First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria

by Eve Brown-Waite

“Especially changing the sex behavior!” one woman shouted and everyone else howled with laughter.

  “Do you like our breakfast?” Auntie Lucy greeted me at the door of the dining hall the next morning. “Or should I ask the cook to make you some potatoes?”

  “Oh, no. I love the breakfast, thank you,” I said, taking a seat on a bench. I did love Ugandan breakfasts of sugary tea and hard-boiled eggs. I noticed there was something of a scramble to sit at my table. And as we crowded around, the women were quick to pick up where we had left off the night before.

  “Do you have any babies?” a young woman next to me asked.

  “Not yet. Maybe soon,” I said.

  “How many years have you been married?” she asked.

  “Two years,” I said.

  “Why no babies? What are you waiting for?” Auntie Lucy, who always seemed to be nearby, asked.

  “Well, I wanted to have a career; you know, get my work settled before I had children.”

  “But what about your husband? What does he say about that?” a woman across the table asked.

  “What about his mother? What does she say about that?” someone shouted from the next table. All the women laughed.

  “Here your husbands mother will make him take another wife if you do not have a baby soon enough,” Auntie Lucy explained.

  “Well, in America, the rest of the family usually stays out of it.” I couldn't imagine my mother-in-law meddling in our sex life. My mother, however, was another story. “And as for my husband, well, he wants whatever I want. I mean, he wants to have children someday. He comes from a family of five brothers,” I added.

  “Will one of his brothers inherit you when your husband dies?” someone yelled from across the room.

  “No!” I said. “In America it wouldn't go over very well to … um … to marry your husband's brother.” Even if he is dead, I thought. The husband, not the brother.

  “So your husband wants you to work, not have babies?” the young woman next to me asked.

  “My husband wants me to be happy,” I answered.

  “Your husband sounds like a very unusual man,” someone said.

  “Not so unusual in America,” I said. “But my husband is a very good man.”

  “Ugandan men are not that good,” my neighbor said.

  “None of them?” I asked, thinking of Adam, who spoke so sweetly of his wife, Sarah, although she and their children had yet to join us in Arua. And I wondered about the many men who worked for CARE. They were all so unfailingly kind and helpful to me. Did they treat their wives differently?

  “Of course not,” Auntie Lucy intervened. “There are good men here. But it is not unusual for women to be mistreated. My own husband was very good to me. Now he is dead and I stay on my own. I did not wish to go to his brother. But our life is not like your life.”

  We all sat quietly for a few moments.

  “But listen to your auntie, dear,” Lucy said, interrupting the silence. “Do not wait too long to have babies.” Strange how my African auntie was beginning to sound a lot like my Jewish mother!

  “So what is your work?” a woman asked from the end of the table.

  “Well, in America, I used to run an AIDS prevention program,” I said, and many of the women looked surprised and clapped their hands in joy. I wondered why else they thought I was here. “But here, well, I really haven't found work. So I just keep going to workshops like this, hoping I can find a way to contribute.”

  “You can contribute to us,” someone shouted. “This project is a good one. We have learned a great deal about HIV slash AIDS. But we do not seem to be able to change peoples behaviors. Can you help us with that?”

  “I thought that's why we were here. I thought that's what we were going to talk about at this workshop,” I said.

  “Ah, these workshops can be useless,” someone said.

  “Well, why did you come?” I asked.

  “Well,” someone said, gesturing around the dining hall, “three meals a day and per diem!” Ah, for me the measly per diem was an unexpected bonus. For them, it was sorely needed income. I was beginning to understand why these seemingly pointless conferences and workshops were so damn popular with Ugandans.

  “You mean nothing will change? The program won't improve?” I asked.

  “Maybe you can tell us some things to make our program better,” someone said.

  The workshops over the next two days remained painfully irrelevant. But the lively conversations we had at mealtimes, breaks, and informal nighttime gatherings made up for it. Regardless of what the organizers had planned, these women were interested in learning ways to improve their program. So I explained to them what I knew about adding value to health messages to increase the likelihood of health behavior change. They listened, asked questions, and took notes. And Auntie Lucy made sure there was a bowl of potatoes at my place at each meal.

  “So will you be working with us again?” several women asked as the conference ended and we were preparing to leave.

  “I don't think so,” I told them. The organizer from UNICEF had pulled me aside at the closing ceremony and told me that his Ugandan counterpart didn't want to hire “another blond-haired, blue-eyed consultant.” It had been a while since I'd looked in a mirror, but as I recalled, I was a brown-eyed brunette. But I didn't argue the point.

  “Well, when we return to our village, we will remember what you taught us and we will add value to our health education message,” the widow/wife told me.

  “And we will remember the Health Belief Model,” one of my dinner tablemates said, waving a diagram that I had made for her.

  “We must help people personalize the risks,” a young woman said.

  “And help them understand the benefit of changing their behaviors,” someone else added.

  “And help them believe that they are capable of succeeding!” several of them shouted. I was too stunned to say anything. “Wow!” I finally managed. “I am so glad I could help.”

  “And now, you take some advice from your auntie,” Lucy said, throwing her arm around my shoulder. “Do not wait too long to have a baby.”

  Dear Mom,

  Yesterday, our new house girl couldn't come and I was having Pauline and Terry over for supper after they drove up from Kampala. No big deal, right? Wrong! I started at ten in the morning, dusting and sweeping the house (Did you say vacuum? Did you say electricity?), beating and brushing the chair cushions and rugs. By noon I was dripping sweat and hacking up the chickens for supper. Unfortunately, Domino's Pizza does NOT deliver here, so I was also making lunch for my hardworking husband who comes home for lunch every day at 1:00 (since there are no little delis, or anything else for that matter). Okay, chickens hacked to pieces, I begin shelling the peas—which is not all that easy—and I finally get the saying “like peas in a pod.” Then I'm peeling and chopping carrots, potatoes, okra, and green tomatoes. Then making the buttermilk batter to fry everything in—but first I have to make the buttermilk.

  Well, by 7:00 we sit down to supper and by 10:00 John and I are both back in the kitchen cleaning so as to avoid the nightly invasion of ants. By the time the lights went out, I fell into bed, exhausted. When Rose arrived this morning, I nearly kissed her smelly feet.

  I'll keep you posted,

  Eve

  Getting a Life

  “G'day, mate,” they'd say. Or “bonjour,” “guten Tag,” “hello,” “hola.” “Jambo,” if they really wanted to impress me with how long they'd been in Africa. As if you have to be a real old hand to know how to say “hello” in Swahili. I didn't care how they greeted me. I was beginning to resent the whole lot of them.

  Arua was the last pit stop on the way north to the Sudanese refugee camps. As more and more refugees flooded into the camps, more and more aid workers passed through Arua. Suddenly, we were smack in the middle of the hopping hot spot of the development set. We were ugly with Americans working for the Red Cross, Brits with Save the Children, Indian and
African bureaucrats with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. And several times each week an unknown foreigner from the UN or a relief agency would drive across my lawn to ask if there was any room in our guesthouse.

  “You have to talk to Pauline. She runs the guesthouse. You might find her in there now. Follow the sign,” I'd say, pointing to the sign that clearly stated that the guesthouse was over there, and my private domain was right where this fool had parked his jeep. The sign, by the way, that hung over the garage at the end of the paved driveway.

  It was pretty slim pickings for guest accommodations in Arua. If you didn't mind sleeping on a soiled mattress, using an outhouse, and weren't too worried about the recent hand grenade incident, then there was always the White Rhino Hotel. But if you preferred clean bedding, indoor plumbing, and a place that hadn't (yet) been targeted by terrorists, then the CARE guesthouse was one of the few options in town. And if it wasn't reserved for CARE's use, Pauline graciously rented out the empty rooms. Pauline was always gracious. I was becoming less and less gracious the longer I remained (a) unemployed, and (b) the perceived receptionist for those who were employed and looking for a place to stay.

  So we often had an assortment of aid workers sharing our compound. And I'd get to hear their fascinating tales as they came and went or popped over for a meal or to ask about where they might pick up supplies. They were going to set up water filtration systems and document measles outbreaks in the camps. Or they were developing retraining programs for decommissioned child soldiers. Meanwhile, I was sitting on my verandah telling Mickey Mouse stories to kids who wouldn't even talk to me. Literally.

  I'd started helping James's twelve-year-old brother, Georgie, with his English homework. He'd sit with me after school and we'd read a chapter from his English book and look up new words in the dictionary. Eventually, James's four-year-old son, Brian, and two-year-old daughter, Doreen, would toddle up to join us on the verandah. Brian, who adamantly refused to speak to mzungus, would frantically wave his Mickey Mouse book at me and I'd read to him and Doreen when Georgie and I were through. The book was in Italian, and every day I made up a different story to go with the pictures, but the kids didn't seem to mind, or notice.

  “Here's Mickey Mouse, so happy in his new job,” I'd say as they'd point to the picture of Mickey Mouse. “And here's Minnie Mouse,” I'd ad-lib as they pointed. “Minnie Mouse is reading books to children who won't even talk to her. She's thinking, For this I went to graduate school?” Brian would nod solemnly as Doreen turned the pages. “Look! It's Donald Duck and he's driving over Mickey and Minnie's front lawn. Don't they have driveways where Donald Duck is from?

  “And here's the three little ducks, Huey, Dewey, and Louie! Quack, quack, quack.” Brian continued to stare silently. Doreen cracked a tiny smile. “Quack, quack, quack,” I'd repeat until Doreen giggled.

  “Quack, quack, quack, all the silly little duckies have big important jobs to do. Quack, quack, quack,” I'd say until Doreen quacked back. “Why can't Minnie Mouse have something important to do, too?” Then I'd get out some paper and crayons and we'd color. Brian in stony silence; Doreen and me quacking.

  John loved his work. He and Adam would be implementing a microlending program much like the highly successful Grameen Bank project in Bangladesh and India. Farmers and small business owners without any collateral could guarantee one another's loans by forming borrower groups. Only one member at a time could get a loan and had to pay it back before someone else could apply. Community support helped the borrowers' businesses thrive and peer pressure kept them repaying their loans.

  But before they could give out any loans, they had to help establish a bank. The last (and only) bank in Arua had collapsed after Idi Amin helped himself to all the money in it. John and Adam had developed a partnership with a bank that served southern Uganda and recruited some of their staff to come up to Arua. They had recently opened the bank in a temporary building while overseeing the construction of a permanent one. Now John and Adam were going out to villages explaining the project and encouraging people to use the bank. This would be no small feat in a region where people generally stashed their money under the mattress.

  I'd amble over to the bank during the day, mostly just to enjoy the bank's cleanliness and all-day electricity. John would be laughing with Adam or strategizing with the bank's outreach workers. I tagged along when he went out to the villages. I watched as he patiently explained the principles of savings and credit to people who had never been to school, much less to a bank. He couldn't be more different from them, and yet he connected with them as if he'd lived among them all his life.

  Who knew, for instance, that John was fluent in “Special English”? He happily dispensed with bothersome verb tenses, articles, and other unimportant words, speaking oh-so-slowly and clearly in his kindergarten English so that everyone could understand him. Well, everyone except, perhaps, those of us who were schooled in English!

  Following after John and occasionally going to workshops still left me with plenty of free time. So what is an educated woman to do with herself in the bush? Well, there's always tennis. And golf. Quite surprisingly, Arua had tennis courts and a golf course. Neither was anything to write home about, which, of course, didn't stop me from writing home about them. The nine-hole golf course was maintained by a guy who hacked his way through it with a machete once a week, and the two dirt tennis courts usually had goats tied to the fences. But expats in remote outposts of war-torn countries can't be choosy.

  Coby and I began to meet at the tennis courts nearly every afternoon. Two mzungus playing tennis in the African bush couldn't help but attract all the neighborhood kids. Which was fine by us. We paid them to chase errant balls and pick up the goat turds.

  “Oh, good one, Eve,” Coby congratulated me as I finally managed to serve one inside the lines on her side of the court. I was not the best tennis player.

  “It only took, what? Six tries?” I said, counting the half-dozen children who were scouring the tall grass for my overzealous balls.

  “Well, you're getting better. This is good!” She pronounced it like the Dutch goed, so it sounded really emphatic, heavy on the “o” and “d.”

  “Sorry I'm not much of an athlete.” I envied Coby's lean, athletic body and had begun to think of her natural athleticism as another Dutch trait. Right up there with cheery competence and a fondness for cheese.

  “You're very good,” she assured me. “Anyway, it is just fun to be playing.”

  “And out of the house,” I added, thinking of eau de Rose.

  “And away from Simon,” she said, using, of course, the correct Dutch pronunciation of her son's name so I had to squelch a giggle.

  “Simon … er, Semen,” I said, forcing myself to say it her way, “doesn't mind when you leave him?” I asked.

  “Ah, he loves Florence and the girls. He's getting to be very spoiled with all of them around all the time.” Coby seemed to have the proverbial African village over at her compound. As far as I could tell, she only employed Florence, the house girl, and Valeri, the cook. But Florence usually brought along her daughters and Valeri occasionally brought his wife, and everyone doted on the towheaded two-year-old. “Now Simon expects Bernard and me to carry him all the time, too!”

  “Enough tennis for today?” I asked, looking at my watch.

  Coby looked up at the sun. “Yah, it look like it's time for tea. You come for tea? I made cheese!”

  “Oh, kaas!” I said, showing off one of the Dutch words that I was learning along with Simon.

  “Goed!” said Coby.

  “And boom” I said, pointing to a tree. “Wolken,” I said pointing up at the wispy clouds floating on the deep blue sky.

  “Zeer goed!” Coby pronounced. “So come for tea and more Dutch lessons.”

  “I'm free as a bird until it's badminton and cocktails time. I was just going to go over to John's bank.”

  “Are you going to open an account?” she aske
d.

  “No. I just wanted to look in the mirror!” The inside of the bank was decorated in a modern, Italian style, right down to the mirrors on the walls. We put our tennis rackets in their cases and were quickly surrounded by a scruffy assortment of small boys and girls, waving our errant tennis balls at us. I collected the balls and handed each child twenty-five shillings.

  “Tomorrow?” one of the boys chirped. “You play again tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said as we left the tennis court. “We will probably play again tomorrow.”

  “Okay!” he shouted. “Bye-bye,” he said, and the rest of the kids echoed him from the tennis court.

  “It's a good life, yah?” Coby asked as we walked through the field toward the road.

  “Yah,” I had to agree. “It is. I guess. Weird, though.”

  “Not working, you mean? I know.” Coby had worked when she and Bernard were in Nicaragua. But in Arua she was the “tagalong spouse,” like me. “I haven't given up looking for work yet. I still go over to Kuluva Hospital every week. But I am not so hopeful about it anymore,” she said, shrugging.

  “And this,” I said, turning around and waving at the phalanx of kids following a few feet behind us. “All these people wanting to do stuff for us. All these people wanting something from us. It's just weird.”

  “Yah, you'll get used to it. I think I got used to it from being in Nicaragua. Now Arua doesn't seem quite so strange.” We came to the edge of the field and stepped onto the dirt road. The children behind us scattered as we headed toward Coby's compound on the other side of the road. “You know what helped me?” Coby asked. “Having Simon. I know it sounds silly, because he hardly needs me. He has so many people to look after him. But becoming a mother made me feel, somehow, less useless.”

  “Yeah, I've thought about it. John and I always planned on having kids. But back home I was too busy with school and my career. Well, I seem to have solved my busyness problem!” I said as we reached Coby's gate and a barechested askari jumped up to open it for us.