Because I am a Girl by Tim Butcher

Author:Tim Butcher
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781409089162
Publisher: Random House

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MARIE PHILLIPS

Marie Phillips was born in London in 1976. She studied anthropology and documentary making, and worked as a TV researcher and as an independent bookseller. Her first novel, Gods Behaving Badly, was published in 2007.

‘SO, DID IT change your life?’

We were sitting in a meeting room in one of the Plan International offices in Kampala, Uganda. I had stopped crying by then, but the four Plan workers were still looking at me with a mixture of concern and panic in case I started again. My face was sticky with the dust of a three-hour drive from Kamuli district, now distributed by tears into orange-red rivulets down my cheeks: attractive. But then probably also a good match for my sweaty clothes, mud-clogged Crocs, hair frizzed-up by rainy season humidity, dehydration-reduced physique, and general aura of exhaustion.

‘Did it change your life?’

This was the only man in the room, a white American – perhaps Canadian. I hadn’t taken in what he did for Plan, though he’d been there for years – perhaps decades – and was present for the debrief with The Writer (me) so I guessed it was something important. It seemed to matter to him, whether my life had been changed by visiting Uganda, and it was just a shame that I didn’t know the answer yet because I was still there and the only thing that had sunk in was the grime into my skin.

But I know now, in case he’s still interested. And the answer is yes, yes it did. But probably not in the way that he had in mind.

It wasn’t my first visit to Uganda. I’d actually been twelve years before, when my sister was living there, working for an environmental charity. So at first it seemed familiar. Arriving in the hot, crowded airport, the anxiety over what awaited me – or not – in the toilets (paper? soap? water? – one out of three ain’t bad), the anxiety over whether my luggage awaited me at all and whether it would have everything in it that I had packed at the other end, the anxiety over whether the customs people would be feeling friendly or not and what they would make of my visa (visiting writers are never exactly embraced by third world immigration officials), anxiety over which of the jostling cab drivers was likely to have a functional vehicle and a non-fatalistic attitude to driving: anxiety, basically. And then bursting out into the wave of heat and noise, and my heart lifts, here I am, I’m in Uganda, and I’m probably not going to die on the way to my hotel. Probably …

Uganda is an unforgettably colourful place: bright red earth, lush dark green vegetation and a bold blue sky when it’s not raining. The international airport is in Entebbe, about a half-hour drive from the capital Kampala, although it’s hard to see where Entebbe ends and Kampala begins. The road between the two is lined all the way with shops, some no bigger than

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