Ugandan Oreo

In this post, I have to make my first major correction. (Even literary geniuses mess up sometimes.) In an earlier missive, I complained that the people of Gulu would never view me as one of their own, and would always think of me as a “muzungu” or foreigner. Well, first off, I spelled it wrong. It’s “mzungu.” And second, mzungu doesn't mean foreigner, per se. Its specific meaning is “white person.”

That means I’m not actually a mzungu, I just play one on the streets of Gulu. That's because whenever I speak to people on the phone, before they actually meet me, they've assumed I was white. But I should be used to it by now….I’ve been accused of “acting white” from the first time I set foot in a public school classroom. Through the years, I’ve written frequently about this curious phenomenon. In many urban US communities, when an African American speaks clear, articulate, grammatically-correct Standard English, people accuse them of “acting white.” MY bottom line? Sounding like you have some sense is NOT the sole purview of white people.

I talk like I talk because my mother, Eloise, talked that way. She was born near Augusta, Georgia in 1926, but she was raised in Pennsylvania. Her lazy Southern drawl got wiped out pretty quickly. And plus, Mama was a genius. Certified. She was the eldest of nine children, and had to help her mother raise all the young ‘uns. But she was always near the top of the class in school.

In fact, when she was in high school, Mama logged an IQ score in the 160’s. One of her teachers, a white man who noticed her smarts and was supportive, went to my grandma Stella Jane’s house to convince her that Mama needed to go college. I’m sure he would have helped her get scholarships, or WHATEVER it took to get the smartest girl in his class (and one of few black kids in the entire school) into college somewhere.

My crazy-assed grandmother shooed him off the porch with a shotgun. Eloise wasn’t goin’ NOWHERE, because Stella needed her to help with the other kids.

Sometimes, I think about that moment and wonder. Obviously, if grandma had been a different person, somebody who was able to put her own needs aside to help her daughter do better in life, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here in a cottage on Samuel Doe Road in Gulu Town, Northern Uganda. I’ve always known that my mother should have been a lawyer, or a journalist, or a college professor. Eloise could dice you like a carrot with words…we ALL inherited a deeply-ingrained sense of sarcasm from Mama.

I mean, sarcastic remarks fall out of my mouth like broken teeth. It’s my automatic default response, to say something smart-assed. Like last night, we were sitting at Bambu restaurant listening to a local musician playing his African lyre. One of his songs was about a young married couple, deeply in love, who start having problems after the birth of their first child.Apparently, Pops couldn’t handle the baby crying at all hours of the night.

Now, it was a beautiful, cool African night, with a huge Harvest moon in clear view as we sat on the verandah at Bambu. I had just had a massage, and was feeling totally relaxed and at one with the world. We’re all just chillin', right? But the very second the guy finished explaining what the song was about, before he could even start playing the instrument, I snapped,

“Humph. Daddy shoulda thought about THAT 11 months ago, when he was gettin’ his groove on.” Everybody laughed, but I was actually embarrassed by how totally inappropriate that comment was....and how there was no way in the world I could have stopped myself from saying it.

Anyway, that’s an example of just one of the personality traits the 10 Jones siblings inherited from our mother. The others include: love of reading, storytelling prowess, a loud, long laugh, a penchant for turnip and mustard greens cooked together, the inherent power of attraction that makes absolute strangers walk up to us and unspool their entire life stories, and OCD, among other quirks.

What I’m trying to explain here is that my mother was a flippin’ GENIUS, and had she been born 40 years later, let’s say, 1961--when I was born--her mind would have taken her all over the world….hell, all over the UNIVERSE. But Mama got married at 19, had 10 kids, worked hard all her life, and died at 79.

So I’m thinkin’ about Mama tonight here in the cottage. I’m here with my assistant, Victoria, and another colleague, Jackie. Victoria is a bubbly Ugandan woman, as sweet as she can be. She's a bit TOO enthusiastic at times.....so much so that I’m tempted to roll up a newspaper and smack her over the nose to make baby girl to chill out. Jackie is a British consultant, and directs another humanitarian project that trains journalists. Internews will be sharing offices in Gulu with her group.

Okay, here's the big confession--I thought Jackie was white before I met her! Most of the British aid workers in Gulu are white, and so when I heard her posh English accent on the phone, I just automatically assumed. So when I pulled up to the airstrip in my Land Cruiser to pick her up, I was surprised to meet a black woman. Just like me.

We’re all sitting in the dining/living room area now, Jackie and me plugging away on our laptops, sending e-mails to the four corners of the Earth, and Victoria logging our expenses on her PC, while the generator rumbles outside in the yard. And something just thumped me right in the gut…..here we are, three women of African descent, from 3 different continents, sitting in a cottage in Northern Uganda, sallying forth on the Information Superhighway, handlin’ our bizness, doin’ it TO it.

What a moment in time, what a juncture in history.

Mama would probably say, “So, what do you want, a standing ovation?” Well, maybe I do, and I would accept it in HER name. I’m living the life Eloise might have lived, if Stella Jane could have somehow managed to believe that one day, one of her grandchildren would be doing what I’m doing right at this very second.

Here's to you, Mama.