Escapism

by Luca. P. (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection Uganda

Time and space. Those are the two ingredients it is widely accepted are key to getting over a separation. I had spent months of toil and trouble to win the affections of my first love. Having eventually succeeded in making the transition from friendship to relationship, my naïve hopes and dreams faded to dust when she cheated on me. Keenly aware that I needed to leave the bleak wintry setting of my all too recent breakup behind me to alleviate my depression with some weeks of sub-Saharan sun and equatorial warmth, I found myself in the Pearl of Africa nursing my broken heart. Altruism is good for the soul, and that’s what drove me to choose one of the most impoverished countries in the world in which to volunteer as an English teacher. I didn’t know which school I would be working at or where in the country I would be posted to until after I had arrived. Following a ten-hour drive from Kampala, I ended up in a small remote village, with no running water and no electricity. It was a far cry from what I had beforehand considered Western standards, which I now appreciate as Western luxuries. One afternoon I joined my fellow volunteers in playing cards with one of the local villagers, a comely young girl called Joy. The others dropped off one by one until it was just me and Joy left playing. I joked that the loser should award the winner with a pineapple, a wager she gleefully accepted. I emerged victorious, and we went our separate ways. On my way home from school the following day, having completely forgotten about what I’d facetiously proposed during the card game, Joy intercepted me and presented me with a pineapple and a beaming smile. I humbly accepted it, and with that exchange began our budding affiliation. It was refreshing to have someone other than my ex-girlfriend occupying my thoughts. Joy and I spent more and more time together; we played pool, we hung out in her shop, and I helped her look after her infant siblings. I even accompanied her to church once, despite my irreligiousness, since there wasn’t much else to do at the weekends. She led me through the wilderness to the simple shack, and I marvelled at her sense of direction given the distinct lack of any semblance of a pathway. The whole sermon was delivered in the local dialect, interspersed with regular unanimous exclamations from the audience. All of a sudden the entire congregation erupted into rambunctious song and dance, with such infectious euphoria that I had no choice but to join in. I danced with Joy for hours, and afterwards we walked home hand-in-hand while several scantily clad tots cavorted around us. Once when I was socialising with the teachers after class, we were comparing the cultural differences between relationships in East Africa and relationships in the West. It transpired that in rural Uganda, the concept of dating was unheard of; if you liked a girl, you would offer her family a certain number of cows, and if that number was sufficiently representative of that particular maiden’s merits, then the dowry was accepted and the suitor would be permitted to go ahead and wed his sweetheart. I blithely asked Joy and her mother how many cows I would need to marry her; she proudly proclaimed ten, but discussions with the teachers evinced that it would only realistically take three or four to secure her hand. I pictured what it would be like if I had chosen that path, to turn my back on everything I knew and leave my comfort zone for good in favour of a new simple bucolic life with a fast-tracked family. I would no longer have to endure commuting to and from central London, no longer have to tolerate the astronomical cost of living in such a cold and grey country, no longer have to suffer the arduous and oft fruitless struggle to find love. In the end, however, prudence prevailed, and I returned home unmarried. But I will always wonder how things would have turned out if I had been bold enough to have taken the plunge.