Mrs.O's writing room.

I visited a funeral home for the first time to celebrate the life of a pretty girl called Freda.  She was a doctor, a wife and a daughter but to me she was just Freda - a friend I got acquainted with in September of 2014. I arrived early to a friend’s birthday lunch and she walked in shortly thereafter. We introduced ourselves and spent close to 45 minutes talking about life since relocating to America, about intermarriage among people of different ethnicities. We discovered we were both from Teso land. Sitting in that restaurant and waiting for the birthday girl we had a lot to talk about. I was struck by her grace; her sweet smile and I loved the way she raised her eyebrows when she talked. There was an excitement in her spirit. She expressed her ideas with clarity and precision. Talking fondly about her husband and her parents back in Uganda. She didn't mention she was undergoing chemotherapy. That some days were dark, that she had stage 4 colon cancer. I didn...

Teso on my Mind: The local market -  You've got to visit the Wednesday local market in Serere . We call it "okisoni" probably from the word auction ☺️. There is nothing like it. This was my favorite market growing up. You can get almost anything here:- cups, plates, basins, food, clothes, saucepans, shoes, cows, sugarcane, bicycles, bricks, solar systems, sugar, bread, cooking oil - see? The list is endless.

Teso on my mind: Peanuts, g-nuts, ground nuts - however you choose to call them. As a little girl whenever my name was called followed by " obia aipac emaido " (come and shell the nuts) I would want to hide. Depending on the amount, it meant sitting on the veranda and shelling nuts for close to an hour. My fingers ached but as I grew I learned the right pressure points to open the shell. My aunt grabbed handfuls at a time and I watched the nuts popped out in a hurry. It was an art. Nut shelling was a communal activity, a time for team work and story telling. Today, we have machines that crash the shells, sort the nuts and grind them to a paste. We have developed. We have saved time. We are more productive for the most part. Here the nuts are spread on the " alaro " (veranda) to dry. Once dry they are easier to shell plus they don't rot as easily as they would if left damp. We make groundnut sauce, peanut paste, roasted nuts, boiled nuts, oil, we even eat...

Teso on my Mind:  Every son must have his own hut.  These are my brothers huts, built in my fathers compound. When they come to visit, their families spend nights in their own space. It's a modern hut with a small bathroom and space enough to section off the kids. Mud huts require more maintenance with the walls being patched up with mud every 3 months.