Night Time Stories

Nights can be DARK here, particularly when there is no moon and/or on a cloudy night. Of course there are no lamp lights or anything like that, and when there is no moon, no light at all. During full moons, it’s nice. You can see forever. I haven’t been scared of the dark like I did with my first few nights in Kamwenge (a rural district in southwestern Uganda) last year. These two stories are interesting stories that occurred at night. I was walking back home with a few teachers. It was a moonless and cloudless night, so it was dark, roughly cave dark. One of them wanted to visit this lady’s house that we were passing by. As we walked through the gate, I was a little confused as to where the gate for her house was because I had never been to her house before. (When you can’t see, memory is all you really have.) Knowing that I had a flashlight in my pocket, not on but just in case I needed it, they were making fun of me telling me that I should take it out and use it. We got to the porch, and we asking if anyone is home. (People don’t knock here, but simply shout into the house asking if anyone’s home.) It turned out that the woman was bathing on the front porch about 5 feet in front of where we were standing. It was so dark that we couldn’t see her at all! Anyways that meant that she was naked, so we didn’t visit her that night. We left, and I told my friends that they should consider themselves lucky that I didn’t turn on my flashlight. This second story is one I have to constantly retell to my friends as they find it hilarious. It was on my second night here in rural Uganda. There was no moon, but at least it wasn’t a cloudy night. I was about a mile away from my home, walking back, the first time I walked that far in one of these dark nights. When walking back I reached the road I need to turn onto. I was walking without light, though I had a flashlight in my pocket. I saw this strange white thing in front of me, and I turned on the light to see what it was. I thought it was a water spucket, a sign that I had gone too far, but it turned out to be a person. I could tell the person had a weapon on his back (I thought it was a rifle, but it turned out to be a bow). What weirded me out was that he did not move. Who when you shine a light directly in your face, doesn’t flinch at all. He stood there motionless and silent. At first I thought he was a statue. To go through it there’s gate for the road that you have to go through as it is closed at night. He was standing directly in front of the little “doorway” for the gate, meaning that as I through it, I had to go right next to him. It was obvious that this was intentional, and I stood for a few seconds deciding whether I would get close to him. It was also certain that he had a weapon in a sash swung over one of his shoulders. After I walked through, twice I turned around and shone the light on him to see whether he was following me. He wasn’t. The second time, after I was maybe a hundred feet away from him, he finally talked and asked what I wanted. He then explained that he was a guard, common things here. My first thought was that’s what he was, but guards are usually more lax. They don’t stand perfectly still like soldier’s at the queens palace. I was later told that he was frequently paid pranks and his completely lack of movement and positioning such that I had to be within a few feet from him was probably that. Anyways, the teachers here love this story.