Stomping Around the Jungle

It’s Saturday. I have laundry to do so I go outside. There isn’t any water in the barrels. This is strange because there is usually always water. I get two jerry cans and head down to the well. At the bottom of the hill I see the kids from across the street. Wasswa, Nakato. They have small jerry cans.

If you are a twin in Uganda your name is either Wasswa or Kato if you are a boy and Babedia or Nakato if you are a girl. The woman across the street has had three consecutive sets of twins. But the oldest Kato is alone; his twin died.

“Ogambaki? Ngende ku maz” (What’s the news? I’m going to water. - The best sentence I can construct to say where I’m going.)

They follow me down the path towards the well. Another young kid, Eric joins us on the trail. Usually when we are playing in the front yard I am speaking English and they are shy. Now Wasswa is talking up a storm to me but all in Luganda. Eric says he is 9 years old, but I don’t know if I believe him. Wasswa and Nakato are six.

On the way to the water the kids call me off the trail to a tree. The first branch is about eight feet up. Wasswa puts his jerry can down and climbs the trunk until he reaches the branches. “Jackfruit.” Nakato says, pointing to the large green fruit hanging randomly in the middle of a branch.

Wasswa reaches it and barely gives it a tap and starts his way back down the tree. He does this in two more trees. Just barely tapping the fruit. I’m guessing it is only good when it falls right off the tree. I imagine the kids must check the same fruits everyday on the way to the well.

I lean on the tree and rub against some ball of black stuff. I get black powder on me and brush it off. Wasswa sees and hurries down the tree to grab the ball. He rips it open and sucks out the juice. Then he goes all around the tree picking off these black pieces of ?fruit.

Nakato stays on the bottom with me. She picks up the fruit as Wasswa drops them and squeezes any remaining juice onto her hand to look at it before she licks it up.

“Tugenda, Tugenda.” (Let’s go, Let’s go.)

We start towards the well again. The kids take turns wearing my sunglasses. Then I take off running down the hill and the kids scream and laugh, following me to the bottom.

The well is really a metal pipe coming out of a small concrete wall. The first time I was at the well the water was muddy in a pool around the well. This time the water makes a crystal clear stream out into the jungle.

I fill up the two jerry cans and start exploring the stream. Wasswa and Eric follow me and we stomp all around the jungle. They call me over to the other side of the stream to catch a trail further down the hill. We come to a place that the water flows down over some rocks. We climb around the rocks, following the stream. Wasswa and Eric show me the small minnows in the stream and try to catch some.

I tell them we should look for monkeys. We run up a trail, passing a few people going to the well. I hope Nakato is guarding my jerry cans. We were going up a trail when Wasswa said, “snake.” What? Where? But we just kept going. I don’t’ think he saw one. Maybe he had seen one there before. I never hear about anyone seeing snakes here.

After making it to higher ground – a clearing in the jungle, I suggest we go back and I start to run. The kids laugh and follow me all the way back to the well. Nakato is there with Kato, who has come to fill up his jerry can.

We start back up the hill to Nsumba. You can see the muscle definition in Eric’s arms. The little guy is buff - all those trips up and down the hill to the well. On the way home I take a few breaks. Sometimes the kids call for breaks. Finally we reach the white house. The kids want to play duck-duck-goose, but I tell them I have to do laundry.

I pour each jerry can into a tub – one for the wash, one for the rinse. We have Omo, powdered detergent. Usually I wash my clothes with a bar of detergent soup. I scrub my clothes and the water turns orange. You would never know the clothes were as dirty as they were until you see the water they were washed in. Omo smells like detergent at home.

I’m hanging my clothes when I realize that I’ve lost some of my vision. I don’t’ know for sure if I really have, so I go inside to read a book, which I can’t do usually when I lose some sight. But I realize that it’s only the bottom half of my left eye’s sight that is missing.

This means I’m going to get a migraine. I realize that I haven’t had much water. The night before I hardly drank anything at dinner because I’m tired of using the bathroom twice in the middle of the night. (Which everyone does here. We don’t know why it happens. In America we never get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, but here we about wet the bed every night.)

I take some ibuprofen and a liter of water and try to get some sleep. I only sleep for an hour or two. When I wake up my head is sensitive, but no big pain or anything. I talk to the nurses when they get home about how this is my second migraine. After talking to them, I realize that I need to be drinking more water.