My humble abode (the left half), those are heaped sweet potato plants in front, delicious
My house has three large rooms. I use the smallest room as a bedroom. It contains my bed, that’s about it. The room next to it is multipurpose/multifunctional. I use it for dressing, doing yoga and other exercises, chilling out during the day, hanging clothes, sleeping in when I have guests, a lot of different stuff. My third room located closest to my front door is my dining/living room.
I also have two smaller rooms, the larger of which I use as a kitchen and the other as my bathing area.
I have built my own running shower using a jerry can, pipes, a shower head, and some nylon tape and melted candle wax to seal around the base. This enables me to have a free flowing overhead stream of water fall on me every day. It sure beats a bucket bath! And the temperature is customizable. I can create a hot shower by simply boiling water and mixing it with some room temp water.
My house is considered medium-large by most PCV Uganda standards. Many volunteers have only two rooms with an area outside used for a restroom and bathing.
So this is my pad. It’s almost perfect for me I would say. And I am able to customize a lot of its features to my specific needs.
My neighbors live in the same amount of space just a few feet away from me. Instead of just one bachelor living there though, they manage to sleep seven human beings. They are Mr. Justin Odoi and his wife, Mrs. Odoi (I cannot remember her name) as well as their five children, Junior, Sam, Patience, Oumolo, and Joanne (pronounced Jo-ahn).
They also house two hens, each with eight or so chicks, inside this home, as well as all their farming supplies, food, cooking supplies, etc. It is amazing to me how they manage to live in such tight quarters. What is even more amazing is that I believe many people in and around my village live in even smaller houses with more people.
My house is also highly upgraded compared with my neighbor’s. Their side has dirt floors and red brick (also dirt) walls. My headmaster informed me today that he gave Mr. Odoi enough money to plaster the entire home many months ago. However, Mr. Odoi chose to “eat it” (local saying) with other expenses. There is a lot of tension and hostility between them. And I don’t really understand it. I usually hear about it on several separate occasions each term, manifesting itself in the form of my head teacher railing against his latest actions or inaction to me and the other teachers. I’m not really sure if he ever communicates his concerns to Mr. Odoi himself, but if he does, they seem to have little or no effect.
Mr. Odoi’s children are well-behaved, charming, and entertaining little creatures. I’m thankful everyday for the first of these characteristics. Screaming and crying children tend to drive me insane. Pictures below from left to right are Patience, Joanne, and Oumolo.
They are incredibly productive. They help with virtually every domestic task. It is amazing what this family accomplishes.
Mr. Odoi receives a monthly salary from the Ministry of Education for his work at our school as an English Teacher. I’m guessing this amounts to around 365,000-400,000 Ugandan shillings per month (roughly $200). In addition to his work at the school, he also farms cassava.
Above is just one snapshot of the cassava that Mr. Odoi produces (by manual labor). In this particular area of Uganda, there are two growing seasons for cassava. So he is able to harvest twice and thus sell hundreds of kilograms of raw cassava per year. This provides a second source of income for him and his family. In addition to cassava, the family also rears chickens. By my last count they had two hens with about 8 chicks each. The family grows the chicks to full weight and then sells them for around 8,000-10,000 shillings. This provides a third source of income.
Mr. Odoi also performs random additional work associated with his profession, such as proctoring exams at other schools and marking exams for the Ministry. Each of these tasks pays extra money on top of his regular salary.
Mr. Odoi also owns a vehicle. He rents out that vehicle to an individual in Tororo who uses it as a private hire taxi and pays Mr. Odoi on a monthly basis to use his car.
We all know that income is important, but what about the family’s expenses? Um….what expenses? The family does an amazing job at living off of… nothing. Almost everything they eat they farm and harvest themselves. This includes cassava, sweat potatoes, maize, and pumpkin. They spend money occasionally to buy things like rice and fish, but not often.
All domestic work is provided though the labor of the family. Schools fees in Kamuge are zero, something I have never seen in any other part of Uganda. The family lives in a home that is paid for and maintained by the school. The only other expenses I can think of are clothing, healthcare, and transportation. Clothing is purchases only when absolutely necessary (as you can see by the condition of the kids’ garments in the pictures). Healthcare – unless you are about to die, everything can be cured at home. And transport – the kids walk to school, the mother stays home, and Mr. Odoi, like myself, lives two minutes away from his place of work.
To me it is incredible.
However, there is more to the story (as there always is) of the Odoi family. Mr. Odoi, like many Ugandan men, is a polygamist. He has/had a second, younger wife by the name of Josephine. When I first moved to my site back in April, Josephine was the wife living in the house with Mr. Odoi.
The two also have one child together, a boy, by the name of Prosper. I find it interesting how some of his kids are named after verbs and virtues while others seem to have regular English names and yet others have Ugandan names. I still haven’t figured this one out yet.
One night, about a month after I arrived at site, I was sleeping soundly in my home when I awoke to some very loud yelling. It took me awhile to figure out what it was exactly but I soon realized it was my neighbor, Mr. Odoi, yelling at the top of his lungs for some strange reason.
It was about 1 a.m. In training they told us all these stories about witch doctors and “night dancers” coming to your house at night to terrorize people and put curses on them. Moreover, I heard another man’s voice, very deep, very unfamiliar. So I thought there was an intruder outside our home and Mr. Odoi was trying to get them to go away. At this point in my service I was still on Mefloquine.
Mefloquine is one of the worst drugs ever. I don’t really know why Peace Corps still administers it to volunteers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mefloquine, it is given to volunteers for malaria prophylaxis. The problem is it has some unwanted side effects, some of which lead to a person going completely insane!!! I’m serious, this drug causes night terrors, hallucinations, and paranoia. All of which I experienced during my first month at site.
It was pretty freaky being all alone in my big house in the dark in the middle of nowhere Africa hearing strange voices and thinking someone was tapping on my front door wanting in. I once had a dream that someone was peering in my window and shining a flashlight inside in the middle of the night and then awoke only to find the hallucination continue even though I was awake, I wasn’t fully conscious.
So my mefloquine induced reaction to this midnight disturbance was paranoia, confusion, and fear. After about an hour the yelling stopped and I was able to get back to sleep.
The next morning, Josephine came over and stuck her head through the bars of my bedroom window (which sort of freaked me out by the way). She tossed me a folded up, handwritten note that read something along the lines of:
Joe,
Please call the Headmaster over immediately this morning. Last night my husband threatened to kill me and my co-wife. And by the way, I’m in love with you.
Josephine
To shed more light on this development, Josephine had been writing me love letters for the past three or four weeks (basically since I had arrived at site). I had been unresponsive to all of these and told Josephine that a relationship consisting of anything more than friends was simply impossible and not desired on my end.
Co-wife. Haha. Love that term. Her co-wife was also living on the premises at this time! She was sleeping in the car and Josephine was sleeping in the house! Now, I’m no expert on polygamy, but it doesn’t sound like a good idea to have both of your wives living on the same compound. Come on Odoi! Shady!
It turns out the reason Mr. Odoi was yelling was because Josephine would not allow the older wife into the home that night. She had wanted to come in and sleep in the home and not the car (not an unreasonable request). Josephine objected strongly and would not allow it. Mr. Odoi was thus scolding Josephine for not allowing it to happen.
However, I did not know any of this at the time! I was worried about Odoi being ma at me since one of his co-wives was apparently madly in love with me. I called Peace Corps security and spent a few days in Kampala while the whole situation got sorted out.
Solution? Josephine moved out with little Prosper and they have not been back since. That woman is trouble! Seriously, she was also shady. She would ask me for money and material objects all the time. And she would stick her head in my windows and come into my house unannounced all the time. Freaked me out! I’m glad she is gone.
I will close with a snap I took the other day while visiting my friend John near Mt. Elgon. Rise and Shine!
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