Master, Dance For Us!

I teach English today. My S1 class has grown to 66 students. As I end my S2 class they call out, “Master!” (which is what they call teachers here. ..awkward I know.) It is also Uganda tradition for woman to kneel when addressing their elders. I’m not sure I’ve seen any of the male students do it, but whenever a girl is handing something to a teacher, or comes to the office with a question, she kneels. When I gave tootsie-rolls to the daughters of the woman whose house we were staying at during the Island trip, they knelt as I handed it to them to say thank you.

Anyway, so the students call out for me and ask me to dance. What? I am so confused. “Why in the world would I dance for you??”

“Please, master, dance!” haha So I say I will dance if they will dance. Some of them try, but they are too shy. I start dancing the Calypso, a Ugandan dance I saw at the Introduction and they immediately cheer and shout. I moonwalk out of the classroom to their utter delight.

After class I stayed for lunch. The teachers were outside on a bench under a tree by the office. Richard and the woman I don’t think likes me ask me what I do with Volset. I tell them about Jeff’s mosquito net project and how we go to villages and give them to woman who are pregnant or have small children, or those who are HIV positive. He asks why we don’t care about “the singles.” I tell them that we don’t have endless supplies of nets, and those people have the biggest risk of dying from Malaria, and that if pregnant women have Malaria it can cause birth defects in the baby.

Then Richard asks me what a muzungo looks like when he has AIDS and that maybe muzungos can’t get AIDS. I tell him how utterly wrong he is. I tell him I’m not sure what a person with AIDS looks like, that if I’ve seen one, I wasn’t aware of it. He couldn’t believe it and him and the woman talk in Luganda about it.

I explain to them that while HIV is still a problem in the US, it’s not nearly the epidemic it is in Africa because we are, from such an early age, educated about the virus: what causes it and how to prevent it.

I think the woman is coming around to me. I tell her I went to a burial the day before and she says to Richard that I am very inquisitive. I think this is meant as a compliment, then she tells me I could have got my head chopped off. What? Why is everyone worried about me getting my head chopped off?

I tell them the ladies said the same thing and warned me about foxes. Now they start on how I couldn’t possibly kick a fox and maybe the foxes in America are domesticated. I tell them they absolutely are not and that foxes are small. Then I say fine, if a crazy fox is after me, I will climb a tree. Then they ask what I would do I were in the tea plantation. I say I would hop on top of a tea plant and they laugh and laugh.