Bonnie Bzdok: Visit to Mukaka's (Grandmothers)

Mukaka outside her home on our second visit!

Habert tells me we'll go visit Mukaka first thing in the morning. That's great! I never got to say good bye to her. Mukaka means "grandmother" in Rufumbera. She is his mother, and she stayed with us for a couple of weeks while she was sick. "Life in the village is hard, she needs to stay here with us and rest so she can recover" is what I'm told when she arrives. She stays for almost two weeks, when I leave for a visit to Fort Portal she is still there, but she wants to go home. She is missing her life there, her routine and her home. She's bored here. By the time I get back from Fort Portal a week later, she has returned home. I'm very excited to go visit her, see her home and to bring her some bread, sugar and soap. The necessities for village life.

The next morning Habert has to go to the office, I'm used to the waiting game, so instead of sitting at home all day wondering when we'll go, I go to the market, stop at the post office and the internet, do my chores for the day, hoping he'll call me when he's ready. When I return home around 5 p.m. I'm told we'll be going soon. Great! I figured it would be put off now and we'd go the next day. We still have a couple hours of daylight and I'm all set. First we have to go pick up Sarah, she's at a conference and we'll be using her car. "Can you drive?" he asks me. "Sure!" I say. Last time I drove Sarah's car it was just across town, which was crazy enough, I get a little twinge of anxiety as I imagine driving all the way to Mukaka's village. We set off to get Sarah. Immaculate stays home and is supposedly "getting ready”. But when we return an hour later, I sit and wait for Jael to be cleaned up, and changed. We have to pack some blankets and get things together; Sarah changes her clothes and gets baby Noel dressed warmer. I turn the car around and wait semi-patiently in the driver’s seat. When we are finally loaded and ready to set off it is nearly dusk, we have to stop at the shop and buy bread, then we have to stop and get gas. I cautiously turn left out of the gas station. I'm driving on the "wrong" side of the road, which means I'm also on the "wrong" side of the car and shifting with my left hand, the blinker is on the right side of the steering column, so I keep flipping on the wipers instead of the blinker. On top of all that, it's also market day so the usual hustle and bustle of the roadways are increased by about twenty times. There are goats crossing in front of me, children chasing after them, strings of women carrying baskets on their heads and bikes hauling loads I can't imagine the weight of. The overloaded bikes are swerving in and out of my lane to pass the pedestrians. I drive with my wheels straddled over the center line. I keep my eyes alert and drive slowly and cautiously. Sarah is breastfeeding Noel and Immaculate has Jael crawling all over her in the backseat. We wind our way up the mountain as it turns to complete darkness. We park the car and leave a boy there to watch it. As we stepped out of the car we were swarmed by family members. Of course, I didn’t realize they were family members at the time so I was confused by all the commotion and who all the people were. We set off in the darkness up the muddy road towards Mukaka's home. Since the landslides came a few days ago, we'll have to walk a bit farther because we can't drive through one section. We walk past a heap of mud and trees and I'm told it's someone kitchen. It was up the hill, but after the last rains, it landed here, in the middle of the road. This kitchen is the reason we had to park back at the trading center.

Slowly and cautiously we hike up the steep, muddy path. I'm using the light of my cell phone to see the washed out parts of the trail. Immaculate and Sarah are behind me with a flashlight. Habert has Jael and he is somewhere ahead of us. There's a small girl walking next to me, she's singing the most beautiful song. It's one of those songs that can go on and on, one of those songs to help pass the time as you walk and walk and walk. When the girl turns up a steep path to the left, I stop and hesitate, wondering if I'm supposed to follow her. Since we were greeted by so many people I'm not sure who's "with us" and who's not. The man walking ahead of us turns his light toward me and says, "We go". I ask him if he's going to mukaka's and he tells me he is. As if she's the only Mukaka that lives on this hill! I follow him up the road as the girls sweet voice gets quieter and quieter. I can hear Immaculate and Sarah behind us as I follow Jack through the darkness. It’s only now that I understand that Jack is a brother to Habert, eventually we turn up a steep path and stumble our way up. When we finally come to Mukaka's home she is sitting in the cookhouse surrounded by other women and a few children. It's a small hut made of sticks with mud packed in between. The goats are kept on one side of the hut and she's cooking over a warm fire on the other side. She is happy to see me. I show off every phrase of Rufumbera that I know. "Hello Grandmother! How are you? Yes, I'm fine. Thank you." I'm introduced to the other women, trying to remember their names is like trying learn French. I think of something that sounds similar. For instance one's name is "Marunge", so I think of the color maroon, and then add a long "gee" to the end. For all I know I'm calling her the completely wrong name, but it sounds right to me. I sit on the stool next to the fire and listen to Mukaka talk to me. She's talking a mile a minute, I smile and nod. I continue to ask her how she is when I get a chance to talk. It's the only thing I know how to ask her. The kids translate here and there as they giggle and stare. They want me to go in the house. A Muzungu doesn't belong in the kitchen. As I’m led to the house I regret not coming in the daylight, I can see the twinkling lights of Kisoro in the distance and I’m sure the view of the area is spectacular. I tell myself I’ll just have to come back. I go in and sit around the low table with a paraffin candle burning on it. The four chairs are quickly occupied and the rest of the crew sits on mats on the floor. This is the home that Habert grew up in. He and his seven brothers and his mother, in this mud structure no bigger than most people’s garage. His father married a second wife and lives next door, the house just past this one, up the path. “When my father married his second wife he brought her here and she lived in the cookhouse at first, until they built there home above this one.” I sit nodding, as if this is perfectly normal while Habert explains it to me. I ask if his father has two wives or if he divorced Mukaka, and then married the second wife. Divorce is greatly frowned upon and so is polygamy, so I don't get a direct answer, but from what I can gather, I think he just married the second one without a divorce. He still acts like a father to his sons who live next door, but he started a new family with his new wife. I guess he got tired of one and there's no one telling you that you can't marry another...so he did. Now Mukaka lives next door to her husband but he lives with his other wife and their five children, while she sleeps alone.

Inside Mukaka's home~ Dinner Time!

The ladies start carrying in pots and plates. I assumed we'd have tea, but didn't expect dinner. I’m sitting next to Mukaka on a mat when one of the kids comes around with the basin to wash our hands. I'm told I'll share a plate with Habert, so I go sit next to him. I'm relieved to learn I get a fork…and it’s my own fork. We are served sweet potatoes and beans. The beans taste and look like Bush's baked beans, out of a can. Though, of course I know they're not, they are different than the beans I've been having every day and I enjoy them. Habert whispers to me that he's saving room for Ava's cooking when we get home. Yes, that's right; we'll be expected to eat again when we get home. Then he tells me to hurry up and finish so that we can go meet his father. I finish the beans and we head up the trail, just a couple of minutes walking and we are at his house. We survey the damage of the landslide. Luckily I have the light from my phone because the earth directly next to the house is gone. To walk around the house we take a big step over a large gap in the earth, then press our backs against the house and make our way to the backyard. Habert's father, step-mother and two of his five step-brothers come out and explain how the kitchen just fell off the cliff. They tell us they heard it during the storm, but they were unsure of what it was that was falling. Then they point to the new kitchen they are building. It is a skeleton made of skinny poles I ask how they'll stop the house from sliding down next time. They laugh at this like I'm joking.

We head back to Mukaka's, we pray, we sing and give thanks for the meal, the friends and the visit. Then we bid everyone good-night and I promise them I'll come back in the daylight when I can see their home and enjoy the view, which I’m sure is stunning. I also cross my fingers as I agree to come back and spend the night! There's another clan of people that escort us back down the hill to the car. They give me a walking stick when I fall on my butt the first time. Everyone is chatting and happy for the visit. I'm following behind, listening and enjoying the stars. By the time we get to the car it's after 10 p.m. The boy we left there to guard the car is actually a family member I find out. He's sitting in the dark, outside the car, it was locked when we left, and he must be freezing. The crew that followed us down now has to turn around make their way back up to their home, this time with a feed sack full of corn that is taken from our trunk and hefted onto Jack's head. They all wave and happily march off into the darkness.

Sarah drives us home much faster than I drove us there. I’m looking out the window, enjoying the stars with Jael sleeping in my arms. I’m thinking about Mukaka and the fact that she missed her home while she was staying with us. I never saw her use the indoor toilet in the two weeks she was there; she’d always go outside to the “latrine”. When I saw her taking a stick a glow with fire from the fire she was cooking over I asked Ava where she was going, she told me it was her “torch” to go to the toilet. Immaculate told me that is also how the used to live, they used to use that torch to clear the floor at night, to check for rats, spiders, critters before they laid down. Mukaka missed hauling water, she missed digging in her garden and she missed her own little residence. No matter how simple, there’s no place like home!