Beauty

Today we traveled to a small orphanage on the outskirts of Masaka. Nazarreth orphanage cares for children aged 2 to 7 years that have had both parents die from HIV/AIDS. The woman who runs the orphanage is named Josephine, during a talk later in the day she told me she was going to be a nun, but instead took the little money she made from a food vendor business and bought the building. Funding for the orphanage comes from community donations and crafts that she makes. I bought a few of her necklaces and plan to give them out to students in Kamloops that have been working on conserving their energy usage. There were other volunteers there as well, a nun named Sister Eve, Andrew and Caroline, they were peeling potatoes when we arrived. The children were not shy and quickly clung onto the volunteers, noses running and mouths smiling. My hair in particular was quite enticing for them, because it is looser and longer than the local hair, the children touched it constantly. One of the girls, no older than 4, sat on my lap and leaned against me, after a while she took my hand and showed me around the property, she showed my all pigs and chickens and walked around to the front door. We sat there with Josephine for a while and said hello to everyone that wandered by. Later in the afternoon the children were playing a game and with so many hands and legs moving a little girl got hit in the throat and fell down, she started to cry. Within a second I picked her up, sat her down on my lap and brushed her tears away with my sweater. I held her against me and rocked her and she stopped crying quickly. Another boy came over and leaned against me so I put my arm around him and pulled him in as well. It struck me that, although these children were well taken care of, they had enough to eat, and shoes on their feet, I didn’t think Josephine was enough to fill all their needs for affection and love.

While preparing lunch, sister Eve told me that she would be the first to baptise any babies I should have, and proceeded to say I should have a baby with a Ugandan man. I said I did not think my boyfriend David back home would like that very much, but that if I ever had a baby she would be the first to baptise it (not having the heart to tell her I am not religious). She asked why I didn’t want a Ugandan baby and I think may have taken that as an insult that I didn’t want a Ugandan baby. Changing the subject, she said she liked my skin. When I commented that hers was beautiful she said that she didn’t like hers because it was too dark.

It is not just sister eve that has internalized racism, European style hair extensions and skin lightening cream can be found in many rural stores. At a religious school I was told that all the girls had to keep their hair "nice and neat," which translates into shaving it off. There are no afros, no long hair, only shaved heads for both boys and girls. This bothers me because many schools receive funding and were started by western religious groups years ago and I worry that "nice and neat" is really colonization at its peak. No matter where you are, women have hair extensions, braided, clips in hair pieces, wigs and chemically straightened hair. Women that cannot afford these treatments wear hats and scarves to cover their hair which is shaved underneath. I want to convince everyone here that they are beautiful just as they are, but that lesson won’t come from a muzungu, and it won’t come in four months.