Friendship

Every parent wants to imagine that his or her children are going to grow up and still be close friends.  We imagine our children supporting each other through the hard times; working together when we are aging and frail; our daughters going on shopping trips together; the older ones passing their parenting knowledge along as their nieces and nephews come along.  Some siblings stay close, others drift apart; some buckle down and support each other when the going gets tough, and some hide their weaknesses from their siblings at all costs.  What makes the difference?  We have our ideas, but in the end, we never really know.

So I don't know what the future holds, but this is what I see: I look into my living room, and I see the three best friends that childhood could imagine.  If you asked about their friends, they would each name someone from their respective classes, and then maybe a couple other kids in the same breath.  At this age, "friendship" means "we had fun playing together yesterday."  What they have with each other, is something more real than they can even understand.

Of course, friendship IS having fun playing together.  Which is the first part of it.... how can any outside friendship match the hours and hours and hours Hibiscus, Sunflower and Buttercup spend engaged together?  They wake up in the morning and tumble into each other's beds; by the time we come along to try to goad them into ridiculous concepts like "putting clothes on," they are already deep in their fantasy world of the morning.  If the day is pleasantly unscheduled, they will glide through a few hours of intense play negotiation until we manage to herd them all in the direction of breakfast, and they tumble straight from their toast into their own world.  Lately, there have been a lot of forts in the living room.  If left alone, they will continue to play for the entire day.  The forts turn into reading books; then there is a pack of dogs who need to go to the vet; toy trucks are zooming around for some urgent reason; baby dolls are comforted, wrapped, and fed snacks.  They are interrupted by the occasional negotiation gone awry, which involves some screaming and hurt feelings; and, like a very small herd of buffalo, migrate from the living room to the bedroom, and then right out the door to the yard.  When I serve lunch or snack, it is immediately co-opted into their imagination -- Sunflower holds the round cracker above his head, and suddenly they are all in a cathedral serving communion, intoning something serious.  The cheese comes in very handy, because the girls are dogs and Sunflower is trying to train them, so the snack is distributed in bits, hand to mouth.

If they day is unscheduled, they can fill it with play.  But if there are other things going on, they still discover all these moments to squeeze in their games, imagination, contests, and ideas.  Daddy and I are not at all amused when bedtime involves running up and down the halls, feats of strength, making up new songs, hiding and popping out, and millions of other high-jinx -- but there is no doubt that the kids are having fun!

Some families, probably the ones with outgoing mothers, are always going to play dates and on multi-family adventures and all kinds of activities.  We do things a couple times a week, but I've never been able to manage an active social life, and doubt I ever will.  Therefore, the sheer amount of hours that the three of them spend playing together will never be equaled by more distant play mates!


Then there's the support that they offer each other.  When it comes to sibling bonding and making lasting friendships, it's hard to imagine anything more powerful than three book-loving children, only one of whom can decipher the actual words.  Sunflower is constantly engaged to "read me this one" or "read me that," and they all huddle together, heads close, all potential arguments forgotten as they are lost in the picture book.  I am quite sure that this arrangement means that the girls have had more books read to them than a busy parent could ever manage, and that early-reader Sunflower has had more inspiration to extend himself and read massive amounts of books... even when he wanted to give up or at first thought the words were too hard.

Besides enjoying having a reader in their midst, they appreciate taking care of themselves and helping each other.  Children of this age feel really good when they are able to be self-sufficient, and the next best thing is keeping the sufficiency within the children.  When they are turning into horses to pull their covered wagon up and down the hallways, they all are relieved that Hibiscus can tie the knots to connect everyone together, and that she's big enough to actually move the "wagon;" that's much better than having to bring a grown-up into the play!  And when they want something read, written, spelled, or figured out, it feels much more reasonable to get Sunflower to do it.  By combining their skills, their group is much stronger, which clearly gives them all a deep satisfaction.  Buttercup doesn't have many strengths she can contribute just yet, but it's perfectly clear that most games are more fun with a third party.  What fun is being the mom and dad if you don't have a baby (or a dog) to play with?


Then there is the sense of justice that they extend to each other.  Now, we must start by acknowledging that they are all in the black-and-white stage of childhood that appreciates justice and rules much more than mercy and individual circumstances.  So, at bedtime when Hibiscus breaks several family policies and then isn't ready when the timer goes off, the younger children are happy to get into bed with me and smug that they have finished their jobs and get to listen to books.  "Shall I shut the door?" asks Sunflower.  "Yes, she is TOO LOUD," Buttercup complains about her tantruming sister.  Mercy and pity is not in evidence in the literal early childhood stage!

But when Sunflower has earned a privilege that is more nebulous, he may gloat for just a moment.  (Especially when Hibiscus has been particularly obnoxious lately, which was probably why he earned something she didn't.)  But then he starts to worry.  And finally he decides to share what he has with her -- "maybe I can be the leader, but she can come along too."  Or "what about Hibiscus? I'll make an extra one for her."

And when Hibiscus enjoys one of the privileges that age grants her, like going to a birthday party, she doesn't forget her siblings.  At a party a couple weeks ago, the other girls scolded her for picking up multiples of the same item from the pinata, but she braved her peers' scorn in order to bring home the same prizes she got for her brother and sister.

As for Buttercup, there is little she can actually do to help out her faster, stronger, and wiser siblings, but she honors them with unfettered adoration.  Which is a pretty powerful gift.


Buttercup is also reaching the point where she is a genuine part of the play process.  Last fall, Buttercup was always the baby of the family, to be hauled around, or the patient with a busy doctor and nurse surrounding her.  She still isn't the leader of their play, and she probably never will be, but now she is acting under her own agency -- she's a dog busily learning tricks, and her voice is heard saying "let's pee-tend I'm da one doin' dat" and "let's play dat I'm da dog now, okay?"  And she does and she is.  She is contributing her own personality, which enriches the game for everyone.  The children do not say this in so many words, but it is clear that everyone appreciates it.


So are the children best friends?  They wouldn't say they are, because they also make each other so intensely mad.

When Hibiscus is frustrated with the world, she is defiant to me, and goads Sunflower.  She especially goads Sunflower when being defiant to me isn't getting her anywhere interesting, which is always.  And she's very good at it -- perhaps he's exceptionally teaseable or trustworthy, but she can pretty much always make him crying mad, which is a good enough reward for her.  It's more likely that big sisters can always make their little brothers and sisters crying mad; it's just Nature's gift to big sisters!

Hibiscus is also excellent at telling her brother and sister what to do in exactly the way that frustrates them the most; the kind of advice they don't want to hear from a parent, but gently phrased they would understand that maybe the parent was right.  From Hibiscus it is never anything less than a grave insult, resulting in times when Buttercup screams "sto-AAAAAH-p, Hibiscus you not da PEEE-rent!" when Hibiscus even tries to speak to her.

And Buttercup is always being awkward and touching someone who doesn't want to be touched, or saying something when it stopped being funny any more, or copying when it's annoying or appreciative.  And Sunflower is not always graceful about defending his personal space, or using his words before he starts screaming.  He is busily capitalizing Nature's Gift to middle children, which is always presenting himself as the injured party in the eyes of the parents.  In short, they all drive each other crazy at times.


Because the friendship is so easy and always-present, and being mad is so very maddening, the negative feelings probably play a large role in how they think of each other.  They will compare their relationship with each to their relationships with their friends, and one day they will each say to themselves, "I'm so glad I have x friends, because we never shout at each other and x is always so friendly and supportive."  And then will start the age when they love to be with their friends, and they roll their eyes at the thought of their family and look forward to moving out and moving in with these wonderful people who are always supportive and never yell.

And then one day, they will move into a house with their best friends, or even find the very best of the friends and marry that person.  They will be so happy, because now they have found something so much better than their family of origin, who teased and yelled too quickly and touched when touching wasn't wanted.  Those siblings scolded them when their feelings were hurt, and always knew when they were trying to tell white lies and get away with something, and laughed at them when their outfit looked silly that day.  And those siblings yelled at them when the sibling was having a bad day, and acted grumpy, and they looked messy and were occasionally rude at the dinner table.  Unlike the wonderful friends, who never tease and never act like they have hurt feelings, and accept what you tell to them, and always appreciate your outfit.  And these much-improved friends always act polite, even when they're having a hard day, and having dinner together is a constant joy.

So they move in together.  And then the next step in this story is clear to anyone who has gone through adulthood, but blissfully concealed from the optimistic teen and young adult: the boundaries gradually come down, and everyday life settles in.  When the friends are comfortable with each other, they take out their bad days on each other; and when they're frustrated with each, angry feelings burst out instead of being put on an internal shelf.  Dinners are half-hearted or messy or something there's nothing to say to each other.  Compliments fade away, and the occasional sigh or rolled eyes sneaks in.  Some of those friendships weather the difficulties of being truly open and honest with each other, and some of them unravel.


But at that point, I think that grown-up child will look back.  And he or she will look on those hours and years of playing and talking and being joyful with his or her siblings.  And suddenly, all the frustrations and ugly edges of one's brothers and sisters seem a lot less important, because one realizes that everyone has ugly edges inside.  Instead, the grown-up child remembers how the siblings didn't let him look stupid in public; or shielded her from outside anger.  Or simply, they remember the hours and years of pure, simple joy in being together; the joy of escaping into a fantasy world, accompanied by people who truly and completely understand and accept you.

And all of a sudden, those brothers and sisters start looking an awful lot like true friends.

January to January

It is the middle of January.  Exactly one year ago, I was in the throes of frustration, trying to pack for a trip to Uganda.  Today, I am in the throes of frustration, trying to pack to go back to America.  One entire year.  One way or another, Uganda has an entire year of my life.   There were a couple months there that weren't exactly in Uganda itself, when our match fell through the day we were supposed to leave, and we didn't leave yet.  But, the entire month of January I dedicated to Uganda, figuring out exactly what we would need, collecting portable toys and every kind of medicine.  At the end of the month I quit my job, closed up everything; closed that chapter of my life.  Even when we didn't get on the plane, the bags stayed packed, the job stayed quit, everything seemed foggy and temporary.  Now it is January, and I am packing again.

We have plane tickets for the 27th, which is next Monday.  Hold up your fingers: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday; a whole hand, five more days, as Emerson counted this morning.  So after months of uncertainty, I am suddenly busy making the actual plans to go home.  I'm contacting our Ugandan friends and the people who have helped us, to say goodbye.  I'm emailing people at home and confirming doctor's appointments and plane seating arrangements.  I'm going through a list of people who were in some state of "we'll do X when I get home," to let them know that I actually have a date to get home and to plan a time for X.  I'm hoping to answer questions and complete connections for other adoptive parents who can't be in Uganda yet.  I'm trying to wrap up all the details that might not wait another two weeks, once the real chaos begins.  I'm probably forgetting some important ones.  I'm trying to sort things into "Take Home" and "Maybe" and "Leave Here."

I'm trying to arrange the house.  I once wrote about how overwhelming it was for me to arrange packing for this trip to Uganda; now it's equally overwhelming to try and un-arrange it.  I have realized the problem is that I'm good at big-picture dreaming, and I'm a perfectionist about all the little details, but the medium-sized problems overwhelm me with where to start.  I can either make lists all day, or I can sit and sort out one thing perfectly, but deciding how to deconstruct an entire house -- and entire life -- makes me feel like I'm staring at a huge brick wall.

And it's an entire life.  The power is out right now, and the candle burned down until the candle holder lit on fire (because all the candle holders are unfinished wood), and I went to get a new candle. The new one was the second-to-last one in the box, and there was a whole new box of candles sitting underneath it, so we wouldn't run out.  There's extras of everything we use in the big cupboards, from powdered sugar (not so frequently) to oatmeal (we go through it fast).  My mother grew up in a small town in Vermont, and they only went shopping once or twice a month, so she knew how to keep a well-stocked pantry, and that's still the way I live today.  It's pretty frustrating to run out of candles during a power outage, or some irreplaceable food when you have three kids and no car, so I keep extras.  Because this is our house, and our pantry.  And our life.

It was never meant to be forever, but as the months went by, it turned into good enough.  This is our days, our food, our routine.  We wake up in the morning, can grab the toothbrushes on the sink by feel, get our clothes from our wardrobes where they are every day.  I make eggs or toast on school mornings with Buttercup on my back, and Emerson staggers around slowly and Hibiscus darts around randomly, but between the three of us we get their backpacks filled with snack, juice, and homework.  They go to school, and bring home stories about new teachers and favorite games and funny things.  Buttercup and I eat our breakfast after they leave, perhaps on the patio.  She plays around me while I work or socialize on the ipad, and meanwhile we sing little songs and name colors and have laughs and snuggles in between our independent work.  When we go out, we shop at the Cinderella market in Bbunga when we're on our way home, which we used to walk to, and I can always remember exactly what I will find on the shelves.  Or we get bread and cash and go to Uchimi supermarket in Kabalagala, which is in the same mall with the shoe store (children need a lot of shoes), and there's a bunch of used clothing shops nearby, as well as most other little things that we might need.  When we go into town, we get our groceries at Garden City mall, which starts with a koi pond that the kids always run over to, and one time had trombonists playing Christmas carols on plastic instruments in the entryway.  That's also where the big bookstore is, and the food-court overlooking the golf course, and the colorful playground on an upper story balcony, which by definition doesn't have any grass and way too much sun on hot days, but is the only free playground in our regular routine.  Now that we usually do our errands by car, we stop there fairly often.  And I can visualize the streets curving around that area, the side heading into the suburbs with some nice restaurants on grassy compounds, or heading out to Ntinda where we see the dancing, or becoming angular in the other direction as it heads into downtown Kampala.  I know all those streets too.

In other words, this is normal.  This is just how we live.  

I never imagined that more than a year would pass between packing and the final unpacking, which is still ahead of me.  I never imagined eight entire months in Kampala.  I trusted that this was where God wanted me, and although I have often felt crazy, I have never felt any question that I was doing the right thing.  It just turned out to be a very large right thing!

Larger in terms of time and effort, but larger in terms of meaning in our lives, as well.  When we were talking about adoption, people warned us that it wouldn't be easy; when we mentioned older-child adoption, they said it really wouldn't be easy.  And I thought, the things that are easy aren't the ones that are most worthwhile. Not to mention, anyone making a choice to be a parent because they think it's going to be easy should think about their choices a little bit harder!  We went through all those thoughts about adoption itself, but I didn't know I would go through them with my children's country.  This year hasn't been easy -- it is probably the hardest thing I have ever done.  But in the end, we have gained so much from Uganda.

I have hated it here sometimes.  I have hated my situation, I have hated the culture, I have hated the entire country.  And I think that's fair; I think you don't truly make something yours when you idealize it or insist on focusing on the positive (or just the negative, for that matter).  But I have also found things that touch my heart and my mind.  I have made friendships that will change my life.  I have had conversations that never would have been possible if I weren't living this life.  I have seen beneath the surface and felt things in my heart.

But what is probably stronger than all that, is that I have hated it, and I have kept on.  I have come to define myself as living in Uganda.  My frustration has changed from something that is directed outward, towards an "other," to being at something that I know that I am part of.  Maybe I have a terrible day with some things that are so Ugandan going wrong -- miscommunication, being cheated, cars breaking down, coughing from the dusty roads.  But I go back in my own home, I make what I like for dinner, I gather my children around me in bed and smell their clean hair as I read bedtime stories, and we relax and think about the stories (and our Bedtime Reading Rules; we always need reminders about those), and our bodies melt into each other and I know that we love each other and that even though things are going wrong, I am filling their emotional cups with love and contentment.  And that's Uganda too.  We're not retreating from the Uganda-ness, we're going to our own special corner of it.

And we've become a Ugandan-American family.  My blond son says "even me" instead of "me too," and a hundred other phrases without thinking about them.  When he does think about it, he can slip entirely into African English, and asks me to "you pooot me he-ah" to refill his cup ("you put me here," like "put it here for me").  When he doesn't think at all, he can follow basic conversation in Luganda.  The girls speak English with an African accent, but Buttercup's is mild, and their vocabulary is filled with American words, and sometimes they forget the Luganda ones.  The phrases even slip off my tongue, and we all can say or understand "sorry for paining you" as easily as "I'm sorry I hurt you."  Everyone talks about whether we need to go sou-sou, and wanting the omunyo to sprinkle on our food.  We dress in clothes that are like what Africans wear, but what Americans would buy.  We eat mangoes and matoke, yogurt and honey, roasted maize and bananas, chocolate chip cookies and cheese.  The girls like nutritional yeast on their rice as much as "soup," and Emerson eats "food and soup" at school as long they cut the tomatoes into very small pieces.  I walk more slowly and my conversation has more pauses than it used to.  The kids are learning two sets of manners, which does not confuse them at all, although using any manners whatsoever can be difficult.  And most of all, we all share dozens and hundred of memories of our world.  Our mutual world, that we all know.  We describe this person that we talked to, or the store we mean is the one near where all the goats are, or the time when Cinderella market had a Santa Claus outside and Hibiscus thought it was real.  And the girls even remind us of American memories, like that Emerson rode a horse on Uncle Mike's farm, and tell again about the time that Mama thought Bubba was going to eat her food and she put it in her mouth all at once.  All of it is swirled up together in what is our own family story.  Our family, that is now and always will be both Ugandan and American.

I have said that I want to go back home, and I do, and now I actually have plans to do it.  I look around myself, and first of all I can't imagine that I'll be leaving this; my cozy living room and the rocky red dirt roads and the smell of fires.  I'll be glad to be getting back to my husband and my dogs and my normal life, but it's going to be hard to leave.  How hard, I don't even know yet; I think it usually hits about two weeks after it's gone!  But I think Uganda and I have turned a corner; have made peace with each other; have become something together.

As I wrote that it seemed self-indulgent to imply that in any way I have changed a country, but as I think about it, I have.  Miss B said that I was the most patient family she had ever worked with, in an admiring superlative.  I was introducing myself to some other adoptive parent the other day, and when I mentioned how long I've been here she replied, "oh, you're the one who's been here for eight months; you've become an urban legend around here!"  I'm sure in all my conversation and support and suggestions I have somehow influenced the course of my children's small school.  Some of the conversations I have sought to learn more about Uganda have probably given someone a different insight.  And then the tiny things: I've lived in an area where there aren't many white people, there aren't many transracial families, there aren't many women on their own.  All these hundred of people who have stared at me, or laughed at me, or bargained with me, or gotten to know what kind of fruit I like to buy, or complimented or scolded the way I wrap my child; all these people have changed their perspectives in some small way.

As for me, the transformation came in the last few weeks.  Around Christmas I was feeling worn down to the bone, and I didn't know if I could make it any farther.  But I did, and I kept going, and I found things to smile about.  And then finally, the children got on the school bus and waved and drove away.  Buttercup and I ate breakfast on the patio, and the sun was a nice gentle golden color and everything was green.  And life seemed so normal, and content, and manageable.  I realized in that instant that I didn't actually hate Uganda, I hated having to run errands with three bored children on an interminable break from school.  As soon as our routine was back in place, we all became ourselves again, and settled into our normal life.

And now it's time to pack the suitcases, give the pantry away.  Decide what we care about and what we leave behind.  Another January, another getting ready to fly away from another chapter in my life.

It hasn't been an easy year.  There has been suffering over administrative difficulties of adoption; there has been suffering over becoming a family through adoption; there has been suffering about doing all that as a solo parent.  There has also been struggling with Uganda itself, and I have gone through periods of excitement, and frustration, and appreciation, and anger, and acceptance, and weariness, and jadedness.  And not thinking about it, just living my life.

Because this is our life that we are leaving.  We haven't been on hold for the last year, we have been living.  And these three children and I, we have made a life, we have made a family here in the hills above Lake Victoria.

We have made ourselves a home here in Uganda.  We started out by leasing an apartment, and noticing all the smells, and being charmed by the outdoor markets, and struggling with understanding the accent.  But the months have gone by, and the tears and the anger and the friendships.  All those details have faded into something normal, something that is part of ourselves.

We have earned ourselves a home.

More on the Christmas Cantata

When we considered older child adoption, we discussed many potential challenges and difficulties, including many of the things that we have faced.  But one thing we forgot to consider: musical taste.  We are a household that has earned degrees in music, both classical and jazz; there are two grand pianos in our living room, and another piano living with a friend; and other instruments include traditional drums and flutes from different cultures, classical strings (violins in several different sizes and a viola), and more guitar-like instruments than I can count.  What are we going to do with a child who has spent six years listening to this combination of hip-hop and pop music, complete with three chords and an insistent drumbeat, turned up way too loud.  How many years do we have to balance out this influence before she's old enough to buy her own music, and turn up the stereo on the back bedroom??!!

So Hibiscus thought the concert was awesome and amazing, and wants to go back today.  It was ridiculously loud and ridiculously dramatic, which seem to be the main criteria around here.  It seemed to be a lot of skits with really corny messages, that morphed into a song, and then all the secondary characters around the stage broke into some kind of crazy breakdancing.

For instance, a woman walks by talking on a cell phone and blowing her nose, and then drops the tissue on the ground.  Another woman is sitting on a bench, and reminds her to put the tissue in the bin.  Cell-phone woman rolls her eyes and walks away.  Nice Woman puts the tissue in the trash, and has a long discussion with the man sweeping the sidewalk about how important it is to put trash in the bin and take care of our beautiful city.  (Ugandans attitude towards trash seems to be a lot like that about lying, that they preach a lot about it but  honesty and picking up after oneself doesn't really enter into everyday behavior.)  Then it turns out that the sweeper-man is expecting his sister-in-law to call and announce the birth of his first child any moment, and that he and his wife have been waiting for a child for six years.  Then Nice Woman goes into a little spiel about how that reminds her of Jesus, and how the people waited for their Savior for all this time, but he finally came, and that is about God because of something-or-other, and then the Wise Men brought gifts and did you know that is where gift-giving was started?  Meanwhile, a spotlight comes on a little area on top of the high-rises, and we see Mary and Joseph struggling along, and the spotlight goes off and instantly they are on the side stage in a different spotlight, while the Wise Men appear as Nice Woman discusses them in the story.  Then suddenly they all burst out in song, and Joseph holds the Baby Jesus bundle above his head and swings around while singing this crazy exuberant pop-gospel stuff, and I am very glad that the bundle does not look like the shape that might mean an actual child is inside.  And a dozen other people come along in some kind of random costume and start dancing too.  And the song is not "We Three Kings" or anything that seems kind of related to the story, because "We Three Kings" would not be loud and excited enough, and I think it would be very difficult to add in the required bass and drum section to allow for the necessary switch into break-dancing.  Because everything has to turn into a break-dancing sequence.  Although they added speed and drums to several traditional carols in such a way to totally ruin them as "carols," let alone "traditional," which is apparently what Ugandans are used to because they all hummed and clapped along.

The program started with the (white) preacher enthusiastically welcoming everyone, and then we all sang "Silent Night" together.  The dancers had not yet appeared, so we only needed to go at about 170% of normal speed.  I don't know if Ugandans have a genetic predisposition towards alto-ness, but they certainly have a learned habit of singing in a really throaty voice.  This was funny because there is one sustained, moderately-high note in "Silent Night," and suddenly you could hear my voice singing it, because apparently I was the only person among the couple thousand who knew how to sustain a high note!

The main stage was this giant area in front, which when empty had a large waterfall surrounded by poinsettias and pine trees in the middle.  Then the couple-hundred voice choir filed in and filled most of the space in the middle in risers.  I think their purpose was mostly to look enthusiastic and sparkly, because they didn't do much more than hum in the background on a few songs.  There was a group song at the beginning and the end and they sang along with those ones, and the one at the end was some kind of enthusiastic praise-Jesus kind of thing, so some of them waved their hands around too.  There was a stage on a couple of levels in front of the choir, with a park bench and a few other props, and this is where most of the skits took place.  There was some kind of platform above the choir, which occasionally they used to dramatic effect, and a giant white screen all the way across the stage above that, which they used for different images.  Then there was another stage on either side of the main area, filled with pine trees.  The one towards our side had a manger, and Mary and Joseph appeared on it occasionally when someone sang about them.

I told a couple of the highlights of the cantata yesterday, so the story today is kind of out of order.  So I will go back to the beginning.  We were supposed to pick up our friends at 12:30, to arrive at 1 to wait for the 3:30 show.  But I knew we were on Africa time, so I didn't get everyone ready and over to their house until 1.  The children were all ready to jump in the car, but the mom wasn't, so we waited a while there.  Then we drove downtown.  Ggaba Road has been very slow lately, but it actually went smoothly, but then the traffic was just plain absolutely stopped once we got to town.  We could have walked it twice as fast, even with all seven children.  Finally, we got to the right place and found a parking spot.  Then it was time to wait.

First of all, we sat and waited under a series of giant tents set up outside, as the ushers gradually filled the tent sections in the order we would be allowed to leave them.  In another part of the parking lot there was a stand selling chapatis, popcorn, hot dogs, drinks, and other snacks, and behind the tents were a grand total of six porta-potties.  We arrived at 3 for the 3:00 performance, so we missed it, and waited the whole two hours for the next one -- but at least we were near the front of the line for that one.

About an hour after we started waiting, we were ushered out, through a church, and up to another room kind of to the side, which was also filled with plastic chairs.  It was the second room filled with people like that; I would estimate at least 300 people were in our room.  Luckily, we were up towards one corner, so the kids played with going back and forth out the edge.  I had a book in my backpack, so Emerson and I read that one together.  He was grumpy and tired and didn't really feel like reading, so he didn't want to read on his own.  We took turns reading the stories, switching at the paragraph for a while, until Emerson decided to switch every time we encountered the word "the."  That was interesting!  But inside my head, I was just amazed.  Back in September, he was still reading the Bob books and getting frustrated, and we were going very carefully over simple rules like what does "ea" say so he wouldn't be so frustrated.  Then something clicked, and he has been reading all kinds of children's books, like the paragraph-full Early Readers at school, and the Madeline books at home.  But this is a whole new level; this is totally text-dense read-aloud only, with unique vocabulary and small text.  He's gotten to the point where he wants to read something, and I say "okay, so read it," and he just starts, instead of worrying that it is too hard.  And really, most books in the world are mostly the same words over and over, so once you start in on it you can get a lot of the point, even if you have never yet encountered "vision" or "malicious."

I described sitting down to the concert, which was quite an adventure, so I will go back to some of the program.  The skits all started off corny, and ended with one of the characters delivering a little lesson about Jesus.  One of them was about difficulty, describing the basic story of the engagement, the census, and so forth, and that it was not actually simple or easy for them, and they probably kind of didn't feel happy all the time.  This was the LESSON.  There were definitely children in the audience, but it was not a children's show, and most of it seemed aimed towards the adults.  Is the assumption that adult Christians are not sure about when or why Joseph agreed to wed Mary, or that they had to travel for a census?   I have been shocked and frustrated with how confused Hibiscus is about basic Biblical characters, but I am beginning to understand why: it seems to me that most of the religion around here is totally based on homily and assumption, and very little on the actual Bible.  The children are told that if they are rude to their older brothers and sisters they will go to Hell, and given very specific definitions of Hell, and lists of other behavior that will land them there.  Which is The Divine Comedy, it is not the Bible.  Then they sing lots of songs with "praise God" and "Jesus loves me," and they turn around and tell me that they will beat all the people who are mean to them and to Jesus.  Hibiscus even described a helicopter with bombs she would drop on people who are mean to Jesus!  This is a nice sweet idea about loving Jesus, but when it is paired with no actual knowledge about anything Jesus ever did or said, it turns into a discussion about where he fits when he is inside you, under one's bellybutton or in the rib cage.

This is the child perspective, and it seems like many people do not really deepen their understanding as they get older.  The religious message that I have overheard again and again is how if you believe in God and really love him, LOVE LOVE LOVE, with lots of swinging your arms around and stamping your feet and singing really loudly... then you'll get rich.  Because God blesses the people who love him, especially when they sing really loudly.  I have actually had discussions with my friend the priest on how prevalent this view of loving God = getting rich and lucky, which he finds a big problem, so I am not naively imagining this.

And this bring us to why Hibiscus wants to have a helicopter to drop bombs on mean people, which was the part of the Cantata that made me absolutely livid.  If you are really into melodrama, I suppose Jesus' birth scores you lots of sequins, but the real drama is in the death.  So it couldn't be left out of a Christmas program.  (Unlike the entire life, ministry, and philosophy of Jesus, which was not alluded to in any way!)  I think it followed the young man's monologue about how he slowly descended into peer pressure, parties, alcohol and drugs, until he realized that his life was empty and the only thing that could fill it was Christ.  I realize that a lot of modern churches really like this "testimony," although personally, I would rather my kids don't hear so much about drugs and descending into "coolness."  But then there were some lighting changes, and another guy came out and sang some very dramatic and sad song.  At least I assume it was; I wasn't paying much attention to him.  Because behind him, they started playing a movie on the big screen of the crucifixion.  It might have been part of Mel Gibson's movie, or it might have been something else.  But it was gory, and it was detailed.  It started with Jesus carrying the cross and falling down, and we got close-ups of his arms and his back.  Later we saw nails positioned in the hands, and a hammer swinging.  It was several minutes long, and all fade-ins and fade-outs to different gruesome parts of the crucifixion.  I didn't see most of it, because I don't like to watch things like that, and then I was busy trying to convince the children not to watch.  Emerson was on one side of me, and all the children until Teacher Monica on the far side.  I started in on Emerson, because I know he has this fascination and deep terror of scary things.  He wouldn't look away, and I could cover his eyes but he yelled at me.  On the other side, Hibiscus was watching with her eyes literally bugging out.  Lately she has been especially terrified of bad things happening at night, and bad people coming into our house, and monsters nabbing her.  I know that images of someone being beaten bloody are exactly the kind of thing that pops into your mind when you are afraid of the dark and you want your mama to stay next to you, but she actually has to do your sister's bath at that moment.  So I tried to convince her not to watch, but she told me she liked it, as the tears started to fall.  Then I noticed Hosta on the other side of her, who had huddled up with her knees up to her forehead (she spent most of the program on her feet, jumping up and down), her face totally covered with tears, but she also could not tear her eyes off the video.  After that I was trying to distract Emerson again, and meanwhile thinking about how I could lean my body so Buttercup, in my wrap, wouldn't have an ideal view of the screen.  In the end, I'm not sure how much it helped, and all the children saw way more than was good for them.

So what happens today?  The children have mentioned half a dozen times how much they liked seeing Mary and Joseph, since they just did a little pageant of their own at school.  And then they've spent a significant portion of the day pretending to fall on the cross and discussion exactly where the nails were placed on the feet, and banging pretend nails into each other.  It really makes me mad.  Overall the cantata was not my cup of tea but it was a fun experience, but supposing I actually lived here, I would seriously consider not attending again next year just to avoid that disgusting video. (Or whatever they replace it with next time.)  It is NOT something that is appropriate to put into children's hearts and minds!  First of all, they have so many of their own difficulties to cope with, and this was just plain gory and unpleasant, and these images now live inside them.  Secondly, they are too young to get any actual meaning from it.  The first thing, that we have already discussed several times, is that this was a MOVIE, not the Bible.  In my own home and church life, I certainly expose my child(ren) to the story of the crucifixion, but I keep it simple and based on the actual Bible.  A young child will remember their first exposure to the story, and I want it to be the actual, literal story, not some film-maker's interpretation.  You never know if what will stay with a child will be the parts that he took from the text, or something random that was never important.  (Like Jesus being tall and blond, which he was.)  But the deeper issue is that if the children are too young to understand the meaning and the reason behind the crucifixion, they are way too young to be thinking about the details of death.  Never mind calling for bomb-dropping helicopters, Jesus actively refused even mild violence on his behalf, and refused to protest or defend himself.  Why?  THAT is what Christianity is about.  If you're not old enough to discuss that, you're not old enough to discuss what they used to whip Jesus, and how much he was bleeding.  Period.

So, that was my philosophical rant; let's get back to the cantata.  Shall we discuss breakdancing?  There was really quite a lot of it.  The theme seemed to be a city park, so we had streetcleaners breaking out in breakdancing several times.  However, there was some attempt at variety.  For one number, a ballerina (the one white woman in the entire thing, actually) was in a spotlight in the little stage that was above all the other stages, and she twirled a couple times, and then lights came on the main stage and a bunch of girls in ballerina-like outfits swooped out, twirled a couple times... and started breakdancing.  A later troupe of mostly male dancers were wearing black and white, leather jackets, and sunglasses.  It was a little hard to see how that fit in with the sequins-and-Christmas theme, but they certainly were matching costumes.  And the breakdancing was quite good, and they did a bunch of fancy tricks.  I probably would have been impressed if I weren't so amused by how everyone kept breakdancing!

Another part of the cantata for me was dealing with the children.  I decided to keep Buttercup on my back, where she could see (and incidentally not escape).  She figured out pretty fast that she had a good view and was perfectly content, although that involved lots of jumping up and down in place.  I had also gotten snacks before we went in, and gradually handed them out to the children. I started off with half a chapati each while we waited for the show to start, which went smoothly.  But I had tried to get something at the snack stand that wasn't JUST simple carbs, so I got little slurpy yogurts.  These are small plastic bags filled with sweet yogurt, and you cut off a corner and stick a straw in and drink it out.  This works pretty well if you do it properly, which half the children managed to do.  Unfortunately, half the children wanted to put their yogurt down for a while, and since they are just plastic bags, this is not very technically possible when you are sitting crammed in a pew jumping up and down.  So when Buttercup got full, I gave the rest to Hibiscus, and then I refused to get Hibiscus her own because she'd already eaten half of one and I didn't want her to put down the next one, but when Hosta got tired of drinking I gave that to Hibiscus too.  Needless to say, that made everyone mad at me.  The friends' children managed to drink their yogurts without incident, although the older girl was still carrying the bag when we were trying to walk to the car.  Her mother had to ask her to drop it, which shows how deeply the no-littering lessons sink in -- although she had to ask twice, so maybe the child noticed the discrepancy and the next generation will manage to do better.  But it was Emerson who won the yogurt award.  He asked me to hold his yogurt several times, or offered it to me to take a drink, so I took a drink and handed it back.  But at one point he got the straw stuck inside the bag, so he put it on my lap so I can fix it.  Imagine: it is dark, there are strobelights, you are trying to figure out which of the next six children wants a yogurt, and there is a bag with a hole in it somewhere plopped in your lap.  It ended up spilling yogurt all over my dress, the wrap, the camera case, the floor, and who-knows-what else.  And then Emerson took it back and sucked the rest of the yogurt directly out of the hole, which worked well, except he took forever to do it (like most things that he does), and I think yogurt bags were designed for speedy consumption.

As for the grand finale: Snow.  Snow is really spectacular here in equatorial Africa, and they had an amazing production of it.  We are not in rich Dubai, which apparently has an indoor ski mountain, so it wasn't the actual cold stuff, but it poured from the ceiling in huge quantities for several minutes.  (I think it was some kind of bubbles.)  The kids were very excited and impressed, and jumped around and squealed and tried to catch it.

And now I will conclude my story with what Hibiscus told me the next day.  First of all, she keeps repeating that she wants to go back, and I have not the slightest intention of reliving the rest of the exhausting day in order to attend the performance again!  But then she told me this morning that she was glad we went to this show, because Ugandan people don't go to shows, and no one in Uganda knows about shows like this.  This is pretty amazing information, given that probably between a thousand and two thousand people were happily watching the show, and I saw exactly one other group like ours, which had a couple Americans mixed in with the locals.  There have been two shows a day for the last ten days or so, and they will switch to four shows a day from tomorrow until Christmas -- just at this church, and I think the other churches do their own shows, and a few of the other mega-churches definitely have mega-shows.  A quick estimate gives about 40,000 Ugandans attending this particular show, along with a hundred or so muzungos, which is a slightly different number than "none."  I reminded Hibiscus about the Ugandans who had been all around her, and that our Ugandan friends had brought us, so it was pretty clear that some Ugandans knew about shows like this.  She calmly and didactically informed me that her daddy in Bbunga did not know about shows like this, and she had never been to a show like this while she lived in Bbunga, and no one else went to shows like this either.  Therefore no one in Uganda knows about big shows.  Obviously, mom.

In preparing for adoption, we talked about the significance of taking a child away from their culture, but I think this is the equally important side of the same coin: a naive six-year-old, starting a new life, comes to the assumption that she is the expert on her own culture.  In many ways she knows more about the Buganda than I do, but in other ways, her experience is so narrow and misunderstood, she really knows almost nothing about her own culture.  But since we take her away from it, she thinks she knows everything.  It makes me very glad that we are spending these months here, and hopefully we can combat a little bit of her own assumptions through the coming years, so that she does not believe that her miserable little life in the slums is the only option for Ugandans.  That some people are kind to their friends, and some children like to read, and some Ugandans go to concerts.

We can have those discussions while not engaged in our full-immersion program of symphonies, jazz quartets, and choirs with actual sopranos in them.  And Christmas performances of The Nutcracker, but only if it has been pre-screened for not switching to breakdancing part way through!

b

Christmas Cantata

It is after 10:30 at night, and I am just sitting down to my second meal of oatmeal of the day.  That might be an ambiguous sentence, but it is true either way: it is the second time I've eaten oatmeal for a meal today, and it is the second time I have sat down and eaten a meal.

We have spent the last eleven hours or so attending a "Christmas Cantata," with our friends, the family who runs the American Montessori School (including Hosta).  It was quite something, to say the least.  Also, I am coming to the conclusion that I should take my children and lock all of us in the bedroom, perhaps with some individuals under the bed, and stay there until we have all the proper paperwork to get on the plane. Disasters large and small seem to dog us wherever we go and whatever we do!  Perhaps this entire trip is cursed.  Or Satan is trying to get at us, as Teacher Monica suggested.

I should eat my oatmeal and go to bed, so I will just write a few things and tell the rest of the stories in the morning.  The Cantata was a very Ugandan extravaganza, including the part about waiting for more than two hours in order to get in.  After all, what Christmas would be complete without breakdancing angels?

As for the venue, visualize an American mega-church, with a balcony and stage and everything, and then squash it down Ugandan style.  So the grandeur remains, but take out all the pretty details like carpets and mood lighting, and make it about a half or a third of the size but maintain the same number of people.  There were three different staging areas in order to get the audience into the church!  First of all we all crammed into the space you might ordinarily expect about the average American family with its 2.2 children to sit, as long as neither adult was particularly overweight.  After a while, the ushers came by and asked us to put the children on our laps so we would take up less room.  Since we were two mothers with seven children, we both already had full laps but there were still a lot of small bums leftover.  The usher moved on and was settling people in the aisles, but they had to stand on the side so the performers could go by.  A couple of enterprising ladies came over and announced that they could carry the children on their laps, thus allowing their own bums to be on a pew and the children to spend the entire two plus hours on the lap of a stranger.  Request denied, although it was not so much a request at all.

Then: LIGHTS!!!!  FOG MACHINES!!!!  GIANT CHOIR ON HIGHRISES!!!!  SKITS!!!!  MARY AND JOSEPH!!!!  SINGING VERY DRAMATICALLY!!!!  AMPS TURNED WAY UP!!!!  And so forth.

Oh, and a revival call, or whatever they are called when sinners are invited to stand up and take Jesus into their lives at that very moment.  I personally feel strongly that one's relationship with Jesus is a lifetime of growth, almost all of which happens inside one's own heart and mind and not by standing up when you are told to by a guy with a microphone, but whatever floats your boat.  Who wouldn't want to listen to a nice Christmas music session without being invited to stand up and declare one's sinner-ness?  Well, I'm obliging enough to watch, until you get MY children involved. First of all, Emerson was so exhausted by that point, that when he kept hearing "stand up, stand up," he just kind of automatically stood up.  And since the church floor was flat, it was hard for the children to see and they had kept sitting on the top of the pew, especially Hibiscus (the other kids had been standing more), and the lady behind her had been hissing at her every few minutes "sit down, sit down."  And now she started hissing "stand up, stand up," which got Hibiscus totally confused, and thought maybe she ought to do it.  Maybe it might be a deeply moving religious experience for some people to stand up at a revival call, but I feel strongly that it is not an appropriate time to manipulate 5-ish-year-olds into confessing something that they don't understand in the least.  Actually, I deeply believe (and have witnessed) that children have a deep, intrinsic connection to the Divine, if we give them the space and trust to find it on their own.  Which this could not be more opposite!


And as for the conclusion of the day, unfortunately my bowl of oatmeal is almost finished so I cannot do the story justice.  I will just say, that we gathered up our seven very amped-up, tired, hungry, and wiggly children, navigated the sea of people, then the giant holes in the sidewalk with cars blocking either side in the gradually fading afternoon light, and walked to where we had left the car.  And we said "isn't this where the car was?"  And it had been, and it was not any more.

Student Led Parent Conferences

Friday was the special day for conferences at The American Montessori School.  I was supposed to put them on the bus as usual, and show up around 11... and I was kind of confused about what that meant.  Apparently it meant it was Student Led Parent-Student Conferences -- how's that for a mouthful?

A little background: the school is very small, with only about 22 students from around 3 years old through first grade, in four classes.  Two of the teachers are a married couple who founded the school, and it is run in their house.  The school is only a few years old, and they are trying to expand to a much larger facility, but right now the small size is a major bonus for me as a parent.  I appreciate getting to interact with the teachers, fewer kids is much less overwhelming for my children, and they get lots of individual attention.  However, it's a striking example of Ugandan use of space vs. what American's would "need."  The whole school is run in one small front room, with bookcases that slightly divide it into two spaces that are each maybe 10 or 12 feet square, the larger front porch, a toilet room, bath-and-sink room, and kitchen.  They also use the yard, which has a natural divide of a small hill, and around the size of a typical suburban backyard.  The equipment comprises a handbuilt play structure with two swings and a climbing rope net, a sandbox, some painted tires half-sunk in the dirt, and a rusty old mini trampoline with three of its legs missing.

I didn't manage to get there until 11:30, and I was still almost the first parent to arrive... and the lead teacher wasn't even back with the materials!  He rented tables to make different stations, but the shop decided not to open very promptly on Friday morning, so he wasn't able to pick up the tables until the event was supposedly underway.  We're on Africa-time!  So Buttercup and I sat on the couches in the covered patio area, and watched the children line up and be a train around the grounds, and then play Mr. Lion, Mr. Lion on the lawn.  Buttercup was eager to join in, but I kept her near me, and we enjoyed watching how the children did.  They enjoyed playing the game, but I could see why Emerson is not excited about going to school by watching his tired face.  The teacher probably spent 10 or 15 minutes getting the children properly organized in a line to move, and then once they finally got going she allowed someone to change their mind about wearing shoes, which meant that half the kids suddenly had to run around and throw their shoes in a pile or move the pile.  The children who had lined up in the "train" properly from the beginning (including both of mine) just stood there looking bored, or started to get poked by their neighbors, which of course meant they had to get in arguments.

After Mr Lion, the children came back and all sat around the sandbox with their feet inside, where they sang songs and eventually the teacher passed out water.  Again, there was a lot of time spent scolding the children and reminding them how to sit and whether to spread out or squash together, while half the children sat there vacantly.  Perhaps they do better in smaller groups when all four teachers are working with the children, but this also had the air of a regular routine that everyone expected.

By that time, the tables were finally set up, and Hibiscus was called over to start my conference.  There were only about three parents there, and a couple more drifted in over the course of the day.  As far as I could tell, most students never had a parent come by to listen to their accomplishments.  It is a huge and striking difference from participating in American schools, where parents will miss work to attend special school events, and at the very worst send a grandparent or babysitter.  This is a special and expensive school attended only by the (upper) middle class, and yet it still seems like a steep uphill battle to get parents to actually be involved in any way!  The conference notes for the parents described the different stations, and had lots of scaffolding help for the parents, such as "use words like 'good try!' and 'nice work!'." I will note that one of the parents there was a father, and all of the parents who attended did seem to be trying hard to be positive and support their children, and genuinely proud of them.

There were three stations for each class: literacy, numeracy, and science.  You can see what is important in Ugandan schooling -- parents want to know their kids are mastering the basics!  There was no information whatsoever about how they were doing socially, or if they could follow directions or be creative.  I think the school does care about those things, and I often talk with the teacher at pick-up time about these issues, but it seemed like they didn't expect parents to be interested.  Since they couldn't even get most of the parents to show up, I can understand why!

Each station had a table set up, with some different activities.  For kindergarten literacy, Hibiscus was supposed to write her first and last name for me, then move on and write small and capital letters when I requested them in different orders, then sound out and read short words that were in cards in a box.  She wrote her American first name beautifully, and then started thinking about our family name, which she has only written a few times.  But my children are not really "sit still and do the activity as directed" kind of kids; they have to keep thinking of something more!  In this case, Hibiscus decided she needed to write "Hibiscus." As the next activity will prove, her spelling skills are way way below the level of a strange word like that, which she still pronounces "Kah-biscuits"!  She didn't want me to tell her, and we spent a few minutes stalling while I tried to convince her how beautiful she had already written the words, and maybe we didn't need to spend all day writing a nickname.  Finally we managed to move on.  When I selected words from the box, she proudly and successfully managed to sound out "at" but could not manage "hat."  She made all the sounds correctly, but struggled to blend them together.  When I compared it to the "at" she had just finished, that confused her; apparently they don't do much rhyming.  Eventually we moved on to writing letters.  At this activity she shone, and her handwriting has become very neat and nicely small.  I do not fail to forget that she has only had this name for a couple of months, and that he is only learning to speak English, let alone write it.

We moved on to numeracy.  She was supposed to point to numbers on a chart when I said a number, between 1 and 100.  She could manage 1-20 fine, but she still hasn't figured out that there is a system to the rest of them, and just counted from "1" to find whatever I named.  Then she was supposed to put marbles (called "glass balls") in my hand to demonstrate her understanding of number values, and she did a great job at this, although sometimes she rushed and slipped an extra ball in!  Then the children are working at addition by going backwards, when they solve a sentence like "6= __+___."  I think this is a great idea for really learning about how numbers fits together, and Hibiscus did a good job when we used the marbles.  She enjoyed making one column full of 4's, by always having a 4 be the second half of her number sentence.

The science table was simply a pile of their drawings, and Hibiscus was supposed to explain her drawing to me.  It sounds like they do a good job of exploratory, hands-on science, although I never would have deduced it by simply listening to Hibiscus's wandering explanation about zebras and apple trees!

And that was Hibiscus's conference!  I gave her praise and kisses, and she glowed.

I had tried to let Buttercup run around, but "around" became the operative word, as she tried to get into everything and pull all the displays down.  Writing with pencils kept her happy for a little while, but then she was needing too much supervision, and I decided to wrap her on my back again.  The older children get very little focused one-on-one parental attention at this point, and I really wanted to treat this like their own special day. So Buttercup went up, and bounced up and down and sang and grabbed everything within reach, and hit me in the head with books, and when I sat on the couch she got her legs under her and jumped around, which totally ruined the wrap job, but still kept herphysically  contained.  There was plenty for her to watch, and I could pretend to almost ignore her, enough at least for the conference-giver to feel listened to!

Then Hibiscus went back into the kitchen, where I guess they were singing songs, and Emerson came out for his conference.  Emerson notes seriously that he is "in two classes," since he goes to first grade for reading.  So we started with reading, and the first activity was to take full sentences of dictation.  The Montessorians maybe have eliminated most of the "copy work" that defines most Ugandan schools, but they still can't seem to get their minds off the stilted learning-to-read vocabulary, and the sentences were full of boys and girls with boxes and balls and trees -- none of which are very logical early phonics words!  However, I was amazed how excited Emerson was to be taking dictation, and how neatly and competently he wrote.  Fine motor and writing skills have always been his great weakness, and his whole life his writing/drawing skills have lagged far behind his comprehension -- until now, apparently!

He was also supposed to read three pages of a book for me.  Emerson is always worried about failure, and would rather not try than attempt something he doesn't feel confident about, so he sorted through the pile of books anxiously, looking for something he already "knew."  Then he read me a whole story.  Emerson has become an amazing reader in the last few weeks!  He reads through many of the children's books we have around, and starts in reading when he wants to know something.  Yesterday he read the entire "Madeline" compilation to Hibiscus -- all six books in a row!  So I was not surprised to hear him read, but it was nice to be able to sit next to him and really concentrate on what he was doing.  Poor kids, we don't get much concentration lately!

At the math table, Emerson breezed through the first activities, so for the addition sentences I added a digit and made the 7 into a 17.  He was fascinated figuring out how to create the bigger numbers, using our mutual fingers.  Then he told me to change the other numbers, too, to make the game more fun.  I saw the teacher giving us some weird looks; I don't know if he disapproved of me changing the activity or had no idea that Emerson could mentally play with double-digit numbers!  I just see no reason for kids to repeat doing things that are not an interesting challenge for them.

After science, Emerson wanted to keep going, so we went back and did more dictation, and then read a new books.  This time, a younger child was interested in one particular book, so Emerson decided to read that one although he didn't "know" it yet.  I was proud of how he allowed his desire to hear the story triumph over his fear of making a mistake!


After that, I was told that I could go home and pick the kids up at the regular time, but I didn't much care for the idea of walking home and then turning around to pick them up again!  So I was invited to eat lunch with the children, and that lunch was almost ready.... which probably involved sitting around very hungrily for half an hour or so!  But the children were obviously very excited and honored to have me eat with them.

Emerson became very distressed, because some of the parents were carrying bags with presents to congratulate their children, and I had not brought any presents.  Something later at home was not acceptable!  So on the way out, we stopped at a nearby little grocery stand, and I got each child a little treat.  They were talking about lollipops, but then Hibiscus wanted a chocolate coin instead, and I was on the verge of getting Buttercup a lollipop before I realized what a terrible idea a lollipop on my back would be! So she got some smartie-like things that needed to be eaten all at once and had no smearing potential whatsoever!  Of course, Emerson's lollipop was going strong long after the girls had finished their treats, and I could see the wheels turning in Hibiscus's head as she contemplated short-term vs long-term treat value!

Contemplating long-term (or rather, something besides immediate) value is really one of the skills I want Hibiscus to be working on, and I am not really that worried about math and blending letters and things.  I want her to learn to not leave her sweater out on the grass and scuff up her shoes, so they are not ruined for later.  So I'm glad that the teachers say things like "she still needs some more positive support in this area, " which is more pleasant than what *I* can manage when she ruins her things!  And I am pleased to arrive after school and see Hibiscus very focused on learning to ride a bike, and Emerson in the sandbox busily making plans with a couple of other boys, making positive friendships.

But I am proud of the skills that they are learning too, and I was proud of how happy they were to show them off to me!

More Emerson in Africa

More Emerson in Africa

Currency:  I'm amused that in Emerson's chatter and his general play, now when he talks about how much things cost, the numbers are in the tens of thousands.  He doesn't really know the difference between American dollars and Ugandan shillings, but his numbers have expanded to reflect the big numbers he hears adults talking about!

Bargaining:  You know all the Americans who say one reason they don't like traveling in Mexico (or something like that) because you are supposed to bargain and it makes them so uncomfortable?  Well, clearly the solution to this problem is to spend time in a bargaining country as a small child.  It worked for me, but it apparently works even better when the child is verbose, confident, and outgoing.  We were at the craft market the other day and I gave Emerson permission to ask how much a helicopter cost.  He trotted over to the stall owner, and declared back to me "Ten thousand!"  The seller clarified that she had said 15 thousand, thinking that he was too young to have brought the message properly.  He repeated "ten thousand," and finally told her, quite calmly and firmly "we'll give you TEN thousand for it," and walked back to me with the helicopter.  

Intelligence:  We had to buy some cables for the electronics, which I knew would involve some waiting around for Emerson, so I had had him bring some toys and games in his backpack.  But once he saw what I was doing, he abandoned the toy (sprawled all over in the tiny store) and climbed up a chair and leaned over the counter and wanted to see everything and do everything himself, and remained to boss us around for the entire time.  As we were leaving, the saleswoman commented that he was a very bright boy, "not like our children here."  I said something about there being some ordinary children and some bright ones everywhere, but she said she thought it was the environment, and that the local children weren't so smart.  She explained that a Ugandan child would have just sat on the bench and waited for me the whole time, instead of climbing up and being so engaged in what was going on.

I am a little relieved that this exuberance is seen as intelligence instead of just bad manners, since Emerson has terribly bad manners compared to the Ugandan children!  (At least, that intelligence was the conclusion of one person.)  As a side note, if this is the criteria, Hibiscus is obviously bright as well, because she has certainly not inherited the Ugandan virtue of being able to sit patiently in one place.

Gender:  Hardly anyone knows whether he is a boy or a girl, although their gender roles seem to be as strongly defined as Americans'.  For instance, he will be looking at the pretty bracelets in a shop, and the shop keeper will start to say something, and then pause and ask me "is it boy or girl?"  When I say he is a boy, they turn to Emerson and tell him "that is not for you! is for girls to wear." I think many people do guess boy, because of the clothes he is wearing -- the girls here wear skirts and dresses, almost exclusively.  But some of them must have noticed that foreign children dress differently, so they think he is a girl because of his hair.  For those of you who know that he left home with his curls in quite fluffy condition, I did give him a haircut which is very typically boy- by our standards, but here the boys all have their heads shaved down to a mere fuzz.  Some of the girls have a longer amount of fuzz, and some of them have tiny braids or twists, so I guess Emerson's three inches or so is a girl-amount of hair by local standards!

Food:  A picky eater + a limited diet makes for a slim boy!  Although he is happily embracing the Ugandans preference for everything sweet, and would happily keep himself full on sweetened juice and fried dough balls and cookies and ice cream and hard candies and sweet yogurt and jam, I am peculiarly un-Ugandan in this instance and keep refusing to let him eat sweets whenever he sees them.  To an endless line of potential sweets, he is willing to add fried bits of blandness, such as chips (french fries), chapatis (like a cross between a pancake and a tortilla), and rolexes (chapatis rolled around fried egg). Other than these, his diet has expanded by exactly zero percent since arriving here, and while our access to food has decreased by a much larger percentage.  He won't eat any of the amazing and fresh and delicious vegetables (except for carrots, like he does at home, but these carrots aren't very sweet or tender until they're cooked, so he keeps "getting too full" before he gets to the raw carrot part of the meal); he won't eat any fruits except watermelon and mango; whatever meat we are served he won't eat, as it's tough and fatty.  As for the main foodstuffs here, he won't eat matoke (starch banana) or any of the local starches, except for rice but only barely -- we don't have nutritional yeast, which he normally puts on his rice, so he wants it as "rice porridge" (which I've served for breakfast) with sugar and milk.  I don't let him put sugar in his dinner, so them he just stirs it around and whines.  He has been refusing to eat beans here, and of course won't touch anything mixed together.  He eats pasta when I make it plain, but there's no butter or cheese to put on the noodles.  He does eat the cardboard-like white bread, eggs, and Irish potatoes --  I'm trying to remember if there's anything else!  Don't worry, he's not going to waste away to nothing; he's going to waste away to a small ball of sugar.

...and Children:  All the happy, fat, barefooted, raggle-tag little children in the shops and the lanes call out to us as we pass by, and now that they have gotten used to us some of them occasionally come running up to hold my hand for a moment or to tag Emerson.  Usually Emerson still kind of resents being the center of this random attention, or he feels too shy to answer back, but occasionally the stars are aligned in just the right way and he starts playing.  Once on our walk home he was being a motorcycle, and a group of children came up and he grabbed one boy's hands behind him.  Emerson's idea was that they were a train and he was the engine, and the other boy clearly thought it was some kind of tug-o-war, but one way or another they careened around the lane for a while looking happy while the boy's mother and I laughed and encouraged them.  After that, the idea of playing with other children was in his head, and it has popped out occasionally.  I had some copying to do, and while we waited for the paperwork to be done, he ended up playing some kind of complicated chasing and hiding game with a couple of nearby children and a stapler for an hour or so.  

Emerson had never been shy, but it has cropped up in the last months, and come out with a vengeance here.  During Sunday School last week, I was thinking about the difference between shyness and introversion: that a shy person is actually extroverted and wants desperately to join in but feels like they can't, whereas an introverted person doesn't really want to join in, although they might feel like they have to.  I think that is the crux of the difference between my childhood experiences in Asia and Emerson's here.  I did make some friends, when I had a chance to get to know other girls my age in a quiet setting, but I also remember being encouraged to join into a big group when the adults thought I would really like it if I tried, when I really wanted to vanish into the floor -- or rather, be a bird on the wall who was allowed to watch quietly.  So I am cautious about encouraging Emerson to join in, but at the same time I can feel in him this huge craving to be part of things.  A few times, with the children on the street or at Sunday school or when visiting the classroom, something has captured his imagination and suddenly he runs and gallops and yells with the other children, and that seems to be what actually makes him happy.  He comes back to me laughing and pink-cheecked, and then suddenly remembers that he's different and he's overwhelmed, and he wants me to hold him and pick him up and take him away, and he buries his face and won't look at the other children any more.  So I don't think he wants to be a bird on the wall like I did, I think he wants to be a busy little boy.

Humor:  The style of joking and playing with little children seems a little off-putting to our American sensibilities, with the firm walls we put around ourselves.  Many friendly women have joked with Emerson in this manner, but I've seen them playing with their own children or students the same way, so I think it is natural to them.  The theme seems to be to say something completely incorrect, and then defend the position while laughing; trading children around is a major theme; lots of physical contact enhances the game.  The people doing the joking -- shopkeepers, waitresses, other people I am working with, vendors in our home village area -- are in roles which, at home, would deal directly with the adult and generally ignore small children, or simply ignore both of us.  The joke is often that the woman is going to take Emerson home with her, although sometimes they offer to let me have their child.  Sometimes this might be enhanced with taking Emerson's arm like they are going to steal him away, and one woman offered "come home with me and I will breast-feed you."  Another time, a school administrator told Emerson that it was Friday, when it was Tuesday, and she kept this going for quite a long conversation.   Another kind of play is to pop the fingers at the child, in what I can kind of describe as how we might pretend to be a duck pecking our baby, especially on the cheeks and neck.  Sharing is another theme, such as if one has something to eat or play "are you giving one for me? I have always wanted one of those!"  These games are a little confusing to Emerson, although when we talk about how they are being playful and how to play back, he seems to catch on and be willing to play along.

(As a side note: It's funny how startling it is to hear the word "breastfeeding" in casual conversation.  I am around many mothers at home who are passionate about child-led weaning and the right to nurse in public and the potent abilities of human milk and otherwise make the subject a large part of conversation and thought, and yet we Americans usually avoid the word "breastfeeding."  Even those of us who talk about it frequently and comfortably come up with cutesy substitutions like "giving her numnums," or would even prefer slightly vulgar phrases such as "boob time" rather than just the direct description.  Here people say "breastfeeding" whenever they mean "breastfeeding," and they also don't see any reason to avoid the subject if it is relevant.)

Conversation:  It's not just humor; people here are much more willing to engage children in conversation than Americans are.  Greetings are very important here, and before asking for direction or to buy a banana or walking into an office it is mandatory to go through a whole "hello, how are you, I'm fine, how are you, thank you" conversation.  But what is the most different is that the banana-peddlers and office workers expect to have the conversation with Emerson, as well.  They are willing to laugh it off when he doesn't respond (I don't think I would get as much sympathy!) but they invariably greet him, and if he does respond they go through the whole greeting conversation and handshake just like they do with me.

When they find a way to go into a more detailed conversation, they do that as well.  For instance, if he has a toy out in a restaurant, the waiter is likely to pause and ask him quite a number of questions about how it works and what he is doing, and listen seriously to his responses. And you know how detailed his responses can be!  People want to hear about where he goes to school and whether he knows how to read, and they praise him.  Emerson has been given bananas and a leather flamingo bookmark by shopkeepers who are praising him for learning to read, and encouraging him to continue working!

...and Men:  Emerson may be uncertain in his relationships with children, but not so with men.  He gloms onto them right, left and center, and from casual interactions to more long-term ones, all kinds of men are warm and encouraging toward him.  He will go out and trail around after the caretaker of our apartment building, and haul his hose for him and come back to tell me all about the ladders going up to the water tanks and everything that Moses did up there.  (Luckily he did not seem to have permission to climb the ladder!  In fact, adults are constantly saying "stop that, you will fall.") One fatherly figure saw him examining a motorcycle and gently put him on his own (glancing at me for permission) and took him for a short and slow ride, stopping at the beginning and end to let Emerson try out every button and knob.  We spent a leisurely lunch at an Ethiopian restaurant where Emerson made tons of friends; the pool players paused their game to show him how to knock the balls around, and the butcher showed him how he cut the meat, and came out to play rounds and rounds of the apparently-universal high-five game where the little boy slams the hands as hard as he can and the man pretends to be wounded and knocked over.  (I have insisted to Emerson that this is a game you play with men, not with your mama.  Mamas' hands get too tired to play that game.)  We were there for about four hours, mostly while Emerson chattered and played!  When I check to see if he's bothering anyone, they wave me off.

Some of the reading I have been doing has shed another angle of light on these relationships.  Several authors have described how their parents taught them during their childhood: around age four or five, their same-sex parent brought them along to do the work with them.  The women describe in detail how their mothers told them how to do things and how important it was, and then praised them extravagantly for doing their little bit.  For instance, the author described that while she mangled a couple of matoke with her knife, her mother neatly peeled and cut the whole batch, and then the mother told her husband that night how his daughter had prepared his matoke for him and the father thanked the daughter and insisted it was the most delicious matoke he had ever had.  In this way the children gradually acquire all the parents' skills, and meanwhile a great deal of pride and joy in doing their work.  

So I think for these men, letting a little boy tag along while making him feel like he is essential to the process, is just the natural way that they have learned and that they are teaching their own sons and nephews and young cousins.  

Emerson in Africa

Emerson in Africa

Right now, Emerson is out on the green lawn in front of our apartment, doing soccer exercises with the Kenyans.  There is a family here while the father is working for the UN, with two boys who are 10 and 12.  Through mutual gregariousness, and the magnetic attraction that boys have towards other boys, they befriended each other the very first day.  The older boys have a genial tolerance and friendliness towards the much littler one, and happily play at kicking the ball around or hide and seek.  This morning while eating breakfast, we saw the big boys out with their dad on the lawn, all wearing their soccer outfits, the dad coaching them through various exercises and preparations, obviously very serious about their football.   Emerson couldn't wait to get his clothes on and run out and join them.  I hoped he wouldn't get in their way, but figured when you live in an apartment you can't stop other children from playing on the lawn too; but the father smoothly switched to English and coaches all three boys.  Now they are all earnestly stretching and sideways-running and high-leg jumping across the lawn: the two big Kenyan boys in their sports uniforms, the tall and athletic father, and one little bitty dandelion-headed boy in a button-up shirt.

So, Emerson has decided that he is going to get dark brown skin and look just like the Ugandans.  Perhaps this is my fault; after just reading a book about children's racial development, and that in the preschool stages they notice skin color but not race, and don't yet realize that people can't switch colors at will and at random, I shouldn't have made a joke like that.  I saw Emerson's hand "helping" hold something next to a black man's hand, and couldn't beleive how dark my boy had gotten in just a couple of days here, so later I commented he was going to get so tan he was going to be as dark as the Ugandans.  This is now his goal, and my observation about his hair being silky instead of wooly and his eyes being blue and so forth has made no impact; he is sure he is going to look just like a Ugandan any day now.  He observes that his elbows are almost there.

I am not positive why the desire to look Ugandan: if it is simply that he wants to be part of the majority, or he doesn't want to be singled out as looking different any more.  I think that actually he thinks if he looks like the Ugandans he will be able to understand their language. It really bothers him that he can't understand what the other children are saying.

Emerson is very popular amongst all the random Ugandans, on the street or in the minibus or at the market or among the children.  Women love to call out "Hello Bay-bee, how you doing?" and they long for him to answer, but they laugh when he does.  Children on the street call out "hello mzungo" (which means "white person") as we pass -- actually, many of them are more enthusiastic about the "bye mzungo" part as we are just past them.  A few of them have asked for names and remember his and call "hello Eh-son" instead.  It's very hard for Emerson to recognize the pronounciation, and he struggles with understanding even the English words.   Some of the older girls want to walk with us and hold his hand.  To me, this attention seems different from what I remember as a girl in Asia, when many women just wanted to see what my hair and skin felt like and maybe thought I was like a little walking doll: this seems like natural gregariousness and friendliness, and pretty much how the children would treat each other.  Emerson is obviously noticeable and special because he and I look so different, but I think it's more like the children want to be friends with the special boy than to just have the chance to touch or gawk at him.  However, the whole thing makes Emerson feel awkward, and he usually doesn't want to answer or hold hands.  I remember being a singled-out white child and how terribly awkward it feels, so I can empathize deeply, but at the same time, my understanding of the situation is that if would just smile or say something back or otherwise act naturally, the situation would actually become fairly natural.  The children want to make friends and he wants friends too.

None of the adults have touched him (or me) randomly or inappropriately at all (meaning feeling our hair or skin or otherwise touching us for no real reason), but the culture here is a lot more affectionate and physical with children than it is back home.  For instance, whenever we get into or out of a minibus the "conducter" will lift Emerson up and hand him to me, or lift him down; when we went on the boat the driver cradled him in his arms to get him to and from his seat; if he falls down near someone else they will lift him up and brush him off.  When we had a driver or a guide from the orphanage, they told him not to touch things or to wait.  They were very appropriate comments, but in our culture we have very stiff walls around other people's children and that it is not allowed to help them or tell them what to do.  I actually like this way much better: it seems natural to pick up a little child who falls at my feet, or keep them from grabbing something dangerous, when I am right there.  And frankly, I think a child listens better when he hears the same message from different adults; and safer if he knows it's not only mom who is going to watch out for him.

Emerson tells me that he has made "a friend" at the orphanage.  I think all of the children would consider him their friend, but perhaps they seem, collectively, a little too overwhelming, not to mention similar.    I know our eyes tend to be attuned to the type of people we are used to seeing, so it is a little harder for us to distinguish amongst all these children, who are of the same tribal ethnicity, which we are not used to seeing at home.  But it gets more confusing than that: they all have the same haircut (a little bit of fuzz), and they all wear the same clothes.  Clearly there is a big box and anyone puts on anything, so one day a little boy is wearing a dress that drags on the ground, and the next day a big girl has on the same dress as a tunic over leggings.  It is amazing how confusing this is!  Anyway, Emerson has "his friend," who is a girl of about 5 or 6 who apparently is good at running around doing something complicated with a plastic card or a stick.  Whether or not Emerson and Daffodil agree that that they are playing the same game is unknown, but Emerson at least has a complicated narration to go along with it, which Daffodil doesn't seem to argue with.

All the orphanage children have been learning from Emerson, though.  The main method of teaching here is call and response, and obviously imitation is the main way in which little kids all over learn, so Emerson has had a great opportunity to teach the children to say "stop copying me."  However, what they have taken most to heart is "not funny."  We can now overhear the children, in random other parts of the grounds, scuffling with each other and yelling "not funny!", which apparently they have observed means something generally to do with frustration -- and nothing whatsoever to do with funniness.