Good books come to those who wait

Sometime during my first month here, I ventured to interview a judge. Rather than make an appointment, I was advised to just show up at his office and seek an audience. I was prepared to wait and while waiting, I read all of Uganda's Succession Act, Evidence Act, Criminal Procedure Rules and Civil Procedure Rules.

I wait a lot. I wait for the taxi (bus) to arrive. I wait for the taxi to fill with passengers. I wait as the taxi stops to refuel. I wait in traffic. I wait for people to show up for meetings, scheduled or unscheduled. I wait for the power to come back on so I can finish cooking dinner (on my electric stove) and finish watching whatever DVD is trapped inside the player.

Waiting has reacquainted me with an once-favored activity: leisure reading. Since my arrival, I've read:
No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu (@, &)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (@, %, &)
Emma's War by Deborah Scroggins (%, !)
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ronald J. Sider (?)
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller (!)
Jesus in Beijing by David Aikman (@, %)
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (@, %, &)

I'm now reading:
Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared M. Diamond (?)
Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski (%)
Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck (%)

I haven't written a book review since high school and I intend to leave that record undisturbed. But some symbol-coded observations:
@ - I chewed through these books. I could not put them down.
% - I like books written by reporters. I like the way they tell the story.
! - I enjoyed these books, but at certain points, I wanted to reach into the story and strangle the protagonists.
& - These books made me cry. Not single-tear-trickling-down-my-cheek cry, but bawling-in-rage-against-the-machine cry.
? - These books are big, full of statistics, not driven by a narrative. Interesting but tough to read.

Out of my reading list thus far, my absolute favorite - no contest - is the Grapes of Wrath. I've read about 8 other Steinbeck novels, so I don't know how I've missed this one until now. I've pushed the book on two of my co-workers (one American, one Ugandan). I'm also starting/joining a book club next month. More books ahead.

Language barrier

English is the official language of Uganda; most Ugandans learn some English in school. This small detail has greatly eased my transition here. Yet knowing the same language sometimes doesn't quite add up to speaking the same language.

During my first or second week in the office, a group of us were planning to go into a village for a program. Being mindful that cultural expectation in dress varies between the city and the rural areas, I asked, "Do women wear pants in the village?" My Ugandan colleagues stared at me and at each other. "Do they wear pants?" A fellow American chimed in, "She means, can she wear trousers." The Ugandans looked relieved. "Yes, it is ok for you to wear trousers. But it's best to wear a long skirt."

My initial take-away from this interaction was that Ugandans say "trousers" instead of "pants." A few weeks ago, I learned that when Ugandans say "pants," they mean "underwear."

Another example. I've met some Chinese people in church. They speak very little English, so we converse in Chinese. I generally feel pretty darn proud of my conversational Chinese, but the first time that my new Chinese friends asked me to translate "big" words like "worship" and "sanctify," I had to swallow hard and tell them that I could not oblige them. One of them had a look of shock that I will never forget; I felt as if my fake horn had accidentally detached in the presence of real unicorns. I stuttered and try to explain the meaning of the big Chinese words using many, many small ones. "Worship... it's like... um... God is up there and better than us... um... so we're like... um... wow." It wasn't quite as bad as that, but it was pretty close.

This Sunday, my Chinese friends ended up sitting behind me instead of next to me; it would've been too disruptive to translate for them. I turned to the passage for the day and there, in verse 1 of chapter 15 of the book of Acts, was the big word that I hope to never explain using the small ones in my vocabulary.

Thanks to the seating arrangement, both my friends and I were spared from a fumbling, conversational-Chinese explanation of "circumcision."