Displace Me Koro, Day 2

The sun was still young, but hot, when we began walking through Koro on my first morning there. My mind’s mist was thicker than the light haze over the camp and I struggled to rally my tired body. I struggled to fake being okay.

We came to the hut of David, the owner of the land on which we make bracelets, and the man whose farm we were supposed to go to that morning to dig. “You are late!” he said cheerily. “He overslept seriously,” said Martin with a grin, whipping his long arm around to clasp and shake David’s hand. I smiled the way a woman smiles when her man’s jokes go too far.

David led me into his hut and called the girls in, who had been up since six working. David’s wife Pauline brought tea and fried dough called ‘mundazi’ for breakfast. A number of men sauntered over and peered in: “You are late!” They all laughed. This would be a common refrain for the duration of the morning.

After breakfast we picked up rough hoes and walked the two kilometers to David’s beautiful land. The quiet was for my ears and mind what pure, cool water is for the mouth and throat. We were about seven men and four women. The men took off their shirts and began clearing an overgrown plot, I with them. Soon into the work they were sweating and letting out low, happy grunts as the hoes turned the soft earth. This is real work.

Tiffany and Kerri began digging with the men and soon moved on to help the women plant in the mounds of dark soil that David’s sons had built earlier that morning.

My arms and shoulders and back felt the sweet soreness of labor, but my hands buckled. They blistered and began bleeding. Soft office hands. White hands. I had to stop.

“You are tired?” the men asked. And though that was true I said, “No, but my hands are weak.” I showed them the little blood in my palms. They pointed to the shade under a mango tree and told me to sit. “I wish I had gloves,” I said, almost to myself.

There’s something magical about the hospitality of the poor. I’ve seen it in Nepal, Ukraine, and now Uganda. Soon after I leaned against the cool trunk of the mango tree one of David’s sons approached with gloves. I hadn’t seen anyone send him, I hadn’t even seen him go. I put them on and kept digging.

The women left to gather firewood and the men soon finished clearing the land. David led us further into the bush to see the rest of his land and we passed the women as they returned, loads of dry wood wobbling on the heads of my white friends and perched easily on the heads of their Uganda teachers.

We turned into a thicket of wild plants, David peeling them aside. Branches shook high in huge mvule tree to our right as a gray monkey leaped away from our approach. All the sounds and smells of paradise hovered in that moment. He pointed off to the left where the remains of his family’s home leaned – decrepit from disuse.

And from there were walked back to the road, where trucks spewing diesel smoke led us back to the camp.

And that was all. That was the extent of our pursuits for that day. After farming it was only the routines of life – cooking, bathing, eating, sitting, talking. The only venues for entertainment are bars, and there are no resources for other pursuits – people don’t have books to read or write in, much less televisions, computers, the internet. All that’s left is to wait for the day to end.

It was strange that as I sat in that camp I felt sadly nostalgic – not for some life that I had left behind, but for the lives that these people were straining to get back to. Their anxious desire was palpable, though it has been suppressed for so long. I imagined David living in that hut under the mvule tree, strolling out to his gardens. I could see his children and grandchildren walking off to school in the cool mornings, helping him harvest while on holiday. I could imagine myself as David sitting under the tropical canopy, resting in the calm relief of resettlement. Being home.

That night by means of solar power and pirated signal the local bar was able to broadcast an English Premier League football match (the way the rest of the world says “soccer game”) and the men gathered. They paid three hundred shillings to sit and watch rich men from their former colonizer play a game. They reveled in the progress, in having something to hope for. The crave victory.