This next tale is a simple one in which finally… nothing bad
happens to me. It’s merely something I witnessed that I feel attests to the
suffrage filled lives Ugandan women endure. There’s a photo I’ve seen online
that I feel rings true, and I’d like to share it with you here:
On with the story… you have to buy a ticket for every seat
on a bus you are going to take up. So in general, mothers don’t buy tickets for
their children until they are too big to sit on their lap. They just fit the
child with them into the one seat they've purchased until it’s a physical
impossibility. If a mother has two small children… nothing changes. They try at
first to keep the two children in their same seat. One standing between their
legs, and one in their lap (The standing child will sometimes have to stand for
the entire 10 hours trip… and not complain once…) But sometimes, one of the children
will eventually stray and end up in your lap if you are the unlucky bastard
sitting next to them.
On this fatefull day I was sitting next to Audrey and Jake
on the side of the bus that has three seats…(I know what you are wondering, and
yes the buses themselves are the same size, but they have 5 seats across… with
an isle… it’s cramped) I had the seat on the isle, across from me was a woman
with a baby in her arm, a toddler on her knee and a little girl between her
legs… Three children and one woman… in one tiny-ass seat. There was a man
sitting next to the woman with a window on the other side, and he seemed less
than willing to take of one of the children off of her hands. So for the entire
trip I watched this woman juggle all three children. AKA, all three problems. There
was no pleasing these children. They were all uncomfortable, hungry, and
probably needed to pee. (Ladies, this is why we pee before we leave… ;) read the blog below, then you'll get it!) There wasn't one point where the baby or toddler weren't crying or where the little
girl wasn’t complaining.
Meanwhile the bus is
hot because Ugandans prefer all windows shut. The driver is weaving all over
the road to avoid pot holes. About half way through the journey I begin to
smell a mess in the babies diaper, and by diaper… I mean cloth wrapped about
the babies bum. And the smell must’ve signaled to the mother that it’s time to
put more food in its stomach cause she proceeded to whip out her breast and
shove her baby up to it. With the baby feeding, there is no room for the
toddler so she makes the toddler stand in the isle… the only problem is that
this toddler had a few more months before she could stand on her own ON SOLID
GROUD. Not a rachety bus... so the Mom has to use her free hand to hold the
toddler up in the isle.
At this moment the
young girl can no longer take the jerking of the bus and proceeds to throw up
all the juice and bread and meat she ate at the last stop. She doesn’t open the
window and barf, or warn her mother, or go for the empty plastic bag on the
ground. Noooooooope. She just does it in her moms lap and a little on the
breast feeding baby. The mother lets go of the baby at her breast and lets it
hang on for it’s own life and rest on the metal armrest while she uses her
newly free hand to catch some of the puke from falling on her. The girl is
still barfing on her mom… she hasn’t turned to a window or at a minimum to the
floor… away from people… I’m so confused and the scene I’m witnessing, but I
decide it’s time for me to take the toddler into my lap until the mom can
manage her again. But as I reach for the toddlers open hand to help her stand,
she finally realizes that a pale faced Mzungu is sitting next to her. Her eyes
go wide… I can see what’s coming… she starts to scream like I was Voldermort
touching her lightning scar. I try to make reassuring noises and help… but my
attempts are futile. My help is in fact, no help.
I give up and retreat
my efforts. The only thing left for me to do is give the little girl half of my toilet paper supply to clean up. And THANK
GOD I kept the other half for myself… because the previous story happened a few
hours later… yikers. In the end,
everything was fine. The mother just let go of the toddler who fell to the
floor and bounced around a little, all in good fun. The girl stopped
projectiling and wiped her mouth. And the baby clung on for her meal until she
had enough to make ooooonnnne more whoopsie in her diaper before the end of the
journey.
Through all of this, the man next to her never helped, other
people on the bus didn’t offer help, if anything a few people got up and stood
at the other end of the bus so they wouldn’t have to smell anything (something
that could have been solved by just OPENING A FREAKING WINDOW) Someone who
hasn’t lived in Uganda might think the people here are inherently terrible
people, but it’s much more complicated than that. You are a product of your
environment, and I think the people of Uganda are very much still in survival
mode. If it doesn’t help you get from this day to the next, then why should you
do it? You are barely getting by on your
own, who has time to sacrifice yourself for others? And while most days I don’t understand and am
frustrated as to why things aren’t improving here, when I see a woman deal with
those three children all by herself, I can see why the next time she sees a
mother going through a similar ordeal she will think “I did it by myself, she
can too”