Anthropological Irony III
Is it really possible to escape the irony?
2024 was a long time coming. I ached to return to Karamoja. I had planned to return in the winter of 2020 and communicated this widely before leaving in 2018. I was on a research schedule and I intended to keep it!
Well, life is funny that way. As soon as your life spreadsheet looks pretty perfect, reality splatters all over it. Obviously, we all endured COVID and by the summer of 2020, I was moved in and working endlessly to figure out how to safely return a school’s worth of California children to in-person learning. As time went on and the years passed, I knew I needed to finish the dissertation to return; because so much time had passed since I left, I needed to have something to show for it. Between running a school and working on my writing every moment of just about every break I had after getting through the thick of COVID, I had successfully defended my PhD and would have something to bring back to Karamoja.
Summer of 2024 was the summer of my return. I would have one month to see people, report out the findings to NGOs, embassies, dioceses, convents, schools, and most importantly, the girls – now women – of my study. I had sixteen women to track down and I wanted to not only share my work with them, read the final vignettes of their lives, and share in what I concluded in my study, but I genuinely wanted to see how they were doing. I wanted to see them thriving. I wanted to see them happy. But I feared that I would return to some of the hopeless feelings I had when I stepped on the plane in 2018. Since then, I always find myself wondering if the world is just too cruel for young women of hopes, capabilities, and ambition to make something of themselves, fulfill their dreams, and live of dignified lives. I wanted them to be in awe of their accomplishments. And yet, I would become almost paralyzed and afraid for what disappointments I might encounter for them, and what anthropological ironies lie ahead for me.
After getting settled in Kampala for the week, it was a delight to know that some of the former students now lived in the big city, in the capital. They were enthusiastic to hear from me and quickly invited me to their homes. I was grateful for the invitations and wondered how different their lives would be now since I last left them in their parent’s homes in Karamoja. Kampala was worlds away from Karamoja and I expected them to have experienced many shifts.
On rainy cold July day in Kampala, I took an Uber ride from the Kololo Hills where Ugandans are used to seeing us mzungus near the shopping mall with a French restaurant full of delectable, buttery croissants built for the upper-class Ugandan urbanites and foreigners. Far away in the newer sprawl of Kampala, these streets have no croissant shops but are filled with the smell of success that its residents achieved after years of urban dreams in rural countrysides. There was plenty of commerce, small food shops, fresh vegetables, clothing shops and more.
Akello told me to meet her at the Shell petrol station. As we approached, the Uber driver cautiously asked me what was I doing here – this is not a place where the mzungu travels. When I told him that my friend was Ugandan, he was relieved I was coming to meet a Black person. “Ah, so you have local friends here. This is good. I will wait until you meet your friend because people will be confused why you are here if you are standing alone and waiting.” I thanked him. Being in a new area, I appreciated deducing from his response that there was no danger for me here, just curiosity.
I’m on my Ugandan phone with Akello when she sees me first. When I finally spot her, she is down the street and crossing traffic to meet me. I’m both overwhelmed with joy and overtaken by emotion. She is both the same and completely different.
Akello’s smile is as wide as I’d ever seen it with her eyes gently and warmly revealing the authenticity of her smile, of her joy at seeing me. She looks the exact same in many ways – her face is no different – it’s as if she hasn’t aged a moment but she is also so visibly older. She is a woman now. She has the neatly plaited hair of a woman with money unlike the short, shaved look of a schoolgirl. She physically does not look much different but I do notice she is thicker, more womanly. In the West, we’re not supposed to comment on people’s bodies so we all play a game and we pretend not to notice. But it is not so in Uganda. Knowing that Akello lived on rice and posho at school and came from the north, I appreciate that her body signals to me that she has regular access to nutritious food.
We meet. I know I’m smiling with my whole body but I’m not sure if I am crying tears of joy as well. Akello gives me a massive hug and even picks me up off the ground in a joyful reunion. She asks what happened to me because I am getting too thin (although I know that the Americans who have witnessed my weight loss would call me “pretty” and “fit” and now ask me if I’m dating). I tell Akello I have been trying to be healthy and she warns me not to lose too much and that I must come over so she can feed me well.
We walk together in awe at each other’s presence. The reunion is happening. I returned. I can’t help but feel a small bit of self-aggrandizement because I did return. It took a long time, but I did return and I know of too many stories of mzungus who promise to return but never do. Life changes. People move on. And they don’t return.
Akello takes my hand and we walk down the street together. I have always loved cultures where friendships can be celebrated with hand holding, cheek kisses, and hugs without friendship being sexualized.
In this moment, Akello is in charge. She initiates our friendship hand-holding. She tells me where we are going. She is going to welcome me int her new adult world.
Akello greets people she knows on the street and introduces me as her friend from Karamoja who came to visit her. People laugh as there’s no way the short white lady with California blond hair is from Karamoja, but Akello insists and I do not betray this version of her world that is true in its own way.
As we approach a boda boda, I ask how much it will cost because I assume I will pay. Akello gives me a confident but kind hand gesture dismissing my question and tells me not to worry.
As I am now the third person on the boda boda behind her and the driver, I can’t help but think about the last time I saw her in 2018 at her homestead up north with her father.
Back in 2018, the stormy clouds and impending thunderstorms confirmed the despair and concern that hung over Akello’s home. Her father was worried. There were several huts on the large property and with the large expanse of the land, you’d be forgiven for looking for animals. But by 2018, the animals were long gone. Akello’s father sold them all, slowly but surely, to make sure he could pay her school fees. So when I left in 2018, I visited a land of a farmer with only few chickens left, a young woman with a high school diploma, and a family with a dream that their daughter will earn enough credentials to find a paying job. To me, despite the family’s optimism and faith in God, I only felt despair for Akello. The path ahead would prove challenging. And after receiving the family’s gift of a rooster for my visit, I drove away and into the storm wondering what would become of her.
The downpour was so severe I had to pull over. The sound of the rain pounding the metal SUV drowned out Kendrick Lamar’s Feel and the discomforting pleas for freedom from the rooster tied up in the back seat.
Ain't nobody prayin' for me. Who prayin' for me? Ain't nobody prayin'
The rain may have been a gift from God as I cry out all my emotions. I’ve always been this way; I cry my emotions – the good, bad, happy sad, every emotion in between, every emotion unnamed, every emotion all at once. I cry and it is healing. My own downpour in the car was the result of so many emotions and I had officially left Karamoja and knew that this chapter of this research project, but more importantly, this chapter of life, has just ended. I wondered who was praying for me, for Akello, for the girls, for all of us. That is how I last left Akello.
But now, in 2024, I had to focus. I was out of practice riding on the boda boda and needed to focus…especially as I was never accustomed to being the third rider. When in threes, I was always in the middle. We ride the boda boda down the road and up towering hills, around corners withmy knuckles gripping the back to the motorcycle begging to arrive at our destination. Atop the big hill and slightly around a curve, we make a left turn into the teachers’ quarters. As we get off, Akello pays for the ride with her money and takes my hand again to lead me to her home. She is the woman in charge between the two of us. She takes me to her home. To her home.
Akello is an elementary school teacher taking classes on term breaks to become certified in secondary school education. She wants to make it to secondary school because the pay is better. I look at her in awe. I watch her easy way of greeting her neighbors, her comfort at being at home, her confidence in belonging there.
Akello picks a small key from her ring to unlock the padlock securing her front door. In the teachers’ quarters, she has a one-bedroom home with a front room, and behind a kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom out back. I sit in the front room and she leaves me to prepare the tea. Seated alone with my legs out, I look around with wonder, with gratitude, with amazement. All those sixteen girls talked about when they were younger was how much they wanted to live in a permanent house. And here I was in a permanent house. How magnificent to see a dream come true! How humbling it is that such simplicity can fulfill a life? I was living in her dream and I wanted to be fully present to fully experience this moment.
Later in the day, she would proudly bring me to her school to observe classes, greet her colleagues, high five her students, and be welcomed in the head teacher’s office. It was my honor and joy to see her as an adult, as a woman, as a fulfilled human being living out her dreams. But what was most meaningful to me, was the conversation we had in her home.
Akello provided tea, bananas, and then had prepared a large lunch that could have fed a family. As I am accustomed in Uganda, I show my appreciation for the welcome and the food by eating as much as I possibly can and know it will never be enough. The welcomes are so generous that even if you do manage to finish the massive plate of food that is put in front of you, you will still be unable to finish the next plate your host had anticipated serving you.
We shared tea and my only exertion of authority that day was insisting we eat together. I do not like eating alone in front of my host when visiting family homes. Akello obliged.
In that conversation between two women, Akello and I became equals. I was no longer the researcher from the prestigious British university with the power of the pen to tell my version of her life. Akello, now with a pay check and life in hand, no longer needed biscuits from me in the secondary school office. We were equals. The anthropological irony, in that moment, across those two beings, had been eliminated.
We were equals. We were two women together sharing our life stories, updating the other on our families, and talking just like women do.
We were two educators. Sure, I am older than her and was a school administrator at the time, but we were educators sharing funny stories of students, classroom teaching successes, collegial trials, our hopes for our students, and our dreams for our career paths. Akello and I were both in the same profession sharing the same trials in the life of an educator. Yes, we were the older and the younger, the mentee and the mentor, the teacher and the administrator. Two women, dare I say two friends, with the older sharing wisdom and answering the questions of a mentee teacher who wants to become an administrator one day.
In a world that can be full of despair and injustice, these are the moments we live for. These magical moments of perfection, of equality, of mutual respect, of friendship, of love for another human being.
On that day, in the moment, the anthropological irony did not exist. Akello and I were able to be fully human appreciating the gifts and the being of a friend, a colleague, an equal.
