Real World: Gulu

So, things continue to be strange and interesting in Gulu. I don’t think I have kept you up to date on this issue but in our guesthouse we have a very interesting neighbor, Christine. She is an elderly woman on crutches, so obviously we all decided to be really nice to her. However, she was completely unreceptive. Then she started doing interesting things like cutting down the clothesline that I made, and complaining about us putting our gym shorts and other crazy clothing articles out to dry. Things then progressed as she threw a chair at Kathy’s head as she was doing crunches in the courtyard. She has also been throwing all of our clothes that she deems too close to her part of the guesthouse on to the floor. Then today, Kaitlyn had made a clothesline out of one of her scarves. Apparently it was too close to Christine’s room, and she took a knife to and chopped up the scarf. Then, she began swearing at us (in English!) and calling us American bastards and idiots. She then proceeded to make turkey-like gobbling noises and cackled loudly like the wicked witch of the west. Even though it may appear that she hates us, apparently Christine has been giving everyone in the guesthouse trouble, knocking over jerry cans etc, so the manager came to speak with her, at which she took one of her crutches and began wielding it about and threatening to hit him. After this ordeal, she slammed her door, made a lot of noise, and stared at us creepily. Everyone else in the guesthouse is equally weirded out, and exchanged knowing glances with us. Word on the street is that management is kicking her out tomorrow, but I know they will have to drag her out kicking and screaming. Despite everything, she is more amusing than anything else, and I don’t want her to end up on the street or anything because clearly life has played her some bad cards. But, tomorrow’s Christine installment shall be interesting none-the-less.

In other less dramatic news, today was a good day. Pancakes at Kope for brunch, then some fabric shopping in the market. Then we went to the !POOL! at the fancy inn in town, which was simply amazing. If there’s one thing I really miss, it is being around a giant body of water that we are allowed to swim it. But a pool suffices. And after swimming for a while, I felt much cleaner than I have after countless showers here with terrible water pressure that fails to actually remove dirt from my body. Then we went to the Obama Inn (so many places around here are called Obama—Obama butchery, Obama hotel…I wonder what they were called before this year. Bush Inn? I hope not. Bush Butchery? Maybe). Anyways, it was all Indian food and soooooo good. Indian food here always takes about 5 hours to come after ordering, but it was worth it.

As for “Real World Gulu,” apparently that is what the rest of our group in Uganda has been calling the 7 of us in Gulu, and it definitely is starting to feel a little Real World esque….you know, some strong personalities living within very close proximity to each other…but such is life. I really don’t have much research left to do, but I’m staying through this week before heading back to Kampala to finish this mongo paper. Fun fun.