A cow walks into a bar

Yesterday, I cracked my first joke in front of an Acholi that legitimately made us both laugh. The conversation was with the gardener at my friend’s house and it went like this:

“Hi. I’ve come to feed Okello*”

(*Okello is my dog Jeter’s cousin brother who has been staying with a friend since Jeter was savagely attacked by an evil German Shepherd.)

“Ok please.”

I proceed to dump piles of meat and rice into the bowl and Okello laps it up with abandon.

“Okello is always hungry,” I say.
“He is eating seriously,” he says.
“Soon he will be the size of a cow,” I say with a smile.

BAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! We both crack up.

As I left the compound I could still hear him chuckling. It was the first time I made someone laugh in Gulu when they weren’t trying to placate me or laughing at me when I’m spasming in anger over some near death experience that they’ve just witnessed.

In the past week or so, after three years of living here, I have realized that maybe, just maybe, my perspective is different than the people among whom I live. In other words, I’ve been living in another culture. Well, duh. An anthropologist clearly I am not…

I look at the onslaught of visitors to Gulu and I scoff at their ignorance with a touch too much disdain and a tinge of envy. There are the missionaries, researchers and war tourists with big goofy smiles and endless amounts of sympathy thinly veiled as empathy. They don’t know what it’s like to live here day in and day out. If they were here as long as me, those smiles would not be so goofy, because they would see just how exceptional it is to truly connect to people.

I’ve been wondering why I’m so grumpy lately and then small moments, like the Okello joke, break through and I realize just how difficult it is to live in someone else’s culture over the long term. I could tell that the exchange with the gardener was a connection between two very different people that we both equally enjoyed. This is a rarity. Usually I run and hide in my house after a long day and find myself saying, “I need a break from Africa.” I think this is mostly ok, because it’s only just dawning on me that it’s natural to crave what you’re used to. (Another anthropological ‘a ha’ moment.) In other words, it’s ok that after a long field visit, I need an injection of the E Channel (well, that’s probably not ok because of its baseness, but I do it.) It makes sense that the longer I’m here the more un-apologetically I socialize with other ex-pats. Ok, it’s apologetically. But still. I need to be around my people.

Actually this blog has been hard to write. I’ve had to re-work and nuance my sentiments to avoid sounding like a neo-colonial asshole. I’m not sure if I’ve succeeded. I could be accused of good old fashioned classism, which can be found anywhere in the world. But I do know that I’ve lived in Gulu for a long time – very few have lived here longer. I think it’s ok that I’ve built up some cultural defenses and gotten a little grumpy. (Ok Hayden, a lot grumpy.) Perhaps that’s why making the gardener laugh was so joyous.