Soroti

Boni and I hitched a ride with Susan, the international coordinator at Makerere University, to Kumi, where she was dropping off a bag of donations brought by the Northwestern students, and also paying their fees to the hospital in Kumi. From Kumi, we caught a matatu to Soroti – 40km of dirt paths and potholed tarmac roads. When we finally arrived in the Soroti town centre, we decided to go to his brother’s home (where we would be staying) via boda boda. I felt fine with this decision, as I had brought my new helmet with me. And so I experienced my first boda ride ever. I told the driver to go slowly, which he did. He thought I was super scared, since I was wearing a helmet, when in fact, I merely valued my life and my brains.

I was totally exhausted from the journey, so I took a short nap. Then, we walked over to Boni’s parents’ home. It was quite a long walk, taking us around 30 minutes. I realized that I walk a lot more here in Uganda than back home. Part of it was my fear of boda bodas, only recently pacified by the purchase of my helmet; part of it was my fear of taking matatus and getting lost – I may never find my way home, especially since I had until recently refused to take boda bodas; but part of it was also the pace of the country. I liked walking, walking amongst the people, moving along to the beat of life’s rhythm here. And as an added bonus, it allowed me to eat more chapatti without fear of getting fat!

We finally arrived. It was an old dilapidated home with no electricity; apparently there was running water though I couldn’t find a tap anywhere. We sat in the living room, with a kerosene lamp lighting up a small corner of the room. “Welcome to my humble beginnings,” Boni told me. I looked around in fascination, at the peeling paint on the walls, at the wooden block rotting away at the edges, blocking up the lone window in the room, at the long sofa where Boni had slept on as a child, and on which he was now sitting. He smiled, his white teeth a gleam of brilliance amidst the surrounding darkness. “Are you afraid?” he asked me. “No, I’m merely wondering at the pace of progress,” I replied. “This is where you came from, and look where you are now. Televisions, computers, fridges, international communication with your facebook friends, etc.” “Life progresses. We always move forward.”

Boni’s mother and sister-in-law prepared a sumptuous meal of rice, atap and fish for us. It was delicious, and the smell of fish was driving their cat crazy. She kept circling our dining area, purring sadly, begging us for some fish. But alas, we finished all the fish. In the end, after the meal was over, she jumped up onto the table and tried to eat the fish bones left on my plate. She was shooed away.

After dinner, Boni’s asked for the bicycle which his parents owned. There was no headlight on the bike, so Boni used the torch on his phone to light the way. (I was fascinated by the phones here. They all have very bright torches on them. I was endlessly jealous, given that power went out so frequently, and in many cases, there were no streetlights, even if power were on. Phone torches – who would’ve thought they would come in so handy!!!) We got on the bike, with Boni riding and me sitting on the passenger seat behind. I had not been on the passenger seat of a bike since my very very early childhood. I still have memories of my father riding a bicycle with my mother sitting behind, and me on her lap – a family of three out for an outing. Life was simple but unbelievably good back then. Progress and technology and all these material belongings, sometimes they can take away time from the simple pleasures in life. I don’t really remember ever being quite so happy since.

We whizzed along in the dark, the path behind us receding speedily into the black night, like the memories of an era gone by. I couldn’t turn away from the darkness, trying to catch another glimpse of where we had come from. All I could make out were shadows in the night.

(Posted with permission from Boni.)