Tongolo 3/Galema

Tongolo, Uganda.  Fall 2009.

Elizabeth says we need to go up the mountain to Galema before we go back home.  The wife of the village's LC has a lump on her leg that he wants Elizabeth to look at.  There's really nothing she can do if it's anything more than a bruised bump, but the people here trust her.  If she tells them to go down to the doctors at the aid station, they will.  

She says it's an hour walk from Tongolo to Galema, and Elizabeth is fully prepared to hike up the mountain.  The rest of us, less so.  Malia is sound asleep in her baby sling across Judy's back - I wish I were that small.  It's late in the afternoon, but the sun is still high enough to burn mercilessly.  It sounds silly to say so; It's Africa, I knew it would be hot, but I never thought it would be so relentless.  I've got a hat and plenty of sunscreen, and I can still feel the skin on my nose burning pink.

Lillian reminds Elizabeth that we have to walk past the car to get to the path to Galema, and we do have a baby with us, after all.  Elizabeth wants to resist, I can see in her eyes she doesn't want to drive up the mountain.  I don't say anything.  None of us do - we are very obviously not complaining in this battle of the wills, and if Judy points the baby in Elizabeth's direction, it's totally coincidental.  

Five minutes into the drive up the mountain, I can see why Elizabeth wanted to walk.  I can't say definitively that this is the worst road in Uganda, but it is without a doubt the worst road I've ever been on.  The dirt has almost completely eroded away, leaving deep crevasses on either side.  The bit of drivable road left is only just barely wide enough for the car - in most places we're driving half on the road, half in the crevasse, with both hands pressed against the ceiling, trying to keep our balance, wincing when a big bump knocks our elbows together. 

At the top of the hill, Elizabeth and Lillian cheerfully greet the LC, then disappear into his home to examine his wife, leaving Judy and I to stand by the car and admire the view.  Lake Victoria rests at the bottom of the mountain, the Victoria Nile stretching out like an arm into the horizon.  Children from around the village who came running at the sound of the car stop short when they see us - we are clearly not who they expected.  Some of them run away when I wave, the others just stare.  Not in a hostile way, but not in a purely curious way, either.  I try not to stare back, but I know that I am.

When Elizabeth emerges from the hut with Lillian and the LC she is smiling, but it's tight across her face, and I can tell she doesn't mean it.  The lump must be more than your average bruise.  The children flock to her with their hands outstretched, crying "Sweetie!  Sweetie!"  Elizabeth shoos them away, finally turning out her empty pockets to prove she hasn't brought any candy, and she becomes infinitely less interesting in their eyes.  Though they do still crowd around the car to hang off the doors when we're all ready to leave, and won't let go until she leans on the horn.  They run off, delighted.    

If I thought driving up the mountain was stressful, sending the car back down half-cocked with gravity pushing us faster should have killed me.  Driving out of the village is like a sigh.  We roll the windows down to let the air run through us, cooling the sweat on our skin.  The sun won't set for another three hours, but all I want to is crawl into bed and sleep for days.  Gently, though; I'm lucky to be unburned, but I'm still pretty pink around the edges enough to know that tonight will be an uncomfortable one.  

We still wave at the children who run along beside the car, but our smiles are tired and our hands are heavy.  The happy cries of "Mzungu!  Bye!" follow us all the way back to town.

Post Script:  Two days ago, after several long, uncertain months full of suddenly appearing family members, lost money, and disappearing judges, Judy contacted all of us with the news that she was officially Malia's legal guardian!  She hopes to return to America soon, where she will be able to complete the adoption process.

Tongolo, Part Two

The meeting happens without me.  I'm not bothered - it's not really my meeting, anyway.  Malia sits in my lap and eats roasted corn off the cob while Judy, Elizabeth, and Lillian present their case to the chief.  They have to prove that Malia is better in Judy's care before the chief will agree to help them, and while they've brought a "before" picture, but it's not the definitive proof they were hoping it would be.  The little girl in my lap does not look at all like the little girl in the photograph.  That girl's little shoulders are hunched from scoliosis, and her little belly is distended from hunger, and her skin is drawn tight across her bones.  The girl in my lap has a straight back, and her little belly sticks out because it's full of food, and her arms and legs are the opposite of stick-thin.  The chief points to the girl in the picture and says, "How do I know that this is not a picture of some other child?"  But when Judy points to the matching scars, he says, "I will sign your papers."

There are other signatures needed, signatures only a chief can get, so we leave the meeting with the chief's cell phone number and a promise to return next week.

Elizabeth tells us that we must go to Tongolo B - there is a woman there with a sick son, and while Elizabeth is no doctor, she knows enough about various symptoms to advise.  She says it'll be a bit of a trek.  I'm glad I wore good shoes.  I wish I had brought more sunscreen.

We have to cross a stream to get to Tongolo B.  A small group of boys are there filling up their jerrycans, and they wave at us as we go by.  They end up behind us, laughing with each other in Lugandan.  I turn to the boy behind me.

"May I take your picture?"  He sets down his jerrycan and smiles brightly.

I turn my camera around to show him, and the boys all gather to see how good he looks in pictures.  

When we reach Tongolo B, a woman comes running out of her hut, waving excitedly.  She wants to show Elizabeth the squash she's grown.  It's a large squash, and she's proud of it, but a bit confused as well - she's never seen a squash before, and doesn't know what to do with it.  She tries to gift it to Elizabeth, who refuses.  "You can sell it to me, if you want," she tells the woman, "but I'm going to give it back to you."  Both women seem satisfied with that.

"I keep telling them to not give me their food," she says when we start walking again.  "They might be ignoring me."

The boy in Tongolo B has Malaria.  Elizabeth tells his mother that it's absolutely treatable, but she must bring him down to the clinic as soon as possible, and they will give her the medicine she needs.  The woman agrees, but Elizabeth tells her again, just to be sure.

Walking back to the car I spy a little girl watching us from a hill.  I wave at her.  She runs away.

Tongolo, Part One

Today we go to Tongolo, the part of Africa you would expect to find in a National Geographic spread.  My Aunt Judy must go to this village to appeal to the chief, hoping that he will fill out the paperwork she needs to begin the process of adopting her daughter, Malia.  Normally these papers are signed by the child's parents, but Malia's mother and father are no longer around.  They aren't dead, just "away," - there's the unspoken understanding that the people of Tongolo know exactly where the child's parents are, and are keeping quiet for their protection.  Abandoning a child is illegal, and if either parent is found, they would absolutely be jailed for it.  There is a man who claims to be an uncle in the village, and we will need his signature as well.

We drive to the village on what must be the second worst road in Uganda*.  It's a holiday, a holy day, and the villagers we pass are dressed in their finest, walking to and from their worshiping places.  "Most of the children in the villages have never seen a white person," I am told before we leave, "so they will either run away from you, or they'll run at you and ask you for something."  None of the children have run away, yet.  They run alongside the road in their dresses and slacks, smiling and hollering and waving at our car.  One little girl wears a red dress two sizes too big, and she can hardly contain herself when she sees our car.  She can't be older than four or five, and she runs the way a child does; she's so excited she can only just control her limbs, and she's picking her knees up higher as if that will make her go faster.  She waves her arms as hard as she can as she cries, "Mzungu!  Jambo!"  Mzungu meaning "white person," Jambo meaning "hello."

(A note about Ugandan roads and traffic from an American perspective.  In theory, they drive on the left.  In reality, the dirt roads have been so damaged by pot holes and erosion that they drive on whatever side is going to do the least amount of damage to the undercarriage of their cars.  Sometimes that's the left side, sometimes that's the right, and sometimes that 's right down the middle, oncoming traffic be damned.  The more metropolitan areas may be in better condition, but are no safer to drive on.  Traffic laws are little more than courteous suggestions, and there's no right-of-way privilege for pedestrians or cyclists, just the assumption that they know better than to get hit by a car.  But I didn't see or hear of a single accident in the time I was there, so they must have found a method to the madness.)     

We've been led to the village by Elizabeth, the woman who found Malia and placed her into my aunt's care.  Elizabeth acts as a social worker for Tongolo and the surrounding villages, an America woman who's made it her job to help floundering villages prosper.  Her visit today has two purposes - to join our visit with the chief, and check in on the progress of her work.  She's been showing the villagers how to plant and care for personal and communal gardens, teaching them to grow vegetables that they can either eat or take down to the market to sell.

Elizabeth speaks little Lugandan, and the villagers speak little English, so her friend and co-worker Lillian has come with us, and when the villagers come to see us, she makes the introductions.  I say they came to see us, but really, they came to see Malia, and some can hardly believe their eyes.  How different she must look from the little girl with stick-thin legs and the crooked back who left them only months ago.  Now she looks healthy, and happy, and most importantly, loved.  And when I say everyone comes, I mean everyone comes.  Mothers, children, men who may or may not be uncles, and they all touch her face and hold her hands and try to make her smile, and I think, "Where was this warmth when she was thrown to the street and you heard her cry?" 

Some of the houses are square and made of brick, some of the houses are round and made of mud. Some have painted pictures on the outer walls, telling you who lives there with some decorative flair. We saw at least one herd of cattle (I still don't know if we saw more than one herd, or the same herd more than once), many people had goats (and some baby goats) tied up outside of their homes.  My aunt and I have taken Malia down the hill a ways to see where the pigs are kept, two huge, muddy beasts fighting for shade under the trees.  There is an engine roar above us, and one of the might-be-an-uncles calls us back up the hill.  The chief has just arrived on his motorcycle, and now it is time to talk.