KOMBUCHA -- I successfully smuggled my scoby's to Uganda, and they are incredibly happy living here. (The smuggling is a joke; I read the regulations and they are perfectly legal, although they probably would have puzzled a border guard if he did bother to scrutinize my luggage!) In fact, they are so happy I hardly know what to do with them! I have been mixing it with about 1/4 mango juice, which is yummy, but even then I can hardly drink it fast enough. Kombucha tea takes about two weeks to brew to a nice tangy flavor back home, and here I get a batch in four or five days. Which reminds me, I'd better bottle up my latest batch before it gets undrinkabley strong!
DOGS -- I had heard different observations about dogs as pets in Africa, but the notion definitely exists in Kampala. Not only do I see dogs around -- some wandering the streets but seeming attached to a certain place, but also in yards and on leashes -- but I've also seen signs for dog breeders, trainers, and veterinary clinics with dogs on the sign. So Ugandans understand the idea of keeping dogs for a reason, and paying something to take care of them.
There mostly seem to be two kinds of dogs: yellow dogs and German Shepherds. The yellow dogs are kind of medium-dog-sized, and are generally just dog-looking. This makes me think they are probably just the reduction of years of dog-mutt-i-fy-ing, but since they are very similar to each other it is possible that they were originally something in particular. The yellow dogs also seem to belong to the regular villages (e.g., the poor people). I saw a meme on Facebook the other day with a droopy dog and the caption "you know it's hot when even the dogs are melting" or something like that, but over here, the dogs are always melting. They seem to spend most of their day sprawled in front of some little shop, remarkably not getting stepped on, although they do trot around in the evening. One day, Emerson and I even saw half a dozen yellow dog on top of a flat roofed building. I assume someone put them there, but I'm not sure how or why! They were gone later.
The dogs on leashes (and signs for that matter) all seem to be German Shepherds, and I've seen a number of them in downtown. I assume most of the dogs exist for protection purposes. There is a nice house near us which has three mini dauchaunds in the yard, which I don't think have much purpose except being dauchaund-y!
BABY-WEARING: The only way to move your baby from place to place around here is to carry it. The roads are too uneven, and full of traffic and cows and random things, to make strollers practical. I have seen a couple strollers in the swanky downtown shops, which I assume are mostly a status symbol, and perhaps for wheeling your baby around the swanky downtown mall. I've also seen a dozen or so soft-sided carriers, made of simple cloth with thin cloth straps, often with cartoon characters on them. I believe they are Chinese Ergo-imitations, perhaps with a few hand-made imitations of the Chinese imitations thrown in there. I saw one woman in passing with an actual Ergo, but it stood out so much that I strongly suspect that she was African-American, not African!
In American baby-wearing circles, I've heard that the African baby-carrier is called a kanga, and I've seen many people lauding the way Africans wear their babies and nurse them and co-sleep and so forth. At least in this part of Africa, I think everyone would be totally surprised by this discussion and definition! Carrying your child seems to be completely a practical necessity.
First of all, little babies are usually held in the arms, wrapped in several layers of fluffy white blankets. This looks unbelievably hot and stuffy to me, not to mention awkward to carry, but maybe if you spend your babyhood wrapped in several blankets you don't mind the heat for the rest of your life! Somewhat older babies are tied on the back. In some places, there seems to be a nice-looking cloth for that, although I think it is the same all-purpose garment that women use to protect their hair or throw over their shoulders when it's cold or over their head when it's hot. Occasionally the cloth matches the woman's skirt or dress, made of traditional material, in which case I'm sure she hemmed the leftover material to make a baby-carrier/headscarf/apron. However, most of the time (especially in my area) the material is just a bit of whatever: a pillowcase, a bit of old sheet, a baby blanket, a shawl. I don't think it is possible to buy a specific baby-wearing apparatus (other than the Chinese ergos), although probably some enterprising shop-keeper would be willing to sell me one if he thought that's what I was trying to purchase!
When being worn, the baby sags with his bum way out the back, approximately over the mother's own bum, and the mother ties one or two knots over her front, above or below her breasts. Sometimes she takes the lower corners of the cloth and ties them high on her chest, thus holding the baby up with only one knot. There is no folding or tucking involved. If the baby is young and sleeping, the mother takes a small folded shawl and ties it around again, with the doubled-up triangular point of the shawl right over baby's head in the back and the ends knotted in the front. Then the baby's head is supported, the baby is totally invisible, and the mother is covered in small knots! The mothers all walk leaning over from the hips to balance the baby, and it appears that by a certain age the women walk like that all the time!
By the time children are toddlers, they are expected to toddle alongside their mother. This might be because families have so many children that toddlers often have a younger sibling already, or simply that everyone moves slowly here anyways and no one minds walking at a toddler's pace. When they get tired or cranky, the mother throws them onto her back, often without any sort of carrier. The child settles into her bum-sticking-out position on the leaned-over back, sometimes clinging on like a little monkey, or sometimes the mother will put one or both hands behind the child's bum to support the child. Even bigger children might be occasionally carried like this, although usually by the time children are five or so, they are carrying the littler children instead of wanting to be carried.
There is one way of getting children on the back, from babies to big kids, and it is the same way that all children are moved any time they need to be moved: grab the child by the arm, slightly above the elbow, and move the child. You can find all sorts of discussions on-line about how to carefully adjust your child, with the Santa toss or the superman toss or the modified superman or all kinds of other variations. However, Ugandan mothers have clearly demonstrated that your baby, toddler, or older child will be just fine if you grab it by the elbow and throw it!
That is what there is to say about Ugandan baby-wearing, but I have to add a note about Ugandans and MY baby-wearing. No one seems to mind staring and unfamiliar things, and laughing outright at the unexpected. I have carried around my potential 2-year-old daughter in a ring sling several times, and everyone stares at us, but I am not sure if it is because of the ring sling or because they are wondering about the Muzungo woman holding an African child! It's hard to tell, because when I wear Emerson they are also surprised, but in that case they are also surprised because I'm carrying such a big child. I think Ugandans actually carry children his age now and then -- like I do, when there is some kind of extenuating circumstance -- but the children here are much smaller, so they think he is quite a bit older than he is.
However, what they definitely find highly entertaining is wearing the actual wrap. One Sunday morning Emerson was tired and grumpy and had a hurt foot, so I carried him to church. Everyone along the way stared and was highly amused! I've put my older daughter in the wrap at the orphanage as well, not out of any need to port her around, but to give her the love and security she craves so desperately. All the nannies stopped and laughed the entire time I put her up! But she absolutely, desperately loves it, to the point where she sulks and fusses when I say I am going to put her little sister "up" instead.
I think I will just have to learn accept the stares and laughter on a constant basis once I become the foster mother for the girls, because I will need to carry the little one all the time, and the Ugandan child-carrying methods look so uncomfortable. After more observation, I think the leaned-over carrying is not so awkward for them, because their posture is very different from ours, so they lean forward from the hips instead of slouching the shoulders. I don't think that is something that can be learned as an adult, though. I have seen one or two mzungo (white) women trying out the Ugandan style, and although one looked like she had done it long enough to be quite comfortable, I could see that her shoulders were tense and her posture unnatural -- whereas the African women are so comfortable that they can carry a preschooler on their back with no carrier and still look and feel graceful.
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