Back to the West

I have completed my first 24 hours in the West now. Many might be wondering how I am adjusting. So what are my first impressions?

• Germany is organized – there is cement everywhere and orderly houses. Even the fields seem to be in perfect green or brown squares.
• The shopping centers here are huge and I wonder if the people here even realize how much food variety they have available to them.
• I am suddenly watching my money – in Africa I would spend relatively freely but here I am counting every cent. Although shampoo here is much cheaper.
• While the time difference isn’t large (only one hour), my body can’t get used to the lighting. In Uganda, it was ALWAYS dark by 7pm and the darkness would descend with a bang. Now you see me, now you don’t type of thing. Here it is still light outside at 8:30pm and the darkness comes slowly. I never noticed the quick descent of night until a German friend pointed it out to me – I wonder if this was because I came in the fall, where darkness does come earlier.
• And complete darkness doesn’t happen as they have street lamps that actually work. While there were street lights outside my compound in Uganda, they were never on.
• Since I am currently staying with a family with a baby, I am wondering what babies eat in Uganda when they no longer breastfeed. Parents here have a huge variety of baby food available to them and Julia, my sister-in-law, even prepared special food for her child but I simply can’t imagine that happening in Uganda. Babies are probably breastfed longer there and real food slowly gets phased in during that process.
• Which also brings me to another difference, which is that, while Ugandans are very prudent, I did see a lot of breasts while I was there. Even on my last night, when I went to distribute some goods in the village, I visited an old lady who was topless upon my arrival. Since she was one of the beneficiaries, we chatted for quite a while and her having bared breasts did not seem to bother her, although she did cover herself for the photo. And women who breastfeed just whip out their breasts whenever the child wants milk, which doesn’t happen often in the West. Usually the woman excuses herself as if feeding her child is some kind of embarrassment. But maybe black breasts are just nicer to see anyway – the dark skin simply looks healthier and hides blemishes.
• Which brings me to the next point – blacks simply look healthier. I even noticed this in Africa as, whenever I was in a tourist area with many mzungus, I felt the whites looked tired, old and somewhat haggard, myself included. And I do think it’s because the black skin hides fatigue (e.g. rings under the eyes) and other skin imperfections much better.
• Whites have very pointy noses.
• The silence is incredible. While I sleep with my window open, I do hear bird noises in the morning, as well as faint traffic sounds. But when I am downstairs, where the windows were closed, the silence is complete. This is quite odd after having been in a place where one is constantly surrounded by people, whether one likes it or not. A) There are more people, especially children. B) In the village the houses are so small and dark that one would not want to be inside, so people are generally outside, surrounded by their community, with very little privacy. C) For ventilation, most people have bricks with holes set in the wall, also allowing sounds to travel into the home at all times.
• Homes here are huge. My cousin’s house has four floors with approximately two rooms per floor and I just wonder how many African people would fit into this house when compared to how many people inhabit a hut deep in the village. I think at least forty people could fit, if one counts at an average of approximately 6 people per family. I find that incredible.
• Parenting in the West is completely different. In Uganda I always came across a laissez faire attitude and often kids were left to their own devices. Children usually roamed about in groups with an older child carrying the baby around. While constantly watching a younger child can be construed as child labor, I have to admit that I quite like the community aspect of child rearing in that sense – of the children being and playing together and not constantly being locked up in the house with the mother, father or nanny.
• And children here have to behave – they have to eat neatly and play nicely whereas in Uganda they have more freedom. Yes, they do have rules they need to follow but there aren’t as many as here.
• And the amount of toys children have here is just incredible. Some children even drown in toys. And in Africa? Kids in the village play with tires and cars made of empty bottles (which are genius and sadly I never got a picture of one) and whatever else they can find.
• While I used the word mzungu a lot in Africa with great pleasure, it seems to have lost meaning for me here, most likely because no one really understands it and all the connotations it has. People here can’t imagine what it is like to go into the African village, or even Kampala, and have people yelling and waving after the mzungu. Would a black person ever attract that kind of attention here? No. Never. If I had yelled, “Hey, black woman!” to the one I saw at the supermarket yesterday, she would either have confronted me or thought I was crazy.
• Plugging things in without first sticking a key into the socket or flicking the on-switch is weird. It definitely feels like something is missing, although I never did feel comfortable sticking metal items into electrical sockets.
• People complain more here and are less friendly. I was at the supermarket yesterday and a man was looking for a certain vegetable and all he found was the limp remainder on display. He made some sort of comment and, when I told him there was an attendant checking for more in the back, the man just glared at me and walked away. Maybe he was having a bad day, but I was quite surprised.
• Bread has never tasted so good! My cousin and I had a hay day shopping and bought lots of meat and cheese and bread and cake and snacks and I have been eating too much since. She says I lost weight, and I think is happy in assisting me regain it. A pro pro weight – I had gained some for a while in Uganda because Maureen (the watchman’s wife) would always force me to eat with her and her husband, but after she left I ate less and then the stress of the past weeks (months?) may have taken its toll, plus the anxiety of leaving also robbed me of my appetite quite a few days before leaving.
• There is a lot of technology here and it makes me slightly nervous. Giving my clothes up to the laundry machine made me a little bit fearful as I have been washing them by hand for the past 7.5 months (and have gotten quite good at it, might I add).
• I am so glad to be back in the world of movies. While I don’t watch movies on a regular basis, they are something I enjoy. In Uganda I just watched one Western movie the whole time I was there (Valkerie) and avoided the Nigerian movies that are so popular with the Africans. I have no idea what movies are even out at the moment which is great, as there will be a large variety of movies to choose from at the video store. But I suppose there is more of a movie-culture in the West since people spend a lot of time inside, especially in the winter when the weather is bad. But on the flip side of things, I do miss the Latin American TV shows I had grown addicted to – El Cuerpo del Deseo (which they translated into Second Chance) and The Two Sides of Ana.
• The circa 9 hour flight to Heathrow went by amazingly quickly. Probably because I had loads of movies to choose from and, after having spent hours bouncing around Ugandan roads in old buses, the plane ride was a complete luxury. Small observation about the plane: can you imagine there was not one female stewardess? It was very strange and made me feel slightly uncomfortable.
• Instead of the Muslim call to prayer, the Bavarians have church bells (which sound at much more humane times, I might add).
• My body is having difficulty adjusting to the food (I won’t say more).
• I miss my Ugandan “recycle plan.” Any scrap paper I put into the watchman’s kitchen shed for his cooking fire, plastic bottles and old clothing (even if it was ripped) I kept for distribution in the village and food that was about to spoil or unwanted leftovers could also always find a mouth to eat it, be it the watchman, one of my coworkers or the dogs. No matter what I wanted to get rid of, other than pure garbage, would always find a home. Here it is not so easy and one is removed from the people aspect of it as one has compartmentalized garbage collection where waste is organized and then carted off by the garbage man. And besides, one often doesn’t talk to his or her neighbor much anyway, so it would be strange if you suddenly showed up at their door with the pasta you couldn’t finish or the tomatoes that are about to go bad.