Adjustments aren't always easy...

Customs and culture are etched and engraved into a person’s personality to the extent that when someone sees another acting or speaking differently one can believe the other is crazy or mad. That is the beauty of travel it opens ones eyes to the variation that different lands can possess.
I have traveled to many places and experienced many cultures very different from my own, but those cultures have always, in one way or another, been in line with my morals and values. Uganda is teaching me that far off lands and lifestyles are very habitable even if they are not in line with “my morals” and lately I am finding that I am awe of what I am learning outside the classroom.
Class discussions have taught me some very interesting and drastically different lifestyles compared to North America. I am intrigued to listen, but as well trying to train myself NOT to shake my head in discontentment.
While discussing the meaning “GENDER” the class was separated into groups, the guys and the girls, and we were given the task “To write down as many roles that we believed the opposite sex should be responsible for”.

The women (Ugandan, Canadian, and Pilipino) talked about; equality, love, respect, security…

The men, who were all Ugandan, wrote:
 Collect firewood
 Bear children and I am not talking 2 or 3.
 Comfort
 Sexually please their partner
 Remain beautiful
 Collect water
 Hide the husband if police sought him
 Cook
 Clean/laundry (all done by hand)
 Make extra money by making crafts
 Churn Butter
 Educate and teach children morals

I couldn’t help it, but I interrupted and said the teacher asked us to describe a wife not a workhorse.
In the capital people are more “institutionally educated”, but, there is still that level of engraved cultural ideology, however, people are more modern that those still living in the villages. There is a this lady in my class that comes from a clan far north and was explaining to me that in her clan, by the time women reach 35 years old they are worn out from a life of hard-labor and multiple childbirths that she begs her husband to take another wife to sexually satisfy him because she cant “take care” of him anymore. The women will even work hard and use all her saving to pay the dowry for the new wife.
Lately, I am quite aggravated by the quality of life and the respect that local people show towards others (and not only me as a foreigner, but locals) and I am unsure of how to process these “scenarios” or situations, but I need to realize that everyday is a learning experience and that is the whole reason I am here. As I struggle to remain positive in negative situations I grow in ways I never imagined and learn patience of a whole new light.