Byeeee Muzungu

Before I start my usual ramblings, I just wanted to update you all on some new additions to my blog.  On your right, below the "followers,"  I have added a feature called subscribe by email.  Hopefully, if you plug in your email address, you'll be alerted when I add a new post or make updates.  Please let me know if this doesn't work or something goes horribly wrong so I can take it down.  Also, I just wanted to thank everyone for being such faithful followers!  I added a pageview counter, so you all know how many hits my blog has gotten.  So far, we're almost at 1200, 43 of those being yesterday.  Thanks again.  I really appreciate the support, and of course it's further motivation for me in turn to be a faithful blogger.

If you were to ask a Uganda what the word muzungu means, you'll probably get a variety of answers.  The most polite or politically correct Ugandan will tell you that it means foreigner.  Then you could ask, would a Ugandan call a Kenyan muzungu?  Absolutely not.  The more honest or blunt Ugandan will tell you what it really means: white person.  According to most Ugandans, my name will be muzungu until told otherwise.  And, for the most part, it's not exactly the nicest word, and it doesn't carry the best connotations.  While walking down the street, it's expected that at least every child will incessantly scream muzungu at you.  More specifically they will scream "BYYYYEEEEEE MUZUNGUUU!"  That's actually something I haven't figured out yet.  Why bye?  Why not hi or hello?  It's always bye.  And believe me, ignoring young children does not work.  Even if you are by now 10 feet past them, the scream gets louder accompanied with a higher pitch.  Honestly, the young children don't really bother me too much.  I don't think they would know any better, and they always seem so happy to see us, it's hard to get actually upset about it.  Whenever I can, I usually try to say "Muli mutye?" which means how are you?  Surprisingly, they are so shocked most of the time that they don't respond and just stare as I continue to walk by.  Only sometimes when I'm running do I just try to wave because yelling back a greeting at them would just take way too much energy.

Small children aside, the rest of the time I find muzungu to be a pretty inappropriate word, but maybe I'm just sensitive.  This past week, when we met one of the town councilmen, he greeted me by saying "Oli otye, muzungu", literary saying how are you muzungu.  Unfortunately, my gut response was "Mbe muzungu, ese ndise Chelsea."  Yeah, didn't really answer his question.  Just shot back at him that I'm not muzungu, I'm Chelsea.  He didn't even know what to say because he was probably so embarrassed as he moved on to greet the other trainees in our group.  I did notice that he didn't continue to use muzungu as part of his greeting though.  I do understand that the word can be useful.  There aren't too many white people around usually, so it can be a great identifier, but once someone knows my name, I would prefer them to use it.  To be fair, they also use other identifiers such as "the fat one", "the skinny one", "the tall one" etc.  I guess I'm glad they're not saying the fat one.

And further, I do think it's only continuing the problem when we, as volunteers, use the word!  I just think it is justifying the usage and not helping to promote cross cultural understanding.  It is just further defining the differences between us, instead of insisting upon the similarities.  When would a volunteer use the word muzungu you might ask- well there is such a thing as "muzungu price", which means you got totally ripped off because you either probably didn't know how much something should cost in the first place, and the seller assumed you had enough money to spend that they started the bargaining high anyway.  I just hope to use it as rarely as possible, although I am kind of horrified how many times I've had to type it just to explain what it means!

In other news, this is the first few days that we've had off in what feels like a long time, although apparently I didn't make clear that a Peace Corps Volunteer is "working" 24/7.  We are always supposed to be working- which can mean integrating into the community, doing projects and basically just surviving- and we get two vacation days per month.  Anyway, despite the fact that in the states, I usually slept in until 10 am, sometimes later, I found myself awake and unable to fall back asleep at 6:40 am.  Is this what growing up is like?  It feels silly- why would I want to be awake before the sun's up?  Plus, it's not like I had a whole lot to do today anyway, so sleeping away the morning wouldn't have been such a bad thing anyway.  I stayed in bed for as long as I could stand it, willing myself asleep.  Alas, I was up eating breakfast by 7:30 am.

For all you readers at home, I realized I should have thrown it out there earlier: if something I write about doesn't make sense, I haven't been clear, you want me to expand on something, or you've got a random question about Peace Corps life in Uganda, let me know!  I tend to just write about random things and whatever I've been thinking about that day.  I honestly have a hard time remember exactly what I've said, so I could be leaving out some huge details and not know!  Thanks again for being so supportive.