Disclaimer: Now that I’m 12 hours on the
other side of the following text, I can laugh at it.
“Hi
Ashley ope u reached well!
I
must say u struck me first time esp.
ur round hips and bums!
love
u."
This
was from the District Health Officer, whom I met yesterday. I didn’t even give
him my phone number. He poached it out
of the visitor’s log. Silly me! I thought health workers and officials might
want to use my number to call me to discuss, oh, I don’t know….malaria. I’ve visited at least a dozen district and
sub-county health offices and not had a problem up until this point. Well, I’ve learned my lesson now.
He
rubbed me the wrong way yesterday when Charles (the technical assistant from
the SMP Kampala office) and I met with him.
It’s protocol to try to meet with the district health officer, even if
you have an appointment with someone else.
He was almost mocking our organization.
“What does Stop Malaria mean?
What does it stand for?” He went into a
spiel about how nets aren’t really effective, how people are using them for
fishing nets, people in Karamoja (a neighboring province which people in Teso
region have stereotypes against) use them on their cows, bla bla bla. I’ve heard this same thing from a few other
“high-ups” in various health departments.
I held my tongue the best I could because I could feel myself getting
angry about how he was a physician, a leader in his community, and was going to
be no support to us at all. I talked to him for a few more minutes about the
Peace Corps after the other guys left the room.
We shook hands (which is really an important gesture here), and the he
said “you’re not wearing a wedding band?!”
I laughed and said my usual response to this. “No, I’m too busy for
that.” And I walked out the door.
This afternoon when I showed Linda the
text, she said “That’s really tacky, but I told you…hips don’t lie.” She was referring to last night when I was
also getting unwanted attention from the bike boda drivers on our walk
home. One guy said “I need you to be my
wife”. I replied, “I need you to keep
riding on down the street.” Linda said, “I swear, you get it even more
than Joanna and Chelsea” (the other PCVs here about my age). Her theory is that my body is more “African”
than theirs. I can’t argue with
that. Hips don’t lie.
Then
on my way home, another guy decided I
needed a companion for the rest of my walk.
“I see you pass by here every day.”
Great. Every time I stopped to take
a photo, he stopped with me. I just
wanted to yell at him, “Please leave me alone so I can have 5 minutes of peace
and just take photos of clouds!!”
Look,
I’m not trying to toot my own horn here about the attention I get. At first it was flattering, but now it’s just
annoying and sometimes concerning. It’s
slowly causing me to form a negative opinion of Ugandan men. The guys I work with everyday at SMP are stand-up
men. But I think I’m going to have to
invest in some skirts.
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