12:05 pm

It is 12:05pm. Stephen and i are sitting on a concrete block at the main intersection in Karenga. Flocks and herds of children stare at us. We stare at them. If we stare at a particular child long enough, that child will run away. We coordinate which children we are going to stare at. It’s like a game.

12:05 pm. We have been in Karenga for two weeks. We don’t—rather, i don’t—have anything to show for it. Stephen has been making progress at designing a survey of Napore Karamojong speech sounds from a descriptive acoustic perspective while i have been chasing the ghosts of speakers of undocumented languages all over Karenga and Lobalangit subcounties.

12:05 pm. We are waiting for a vehicle to drive by en route to Lobalangit. There is one place in the world that i don’t want to go. That one place is Lobalangit.

12:05 pm. This will be the fourth time in six days that i’ve made a trip to Lobalangit subcounty. Two of the three previous trips, i’ve gone all the way to Lobalangit Trading Center, 11 miles from Karenga. 11 miles is longer when you face the prospect of walking back late in the evening than it is when you have a car and paved roads at hand. And when you only hope that you won’t get caught in a seasonal downpour. i have very little to show for my trips to Lobalangit—mostly just a little bit of lexical data that i had collected from an elderly man in very poor health who does not seem likely to have sufficient energy for extensive future work. Even that work neatly duplicates work done by Bernd Heine (1974/5) and Terrill Schrock (unpublished field notes, 2008-2010). i keep going back because there is just one more man who is known to speak the language that i haven’t contacted yet: Komol Isaach.

12:05 pm. Komol Isaach is rumored to be overseeing a Word-for-Food road-building project. That makes him pretty inaccessible usually, and as such, i have been thwarted by my previous efforts to meet him. i don’t feel like it’s likely that i’ll be able to track him down this time, either, and that makes me feel like spending a whole additional day traveling to and from Lobalangit is a waste of time. i have access to speakers of Mening and Katibong here in Karenga—if Nyang’i is a lost cause, then it would be a shame to spend all of my efforts hopelessly chasing nonexistent speakers when i could be doing work on Mening (for which i have access to an English-Mening bilingual) and Katibong (which is only a few years behind Nyang’i, i fear). Both Mening and Katibong are almost completely undocumented. More documentation exists for Nyang’i than for either of them, in fact.

12:05 pm. The kids stare at me more. One girl in particular is beginning to annoy me. Her shirt features a picture of Mickey Mouse kissing Minnie (in a place where, reportedly, kissing isn’t even done—it is just for children!), and she has a necklace with a key on it. She mocks everything we do. i’m over it.

12:05 pm. i’m over going to Lobalangit. i’m over being stared at by children. i’m over strangers walking up to me on the street and beginning conversation with ‘You bring me 500 [shillings]’. i’m over being dirty. i’m over posho and beans. i know that my time here is limited, i know that i’m almost certainly the last person who will try to describe any of the Nyang’i language, and i know that this might be one of the most extraordinary opportunities i ever have, but i’m tired. First world problems, sure, and probably not really appropriate for Karenga Subcounty, but as i sit on the concrete block waiting for a truck to go by, the only thing i really think is ‘i hope that nothing comes. If nothing comes by 12:15 (just ten minutes more!), then i’m walking back to the mission to relax, straighten up my room, and maybe eventually track down one of my Katibong speakers. And i’m going to stop by a shop on my way and buy a coke.’

12:05 pm. My modes of transportation to and from Lobalangit have been various. i rode in the back of an ambulance, which had a flat halfway there. i rode in the back of a telephone company pickup. i rode on a tractor. i walked. i rode in a World Food semi, and then in its police escort. i rode with my legs hanging out of the bed of a pickup loaded with merchandise for the local shops. Staying clean and energetic had not been an easy task.



12:05 pm. The children.

My mind goes back to Saturday afternoon. Stephen and i are just outside of a village about a mile from Lobalangit Junction. Lokwang lives in this village. We stop to collect ourselves under a massive tree before walking into the overwhelming swarm of humanity and flies that awaits us. A drop of rain splashes on my arm. Clouds keep rolling over the mountain. We take refuge under the tree, and thereby make the acquaintance of a local man and a few local women.

‘You help us.’ He says.

‘You help us.’

‘You help us.’

‘You help us.’

‘You help us.’

‘You help us.’

‘You help us.’

i don’t know what i’m supposed to do. i have more money than a lot of people in this area do, admittedly. But i certainly don’t have enough to give even a single meal to each of them. i can help the person in front of me, but i would probably be neglecting to help people in far greater need who are not able to make appeals for themselves, thereby creating an even more imbalanced dynamic between the poor and the destitute, the ill and the healthy, than already exists. Is it even my responsibility to help anybody here? And if it is, how thoroughly should i help them?

‘You help us.’

‘You help us.’

‘You help us.’

Every 20-30 seconds for half an hour.

‘You help us.’

‘You help us.’

i’ve grown accustomed to speaking of the offensive nature of The White Man’s Burden. The notion that the poor miserable foreigners are in desperate need of a nice little white savior to come and give them lots of stuff and food and peace and civilization and the internet is a little bit repulsive to me. Granted, it’s good to do nice things for people, and to mind their needs and desires, but the arrogance and condescension and simple-mindedness of dismissing anything that doesn’t originate in America (or the west, at least) is not something that i can get behind. i’m clearly not alone in the university setting.

But i never asked for The White Man’s Burden. i didn’t come here out of some narcissistic desire to re-create Africa (or Uganda, or Karamoja, or Karenga Subcounty) in my image. i never had delusions that i could solve all of the problems of the people here. i wanted to come offer a small positive contribution to the language ideologies of the local people. And every day i see 6 or 8 Land Cruisers drive by, conducted by African employees of the countless NGOs operating in Karenga. Each of them has a significantly larger operating budget than i do, and their budgets are specifically designed to improve specific aspects of the quality of life of the people. i’m not choosing to pick up The White Man’s Burden. Every person i meet on the street who begins conversation with ‘You help us’ or ‘Give me 500’ puts something on my back, and it’s because i’m white. i don’t feel like it’s my responsibility to singlehandedly change the culture of a subcounty or a region or a country or a continent, but i feel like there are many here who would have it be so, who would gladly be a white man’s burden.

It is 12:06 pm. My mind has finished its little rant. Rumbling and a cloud of dust.

12:06 pm. It’s the same Land Cruiser that has driven through the intersection five times already today, alternately going south and east. i turn to Stephen. ‘There’s no way it heads toward Lobalangit now.’ Of course it heads toward Lobalangit. i feel no relief. i feel oppressed by the prospect of another trip west.

12:06 pm. i do feel relieved, though, when the Land Cruiser drives on by.

12:06 pm. But then a local man named Simon yells to us from 50 yards down the road ‘Is it ok if they drop you at the junction!?’ We get in the Land Cruiser. We comment that there’s no way that Komol is going to be there.

By 3:00 pm we were 10 miles past Lobalangit at a road construction site. Komol climbed into the Land Cruiser that had given us a lift in Lobalangit.

By 4:30 pm, we were on the back porch of the mission. Komol was translating sentence after sentence fluently. Sometimes i couldn’t hear him over the downpour that pounded against the steel roof. The rain began to slacken. I pulled out my recording equipment and asked if he could tell a story that the fathers of the Nyang’i used to tell. He looked at me, chuckled, and within seconds had begun. Two breathless minutes later, he smiled. ‘Etimokin?’ i asked. ‘Etimokin,’ he smiled.

Komol Isaach then walked through the gate into Karenga, to stay with relatives for the night. A rainbow marked the end of the rain and the return of the sun. It was good to leave 12:05 pm behind.