Lingala! And sex and the city

I have really liked walking around the city, especially when I can speak in a different language!. Yesterday, I was walking around the craft market just minding my own business, and the owner of one shop just came up to me and said “I am from the DRC!” I was soooooooooo excited, since I have been taking the language they speak there, Lingala, for a whole year (yayyyyyy molakisi mpe baninga na ngai!) Anyway, I asked him if he spoke Lingala, in Lingala of course, and we had almost a twenty minute conversation in Lingala!

It was seriously my favorite experience here so far. I think the man was so excited that a white girl could speak Lingala, haha, and my friends that I were with thought I was speaking so fast! I asked him if there were a lot of people from the DRC in Uganda, since they share a border, but he said there were not very many. He came to Kampala two years ago, from the region near Lake Kivu. I didn’t ask, but I think he must have come because of the fighting that is going on in that area of the Congo. That is the area with a lot of spillover violence from the Rwandan genocide. Anyway, our conversation was awesome, I loved being able to speak with him in Lingala! (eboto mingi, molakisi!)

Tonight, a group of us went to go see Sex and the City! It felt really different than watching it in the US, especially because it seems so much more…uhhh…graphic than what is acceptable in Uganda. It was really interesting when two gay men in the movie got married, because there were a lot of scenes/conversations about homosexuality. But in Uganda, they just passed a law that made homosexuality a criminal offense that I think could be punishable by death! So those parts were pretty awkward, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the jokes or not. I am surprised the government did not censor those scenes! Ido know it is kind of bad to go watch an American movie, especially since tonight is my last night in Kampala, but it was so incredibly awesome!

Tomorrow, I will leave with Avery, another intern, to go to our internship site in a really rural village named Katosi, which is about an hour or so outside Kampala. We knew there would be no running water, only bathrooms outside, and pretty spotty electricity. But we just found out the electricity has been out in the ENTIRE village for a month and a half, because a transformer blew. If that happened in the US, people would be mad if it wasn’t fixed in like two hours. But a whole month and a half! And who knows how much longer it will be out. Anyway, I may not have much access to internet for awhile, but do not worry, I can travel to a nearby town during some weekends!