Talking to Strangers Ugandan Style

In England I go for a walk because it is good exercise but also because it allows space to think and reflect. During my time in Uganda there was not a lot of space on my own so I decided to go for a walk one Sunday along the dirt roads alongside the Nile. It was a hot, sunny day so I didn’t have the problem of huge amounts of sticky mud forming part of my shoes and making my feet weigh four times more than they did at the start of the walk as they would on a rainy day.

I decided to take one road that goes to the Nile and then go back and onto the village of Bujagali Falls, which is gradually starting to be called Bujagali Lake following the recent construction of a second dam in this part of the Nile for hydro-electric generation which drowned the Falls.

Any thoughts of a quiet, reflective stroll were quickly dismissed. Firstly there is the importance of greetings and since almost everyone else is travelling by foot or bicycle or are busy in their yards in front of the house there are a lot of people to greet. I am limited to “Jambo!” (Swahili but accepted here from foreigners) or a somewhat sing-song “Hello. How are you? I am fine”. Secondly “mzungus” (white people) stand out just a little and generate a lot of excited interest from small children and most of the school age children will recognise my face at least from school “Teacher Joanne”. There are lots of children and so lots of attention. Neither of these allowed for long enough to switch off into reflecting mode.

However, when I swapped notes on my experience with a volunteer couple at the school on my return, they were surprised at just how many people had engaged me in conversation in addition to the basic greetings. On the way to the Nile Eva started walking alongside me carrying her 6 month old daughter who she said had malaria, her elder child a 3 year old girl was at a neighbour’s house. She walked me all the way down to the edge of the Nile where her mother and other family members were planting grass in a field along the banks of the river. I had been told there was a nice spot to sit and read but I quickly realised that I would be too much of a novelty to be left to read so I headed back the way I came, thanking Eva for showing me where to go, but she insisted on walking back some way with me. Her nephew Brian, who is a pupil in one of the lower years at the primary, joined us. My cynicism was waiting for the request for something, after all she had a sick baby, however I was wrong and I was just being offered friendship. Eva explained to me she had continued at school until Senior 2 until finances meant she couldn’t continue. She also pointed out several different crops to me and explained the process of cultivating beans.

Beautiful blue dragonfly that sat beside me

As we walked Anthony, the young man in one of the yards who had advised me that the river Nile wasn’t much further, came out to greet me and find out where I was from and what I did. We chatted for a while and he told me that the following day the President of Uganda was coming for the inauguration of the new hydro-electric power, which explained the helicopters we had heard overhead in the previous days. Eva explained as we walked on that Anthony’s mother had died some months earlier.

Finally Eva decided she’d come far enough with me and turned back. Shortly afterwards Brian reappeared and I realised he had been sent to give me Eva’s phone number.

A little further Fiona and Sandra, who turned out to be Primary 5 pupils greeted me and took it upon themselves to walk with me and try and teach me some Lusoga words (the local language) before inviting me to their home, which I hope I politely declined.

Having barely got 5 minutes further on my walk Aminah a Primary 3 student greeted me and we went through introductions to her younger siblings and an older sister. Aminah said she’d like a friend in England and with some extra input from her sister I came to the conclusion she may have heard about the letters that had been written to pupils in one of the volunteers schools in England and she was looking for a pen friend. By now I was close to the entrance to the restaurant I was planning to visit and after explaining I’d be in school on Monday and promising I would be passing back that way later she reluctantly allowed me to continue.

Lunch overlooking the Nile

The minute I emerged more than two hours later Aminah came running over to me calling her friend who it turned out had written me a very nice letter on her behalf, explaining that Aminah had lost her mother and she would like me to sponsor her and be her new mother and take her to my country signed “Your pen friend, Aminah”. Clearly the concept of a pen friend was a little different than mine! I tried to explain that she had all her brothers and sisters here with her and that it wasn’t very simple to just take someone to my country.

My final encounter was with a man and two women who had obviously just left their Sunday morning church service at the local “born again” church. I think that the man was the preacher and one of the women was his wife. The preacher greeted me and then immediately wanted to know if I was a Christian and if I was saved. When I replied in the affirmative he got very excited and said how God had convicted them that they assume white people are Christians and don’t check they have faith and preach the gospel to them. I was quite glad I was the only one of the 4 volunteers on the project that had this encounter as I doubt the others would have been so able to feel comfortable with it and honestly it was probably more likely to put them off God. Since we were all walking in the same direction I was part of this conversation, although a fairly quiet participant, until the pastor and his wife turned off to make an important visit. The third lady continued on which me until we reached her home and she told me about the President’s visit the next day and how she had been invited to the event along with some of the other villagers and was clearly very impressed with the President.

By the time we said “Goodbye” I was left with only 10 minutes left of my more than 2 hour walk, so I had no reflection time, but I’d met a lot of rural Ugandan friendliness. 

Talking to Strangers

Whilst I have been busy since I stopped working I guess a combination of feeling a little less task orientated as well as travelling round and interacting with more people who at least on the surface probably feel we have some similarities means I have found myself in short conversations with strangers which are more than the functional exchanges that normally fill our lives.

I guess it has helped that I have been doing more travelling on public transport as well as the fact of hosting the Olympics and Paralympics in London this year has seemed to grant a space in which all of a sudden there is a mood to cross the normal British reserve to the stranger and a subject with which we can initiate a conversation. However I have been blessed by a number of exchanges chatting about the Olympics or children or recommendations about travel bags with people with whom I never even exchanged names. I have even occassionaly managed to get someone to talk to me on the tube! It has been wonderful to have these moments of shared humanity with people whom I almost certainly will not meet again, even sometimes just to sit in public spaces and look around and realise that all those I see around me are all made in the image of God and if only I am attentive enough and willing to reach out of my protective shell show me something of the glory of God.

I am reminded of how I used to walk through my home town with my mum as a teenager and she'd greet people who I didn't know. I would ask her who the other person was and she would reply telling me she's met them in the queue at a shop and knew lots about their holiday or child going to university or any such thing, but of course in most cases she had no idea what their name was. This summer I caught myself wondering if I was turning into my mum, despite how I teased her many years ago! And actually it seems a good way to be. I've been surprised at the number of positive responses I've got when I take the first step.

This week I was talking with a good friend who said he tries to engage with strangers in public space from time to time but how hard it is. I did wonder if his being male and being of a minority race in the UK made it harder as we wrap ourselves in a fear of the stranger.

So if you are above the age of 18 why not try talking to a stranger this week and get a brief glimpse of another face of God.

Driven to Whispers

Why when we are in the front of majestic beauty in the countryside do we tend to lower our voices to talk in an almost reverential tone? It doesn’t matter if you are the only two people there and wouldn’t disturb anyone, we tend to become quieter as it we don’t want to disturb the beauty. What is it that strikes us with awe?

I had the joy of that experience recently as I stood in the drizzle on a trail where we had seen only two other people in the previous 90 minutes and looked at the splendour of the Jacques-Cartier river and the Laurentide mountains in one of Quebec’s national parks.

How do we explain this awe and the effect that it has on us. As a believer in God I would say our Creator made us able to see the glory of other parts of his creation and yet that still doesn’t seem a complete enough explanation. The mystery of that which is beautiful and yet so partially known can be almost overwhelming.

My friend on the walk does not share my faith and would describe herself as an atheist yet she too commented on how the splendour of the scenery caused us to unconsciously whisper. I lacked the courage or the opportunity to ask her why she thought it were so as clearly her perspective may be a little different that my own.

I drafted this post about two months ago now, but was reminded of it over the weekend as I listened to a Jew, a Muslim and a Christian describe paradise from the perspective of their tradition. The white British iman explained that as a Muslim he believes much as the Christian and Jew would that we come from a garden, which is described in Scriptures as the Garden of Eden. He further believes that we will return to the garden of Paradise and our love and awe of nature comes from a sense of nostalgia, a sense that this is where we come from and where we ultimately belong.

Parlez vous anglais?

When I am in a new place one of the things I like to do where possible is read a local newspaper if one is available in a language I have a chance of at least partially understanding. I find it interesting to see what is important there and how they see the world as well as the interest in local activities. So being in Canada I bought the weekend version of The Globe, one of the articles written on the eve of Quebec’s National Day was on the future of bilingualism in Canada.

I knew Canada was officially bilingual and I knew in Quebec French was the dominant official language but neither I nor my French/English speaking friend that I have been travelling with for a while had appreciated just how French it was. Signs even for tourists are almost all in French only. Many people could speak English in the restaurants and tourist places we visited but French was the default language and there was no doubt that when my friend asked in French she got a lot more extra information than if I started off with my “Bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?” or alternatively attempted to answer a question in French and which point terrible broken Spanish would come out of my mouth as if according to my brain all foreign languages are the same! Or as I just tried after a lot of mental preparation on the long distance bus today having finally been left to fend for myself on the journey to Montreal “Excusez-moi, vous avez internet?” after my unsuccessful attempts to get meaningful internet access via the bus Wi-fi. I understood that my neighbour on the bus had also not got internet but then she kindly explained a lot more to me than I had any chance of understanding, being worried she may think I was someone she could engage in conversation or that I should be answering something and I might be seen as rude I tried to say “Perdon, je ne comprende pas tout” it came out as neither French nor Spanish that any intelligible person could understand something along the line of “Perdon, no comprendo (oops forgotten better add in the I) je pas todo”. I guess she got the message we weren’t going to be having a conversation anyway!

It was interesting to learn that the Official Languages Act of Canada wasn’t designed to encourage bilingualism but to ensure that all Canadian citizens whether French or English speaking has the right to access to all services in a language they could understand. A Canadian friend told me that the current population of Canada is approximately 30 million and according to the Globe around 5 million Canadians speak languages other than French and English at home. I was astonished to learn that in 1950 450,000 Canadians spoke Ukrainian at home and that briefly there was a discussion about making Ukrainian an official language, but by the third generation of immigrants only 45,000 people spoke Ukrainian at home. What would have been the effect of making Ukrainian official?

The article explored Canadians feelings about bilingualism in their nation and what were people’s reasons for learning the language which was not their mother tongue. Since the Globe is an English language newspaper obviously much more of the responses were from Anglophones of which the majority felt bilingualism was a good thing to be encouraged. The answers mostly emphasised establishing a stronger sense of national unity and identity and better job prospects.

This got me thinking about why we learn other languages and perhaps why we should learn other languages apart from the ongoing research that being fluent in at least a second language and ideally more seems to help stave off Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. As someone who comes from a country that traditionally hasn’t really valued learning other languages and yet spent 7 years learning French at school and 3 years learning German and Latin it struck me that I have no memory of ever having a discussion as part of my studies about why it might be good to learn another language except for it giving breadth to your later study and career options. You learn to earn or learn so you can study more, which seems rather narrow minded. The irony of course is that 25 years later the only foreign language I speak well is Spanish which I learnt as an adult.   

So why do we learn languages other than our mother tongue? I guess like most people my primary motive has been to communicate and survive in a place where English is not spoken or at least not widely. I want to be able to explain what I want, to tell people what to do or what I think and not to feel both foolish and vulnerable when someone talks to me and I can’t understand what they are saying. When I describe the motive like this it sounds very self-centered, perhaps more self-centered than I would like but this is pretty much the truth of it.

Not all my motives are self-centered however, there is a small part of me that tries to learn a few words, such as greetings of the language of a country that I am going to visit simply as a courtesy to show that even though I can’t speak it I value their language and am trying to show some respect before I have to ask “Do you speak English?”. In Manila there was little reason for me to learn Tagalog to meet my survival or day to day communication needs, but I am sure my colleagues appreciated the fact I tried to learn a couple of words at least.

As I have reflected on this I have realised that in many ways the most compelling reason to learn another language is the one that I have never heard discussed and I have only discovered as I have gained a reasonable fluency in Nicaraguan Spanish. Speaking another language well allows us to more deeply hear and understand other people’s stories both personal and corporate and as such to expand our view of the world and recognise our common humanity as well as our differences. Each language has words and expressions that do not easily translate into another language which make you aware of how limited your own language as well as others may be in expressing everything, sayings and jokes teach us so much that cannot truly be translated, it allows us to more deeply appreciate the culture and art of another people. Even as I write parts of this post I am listening to Shakira and enjoying the joy of lines such as “cuando menos piensas sale el sol” (“when you least expect it the sun comes out” although not a direct translation) The more we appreciate others the greater the understanding and peace between us.

Would I have been more interested in languages at school if I had understood that at heart it wasn’t about having a breadth of study to give me more career options later, nor was it about grammatical exercises all be it they are necessary, it was about being able to understand other people’s stories and experiences, increasing the meaning in my encounter with humanity and building peace? Perhaps, perhaps not but it would certainly have made all language learning seem more valuable.

So as I leave French speaking Canada, should I go and refresh and develop my French which has been dormant and largely forgotten for 25 years? Yes. Will I? Hopefully.   

How great a grandmother's love

One thing I have learnt in living overseas is that elderly or disabled people begging, although less immediately appealing than children, are the ones that should be noticed. The fact they have to sit or stand in the heat all day and looking for paid work is not an option for them shows their need.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post I have seen far less beggars or traffic light vendors in Manila than I had become accustomed to in Managua, a fact which had surprised me as Manila is truly a mega-city with lots of poverty, as well as a lot of wealth.

Today as I went to the supermarket in a large, well frequented shopping mall near my accommodation I noticed  a boy and girl about 6 and 7 years old playing and sorting out what seemed to be recyclable rubbish whilst close by sat a grandmother aged woman with an umbrella to protect her from the sun. The woman tried to engage me in conversation but I walked on by. After the supermarket I put some small notes in my pocket and resolved to speak with this woman if she was still there on my way back.

She was, and once again she asked very politely if she could speak with me. I asked about the children and she confirmed that they were her grandchildren. As I crouched down to be more at her level and seem to show some respect for her age I was struck by how well kept she was, even though clearly they were poor, her short grey hair was tidily cut and clothing was simple but well presented, I was also surprised how excellent her English was. I asked about the parents of the children and she explained that their father was in prison and their mother, who was her own daughter, was jobless. We spoke a little more and she explained her daughter has 4 children the youngest of which is only 11 months old. She herself gets a small entitlement of money from her husband each month, it sounded like a wife's pension allowance, which she explained is enough for her to make ends meet but it is not enough to help her daughter support her four children so her daughter begs and she helps her daughter also by begging.

Of course there is always that voice inside your head which wonders whether the story is true, but everything about this woman and her story felt true and I couldn't help admiring her love for her family which would allow her to humiliate herself to sit at the roadside and ask for help from strangers.

As I got up to leave she asked which country I was from. I walked away wondering more about her story and why I had only been prepared to give less than I would have spent on even a simple lunch for myself and far less than all the "necessary" cheap luxuries I indulge in here - like a massage.

I thought about my own mother who would be of a similar age, I don't doubt that she would be willing to do the same for her children and grandchildren because she loves that much, but I am so grateful that given the blessing of birth country and circumstances she will never have to. And I thought that I should probably have been a good deal more generous.

Philippines in film

A few weeks ago Hollywood came to town as they used different locations in Manila and Palawan to film scenes from the new Bourne movie "The Bourne Legacy". The Sunday edition of the Philippine Star on the 4th of March had a list of films that have been at least partly shot in the Philippines, although in almost all cases it was the Philippines pretending to be some other country where for one reason or another filming had proven too difficult.

Brokedown Palace (1999) Manila and Luzon, pretending to be Thailand.
Platoon (1986), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Missing in Action (1984) Luzon pretending to be a Vietnam war zone.
In Born on the 4th of July (1989) the Philippines is used instead of both Vietnam and Mexico.
Thirteen Days (2000) Many places in the Philippines pretending to be Cuba.
An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) at the former US Air Force base of Subic Bay.
Delta Force 2: the Colombian Connection (1990)
The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) Luzon pretending to be Indonesia this time.
Too Late the Hero (1970) Visayas and the beach paradise of Boracay.

Strange how many seem to be war or action movies.

Views from Bangkok's canals

Had the opportunity to make a brief visit to Bangkok a couple of weeks ago. With only time to do one tourist type activity we headed on the Skytrain to take a longboat on the canals. It was easy to see why the country was so badly affected by flooding due to excess rains over this last year.

Diesel station for boats

Enough options? Buying an MP3 player

I make no secret of the fact this blog title is taken from a chapter in a book that I am currently reading called "Enough" by John Naish. Naish is a writer/journalist from the UK and his book resonates with me as a call in the rich world to be able to evaluate what is enough. It is written from a secular and ecological perspective but as a Christian I have found myself wondering the same things both for our individual lives and national and global situations can we stop when we have enough. If we can meet everyone's reasonable needs is further "growth" really required? Of course politicians seem unable to ask this and marketing people would hate the idea that we could be sold something that served and therefore satisfied for life.

Several years ago a friends husband in the technology sector shared that mobile phone manufacturers deliberately only upgrade a feature or two at a time so that they can constantly promote the next model with some new "must have" feature. I remember my irritation and disbelief at a set of advertisements that ran in the UK some years ago promoting changing your glasses or your mobile phone because they questioned "are you embarrassed by them?". We need to be forced to be embarrassed by our functional products in order to jettison them and spend more money or accrue more debt to get something less uncool, which within months will already be out of date according to the marketeers. John Naish writes;

"In response we eagerly buy - but don't use - the extras. Nearly 60% of adults employ only half of their new functions, says one study, which says this is because only one in six of us bothers to read the manual. But perhaps this is pragmatism rather than sloth: another survey found that almost two-thirds of mobile phone owners use only four of the features - calls, text messages, alarm clock and camera. The rest is techno-flannel. More than a third of us don't even know if our mobile takes pictures."

Having gone out today to buy an MP3 player in order to play portable music and download podcasts to listen on the move I can relate to option overload, the mall had about 30 shops that would sell a product that could function as a MP3 player. First even before I ventured out to the mall I felt the need to check on line the differences between MP3 and MP4 so as to figure out if it was even worth buying an MP3 player at all as was it already outdated. I discovered, at least if I understood the techno-babble well enough, that MP4 is not a replacement or more updated version of MP3 instead MP3 is a compression file that takes out all the musical data that the human ear can't generally hear anyway but exists on those old fashioned CDs that I still buy, whilst MP4 is a media "container" that can transport several type of files including video. More knowledge, still can't say I was clear on the decision making but decided a 4GB MP3 would serve my purpose.

After about 10 shops I was exhausted with options and attention and I didn't even go in all of them. Unfortunately I had also realised that I could of course buy a different phone which plays MP3 files at close on the price of an MP3 player, but then I was faced with researching costs of extra expandable memory, whether I wanted a dual SIM, dual or quad band, QWERTY keyboard so texts don't take me an age to reply to and that was before I looked at makes. After an hour I was exhausted and defeated and no closer to what I thought would be a quick purchase of an audio playing device I left empty handed thinking with dread that I would have to return and then I would have to load all my songs onto this device which in all probability would be lost, stolen or obsolete before I got full enjoyment from it.

In a similar way to most people who have lived in smaller or less developed nations where supermarkets don't feel the necessity to stock a multitude of options I have generally found supermarket shopping in the UK both a delight in concept and an exhaustion in practice when I am home, there is TOO much choice. Naish summarises this,

"there are now nearly a thousand shampoo types on the world's shelves. And if you're thirsty, there are 27 different varieties of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola alone to choose from. That's a lot of ways to sell fizzy syrup. This mass outbreak of differentiation is why the average shopper spends more than 40 seconds weighing their options in the soft-drinks aisles, compared to 25 seconds seven years ago.

While we're doing all this agonising over infinitesimally small options, we may well get seduced into buying something else."

Meanwhile so many in the world have to take the only option available to them whether it is a safe one or a good one. The following is taken from an article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer this week.

Landslide also buries sisters' hope 

Judith Avila Taladok and her sister, Imelda, had agreed to open a food outlet in the school canteen where she teaches so they could keep Imelda's husband from working in the landslide-prone mining site in Pantukan town in Compostela Valley.

"Everything had been prepared," Taladok said. She said they had even raised fare money for Elmer Torred, who was hired as mine portal guard, "and were looking forward to his coming home."

But five days before Elmer was to come home on Jan. 10, a series of landslides occurred burying tunnels and the mining community in Sitio Diat Dos. His body, bloated and discoloured, was found among those by rescuers and brought to Mabini Funeral House on Friday.

Still grappling with her shock, Imelda recalled how she last spoke with Elmer through her cell phone at 2pm on Jan.4. Her husband said he had already advanced his pay and was sending it the following day to tide the family over.

He did not get the chance to send the money.

Imelda said Elmer left their house on Dec. 3 last year to work as a portal guard for Hexat mines "He did not get to spend Christmas and New Year with the family, but he promised to return on Jan 10 to be on my birthday Jan 12," she said.

After their talk Imelda received a call the next day from Elmer's friend, telling her to check if he was among the landslide survivors... Imelda found Elmer at the funeral parlour, his skin so dark and bloated. At first she did not believe it was him until she found the tattoo on his arm and the cyst near his foot."He had been complaining of that cyst and we were planning to go to the doctor to have it removed," she said.

Taladok said the family was aware that Elmer was risking his life working at the tunnel so they decided to start a food business at the canteen of the Talomo Elementary school to keep him far from danger. 

The Black Nazarene

Being driven home tonight I asked Freddy, our Filipino driver which route he would take, the normal one which seems to have been very slow lately or EDSA (a massive 4+ lane highway in each direction) which it seems everyone avoids like the plague as the traffic is even slower, although our recent attempts in desperation have been slow but not nearly as slow as the route to avoid EDSA. Traffic is always slow in Manila! Well at least always EXCEPT if you leave just over 2 hours to get to the airport two days before Christmas because "the roads will be crazy as well as the airport" only to find the journey was in record time leaving an extra 90 minutes in the airport before I could even check-in!

Freddy quickly told us he would go the normal route as EDSA would be very busy and gave a reason why. We had to get him to repeat a few times before we worked out there was going to be a procession from the Catholic church of a statue of a black Jesus (the Black Nazarene). For details of the celebration which I had to look up later see Description of the Feast of the Black Nazarene and a few photos Photos of the festival.

There was Freddy, me and two other Brits in the car, which made for one "slightly religious" Catholic, a Christian of non-Catholic background, a Muslim and an agnostic. As it happens the life-sized statue of Jesus wasn't black to begin with but got charred when it was caught in a fire on the boat bringing it from Mexico, but I didn't know that until my Google searching later, so we had quite an interesting conversation on why a black Jesus and how it was no less realistic than the many very European/Caucasian portrayals of him that fill our consciousness. After all Jesus came from a Arab region of the world. Freddy made the good point that no-one knows what Jesus looks like and I surprised my Muslim colleague when I referred to the Biblical prophecy of Jesus that described him almost as physically ugly yet so many artists have tried to portray him with a glorified physical beauty.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2)

So if God who had the choice to give Jesus any kind of body he may have wished to do chose to give him one "which had no beauty or majesty to attract us" why are some people so determined to change Jesus to make him more "attractive" to people and why are many Christians as influenced by public appearance and vanity as those who are not Christians?