A day in the life

So, I was thinking you might want to know what a typical day consists of for an American student at Uganda Christian University who lives with a Ugandan family. It's a bit long, so if you don't really care that much, I understand. But, here it is:

I usually wake up at 7:15 a.m.- (or 8:15 depending on the day). I share a room with my host brother Martin who is 25 and a school teacher. He takes me to watch English Premiership football matches at a restaurant on the weekends. I have a mosquito net over my bed, he does not. Africans are used to malaria, apparently.

After I wake up I put on khakis or other dress pants (strange I know, but I can't really wear athletic shorts around the house) and walk out and greet my mother, Mama Margaret. This is how you ask a Ugandan how they slept:

"How was the night?"

"The night was fine, how was the night for you?"

"The night was fine."

Then I bathe. I pour water that was collected from rain on the roof, into gutters, into a giant basin thing. The water is held in plastic containers called jerrycans, of which there are all different sizes. I pour the rain water into a small plastic basin that I set in the bath tub (I am lucky to have an indoor bath room to do this in by the way). I cup my hands and splash water on myself, lather up, then splash water onto myself again. The water is not hot, just to note. It's not quite as simple as jumping in the shower.

After I bathe, I get dressed in my nice school clothes. There is a different academic culture here in which "smartness" is valued a lot, but smartness doesn't mean intelligence, it means that you're well dressed. So I wear much nicer clothes here than I do at home. Strange.

Breakfast for me is morning tea. "African tea" is half hot milk, half hot water, with a tea bag (or just loose leaves). Tea is taken in the morning and in the evening before dinner. Usually we have bread and butter to dip in the tea, and sometimes we have chipote, which is a tortilla-like food that is sweeter and greasier... and better to have with tea.

My walk to school takes about 15 minutes. I walk on the main road which goes through Mukono. It is the road that takes you from Kampala, the capital, to Jinja, another main town in Uganda. Then I walk on a dirt road past a few school compounds and I arrive on campus. 

Most days I start class at 8:30 a.m. In New England that is 11:30 p.m., midwest 10:30 p.m., and Arizona 9:30 p.m. Other days I have class at 9:30 a.m. These are my classes:

Faith and Action

Missions

African Traditional Religions, Christianity, and Islam in Uganda

East African History 1800 to Independence

Reading the New Testament in Africa

Lunch is starts at 12:45. There isn't much variety, and it is usually rice, beans, matooke (think mashed potatoes but instead of potatoes, mashed bananas) and posho, which I'm not even going to try to explain more than just a white, soft block of... food.

Sometime in the day I use the internet and hang out with other USP students in our little building. Today, since it is raining super hard, I'm inside now online at 2 p.m. It varies, but I use the internet every school day (so send me emails!).

After lunch, on sunny days I sit in a chair behind Bishop Tucker Hall and read in the shade. It's so nice. It's probably the nicest place in all of Africa. And my favorite part of everyday.

Football (soccer, duh) with the UCU team starts at 5 p.m. It's been great so far. It's a pretty high level of play. Sometimes we just play 11-a-side, sometimes we have more organized training sessions with fitness and things. Ugandans, reflecting the African culture of not being individualistic, pass a lot. It's not really about making yourself look sweet, which is refreshing.

I walk home, and usually get there about 7 or 7:15 p.m. I bathe once I get home, even if I don't play football. Ugandans are clean. I'm not, but I have to be here. 

Evenings are either spent reading, watching the news with my family, watching old kung fu movies (check out Game of Death where Bruce Lee fights Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Snake in Eagles Shadow with a very young Jackie Chan), watching terrible Nigerian movies that are dubber into Luganda, or just sitting around. Evening tea is somewhere in the mix before dinner.

Dinner is usually around 10 p.m. It is usually rice, beans, matooke, and maybe some beef in soup that you pour onto everything. Again, not much variety, but more than lunch at school. Then I go to sleep.

Hope that gave you a decent picture of what life is like here. Not that it really went into what I'm learning, but hopefully that provides a framework for my other posts in the past and in the future. Hope you are all well! Send me an email, I miss a ton of people at home!

Love,

Chuck