Lawrence
The Best of Nsereko Rorens

"Can I join you shopping in Jinja?"
"OK."
"Tomatoes are finished! Are we buying meat?"
"But we still have fish for two days"
"We can buy it then we put it in the fridge."
"No, we buy meat another time."
On the way to the car we meet Hans Martin Fisher the owner of Kingfisher safari lodge.
"This is my new hotel guest Nsereko Rorens", I say
"Nsereko what?" Hans Martin asks
"Rorens", says Rorens.
"Ahhh! Lawrence!"
Hans Martin lives here for 30 years or more and is married to a muganda. He asks Nsereko some things about his family and clan which come out slightly different from the time I did, then to me: "I saw many of those boys", to Nsereko "Now don't spoil it a!".
We drive to town, and buy a great many things.
"We buy mango juice?" (N. developed in a few days into a total mango juice addict).
"No, we need to save money for next time's shopping. What if now we drink mango juice and next time we have no rice?"
"There is my sineering oil".
His vehemently desired smearing oil is on the cosmetics shelve for 7 eurocents.
"OK"  I do think this luxury item is, for pedagogical reasons, in the list "to be earned by fishing and jobs", but anyway, I had failed to get used to seeing him smear used cooking oil - used to fry fish! - on his body after washing.
Back on the dhow: "Where's the cheese, I do not see our cheese"
Not exactly his favourite shopping item I would guess, but he is the one misses it first.
"It must be here..." I do not find it
"You put this bag from the supermarket behind your chair in the car, it is still there"
He is right. Those brains store everything the eyes see, this boy can be a detective!
Can he? But now he starts overdoing it:
"Edmund was going to Kenya?"
"No his name is Philemon and he is in Tanzania "
"I have seen Philemon in Bukaya."
"No Philemon is in Tanzania."
"I have seen him. In Bukaya."
"No may be Doi. He is back here."
"Doi? I do not know Doi."
He is right, all the time since Nsereko Lawrence arrived here, Doi was at Sese then went to Tanzania.
This is too crazy for words but easy to check: Philemon has different SIM cards for Tanzania and Uganda. I take my phone and dial Philemon's Uganda SIM card.
It rings...and there is Philemon!
Philemon's captain's course in Dar es Salaam suddenly required testimony of three years work at sea. The captains friendly enough to be willing to supply this testimony for him (I do not know whether for free or for some compensation), were all at the Uganda side at that moment. He had also been in Bukaya, but there had been no time to see me.

Thursday sunset. My siesta got out of hand. I am late for shopping. If I still want to do it I will be back after dark. I peddle to the shore, find Nsereko and tell him to watch the boat. After my shopping I eat a pizza in Restaurant Two Friends. There is still some light (19:00 EAT). At 20:30 I am back on the boat.
"There were two men in a big blue boat with an outboard. They climbed. I told them they could not enter. They were sitting in the open hatch. They were wearing women's' wigs and lipstick to look like a woman. They asked me what is the blue bag. They thought there was money inside. I told them there were only CDs there. I gave them to check. I was fearing they kill me. When they saw only CDs they asked for the camera. I gave them, I feared. With a torch they made a picture of one of the CD's in the bag. Then they wanted to go but I grabbed the camera. The man held it, I pulled and his hand came inside the hatch opening. I closed the hatch with a big bang. The man screamed.  But he still held the camera inside. So I bit him in the arm. Then he released and pulled his arm back. I closed the hatch with the bolt and started screaming very loud but nobody heard me. The men started fearing somebody would come. They wanted to jump in their boat but one of them made a mistake and fell in the water. He screamed: "Help! I cannot swim!. The other man said do not worry I can swim I will rescue you. Then they started their outboard and went away."
"Have you ever seen the boat before at our beach?"
"No"
"And the outboard engine?"
"No".
"Were you not fearing very much?"
"Yes I am still fearing, feel my heart", he put my hand on his heart, and it was bouncing seriously. I checked the camera which contained this picture:

Mobile phones, a blessing for Africa. There must have been a phone call from our beach immediately after I left to town.

"Have you bought Nutella?  I want Nutella" With whining voice he words a whole list. I want....I want. Meanwhile he is pushing all buttons of all gadgets not in order to use them, but just to push buttons.
It angers me. Why hide it? "I give you enough! You make my coffee!" I issue the order not because I cannot make my own coffee but to redress what seems to me an imbalance between his inside and outside pressure. He descends the cabin to the kitchen and starts making coffee. Silence. No word. A happy change after all the whining. Then: "You make me cry... " Indeed, one small tear is visible in the corner of his right eye.
"Sometimes you make me happy sometimes you make me angry. When you cry I want this, ...that, ...this, ... that, ...you make me angry. And when you push my buttons and you know it's not allowed. You have to remember what makes me angry, because when you make me angry I make you cry"
He gives me bread but is not eating. Refuses when I offer. Then I tell him friendly I want him to eat. He eats.
"You want coffee?" I pour from the thermos he filled, mix with milk and give him. Issue closed (I baptized it the Nutella Incident).

Meat! I bought it and he is excited.
"We fly chipus!!!" (We fry chips).
No more questions. He knows what to do. And there he goes, quite nice chips, meat chunks well spiced and fried.
After the meal he throws himself on my bed. "Ajajaj, now I'm full like a woman who is pregnant!!"
In general, if I want to influence his cooking, I have to go and interfere. Otherwise a plate with a full meal will appear in front of my nose, generally excellent, only often to oily. In the kitchen, he works standing on a beer crate on which I put a little "floor" for him. He says he learned some cooking in Kampala, but most from a mama here at the shore side in the fishermen's village. In 4 months? We'll have to talk to her.
My nourishment scheme is monitored: Lawrence: "You eat your rice! Yesterday you also did not finish and in the morning you did not want to eat."
"In the morning I eat bread. You make less rice!"

Teaching Lesson 1: he can construe all Arabic numeral signs by counting, 1,2,3,...83, etc., but after 99 comes one hundred written 1000). Writing the number words gives problems with "one", "three", "four" and of course "eight".
"e    i    g    h    t ... WHY???"
"I don't know, that is how they do."
Nsereko is a total extrovert, hence any movement or sound around him has total priority and teaching is forgotten. Then this extroversion is very active type, that is, if sensory stimuli are low, he will simply more actively search for them. Put him in a totally silent room without view and he will find somewhere in a tiny corner something very small, with a colour and movement, and go for it with his fingers. All my gadgets are covered with his finger grease and set to the most improbable configurations. When during teaching there's nothing to grab or push he starts playing with pen and exercise book rather than do the brain job. Within seconds of weak attempts he is totally frustrated when unable to solve a problem and far out of the zone. Also when starting the teaching, he sometimes seems to play a game of not willing, wishing to be forced on the subject by me: not sitting down, looking the other way, etc. Once already I had to cancel the teaching, and one time I shortened it, explaining that he had spoiled my mood for teaching. This causes a degree of stress and sadness that I hope will help him to keep trying. I am fearing though, that teaching, like doing other awful things such as eating cheese, drinking grapefruit juice is, like insisting to sleep on my bed, on the list of ceremonies done for honour, symbolizing my appointment (by him) as his "father", rather than intrinsically liked. When however he is told a procedure that he feels he can do, like adding 3 + 5 by drawing three tomatoes, then five, and then counting all of them "IT IS 8!!!!", he bursts into counting tomatoes like a mad man.

Nsereko in tomato counting frenzy, 45 + 55 = ....102!

After drawing 45 tomatoes, then 55, he counts 102. Since I count 100 he proposes to settle on 101.
Writing and reading is extremely poor. But he knows all letters and their spelling names.
To cause him make effort in learning something he needs immediate gratification. Two seconds "thinking" without seeing how to do something is too long. After a failed attempt to teach him something it is useless to try another way. His brain is off the subject, not to return soon. Of course, I am not going to force him. When he comes with questions that require teaching, I will tell him. He really does not want to be cheated when it comes to sell a sangara and get your money. I tell Tielli and Desmond: "we have to teach Nsereko, otherwise they will cheat him with the money!". But only Desmond turns out useful: Tielli is a Luo (a tribe mainly in Eastern Kenya), speaks little Luganda, and almost no English.

"You never say thank you!!", Nsereko complains after cleaning the dresser.
I take him at his wrists and say: "Thank you for cleaning, thank you for cooking, thank you for catching our fish, thank you for not touching my buttons, thank you for not talking when I am reading, thank you for always sweeping the floor after making chapatti, thank you for ..."
He goes through his knees, hanging down from my arms, giggling and even screaming with laughter, interrupting my thanks litany shouting: "Thank you for buying, thank you for reading, thank you for sleeping, thank you for thank you for thank you for thank you for thank you for thank you for thank you for "

"We have too many clouds today. Tonight we need to run the generator."
"Yes! Power! Jesus Christ give us power!"