Stranger than fiction

Things have quieted down on the political front. Certain banned political demonstrations (like the lawyers’ vigil at the High Court) went ahead without incident (read: no tear gas). Opposition leader Besigye was freed –after much humming and hawing. Things are still going on, but it’s basically life as usual.

Beyond politics, there are many things that happen hear that place me in situations far beyond the realm of my understanding. Take Sipi Falls.

I went there the first week of December. The falls themselves are beautiful, but we were there for Uganda’s only sport climbing –about 13 newly bolted routs of varying difficulty on a short cliff at the top of the valley.

It was a somewhat arduous journey to our hostel. My neighbour Rebecca and I left at 7am for the post office. They run a Post Bus along major routes, stopping at all post offices along the way to exchange packages and passengers. The bus takes longer than others, but is widely touted to be safer than the massive flying coffins that careen down cross country roads, passing blindly, speeding recklessly, and yes, crashing with alarming regularity. Our friend Karen joined us in Jinja.

It happened to be the end of the school term, so the bus was completely overcrowded and quite uncomfortable. Children crouched in the aisles and baggage teetered every which way. And as no long bus trip is complete without it, there was also a fairly sizable contingent of uncaged live chickens.

After eight gruelling hours we arrived at the town of Mbale. We paused at the bus park, where a gentleman peddling pictures with words of wisdom on them passed his wares to me through the window. I finally settled on one that says TRAINING A FOOL IS NOT A JOKE. Its hilarity is difficult to convey without showing the accompanying picture. Maybe I’ll scan it one day. Anyway, it now graces my living room wall. There were a great many sayings in this pile of accepted wisdom, but the one we found unbelievable said A WOMAN WHO DISOBEYS HER HUSBAND IS BEATEN EVERYDAY, along with a drawing of a woman cowering in fear beneath a menacing man with a raised fist. At that point I thought to myself, “Cara, you’re not in Kampala anymore.” Little did I know that this was just the beginning.

I should have bought the picture, simply because without seeing it I have trouble believing it exists. However, we had had a couple of other experiences on the trip that I felt had filled my misogyny quotient for the day. At this point, I felt slightly nauseated and just wanted the offending picture to go away.

We were finally dropped off on the streets of Mbale, were we were immediately surrounded by about 20 men, all yelling at the same time. It was hard to know what they were saying, but the gist seemed to be offers of transport to various places and orders that we modify our behaviour to bring it into line with their expectations. We tried to sneak away, which was largely to no avail and seemed to make things worse as the men became increasingly upset by our unfeminine impudence. After much brouhaha, we made our way to Sipi, chartering a special hire that operated as a group taxi, with the 3 of us paying for fare for 5 so we wouldn’t have to wait for more passengers. After reaching that agreement the driver proceeded to wait for more passengers anyway, seeing a chance to make a little extra coin since we had already said we’d pay the whole fare. After additional protracted negotiations, however, the three of us were on our way. We arrived at Sipi after all these hours exhausted and dehydrated (the only washroom is the side of the road, and as a white woman your “short call,” as the locals call it, is guaranteed to be the most widely watched show of the day, so unless you are a closet exhibitionist, you learn to moderate your intake). We sat back and ate, drank, used the facilities away from a hundred prying eyes, and relaxed with some more friends who arrived later in the day.

It was extremely cold that night, so the friendly hostel staff started a campfire and huddled around it, drinking their local brew. The people were Sabiny from Kapchorwa District. Two of the travellers around the fire were Baganda –Uganda’s largest ethnic group, who live in the centre and south of the country. A Muganda woman was talkling to the Sabiny about their local brew. The compared ingredients and methods. Finally, one of the Sabiny men mentioned that the brew played a special role in their circumcision ceremonies. All the non-Sabiny people gasped as we realized that they were referring to female genital mutilation. The Sabiny are the only tribe in Uganda to practice this.

The men defended the practice, noting that its incidence had dropped to a small proportion of women and girls, and that it was necessary to protect their unique culture. One told a story about the origins of the practice 1500 years ago. A hunter, gone away for an extended period, returned to find one of his wives pregnant (yes, polygamy happens here too). After explanation everyone understood that the reason for the practice was to make sex too painful for women to contemplate straying. We westerners and Baganda made grand speeches about the barbarous and deplorable nature of the practice, and as it went on I noticed our hosts seemed increasingly insulted. Not surprisingly, calling people barbarians dose not encourage them to see your point of view.

We never did settle our differences, and to a great extent our points seemed lost on each other. One of the other men defended the practice by saying that it didn’t matter because sex was still enjoyable. He was clearly speaking only of the male perspective. Knowing a woman could not get away with such a question, I urged my Muganda friend to ask “What about the women?” The Sabiny man looked at my friend like he’d asked how his flying pigs were faring.

Another memorable moment was when a Muganda woman cited examples of change in Baganda culture. The eradication of certain “harmful traditional practices” (to use the accepted term from the delicately worded world of international human rights law and development NGOs) that, while changing Baganda culture, did not erode it. Her example was the “harmful traditional practice” of men beating women. At that point one of the men interjected incredulously, saying “But beating women is not culture. That’s just normal.” There were no Sabiny women around the fire like that –the women seemed to work every waking hour- so we couldn’t get their perspective.

So, that was how I came to sit around a fire debating female genital mutilation with proponents of the practice.