Women’s Day 2012… Um…. What?

This is a blog written by my ever so talented teammate, Carly Crookston. We are together twenty four seven, we live the same life here in Africa, except she is much better at articulating these stories! I admire her work, please keep up with her blog, it’s a perfect way to get a glimpse of my everyday life. Thank you Carly for sharing! Carlycrookston.theworldrace.org

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We arrived in Mbarara late Sunday night.  The seven of us were waiting on the side of the road, fending off the motorcycle drivers who inevitably swarm us, when Solomon pulled up in a pickup, threw the seven of us [and all of our massive packs] in the bed of the truck, and sped down the bumpy African roads.  Once we got home, he and his wife Lilly had some food for us and told us a bit about our week: Monday, we would rest, Tuesday, we would preach, Wednesday, we would debate high-schoolers on whether or not educating women was a waste of money or not [I’m serious], and Thursday was Women’s Day, so Solomon would be taking us to a Gospel concert.  Ummm… what? 
 
Apparently, Women’s Day is taken very seriously here in Uganda… schools are cancelled, men cook meals, and Lilly spent the entire day at the hair salon.  I soaked up the celebration of my gender by reading for most of the morning, then piling back into the truck bed with — count them — twenty-two other people to go to a soccer game.  My teammates and I are quite the spectacle at these things; Elizabeth is dressed in a fluorescent soccer uniform, the one white girl among over twenty African men on the team, and then the rest of us lie on Katangas on the sidelines, reading books and talking about wedding nonsense and occasionally cheering/screaming for our favorite mzungu on the field.  At any given time, there were as many people staring at the six of us as they were at the game.  Just the average day in Africa.
 
After that fiasco, we headed to the concert.  Now, when Solomon told us that he wanted to take us to a Gospel concert, I figured it would be excessively loud, slightly over the top, and an hour or two long.  How silly of me.  What it actually ended up being was a strange, painful mix of American Idol, a middle school talent show [lip synching included], a dance troupe that was confused as to whether it was gangsta or Gospel, costumes straight off the set of Toddlers and Tiaras, and a particularly atrocious pair of MCs whose slapstick humor was met with tepid laughter – even from the people who spoke the language.  Oh, and did I mention that it was five hours long?  Because it was five hours long.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the Superbowl is shorter than that… I mean, the Academy Awards are even shorter than that! Also, it lasted until one in the morning and seeing as my teammates and I haven’t been out much past dark in seven months… let’s just say that it was a long, long night. 
 
To put it nicely, I wasn’t really into the concert.  I was incredibly touched that Solomon took us out and that he wanted to celebrate with us, but it was cold outside, never-ending, and more confusing than entertaining.  Around the third or the fourth hour of sitting in the cold and smelling goat kebabs roasting nearby, I started to actually think about the concept of Women’s Day.  As my squad leader pointed out last week, I’ve had a very women-centered Race… I was a team leader for five incredible, beautiful, faithful women for the first three months, and I’ve been on a team with another group of bold and funny women for the subsequent four months.  A-Squad only has eight men these days — eight.  And they’re really wonderful, God-fearing, women-honoring men, but they’re slightly outnumbered.  Women’s Day almost seems like a cruel joke to me at this point — Women’s Day??  Really?  Just the one?  Want to talk about eleven months’ worth of them?  Because that’s currently my reality… thanks for playing though, Uganda.  Try again next year.   
 
Still, it’s worth it to take this moment and say Merry Women’s Day to all of the incredible women in my life right now.  I am so, so grateful for the women that God has brought into my path for this season — for the mismatched girls who I would might never have been friends with at home, for those special, instant connection friends, for the obnoxiously satisfying [and altogether far too-frequent] conversations about weddings and husbands, for owning the all-women’s team cliches rather than pretending like they don’t exist, for the shared clothes and being on a first-named basis with everyone’s ex-boyfriends, for the Disney and Britney sing-alongs, for the truth and different challenges that everyone brings to the table, for the pure ridiculousness and silliness of our times together — I’m grateful.  Joining A-Squad might be the closest I ever come to being in a sorority… And as much as I miss my dad and brothers and guy friends and, let’s be honest, pretty much any ����non-female interaction sometimes, I can’t imagine it any other way.
 
But next year, we’re skipping the African concerts… because that was just rough.

(Posted from my iPad, hence the run on paragraph. Sorry apple doesnt like flash)