BOO!

Halloween may be the most bizarre holiday we celebrate. I’ve tried to explain it to my Ugandan teachers and friends, but somehow I just end up sounding crazy. Let me explain.

1. Let’s start easy and simple. Jack-o-lanterns. There are pumpkins in Uganda, so thankfully I don’t have to start from scratch. We scoop out all the insides, carve a scary face into the vegetable, place it outside our house, stick a candle in it and now you’ve got yourself a Jack-o-lantern. You buy food, ruin it, then let it rot outside your house? Well, when you put it that way, yeah I guess we do. Why? Uhhh, I don’t really know. I think in the past it was to scare the ghosts that are out at night. You think a scary pumpkin will make ghosts away? Good point. Moving on.

2. Alright, I’ll admit that Jack-o-lanterns are a strange tradition. But, how about costumes? Everyone dresses up in a costume! Children, teenagers and even adults. Scary costumes? Yeah, usually they are supposed to be scary, but sometimes people just dress up as other people or things. That aren’t scary? Yeah, like teachers, baseball players, hippies, Christmas trees. Well, now I’ve just lost them at baseball player. What would they think if I told them that people tend to blow a lot of money to be the best dressed or most original?

3. Trick-or-treating! So, on Halloween, all of our children go door-to-door collecting sweets. Who buys the sweets? The owner of the house. Why? It’s Halloween. Only the poor children go begging? No, they aren’t begging! Every child, no matter how poor or wealthy, goes trick-or-treating.

4. Oh, and we make our compounds (our yard and house) look scary so when kids come to ask for sweets, it’s spooky. How do you make your house look scary? How do you explain that weird, fake spider webs? Or that some people make their lawn into a graveyard?

5. Funny story! My mom used to dress up like a scarecrow and sit on the front porch. She would play creepy music- what does creepy music sound like?- and try to stay as still as possible. When kids would come get candy, she would scare the, well, poop out of them. It was hilarious! Wow, that sounds awful! Why would you do that to a child? Great, now I sound sadistic and crazy.

6. So what is Halloween exactly? I’m honestly not sure, but something to do with All Saint’s Day. The ghosts, witches and spirits supposedly come out that night. You believe in witches? No. Then why do you celebrate? I have no idea.

If you really think about, Halloween is sooooo strange. Regardless, my American friends still wanted to celebrate it. We thought it would be best to travel away from our sites to dress up. The last thing we needed was our neighborhood suspecting a gathering of witches. That would really hurt our reputation in our communities.

We decided to make the journey to Gulu, NGO central in Uganda. We had heard that because there are so many NGOs there, they would celebrate Halloween. Even though Uganda is about the size of Oregon, it was a very long journey to get there. About 12 hours to be exact! Once we got to Mbale, we had to board a bus that would travel through Soroti, Lira and finally Gulu. Despite being stuck on that bus for nearly eight hours, we had a blast! It was about six of us, and we talked nonstop from 9:30am-3:00pm. Finally we got tired of each other and put in our headphones to relax. It was fun though. Almost like a road trip without having to worry about distracting the driver. We stopped often for bathroom breaks and buying snacks. We ate most of the trip. Bus snack food? Bananas, peanuts, oily tortillas called chapatti, omelets wrapped in chapatii which is called a rolex, samosas, chips, roasted corn, fried corn, popcorn, snickers, soda, trail mix, roasted meat etc. Yeah, we did a lot of eating.

To our surprise, we did find a Halloween party! A bunch of other Peace Corps Volunteers met up with us in Gulu, so we were rolling about 15 deep. It felt surreal. I had pictured everyone meeting up at a bar in our costumes. Sure, the other Ugandan patrons may be creeped out, but at least there would be a lot of us. In reality it was a house party that honestly resembled something like a frat party. How could a Halloween part in Uganda feel like frat party? The booze was free, we were totally welcome without anyone knowing who we were but there was definitely an “in crowd” that we were not part of.

As for our costumes, we were relatively creative considering most of them were thrown together last minute. One of my girl friends was a middle-aged man with a beer belly getting back into exercising. Two guys dressed in rice sacks that were labeled as “Posho” and “Beans”- the most common Ugandan meal. I guess you’d have to be there to appreciate it. I dressed as Donatello from the Ninja Turtles! He’s the one who wears purple. A friend “borrowed” the broom handle from our hotel to be my staff. It was the perfect finishing touch to my lazy costume, but ended up being a hazard in the hands of others. Believe me, most people cannot twirl a giant stick and should never throw it into the air. We had a number of close calls that could have resulted in a lost eye.

We had a great time dancing, but we definitely stuck to our group. Maybe we’ve been here too long, but sometimes it can be annoying to interact with other volunteers. You always have to ask the same questions to other volunteers: What do you do? Oh wow, that’s great. How long have you been here? That’s nice. How long are you going to be here? As Peace Corps Volunteers, we’re kind of snobs- I’ll admit it. Of all the volunteer programs (don’t quote me though!), we have the longest minimum service of 27 months, we get paid the least, we live alone, and we learn the language. I’m not against new friends, but if I’m visiting a town far away from my site, it seems kind of troublesome when I can just be dancing.

Once we got back to the hotel room, my friend Ryan asked the same question about three times. “Did anyone talk to anyone else besides us?” Only Bethany can claim being social! She had a lengthy discussion with another volunteer about the importance of bringing Richard Simmons workouts to the village. Yes, she was the one dressed as the newly athletic man. I guess we’re a little antisocial. I actually never figured out who was even throwing the party. It was definitely either the entire crew dressed up as the characters from Peter Pan (they even had an alligator!) or the eighties girls who couldn’t figure out how to do a cartwheel. I don’t think I helped our case because I wore a backpack as my shell, which I managed to stuff full of water bottles at the beginning of the night. When all the drinks ran out, guess who still had water? I know, unspiritual, but I sweat so much when I dance that I needed to replenish! Hey, it was a health issue.