. Anyway, so M.A. bartered with the old lady for a month’s worth of green bananas, which I bought for her. We walked through the fields while she pointed at different clusters. They all looked the same to me, but she has a discerning eye. So the kids are set while I’m in Kampala this month, which is something, but hardly sustainable. They do have a few chickens…I’m thinking maybe I can buy them a bunch of chickens and have someone make a coop; they can raise the chickens for eggs, sell them, and use the money to feed/school the children, also an activity the children themselves can partake in. We'll see...


Here is Felix modeling the football the kids popped in pineapple patch! He’s so adorable!!