Village, Town, City

Africans live in one of three places: a village, town or city. It’s important to understand these rural, semi-urban (rather, semi-rural), and urban areas to appreciate life in Africa.

The Village

Villages are basically an area encompassing a collection of small subsistence farms. The farmers’ self-made homes are usually mud walls and thatch roofs, or if wealthier, concrete walls and tin roofs. The indoors are used for sleeping and sitting; the outside for cooking, laundering and often eating. Next to their dwellings are the plots of land where they grow their food. Their days are spent just trying to meet basic needs: they wake up early and if lucky, make and eat breakfast; they then tend to their fields and if blessed, they take lunch; they tend to their fields some more or perform household tasks, and then back to make supper. If their children are fortunate, their caretakers will have both the money and desire to send them to a local school. Otherwise, the older children help in the fields and with chores, and the young ones run around unattended.

The vast majority of Uganda is extremely fertile and does not suffer from drought and its people from starvation like many other African nations; nonetheless, many villagers struggle to feed their whole families. If they can overcome hunger, there is still malnutrition to face as many only eat the staples their land gives forth, and often go without much needed protein, making the children listless at school and the entire clan more prone to illness.

The first three things I noticed traveling through the villages were: one, all of the land has been developed; it seems all of Africa, except for the few conservation areas have been deforested; two, there are so many children, running about very dirty, wearing tattered clothes falling off their bodies, usually snot-nosed and sick; three, there is almost nobody between the ages of 20 and 40; most have died from AIDS or have fled to the cities and towns.

The AIDS epidemic is most visible in the villages where the middle-aged are almost nonexistent. Truly, you see almost exclusively countless children playing with each other and whatever trash they can turn into a ball or game, and their elder caretakers slowly making their way around with great dignity and a degree of resignation and pain. There is not much joy in the older peoples’ lives; having lost many of their children to the virus and urban lure, and watching after their innumerable orphaned grandchildren. The government claims that it has reduced the virus rate from around 24% a decade ago to about 6%, but Ugandans on the street acknowledge that can’t be so. Two friends of mine are physicians, AIDS specialists in Kampala. They put the infection rate at around 15 to 20%.

The villagers need so many basics to improve their standard of living: latrines for improved sanitation (just dug pits, not real toilets, mind you), seedlings for food security, wells for safe water, vocational training for income generation, clothes for half naked children, bed nets for malaria protection, a few dollars for school fees, a few dollars for live-saving medicine, accommodations for homeless teachers, accommodations for homeless orphans, community centers for educational courses, educational courses for just about everything: family planning, health intervention (malaria, HIV, etc.), nutrition and sanitation, agricultural practices, adult literacy, vocational skills, elderly care, orphan care, etc.

It is hard to describe this level of chronic poverty. I recently had a very kind friend inquire about fundraising for the projects I am coordinating. She asked if maybe we could raise money to give the village children backpacks stuffed with school supplies and vitamins. I use her thoughtful brainstorm as an example because it helps to put the need here into perspective. The village children don’t have or even need backpacks; many can’t afford the very meager school fees, and if they could, the schools don’t have books anyway. The children first need a secure food and water supply, mosquito nets, medicine, clothes and basic school costs paid before luxuries like shoes, books, vitamins, balls and bags.

Another way to conceptualize the poverty here is to understand the distinction and definition of the different types of poverty around the globe. International development economist icon Jeffery Sachs categorizes poverty into three groups. Poverty in wealthy countries is defined by those whose basic needs are met, such as food, water, shelter, schooling, but who are exempt from many goods and services the society has to offer. Poverty in emerging economies, or middle income countries such as China, Brazil, India and Mexico, includes those whose basic needs are slowly being met and who are on the verge of greater wealth and prosperity. And finally there is the poverty found in the poorest countries on earth, the bottom billion as they are called for the number of unfortunate souls in this group. These people’s lives are characterized by persistent, endemic poverty that proves almost impossible to escape both at a personal and societal level; a poverty trap. They wake up every morning spending the day just trying to survive.

The Town

Town is an area with many local shops, maybe a couple of small clinics or hospitals, and a few schools. There are usually a scattering of nicer homes near town, owned by the wealthier business people, and then the land gives way to the outlying poorer villages. People from the U.S. would probably call an African town a village, and villages would maybe be called farms.

The towns have more wealth than the villages. You won’t see the same widespread poverty. And the towns also have better infrastructure: maybe some street lights, a well or tank, public toilets. There are, of course, many destitute townspeople and an uncountable simply idle. As I mentioned in a previous blog, many Africans move to towns and cities looking for work that doesn’t exist. The town I live in, Lugazi, does not suffer from unoccupied people to the same degree as other African towns, but they are there nonetheless; lying in the grass, sitting on a stoop, lounging next to a shop, standing next to the road.

Most of the out of work and menial laborers, such as the sugar field workers and boda boda drivers, are uneducated. They comprise the very large constituency that voted for the town’s new mayor, Obama, to the dismay of the educated business owners. Certainly, classes exist in towns and even more so in cities. In the village, however, wealth distinction is almost unperceivable; everyone seems destitute.

Uganda is landlocked. This is a serious obstacle to its development. It also has no significant natural resources; another major development hindrance. It has a poorly educated public. Yes, yet an additional factor inhibiting growth. There are many barriers that we’ll explore later, but the point is that Uganda does not have the factors necessary for substantial business investment or the export of domestic products. This means that Ugandan businesses are usually small and serve the people in the immediate area. As such, towns and their shops pretty much all look the same. The shops are usually not more than maybe a dozen square feet, open air and unsophisticated: a small hair salon, a pharmacy selling a handful of medicines, a snack and soda stand, a music shop filled with African tapes. The shop owners usually sit outside all day exchanging gossip, their small children running around, doing little business.

The town schools are better than the villages’; the public schools are superior and there are more private schools, which offer the best education by far. Still, many town youth do not attend due to school fees. I watch them from my balcony running around when the others are in school. They are usually, as Ugandans say, rougher than their educated counterparts. Many also engage in small time crime: pick pocketing, stealing scrap metal from community property or the façade of personal residences, occasionally breaking into people’s homes. The limited opportunities that exist in this society for acquiring wealth are staggeringly small, effectively absent, for the uneducated; even house girls usually need to know English, which is only taught in school as many speak tribal languages in the home. These rough children in town, without an education and without land to farm have dismal futures.

The City

There are real African cities: Nairobi, Johannesburg, Cape Town. Kampala is not one of them. Kampala basically looks like a really big town with some tall buildings, lots and lots of traffic, and terrible, horrible, Sweet Jesus!, horrendous roads. The pot-holes are too numerous and too large for any small car to navigate. SUVs and trucks are a necessity; otherwise vehicles spend most of the time in the repair shops, which are usually run by untrained mechanics who oftentimes make the cars worse off.

There is still greater wealth and infrastructure to be seen in the city, compared to the towns. Some live in comfortable homes or apartments, own private vehicles, maybe even reside in mansions on the surrounding hillsides; affluence built legitimately and not, but always hustled. Even Ugandans with university educations, professional degrees and good jobs usually need to have a few sources of income to have a decent standard of living. For example, most physicians here are paid about $300 per month. This is about 300 times more than the sugar cane workers, and even more than the villagers, but it is still not enough to live very comfortably on. Many of my educated Ugandan friends have a full time job, or two part-time jobs and a series of things they are doing on the side: running internet cafes, owning sausage stands, performing outside consulting. The virtuous have to be shrewd and juggle to make ends meet. The dishonest will simply steal public or private funds when the opportunity arises; a depressing situation that occurs constantly in a country that is reliably in the bottom group on corruption indices.

For those that don’t have full time employment in the city with a reputable public or private enterprise, there are the opportunities also found in towns: shop keeping, boda boda or taxi driving, being a house girl. And there is begging. There are a number of beggars in the Kampala streets, although not as many compared to cities in other developing nations. Most beggars in Kampala are from the northeastern tribe Karamojo. They usually send their children out alone to beg, making it appear they are orphaned or abandoned to garner more sympathy, and therefore, more cash. The government is trying to intervene and mobilize these people to go back to their land up north. There are, however, a number of street children who are truly homeless, dumped in the city by overwhelmed or careless family members, or orphaned from war, AIDS or other symptoms of poverty.

To understand the lifestyle and business environment here in Uganda better, it is crucial to cite a recent government statistic that reported the national employment rate at 5%. You did not read that incorrectly. It is the employment rate, not the unemployment rate. Their employment rate is about what the U.S. unemployment rate is outside of recessions and depressions. The majority of Ugandans are subsistence farms, and the rest are partially or self-employed: selling mangos at the roadside, styling hair in a salon, driving a taxi between towns; living just on the edge of the next catastrophe that could send them deeper into poverty.

For the wealthy, life isn’t as precarious and offers some of the same luxuries found in the West, although of poorer quality. I’ve seen local fashion shows on TV of very low production value, both the program and the clothes. There are restaurants and hotels, but even the nicest ones would only be considered luxurious by African standards. Homes may have electronics and personal computers, but they are almost all Asian knock-offs; the low wage markets here can’t afford the high cost of the real deals. There are DVDs, but again, all seem to violate international copyrights. And when you check them out at the store, they come in covers that usually look legit, although slightly different than in the West (for example, all of the 24 series has Bower’s very beautiful white daughter on the cover despite her not being a main character), but the disc itself is plain with the sloppily written title in felt tip pen: 24 Season 1, Part I.

Ugandans Are Doin’ It for Themselves

Browsing the net, reading the paper, watching cable news, listening to NPR; Western media paints a picture of foreign aid agencies as ubiquitous as mangos in Africa. Not so. In seven weeks I have seen two UN vehicles on Kampala streets, a UNICEF tent in a Kisumu neighborhood, and just a handful of mzungus strolling through the capital’s city centre. The development work on the ground, the organizing, the planning, the exchange of ideas, the proposals, the needs assessments, the hope, the questions, the implementation, the data collection, the accountability, the evaluations, the early mornings, the late nights, the meetings in half constructed buildings, the gatherings next to maize fields, the discussions along pot-holed roads, the women’s groups, the elderly groups, the youth groups, the disabled groups, is all done by Ugandans.

Travelling in and around Kampala, you will occasionally see the tin painted signs for in-country associations and non-profits; women for democracy, HIV/AIDS outreach centers, human rights campaigns. I spoke before of the thieves that thrive here in the name of such work, taking advantage of the lack of laws and enforcement that plague this society; however, most people working at these institutions are honest, reliable and deeply concerned about the community. They do their work alongside those with bad intentions, accepting it as part of life, but undeterred nonetheless. And they are making a difference.

I am now reading the tongue-and-cheek titled White Man’s Burden by William Easterly. It points out that international foreign aid goals fail because the Planners ask the wrong question: what does the end of poverty require of foreign aid? Rather, we should ask how foreign aid can help the poor. The Planners’ approach of a master strategy with no accountability designed from top to bottom is destined to fail, as it has time and again. Throwing sweeping agendas aside, the piecemeal solution that includes accountability; creative, practical problem solving; and on the ground, real results is how the “West can help the Rest.” Easterly calls those with this type of involvement the Seekers.

Ugandans are Seekers, and I plan on being one with them. They are highly organized at the village, parish, sub-county, county, district and national level. Communities have all kinds of committees and groups representing the people’s interest and the local government deploys community development officers to assess problems and develop solutions. So with all this organization, why can’t Ugandans do it by themselves?

Quite simply, they are lacking funding. The community groups write proposals for development work, such as education and rights intervention for orphaned and vulnerable children, or maybe assistance for the elderly destitute who care for their dozen dependent grands. This is where outside aid agencies are very helpful. The community groups don’t have the money to buy markers and paper, much less hire staff, pay for travel, etc. The proposals are floated to donors, and they review it, accept it, grant the funding, then Ugandans perform the work and provide the funders with data on outcomes.

What else are Ugandans missing to make their work successful? More help. There are people working hard, but it is difficult to always find enough individuals with the skills and the time necessary. People here care for their children, grands, nieces, nephews, and cousins. They hand wash clothes. They prepare food for hours, then almost as long cleaning it. They dig holes in the deep mud for their plants, and harvest it months later. They raise and slaughter chickens and turkeys, and herd goats and cattle. They fetch water. They fetch milk. They care for the sick and the dying. They do not have modern conveniences, so they do not have much time for all else. Having basic needs met is time consuming, and community work, while highly valued and understood to be the backbone of society, is obviously of secondary importance.

They have everything in place, so I am just interjecting myself into it. I am currently assisting the Wakisi Sub-county with their SACCO (Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies) development. As the name suggests, SACCOs are community savings and lending cooperatives that provide small emergency and commercial loans to its members, and encourage member savings as well. SACCOs have existed in Uganda for some time, but the government has just rolled out a national program whereby it recognizes an official SACCO in each sub-county. The network of sub-county SACCOs forms a national association that offers greater oversight and support than previously available.

I am helping with the mobilization effort, trying to encourage more community involvement. The local board and I are holding a series of talks around the sub-county, which has over 130 villages and about 33,700 inhabitants. We are informing the community that the SACCO is now part of a national network with government backing, ensuring greater accountability and assistance.



My role is essentially that of celebrity spokesperson. Africans hear that a mzungu will be at the meeting and come in part out of curiosity. They also listen to me. There is a general understanding that I come from a place where things are better, including education. I am not sure exactly how persuasive my whiteness is, but apparently it does carry some weight. This actually makes me feel pretty lousy; authority by way of skin color. I suppose I could disprove their assumptions through purposeful incompetence and untrustworthiness, but I think I’ll take the more well-worn path to bridge cultural gaps in understanding: getting to know one another better.

BTW - I am okay! Really! Quit worrying about me! :)

A Week of Silence

I’ve been gone for a while for good reason. You’ll see why below. I had actually written an entry before I got sidetracked then wrote another on why I was sidetracked, so there are two entries below. In unblog-like fashion, the older entry is first.

DRINKING TEA (written 5/13)

A girl came by the night before last and began cooking in our kitchen, and then again yesterday evening. I recognized her, having seen her before briefly in the house. She keeps her hair short; unable to afford to have it styled in the salon. She wears the same thin white cotton, diagonally striped top; her breasts already big, but no bra.

Ester and I sat at the table drinking African tea as the girl moved quietly about the kitchen. I took the hot drink slowly for several minutes then approached the girl to introduce myself. She glanced away as I spoke and reluctantly, incompletely answered some of my questions. I gathered only that she was called Agnes, her English was poor and that she didn’t have much.

I sat back down at the table just outside the small kitchen. Ester looked at me and said that Agnes' family lived on the outskirts of Lugazi and that she was cooking for her sick mother who was admitted to the hospital near our home.

“Her mother was here once. You were resting in your room. The mother is very weak.”

We sat in silence for a few moments and I poured myself some more.

“So, how does Margaret know the mother?”

“Mummy brought her back to Lugazi to live here for a while. She is from Daddy’s village.”

“She brought her here when she was a child?”

"Yes.”

We stirred our tea and watched a Ugandan musician perform on the T.V. Ester told me he was singing about his ex-wife who left him for another man.

For a while we watched; the television barely audible; Agnes’ soft shuffling behind us. I began telling Ester about my trip to the village earlier that day. I told her the local priest was surprised to learn that most Americans have only 2 children.

“There are many differences between America and Africa,” I said to Ester. “I respect them, but I don’t understand why some here have so many. Some can take care of all of their children, but many can’t.” I sought an answer from my clever Ugandan sister. I have come to rely on her to reveal the unfamiliar to me plainly and perceptively.

“Yes. They have so many children and they can’t even take care of them.”

“Why do they do that?”

“I don’t understand. Maybe they have girls, but are trying for a boy. Like in your family there are three girls, then they want a boy.”

“But I know of many families with boy, boy , boy..”

“Then maybe they want a girl.”

“Okay. What if they had a girl, then a boy?”

She laughed. “They can’t stop there.”

“So, it’s not that they want a girl and a boy.”

“Yes, they want many. You know. Sometimes if they have more than one wife, they can have like 20.”

“I know. But if they can’t take care of them?”

Ester paused and raised her eyebrows, “They just don’t care.”

I stared into the full mug of light brown liquid absorbing Ester’s words; trying to make sense of the foreign and frustrating. My mind turning over and again the cultural absence of family planning like a coin in my hand. Ester knew these things. She has lived them. She is one of many, many, many. She calls Margaret and Steven her mummy and daddy, but they are not. She went to school as long as her own parents could afford it, until she was a teenager.

Nodding towards the kitchen, Ester then said “Agnes. She only went to P7 in school. She is the first of six. Both her parents are HIV positive. She’s 13.”

The corners of her mouth lifted in a vague smirk because she knew it so ridiculous, because she knew I never encountered such a thing before; Ester said, “She’s already been married and he’s run off.”

My gaze shifted to Agnes in the kitchen. She was smiling at her wrist, admiring a watch that she had found on the counter. She saw me looking and, embarrassed, quickly took off the watch. I reached again for my cup; knowing I must accept what I sought.

SURVIVAL BY FORTUNE

As my fever subsided, between moments of semi-consciousness and aching nausea I would gaze at the rust smears on the walls of my private hospital room in wonder. What happened to the patients whose blood remained? Did they walk from their beds to the arms of relieved family members? Or were they carted away by widows and widowers? How did they come to be here? What illness befell them? What good chance in life afforded them privileged medical care, rather than coping with illness at home or in the clinic?

The day I was overcome by severe malaria, Agnes’ mother died of complications related to AIDS. Diagnosed only a few months ago, the clinic gave her ARV drugs, which she did not take. Her husband, too lazy to test himself, assumed he was positive as well. Too selfish to get his own free treatment, he stole hers, effectively murdering her. She succumbed in the government hospital and her body was driven back to her family’s village in mummy and daddy’s car, otherwise her remains would have been transported like most Ugandans: wrapped in cloth and placed on the back of a boda boda.

I did not attend the funeral since I was still admitted. I would drift off and mummy would not be in the room with me. I would awaken and again she would appear, on the phone making funeral arrangements and giving updates on my health, providing me with food, water, clothes and bedding. She was tired and worried, but worked bone hard; as always. I told her I was sorry about her friend when I was clear headed. She nodded and said “it is unfortunate.”

Ester was by my side for two days in the small room that contained only a couple of mattresses and no shower or toilet, not even ones nearby. She cleaned my mess from diarrhea and vomit, ensured I received my medications, forced me to eat and drink, changed me, carried me, sat me up; was my nurse. I asked her why the hospital’s nurse in the hot pink uniform with white tubing didn’t tend to me and she said that they only treated you. I didn’t understand. It seemed there was no one else in the few dorms of this modest building. “What is she doing, just sitting in the room?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“That is ridiculous,” I heard myself saying. Ester started to tell me that when you go to hospital you had to bring someone to care for you. And in the government hospital you don’t get your own room, and they don’t even have drugs there. Someone has to go to the pharmacy in town to buy them then the nurse will give them to you. I started to drift off again…

Restlessly moving my throbbing joints to no position of comfort, suffering from heat and cold at once, too fatigued to lift my head or talk, incoherent from the pain and the medication that filled my mouth with metallic residue, I knew I would be okay; thinking of my life compared to Agnes and her siblings.

The father ruthlessly beats them. Drug addicted, impatient and callous, he had run Agnes off once before, telling her to get married to an older man who quickly used her and left her. And the family in the village wouldn’t take the children in either. The father’s brother’s wife had chased Agnes away a couple of years ago when she was recovering from illness.

“She’ll probably get married again,” Ester told me.

“What about the little ones?”

“They will stay with the father.”

“She’ll probably get infected like her mom, marrying an older man,” ‘I said, hoping she would object.

“Yeah. And she won’t get married just once.”

“What do you mean?”

“The husband will probably run her off for a new wife after some time.”

“How long?”

Ester shrugged. “Maybe just a month because she is so young. Then she’ll have to get married again.”

I squinted. “What do you mean married?”

“They just start living together.”

“Oh.”

“They don’t go to church and have a ceremony. They just get married.”

The mother herself had been married many times before taking the husband who fathered her children and essentially took her life. Often the poorest families survive by pushing the adolescent daughters to live with an older man. The mother’s first husband had driven her away after a while, forcing her to take another man that did the same; again and again. And so it seems her daughter’s fate, trapped in the same cycle of poverty and abuse.

As anywhere, the destitute here bear the weight of life’s harshest cruelties. It is largely fate that distinguishes those that live just to survive, and those that are blessed with more; the family and circumstances into which you are born, and the doors that open and close along the way. It is mere chance that defines Agnes’ mother’s death and my survival; hers of being born poor and African and mine of being born rich and mzungu.

Orphans, Swindlers & One Big Sky

or There are abandoned children in the U.S., but it’s largely an untold story. A woman who works in a maternity hospital once described to me the not totally uncommon occurrence of drug addicted mothers leaving their newborns following delivery. Presumably these children are reared by relatives or adoptive or foster parents.

Abandoned children in Uganda do not have a foster care system to fall back on when their own families fail them. The extended family IS the foster care system. If secretly deserted by their parents, children die where they are left, survive in the streets, or, the few, the fortunate, are nurtured in foreign funded orphanages.

I recently visited one outside of Kampala. Since I didn’t seek permission in advance to write about it, I will not reveal its name, but I was absolutely astounded at the quality of the facilities and care provided.

The sprawling campus rests on soft, rolling grassy hills containing 10 modern homes, a full service kitchen, a large playground, a “football pitch” (soccer field), manicured landscaping, an extensive farm, real washers and dryers, two full time nurses, one part time doctor, a mommy for each of the house’s eight little lodgers, teachers and assistants, and countless staff for cooking, cleaning, repairing, coordinating, assuring, etc. And it all overlooks Lake Victoria.

These children live far, far better than most other Ugandan youth who often live in substandard homes with little food and no modern appliances; without toys or play areas; running barefoot on muddy, trash-filled roads or grass clearings; occasionally receiving paltry medical assistance when family funds allow; and lucky students squeezed next to 100 other classmates in meager school buildings.

The abandoned Ugandan children are rescued from anywhere: hospitals, police stations, plantation fields, or the hands of an abusive parent. Little Elijah, a toddler I met, was saved when he was just one week old by good Samaritans who saw his mother savagely strangling him. The infant struggled for his life in a hospital for the two weeks before the parole officer released him to the orphanage. As he ran towards me to catch my hand, the kind woman who is his orphanage mummy and my guide for the day told me that he is very advanced for his age in speech, movement and social abilities, and never gets sick. “God wanted him to be here,” she said as she watched him, gently smiling.

Maybe there is a special place in heaven for her and the thousands like her who dedicate their lives to the care and love for strangers. At the very least, I believe that Sir John Vanbrugh is right: virtue is its own reward.

But other non profits are not so exemplary.

There is a relatively large NGO in town run by a former Ugandan rebel who actually lives in the U.S.; shamefully, granted refugee status years ago. Charismatic and convincing, he seduces donors out of thousands of dollars so that he and his brothers can live lavishly. Friends who have been to his brothers’ mansions resting on the hills outside of Kampala say the residence are grandiose and filled with a small army of servants, including chefs (that’s plural) that serve the family and their guests in actual tall, white hats. The family is also constructing revenue generating buildings in and around Gulu, and God only knows what else for their personal benefit. Anyone care to guess how many schools would have actually been built with that money?

His style of non-profit management includes inflating school development costs to secure more funding than necessary; not forwarding donations to volunteers, in effect ensuring their projects will fail; and actually attempting to persuade the local government to block projects that volunteers then take up on their own.

Until recently you could legally establish an NGO in Uganda in about a week. The government has made the process more difficult in light of the countless people like the aforementioned supreme asshole who have taken advantage of international development interest and funds from foreigners.

Apologies, but again an example of the bad so that the extent of thievery in the name of charity sinks in. Another former rebel also granted refugee status in the U.S. and living in San Diego has swindled countless dollars out of the hands of wealthy women in Coronado and La Jolla saying he is constructing schools in his village; however, he’s probably showing pictures of already existing buildings to them as proof of the work he claims to be doing outside of his full time job at Catholic Charities. One of his coworkers tells me he has suddenly been buying electronics for his personal use and taking his family on trips to Europe on his non-profit salary.

(ADDED NOTE: This person is doing this "charity work" OUTSIDE of Catholic Charities. I am in no way suggesting that Catholic Charities or any other major charity organization, non-profit, or NGO engages in stealing. In fact, I hope I am conveying quite the opposite. It is these individuals and smaller in-country organizations that are often unscrupulous, and I hope all of you would continue to trust and support the work of large, legit, international aid groups.)

I hope there is a special place in hell for these thieves.

I also wish myself superlatively creatively minded and these swindlers a product of my brilliance; rather, they are very real threads in the fabric of Life here, and I seek in my blog to lay It bare. I spent years reading about Africa, talking to people who had been, watching documentaries and films, but nothing entirely prepares and educates you, and I am slightly surprised at the aspects of life that weren’t revealed to me previously. The parts that, maybe, foreigners didn’t discuss to avoid perpetrating negative stereotypes; backwardly woven are many fibers here. Fortunately, there is also extraordinary and inspiring kindness and determination knit through It. I’ll be telling these stories, the good and bad, side by side, as I go along.

Which brings me to the blog title. I carefully considered it while drifting off to sleep, hiking through Mission Trails, reading the morning paper, listening to music….

The sky is limitless; a void of light and dark. Stretching as far as our imaginations, it reflects infinite possibilities existing within us; our potential and nature revealed faintly in lives of want, and starkly in crushing need. I anticipated witnessing it vibrantly within others Here, but within myself….what will I do faced with the novel and unknown?

Surrounding me Here in the extreme is the sublimely virtuous and the hideously appalling; pushing past each other on crowded grimy streets; polluting and nourishing the lush Eden that abounds; in Christian hymns and prayers and whispers of witchcraft; aside, along, courting and ruining each other in the same minds; as boundless and luminous as the pearl blue, puffy cloud Uganda sky.

Oh, and it is also inspired from a song title from one of my favorite artists and humanitarians, Annie Lennox. It’s a beautifully wrenching melody and story about overcoming the oppressive and overbearing.

I hope my writings enrich your understanding of Africa – enjoy!

Kenya Exposure

I went to Kenya two weeks ago to visit Ester's family and see the Masai Mara. Here's what happened...

Binti, Baba & Sandrin ~ Daughter, Daddy & Sandrin

Two weeks into living in Uganda, I was standing next to the dining table one afternoon when Ester walked up to me and simply handed me a picture of a young girl. I said, “She is cute. Who is she?” Ester said it was her daughter. I exclaimed, “I didn’t know you were a mommy! What’s her name?” “Her name is Asher,” she replied smiling. I didn’t realize until the day before Ester and I left for Kenya to pick up her daughter that Asher was the girl’s last name. Her first is Natalie.

Because there was no one to watch Natalie after school when she lived in Uganda a couple of years before, she had gone to live with Ester’s sister, Harriet, in Mumias, Kenya. Now that Natalie is older and her schooling lasts all day, Ester wanted to bring her back to Uganda where the education is better and, of course, so she could be closer to her daughter.

Ester and I arrived in Mumias in the late afternoon on Monday, the 20th. We walked through the outdoor market in the fading light and bought a few bags of groceries for Harriet, who has two little ones of her own, Sandrin and Lawrence. I asked Ester if I could put the bags in the kitchen. She said, “No, just set them here.” We sat in the front room furnished with a couch, coffee table, a couple of chairs, and a cabinet. After some time, I realized that the entrance to the rest of the home on the far side of the room that had a white woven cloth for a door, lead only to a bedroom where the parents and three children slept on mattresses on the floor. Their bathroom was the big rocks on the side of building, or the wooden outhouse in the courtyard. The kitchen was a small, portable charcoal stove used outside weather permitting, otherwise lit inside choking the house with grey smoke. The dishes were done in a pot behind the chair. I had been aware of the Balaza’s relative wealth to other Africans, but the vague became tangible that evening in the airless room.

The sitting room was decorated like most I’ve seen in Africa. From the off-white paint walls soiled with dirt smudges, insect remains and greasy hand prints hung outdated calendars and religious pictures and prints. Harriet’s wall had something a little unique: a photograph of two children sitting facing each other above the words, “kindness is loving someone more than they deserve.”

The kids were excited to have visitors, especially to have a mzungu in the home. Sandrin and Natalie looked and acted like twins; speaking to each other in hushed murmurs; exchanging quick, understanding looks; giggling suddenly over a secret joke. Lawrence is known as Baba, which is appropriate because he thinks himself a daddy. So little and so animated, I would laugh at him despite not knowing what he was saying. He would swagger and stomp, talking aloud to the room, shaking his finger and throwing comical glances. Once when stopped from doing something by his parents, he started teasing “I’m gonna make you cry. I’m gonna make you cry. I am getting my cane.” In the car the next day, he was leaning into the front seats and his sister told him to quit. He starting exclaiming in Swahili, “Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?” Over and over and over. He’s just two and a half.

The following morning I hired a private driver who took all of us to the Kakamega Forest Reserve about an hour away from their home. As I mentioned in a previous blog, most Africans can’t afford to attend their parks and reserves, and the only thing more rewarding to me than trekking through a deserted virgin forest was watching Harriet and the kids’ delight. Through the mass of green leaves and vines we watched three different kinds of monkeys play in the branches above our heads.

We also picnicked in the clearing in the front of the park, and walked through a small educational building and saw preserved snakes and butterflies. From morning till night the kids thrilled in doing the unusual: eating an egg for breakfast, riding in a car, drinking mango juice, looking at pictures in my camera.

That evening, and the one before, Ester and I slept in the hotel on the other side of Harriet’s courtyard. It cost the equivalent of $3 a night. At the end of the small hall outside our perfunctory room was a shared sink. On the concrete wall above it were the sloppily painted words Toilet-Shower and an arrow to an adjacent room the size of a broom closet. The sign was quite literal. In the ground was a non-flushing toilet. Above was a shower head. It smelled, well, like a toilet, but the bathing water was steaming hot.

Akuna Mazuri ~ There Is No Good

Early the following morning Ester, Little Natalie and I left for the Masai Mara, Kenya’s premier safari destination with sweeping savannas, abundant wildlife and the famed indigenous tribe, the Masai. Studying the map, the Mara appeared about 90 direct kilometers from Mumias, maybe 150 driving kilometers. We reasoned it would take about 6 hours using African roads taking African public transportation. We miscalculated by about 10 hours. The trip to the Mara proved to be as memorable as the safari drives we took the following three days.

The staging area for the Mara, Naruk, is on the eastern side, but we approached from the west. We realized en route that we would have to travel an additional 100 kilometers to the opposite of the Mara and then double back. We also inadvertently took a more circuitous course by traveling via matatus (Kenyan term for taxi minivans) from Mumias to Kisimu to Kisii to Naruk. The stop in Kisii was unnecessary and added 3 hours onto our trip.

The positive in all of the road travel is being to say that I have seen virtually all of Western Kenya, which actually isn’t such a great thing to be able to say. The landscape varies little; maize field after maize field; little town after little town. At one point we dropped down through a series of rocky hills to climb again to an elevation that left the land desolate, wind-blown and spotted with tall, twisting cactus. The people walked in fleeces and shawls amidst the visibly blown dust; reminding me vaguely of a scene from the Southwest U.S. From there we dropped again into the flat plains of the Mara and continued for another hour onto Naruk. When we finally arrived tired and irritated in the late afternoon, the buses had already left for the day, forcing us to hire a taxi. The drivers assured us they knew how to get to the town in the middle of the Mara, Talek.

After veering off the paved road it became apparent that a four wheel drive would have been a better choice over a small car. We rattled, bounced, lurched and stumbled along the dust and rubble, then, BANG! - a large rock flying up against the underside metal as if trying to shoot through the floor. “These guys are professionals,” I assured myself. Smiling. Still hopeful.

Now it was completely dark. The kind of darkness that envelopes you; the kind you never experience living in or near a city. The only perceivable light radiated from a myriad of overhead stars, the occasional Masai flashlights flickering to our sides, and pairs of animal eyes darting along the road ahead. Gazelles. Zebras. And WHOAH a giraffe! We were told the trip from Naruk to Talek took 2 hours and it had already been that long. Surely we were close.

The dusty path then gave way to a mud, which overcame our tires as easily as melted wax. While helping us past our first mud trap, the Masai ranger said we were only about 40 minutes away. Twenty minutes later we stopped for almost an hour as the driver walked and studied a series of mud hills and streams in our direct path. After traversing over this and worse for another 2 hours, we were finally, completely, impenetrably stuck. From the darkness emerged the Masai to assist. Ester, Mini Me and I sat in the car as 11 of them tried pulling, pushing and lifting the car out of a patch of mud that went on for 70 yards. They left us to return with a vehicle that they claimed could clear the road. As they disappeared back into the night, we finally convinced the operator of our campsite, Peter, to pick us up. He arrived in a proper safari vehicle apologizing for our long journey, but annoyed that the cabbie had taken a different road than instructed on the phone; a road that he described as “the worst in the whole Mara.”

Akuna Matata ~ There Is No Terrible

The next day was one of the greatest of my life. We awoke early despite going to bed late for our first ever safari game drive. We were visiting the Mara during the rainy season, which meant we were the only people at our campsite; therefore, the only guests that the staff had to wait on and the only passengers in our safari jeep with Peter, also the campsite’s safari guide. The morning light shined clearly on the gently sloping green hills and the animals that covered them. All of the savannah wildlife I had seen in National Geographic, on the Discovery Channel, and at the zoo was there, grazing, napping, playing, hunting and… copulating.

After driving past herds of zebra, gazelles, topi and some wart hogs in our first few moments on the reserve, I asked Peter the likelihood of seeing lions. Not 15 minutes later we saw two mating in the tall grass.

It would be the first of several times we would come across lions over the next three days, and the first of two times I would see them copulating. Their love-making is quite a sight. It lasts for maybe 30 seconds and usually the female roars at the male upon completion because, if not done properly, his removal is painful. I joked with the Peter that I hoped she at least got dinner out of it, but apparently she doesn’t get that either. When mating, lions will not do anything for a week besides copulate a few to several times an hour.

The only way to describe our three days on the Mara is as absolute bliss. Not only was the entire campsite and staff at our disposal, the reserve was virtually deserted of tourists. Alone rolling over the grassland, we saw every animal on the Mara except for the elusive leopards and white rhinos. A highlight was watching brother cheetahs lazily lounge next to some shrubs, then attempt to hunt a jackal, only to be run off by a herd of elephants.

Even Peter, a Masai having lived on the Mara his whole life, described it as “amazing.” We also saw a number of baby elephants slowly amble and graze with their mothers and aunts, cousins and sisters. I’ve decided there is nothing cuter in the world than a young elephant. They play with their trunks; whirling them in the air, over their heads, curling them tightly, launching them quickly. This one is giving me a good luck pose!

Our morning walk through the reserve on the second day was also memorable. We told Peter that we were interested in walking rather than driving, so he drove us into the park entrance and gave us a pep talk before sending us off:

Peter: So you know. There is no, like, animal insurance. If you get stepped on by an elephant, that’s it (clapping hands hard). Now if an elephant charges you, run down a slope. And get out of the wind. They smell you from far away. They don’t like crossing water, so try and run across a river. If a hippo charges, they are fast. Run straight ahead then make a sharp turn in one direction. If a water buffalo charges, go up a tree.

(Big Natalie and Ester looking at each ot

her wide-eyed and laughing. We also know there are not many trees or rivers.)

BN: Do you still want to do this?

Ester: Yes. (laughing)

BN: Do you still want to take her? (pointing to Little Natalie)

Ester: Yes. (laughing) This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done.

Peter: If you come across a lion, DON’T RUN. Try and look big.

BN: I have a whistle. Should I use that?

Peter: Yes.

BN: Can I use that on all of the animals?

Peter: Yes

BN: Shoot. I forgot my pepper spray in the tent.

Peter: I don’t think you will have a problem (slowly, gazing past us at the land)

Yeah, a whistle against a lion. Anyone willing to take that bet?

We weren’t alone though. Accompanying us was Daniel, a very funny Masai who the day before, without being asked, told Ester he was too young to get married. For the rest of the trip we privately referred to him as Ester’s future husband.

Ester’s finance entertained us with stories about the Masai as we strolled through the reserve for the next 4 hours. He told us that the Masai send their teenage sons into the wilderness for a week of hunting training where they only eat meat, blood and milk. They must kill several types of animals with their spears, including an elephant. If they run away, the others will spear them.

I asked him if the Masai ever used guns. Ester often had to translate into and out of Swahili since his English was poor. He would talk, she would start laughing, then pause, and retell me. He claimed that the Masai were too hot-headed to own guns because whenever neighbors quarrel they spear each other. He also said there was deadly poison at the end of his spear. Later that afternoon Peter told us that the poison was found only on the arrow tips, not on the spears. Daniel lost quite a bit of credibility with me with that one, but whether real or creative, his stories were fascinating nonetheless.

Through talking with Daniel, we also learned that the Masai were allowed to take their herds of cattle onto certain parts of the reserve at specific times. The indigenous animals, particularly the carnivores, move to the other side of the park because they are afraid of the Masai. Peter obviously had us walk through the area with the cows and few wild animals, although he didn’t make that clear in advance. This is quite common I’ve noticed with Africans; they do not fully, directly explain themselves like Americans, which can be frustrating for me at times.

We walked past zebras, gazelles and a large family of giraffe, but no elephants, hippos, water buffalo, or lions. Gesturing wildly, Daniel proclaimed that two weeks prior he and his brother had killed an adult male lion that had slaughtered their cattle. He also proudly offered that the animals run when they see the Masai’s inconspicuous, vibrant clothing. Ester and I felt more secure after learning this, even as we passed along a grassy clearing strewn with bones. Daniel looked at the remains and said, “Lions eat here.”

Tukutuku Kenya ~Rough Kenya

Walking through Mumias on the first evening I sensed a difference from Uganda; a subtle underlying disturbance. The people did not smile and greet me as I passed; they eyed me studiously and distantly. When we disembarked from matatus during our trip to the Mara, people would flood toward me, harassing me, asking me where I was going, pleading and cajoling, occasionally just sticking their hand in my face for money. I now understand why Ugandans describe Kenyans as “rough.”

Kenyan culture is distinct from Uganda, as is their land. Western Kenya is the country’s agricultural basket, but its fertility can’t hold a mango branch to Uganda. The only crops I saw sail by my matatu window kilometer after kilometer were maize and sugar cane. At market maybe one person sold overripe bananas and a couple of vendors offered mangos. Ester, who is Ugandan, but spent most of her life in Mumias, tells me that Kenyans import their fresh produce from Uganda.

Ester also explained Mumias life to me. It is a small city home to a large sugar company that attracts people looking for work from tribes all over Kenya. One night after dinner in the Mara Ester said:

“It’s all mixed up. The Masai are in Mumias too. They come. They come from all over [Kenya] to get work. Most people just get up in the morning and go to town. They sit all day. Try to get a few shillings. So many people are idle.

Maybe they can afford to go to school, but not food. They don’t take breakfast. At lunch they go home for sugarcane. You see them. You see them walking with just sugarcane. Maybe they take dinner at night. A lot don’t go to school…

So many people are idle. They come and they live in horrible conditions. They pay rent, but the place is no good.”

I asked her why the people who never found work in Mumias didn’t return home. She shook her head and said, “They don’t have money. They can’t save the money for the ticket. They just die there and are buried there. ”

This is not simply a Mumias story, but an African one. I watched a documentary on suffering in urban South Africa the other night and shook my head. It revealed a situation that I now understand; that I have now witnessed: people languishing in cities and towns with nothing to do.

An article in BBC Focus on Africa described African urbanization rates rivaling that of China and India, which surprised me. The following statement, that African economic development fell far behind, did not. Countless impoverished rural Africans move to cities attracted by the prospect of jobs, services and infrastructure not available in villages and small towns. Some move and do find work. Maybe some are able to educate their children. Others might have running water. But many suffer in slums with no jobs, no education, no clean water, no food, no money, no opportunities. So many people are idle.

Rest of Kenya pictures here.