Uganda, November 2015
I was just couchsurfing in Kampala with Nathy, a lovely Ugandan my age.
I told her about my preference for traditional villages, where people still live far away from any tourism. Then Nathy suddenly came up with an idea. She was working on a project to build a school in the remote village of Mbrizi. According to her, this village was "in the middle of the bush".
That sounded good. I wanted to go there. Nathy said it was not a problem at all. I could help out at the school and teach the kids some English. That sounded perfect. She warned me that it would not be easy to get there. But as you can imagine, this fact made it even more interesting to me. Nathy and her friend Lukas wanted to take me to Mbrizi.
So a few days later, we started with a private driver, because no public transport went into that direction.
In an inn, about two hours from our destination, we made a stopover. Here we also spent the night. The accommodation was a welcome change for me. Finally a little luxury awaited me again: a private room, hot water, electricity, and, to my delight, even full board was included in the price. That fit well into my budget for the equivalent of 5 € per night.
The next morning we started the extremely bumpy drive to Mbrizi. The village is far from any civilization – it has not even found its way to Google Maps. The roads there – unpaved – were really miserable at the moment due to the rain of the last weeks. From time to time we all had to get off and push the car because we were stuck in the mud again. Our driver was really great, and we managed to arrive without any major incidents.
In Mbrizi we were already eagerly awaited and even received a guided tour personally from the head of the village. The residents looked at me curiously as we strolled through the streets. They lived in very simple mud huts with thatched roofs. Rainwater was collected in a huge tank next to the school. There, the residents could get it with canisters.
In the village center itself were only a few huts. We were told that most of the residents lived scattered across the land. The children thus had long ways to school. The people here lived mostly from cattle breeding. I saw some very small children looking after cattle herds. It was noon, and we were served a good portion of matoke with rice and peanut sauce.
After we had eaten, we visited the school where I was to help out the next few days. It consisted of only three classrooms. The tiny school was supposed to accommodate nearly 200 students – unimaginable.
In the classrooms were a few dilapidated wooden benches, but unfortunately it was not enough for all children. There was also a lack of teachers, and the students attended the school very irregularly, as their parents often needed them to work. "Nathy still has a decent project in front of her," I thought to myself.
The day before we had bought balls, chalk, and other utensils for the school, which we handed over to them. The joy was great. The boys immediately grabbed a ball and began kicking it back and forth loudly in the meadow, while the girls tried to take the ball from them again. They had such a joy with this game that the fun lasted for the whole afternoon.
In the evening, Nathy and Lukas had to go back to Kampala. They assured themselves that I had everything I needed here and said goodbye. Then I moved into my little room in the middle of the village center. The room was tiny, and there was no running water or electricity. Besides, the room was desolate except for a tiny bed with a rusty metal frame standing in the corner. For the first time since the beginning of my trip, I was glad to have a mosquito net with me because the bugs were quite aggressive due to the rainy season.
The only power source of the village was in the school. There they had a small solar panel attached to the roof. Unfortunately, the sockets usually were all occupied, because after all, they had to be shared by the entire village. Fortunately, the school was only 300 meters away from my new home. I only partially had cell phone reception – I guess so depending on the wind direction – but more bad than right.
The people of the village lived in very simple conditions in their mud huts, which mostly consisted of only one room in which the whole family slept. They cooked outdoors in front of the hut. The whole village shared a few outhouses, which were accordingly dirty. I must confess that I really preferred the bush toilet there.
The village community was delighted that I would spend a few days with them, and the children besieged me immediately. Some families asked me if I had brought money for them. Unfortunately, I had to disappoint them.
Nathy, Lukas, and I had bought a lot of school supplies for the village, but we had deliberately avoided donations. I have noticed that Muzungus are often associated with donations. But, fortunately, they did not blame me when I said no.
My neighbors, a young family of three – Arafath and Fatima with Arafath Junior, who was only one year old – took care of me from the beginning. Arafath and Fatima were both teachers at the school, but originally came from another village and therefore had other traditions. The whole family lived in a small room of approximately 8 m². When I was home with them in the evening, I was amazed when suddenly I saw three cackling chickens beside their bed. At night, they kept them in a box so wild animals would not eat them.
As soon as it got dark, the village was deserted. Everything was calm and dark, as there were no electric lights. It was quite different from what I was used to. To live completely without electricity and only with a mini flashlight – fortunately mine had a crank drive. I often had no electricity in Uganda, but at least I had some candles, which can also bring a lot of light into a room. But here in this village, there were not even candles.
The next day, I helped Arafath write the certificates for the students. These should be distributed on Wednesday. Then the school year was already over, and the kids had two months of vacation. Among other things, I had to enter a behavioral note in the certificates. So I asked what I should write about each child. Arafath said, I could write "very good" or "good", as I liked. I only thought T.I.A. ("This is Africa"). As benign as I am, of course, I wrote only "very good" for each student.
The twelve-year-old neighbor girl named Murunschi accompanied me during all of her free time. She was a pretty thin girl, and her hair had been shaved off completely. The girl lived with her uncle in a very simple and small hut opposite my accommodation. Murunschi was coping with the entire household, washed the laundry, and cooked for her uncle. In return, he paid for her school fees. Her parents had died very young due to illness, she told me.
The little one always had a lot to do. But as soon as she was done, she already stood in front of my door and smiled at me with her beautiful big eyes. She loved to touch my hair and make hairstyles. The hair growth of Africans is, after all, a little more complicated because of their dense, curly hair. The women usually wear very short hair or dreadlocks.
In addition, Murunschi loved to rummage through my backpack. Many of the things she had never seen before, such as a deodorant spray. She regarded it with an incredible fascination. When I explained the meaning of the spray to her, she was quite surprised that we Europeans would need something like that. Here in the village, people would just wash themselves daily with a little water, so nobody would stink anyway. What did I have to laugh about her statements! I realized, once again, how many luxury goods we have in Europe.
The rest of the days, Fatima accompanied me from morning to evening. She was really nice and helped me get water, cooked daily for me, showed me the African way of doing laundry, and much more.
Meanwhile, she had also told me about all the intrigues in the village: Which man secretly met with which woman, who was enemies with whom, etc. – so it was just as at home.
Fatima told me some more exciting facts about life here in the bush:
During my stay, I mostly made small hikes in the afternoon with Fatima. We visited some families who lived outside the village center. Sometimes, we had to walk to their homes for a few hours. The joy of our visit was always huge. After all, I was the first Muzungu in their house.
Guests were usually given a large pot of milk – about a liter – as a sign of hospitality. You were not meant to take it away, rather you were supposed to drink the whole pot during the visit. I did not want to appear unfriendly, but I could not drink a whole liter of milk. The milk tasted smoky. Fatima explained to me that the pots were fumigated here, so that the milk gets that special flavor, which is probably very popular with the people.
Another exciting fact about milk: The young girls in the village were usually really thin, but the adult women could be described as tubby.
The reason for this is this: If a woman is of marriageable age, you could say, that she is fattened with milk. According to Fatima, the girls then have to drink 10 - 20 liters of milk per day to maintain feminine curves and gain weight. And they had to do this for several months and were not allowed to eat anything else.
It is a sign of prosperity when a woman has something on her ribs. After the wedding, the woman is allowed to eat normally, but has to maintain her weight. Thus, they must continue to drink a lot of milk. If a woman is too thin, the man is said to be inadequate to take care of her. Crazy how different beauty ideals can be.
To my astonishment, there was even a clinic in the village if you would like to call this about 4 m² small room that way. A relatively aged man – the doctor – sat in it in front of a few boxes with medicine. The choices were antibiotics, analgesics, and drugs to treat malaria. These were probably the most needed pills here.
Besides, the gentleman showed me a black stone. This would be used for snake bites. I had never heard of it before. But my research on the internet showed that this stone was indeed an effective treatment for snake bites. Otherwise, the doctor repeatedly treated small wounds. The hygiene level seemed not quite perfect to me, but how could it be expected otherwise.
On the penultimate day of my stay in the village, the certificate distribution was held in the school. It should start at ten o'clock in the morning. I was there on time, but to my surprise nobody else was in school. I had to know better – here in Africa the clocks tick differently. But at least on such an important day, I would have expected people to arrive on time.
In the next few hours, the teachers and the students with their families slowly settled in. At 14 o'clock the ceremony finally started. After a long speech by the director, the certificates were distributed.
The following day, the time had come for me to say goodbye. Fatima woke me up at seven in the morning with a delicious African tea. She said, I should leave early because the roads were very bad due to the rain.
I said goodbye to Fatima, Arafath, Murunschi, and the other villagers with tears in my eyes. I would miss life and the people very much. All the people here, who lived in the simplest conditions, mostly had to get by without medical help, had water shortages, lived without power, and had only two or three sets of clothes and a maximum of one pair of shoes. And yet, they were the happiest people I have ever met. They all radiated joie de vivre. Everything was readily shared without looking at one's own advantage. Yes, I think we can all learn a lot from such people. Here, no one needs PlayStations or iPhones to be happy.
A villager took me to the nearest village in his Boda-Boda. The ride there was a disaster. We only progressed at a snail's pace and got stuck in the mud again and again. Once more, I was splashed with dirt from top to bottom. From the next village, I could immediately find a ride to Kampala – what luck! So my adventure in the bush, which I will never forget again, had ended.
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