First Place: Creative Nonfiction
Floral and Gingham Brooke Striegel
I packed so many skirts for nine weeks in Uganda. I had a navy and floral silk-like skirt that made me feel like a real teacher, as Fede watched me grade her work. I had the bright, colorful skirt that I wore when Fede crawled into my lap, one day. I had an orange and blue geometric skirt that I wore at the community concert, when I told Fede goodbye, and I had my favorite black and floral skirt that I wore on the first day in Bulike that led into all of the rest. I remember the first time I wore that black, floor length skirt with the pink flowers and blueish-green leaves in Uganda. It was my first day in Bulike, the village I spent my summer in. Full of red dirt roads, goats roaming at every turn, tall green crops, and incredible people, Bulike was a beautiful place to be. On that day, my team got to go to Church, and see how the people sang and danced and prayed to worship God. They just had an open-air, one-room brick building with dirt floors and wooden benches, but they had so much joy, and seldom – if ever – had I seen people show it so obviously. Soon after that day, I met my sweet friend Fede. At five years old, she was still so small, and could sit in my lap, almost like a doll, but her size didn’t stop her from being full of huge smiles. Her little, bald head was precious to me, and her tiny, little hands could fit perfectly around my pointer finger. My friend described her as an “angel,” one day, as we drove away from the school, and this description was true. She was so sweet and gentle hearted, but this didn’t stop her from scrunching up her nose at something or trotting around the schoolyard, leading a whole squad of girls. For such an angel, she had her fair share of sass. I saw Fede in two different outfits, during the entire summer. Most days, my sweet friend was in her purple gingham school dress with the adorable white collar. Sometimes, not very often, she was in a red polo with a black and white plaid skirt. Maybe, those were the days that her school uniform was hanging on a line to dry after it was hand-washed in a bin of water fetched from the well. Everyday, Fede drank her porridge, out of the same white, plastic cup, surrounded by her friends — some with porridge, some without. She sat in the same spot on the same crowded bench and wrote in her workbook. Everyday, Fede was bright and smiley and beautiful, all the same. I met Fede at Bulike Community Primary School, a place that was once a gathering under the shade of a tree, but had grown into a collection of three simply constructed buildings covered in bright blue paint. Illustrations of the human body or the alphabet or of animals lined the walls of the school, painted on the sides over the blue. Each age group had its own square room, inside, with wooden desks and paper posters stuck to the walls with porridge. 91
