Giant for an Hour

We've been in Uganda for a week now. Our first stop was an island on Lake Bunyoni, just across the border from Rwanda. It was a great place to relax and do some reading. We slept in something they called a geodome. We had a beautiful view, and it almost kept the water out during the thunderstorm while we slept!
On our second day there we took a boat to a nearby Pygmy village. So far, Michael and I have been a bit leery of commercialised cultural tourist attractions. Most of our cultural excursions have been the kind that develop from walking around a market or meeting someone on a bus. It's quite a different experience to go with a guide into a village and to ask someone to perform for you. Well according to our guidebook, the Pygmies "have little choice but to cash in on their culture...if they hope to survive as a distinct ethnic group" because the government "generally views them with disdain," and "they've been dispossessed of their ancestral lands." (And they're so tiny!) We decided to go, and it was definitely worth the trip. As we were hiking to their village, we caught up to a few of the men. They told us they had been performing for the President the day before. They invited us to their village, and gave us a little sample of what we could look forward to. The village wasn't much, but the people were so vibrant and energetic! So was their singing and dancing.

When they finished, Michael showed them the video he had taken. They loved hearing themselves sing, and they all crowded around to get a better look at the screen. We gave them some money for their performance, and it was followed up with the expected haggling. "This isn't enough." "The children are hungry." They begrudgingly accepted our money, but we could hear them cheerily singing as we walked away.