Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Slowly, Slowly

The places: Home, the office, the youth center, the soccer pitch. Kawempe stage, “downtown,” Sitebale, the hilltop.

The people: Bruhan, Big, Violet, Moses, Rashida, Kayanja John, Patience, Roy, Stevie, Franka, Max. Of course there’s also Sarah, the “kazungu.”



Slowly the list of names and places grow as the number of days here lengthen. First a small number of names for a large number of faces. “Slowly, slowly,” as my assistant coach Kayanja John says, I learn to familiarize the faces and identify the places. Slowly, slowly, I put together the rhythm of my life here. Nothing is on time, especially me. Yes, there is an internet café a ten minute’s walk from my house. No, most of the time I’m not able to do much besides check my mail before the power goes out (or even if it doesn’t, before I’ve spent two hours watching my time run down and the page fail to load yet again). Yes, I feel exhausted at the end of each day. No, actually I can’t exactly say that I accomplished much in that day. Maybe I did do something, in between all the walking and waiting and explaining and trying to understand. I’m sure of it, actually, but what exactly is sometimes hard to say.

To the Sesse Islands this week. Lake Victoria is amazing; this weekend while I was there all I could do was day dream about owning a small home on its shores. I wonder what the real estate laws are here.