Uganda: Cultural Observations

I wanted to write a blog post on the cultural observations I made so far in Uganda as well as some challenges and experiences we have had while living here. 

1. Life is slowly paced here. You can tell by people's attitudes, behavior, and even by how they walk. Most people take their time while walking. After a stressful semester, I've had time to relax and take life at a slower pace for the summer.
2. I learned that it's really hard for people to get jobs in Uganda (in Africa in general). Even after people graduate college, they are often jobless for a couple of months. I suppose it is similar back in the US, but I think it's more severe in Uganda. 
3. If you invite someone to come for dinner or a meeting, they will say "yes, I'll come" but half the time they won't show up. I asked Gloria why Ugandans do this if they know they won't show up. She said that it's because they don't want to hurt the person's feelings.
4. They tend to marry early and have a lot of children. They say that having three children is the minimum.
5. The rich are so rich and the poor are so poor. When you hear that people live off of $1 a day, you wonder how it's possible. But I realized why it could be possible. $1 is currently equivalent to 3,200 Ugandan shillings (Ugsh). A regular sized avocado is between 500-1,000 Ugsh, a pineapple is 2,000 Ugsh, a mango is between 500-1,000 Ugsh, a bunch of bananas is 2,000 Ugsh. Fresh fruits are really cheap here while processed foods are extremely expensive.
6. Art is appreciated. I found this to be really interesting, but apparently there are really famous world-wide artists from Uganda. When we visited the Kyambogo University, I learned that being an art major is really competitive and more expensive. This is so different from how being an art major is viewed at UMCP.

These are just some of the observations I've made the past month and here are pictures from my phone. (I find it a lot easier to take pictures with my phone than my camera because it's less bulkier and obvious. Also it takes forever uploading pictures from my camera on the internet here.

Pictures

As you can see, there are no sidewalks here. And as Asians, we are often referred to as Chinese people. We also stand out a lot whenever we walk in the streets.

All private properties have guards next to the gates. I heard that Uganda is one of the safest nations regarding theft in Uganda. This is the compound where the Bethesda Medical Center is as well housing for three families as well as some volunteers.

This was from when we were helping out with the children's eye exams. This Anna and John putting eye drops to dilate the children's eyes.

All the windows here have a certain pattern to them. It's to keep out burglars but I think they look pretty.

There are sooo many butterflies in front of the clinic! Who needs to go to the butterfly garden?

more butterflies

Living in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, it's hard to see what life in Uganda is like for most people. But when we went to visit the land where the future hospital is to be built, it had more of a countryside feel. It really reminded me of the village Jerusalem in Mexico. I loved the fresh air and the quietness of the land. Even though it's been over a month, sometimes I have a hard time sleeping through the all the car noise and sound of the city. Also there is a mosque near the hospital and they really do pray 5 times a day. The prayer goes through a speaker and we can hear it all the way from our room and sometimes it wakes me up at 5:30 AM in the morning.

Anna

One of the main public modes of transportation is by these vans called "taxis". Taxis fit about ten people and are fairly cheap. Another main mode of transportation is by a bota bota, which are motorcycle.

I really like the trees here.

A leaf I found on the street.

I think one of the challenges is doing laundry by hand, haha. Every time I do my laundry I pray that it won't rain so that my clothes can dry. 

This is a picture from when we taught CBF one Sunday.

I was surprised when Aizhen sat in the front of the car without a seat belt...haha I guess there are no laws about kids sitting in the front here. Apparently cars are not manufactured in Uganda. So all the cars here have been imported from countries such as Japan. And all the cars are so so so old. They say that an old car in another country is brand new in Uganda. They also sell them for the price of a new car. This contributes to the pollution in the city.

Food

In high school I was never really interested in cooking so I never really cooked at home. My mom taught me how to make things like kimbap and a few things, but I didn't know much aside from that. Perhaps it was the fear that I would end up being terrible at cooking that prevented me from trying and learning, but I have definitely learned a lot this summer about cooking from google + trial & error. We've also made dinner and invited our next door neighbor Seul-Gi (Sophia) a couple of times as well as Gloria.

Lunch

This is typically what we eat for lunch here. The first week, everything tasted kind of bland but after the first week it started tasting good. The pineapple here tastes sooo good. It's much sweeter than the ones back at home. 

I just thought the gradient was really pretty. Spring onions!

We don't eat nutella as much now, but when we didn't know what to cook or make for breakfast, we ate a lot of nutella sandwiches...haha I really like nutella banana sandwiches but Anna doesn't really like bananas.

One of the first meals we actually cooked.

We also learned how to make spaghetti. To make the tomato sauce, you need around 10 tomatoes for 2 people.

Are we in India? At the supermarket near the clinic, there are so many Indian spices...only if I knew how to use them. I think it must be because there are fairly a lot of Indian people in Uganda. Surprisingly, there are a bunch of Koreans living in Uganda as well. However I think the number of Chinese people in Uganda surpasses the number of Koreans here.

I'm so thankful for missionary Mary (From Kyambogo UBF) for making us kimchi. I didn't really miss kimchi for a few weeks, but eating it after not having kimchi for a while made it taste so good! Missionary Mary went back to Korea to visit her children and will go to Swaziland to pioneer another chapter with her husband, doctor Samuel.

The sweet potatoes here taste really good too. So we made gam-ja-tee-geum (deep fried sweet potato).

This is when Anna got really into making Korean pancakes for a week or so.

I miss coffee. Although Uganda exports a lot of coffee, not a lot of people drink coffee here. So I've been drinking a lot of black tea (which is what is in the picture above).

I learned how to cut pineapple! We failed in our first attempt to cut a pineapple, but now it's solid. The process goes from L to R.