Things Fall Apart

Not a day goes by when I don’t break something. For a while, I attributed this phenomenon to my clumsiness, which was miraculously absent before those wonderful years we fondly know as puberty. Since the 6th grade, however, klutz has become the median of my characteristics. It follows then, unsurprisingly, that I operate in a perpetual state of caution and still manage to break one out of every nine things I touch in a given day.

For all of those people who are upset about unfair competition from China’s labor force, you really don’t know the half of it. If you want something of quality in America, don’t shop at WallMart, where Chinese products smile at you dancing down the aisles. If you want something of quality in Uganda, you are in for an monotonous adventure. To the best of my recollection (a phrase I learned to utilize in depositions at the ripe age of 14; another story entirely) I have yet to examine a product label that boasted three words other than “Made in China.” Hats, Nokia and other cell phones, refrigerators, books, internet modems, illegal DVDs, Yamaha motorcycles, fabrics, posters, and wigs are all made in the land of the free [labor]. Although I make no excuses for being clumsy as a chimpanzee lacking opposable thumbs, this situation as accelerated my predicament.

Yesterday I broke two things. I was scooping fuel briquette materials into a bin to decompose when the plastic bowl I was using snapped in half. Specifically, the material was sawdust, which in my enlightened sense of precision weighed about three quarters of a pound. I just stood there with the look of failure etched into my eyes holding half a bowl while sawdust snowed over my feet. Later on, calmly cleaning up other people’s dishes, I cracked a plate all the way to the center. It looked like a physics experiment where I’d drawn the radius of the plate and was about to divide it by one over two times pi. Utterly worthless.

To my dismay and your entertainment, I must admit that breaking household items has become a regular engagement in my order of operations. The real debacles come from situations when I have to borrow something, and then I break it. This past week my comrades and I traveled to Tororo. Our insane acquaintance Simon insisted we borrow his car to accommodate our vast numbers, and he was leaving town anyway. Smitten at the opportunity to drive a Chinese-made, manual transmission Nissan March on the left side of the road and steering from the right side of the car, I accepted his offer.

After letting the Chinese Dragon out of the bag, we were riding dirty on our way to RestVille when I hit a pothole around a turn, locked up the Chinese drum brakes and slid the front left wheel into the embankment, putting a torso sized dent into the wheel well. Before I continue, Simon is a fanatic mechanic obsessed with his vehicles who somehow managed to get his hands on one of two Nissans in all of Uganda, made in China or otherwise. The following morning I could not fit the key into the driver’s door lock. I took a step back and observed that those kids had shoved a stick into the lock and broke it off, splintering into fifteen or twenty pieces. Then I observed that they had ripped the plastic décor off the rear quarter panel. Infuriated, I complained to their mother. I will quote her response, speaking directly to Luke and I: “What is wrong with you?! When they do bad, you beat them! Don’t tell me! You get a stick and you cane them!!!” My inaudible response: “Whoa… My mother didn’t raise me to hit kids, especially not my neighbors.” Anyway, I’m sure all caning sticks are made in China and would just break at the wrist when swung forward.

On our way to Tororo bumping jams, Simon’s rear left 6x9 [Chinese] Sony speaker blows up and starts squawking at us like an ostrich trying to sing Black Rob. About five minutes later, his power steering fluid runs out and proceeds to grind harder than a Taylor’s floozy on dollar beers eve. By the time we get to Tororo, my arm is exhausted from compensating for the car’s tendency to veer left, probably chasing the illusion of proper steering alignment. Finally, the inside handle of the rear left door decided that it would be more appropriately located in Joel’s fist, detached from the door entirely. This one required behavioral change because we then had to roll the window down to obtain door-shutting leverage. Oh yeah, and we ate all Simon’s candy, which was interestingly about $10 worth. I don’t think the Candy was made in China, but it could have been.

It’s my interpretation that all goods in Uganda coalesced before jumping the boat from China and decided that if they all exercise 10% of their projected life expectancy, they can ensure perpetual demand for their heirs. Also, this cartel of worthless goods comprise half the rubbish my team and I are trying to extract from the streets. I guess this is how the world goes round, assisted by my clumsiness with my aspirations as a counterpart.

Post-Scripted November 23rd: Uganda is where electronics come to die. Joel is an artist of electronic misery, breaking more devices than I own. My iPod has been slowly dying since it was born, and it lasted all of one week in Uganda. Joel broke his Sony eBook within twenty-four hours. My flash drive lasted two months before it coughed up its PDF files and sputtered out of existence. Rachel’s computer displays the blue screen of death twice daily, usually during online board meetings or cultural journal article readings. It seems to work fine when I want to play solitaire though. Left with dwindling hard-drive space, we decided to facilitate the use of the desktop computer Caitlin dutifully carried 10,000 miles with her. Upon plugging the computer into the outlet, the power supply exploded. I opened up the case to see if it was just a fuse and stared dumbfounded at the blackened, fuse-less power supply proudly displaying those three magic words: “Made in China.”