Impressions Sugary Sublime

Here are some recent images from around the sugar company in Lugazi.


A woman walking at dusk along a sugar company road


Fighting peacocks - the birds are brought from India and roam the plantation property


Flowering gardens are common along the central grounds


Factory at sunset

Negatives as Positives

I was sitting in the shop one evening a few weeks ago when the normally quiet and unruffled Ester suddenly widened her eyes and told me she just remembered she needed to tell me something.

“Last night little Sylvia told me that the father used to inject them in the village.”

“What?” I said my eyes widening as big as hers.

She repeated herself. Then my head began spinning.

Into my mind flooded all the stupid things the father had done out of ignorance and poverty and possible madness. And into my mind also wandered the public service announcement I saw with Ester some months back on TV: a doctor cautioning a family against using the same needle when administering medication to different family members.

“Can you imagine one family using the same needle?” Ester had said laughing.

Yeah, now I could.

“I am guessing that the father reused the needles?” I asked Ester.

“Yeah, I asked the kids and they said he kept the same ones in the house.” I looked at her in disbelief.

“Did he use them on himself too?”

“That is what Sylvia said.”

I dropped my head into my hands. The father was HIV positive.

We had the two youngest tested for HIV the first day we took them in several months ago suspicious that they might be infected as the mother had recently passed from the disease and the little ones were so sick. Richard had also been tested in the summer prior to his surgery; all were negative.

“Okay. Tonight ask the kids the last time the father injected them. Be sure to ask them if he did it when they visited during Christmas. We need to rule out the possibility of him doing it since we took them last June.”

Ester nodded. She understood the importance of the time frame: HIV will sometimes not show up on tests until six months after becoming infected. Ester questioned the kids and to our relief they said the dad hadn’t injected them recently. Now it was time to test them.

So a couple of Saturdays ago as the three youngest, Rachel, Sylvia and Beatrice, played on the patio outside the Snack Shop in late morning sun, excited as usual to be at a shop they knew was established for them, their photos decorating the walls for all in town to see, Mama Ester finished a few tasks at the business before they departed for the hospital; the kids not knowing where they were going and what was about to happen.

“I’ll meet you here when you get back,” I said to her, anxious to get the results.

A couple hours later they returned, Ester climbing the shop’s steps with an even face, the girls in tow, the two youngest looking as if they recently shed tears.

“They are okay?” I asked uneasily. She nodded smiling.

“Good,” I sighed handing the little ones some pancakes for their troubles.

Meanwhile, Richard was having small procedure at the end of the week; the doctor was to remove a piece of bone for biopsy.

“Ask them for another HIV test while they are doing the procedure,” I told Ester.

A week later Richard and Ester returned from the hospital. Ester said the procedure went well, but the boy was in pain. I frowned; ineffective pain meds were all African hospitals could offer.

“Did they get the HIV results?” I asked her.

“Yes. He is negative.”

“Good,” I said deflating with relief.

Now it was time for Aggie’s test. I was concerned about my oldest since we recently had to chase off some boyfriends and previous to us taking her in, she had been chased off by her father to be married to an older man. It was becoming too difficult to coordinate taking her to the hospital without removing her from school, which she attended until the evenings Monday through Friday and half the day Saturday.

“We need to get Aggie tested now. We can’t keep putting this off. Let’s just take her to the lab here in town,” I finally said to Ester a few evenings ago. Soon thereafter Aggie showed up to the Snack Shop on her way home from school, darkness spreading against the sky.

“Aggie. Before you go home, you come with me,” I said to her. She followed me to the lab, sat down, and yelled and squirmed as the technician stuck the needle into the crook of her arm. I tried asking her about the recent running competitions at school to distract her. She had proudly announced to me when she saw me at the shop that she was selected to run on behalf of the school in a meet taking place in Mbale – a district about a four hour’s drive away.

“You got to go because you were the fastest?” I had asked excitedly. She smiled bashfully and nodded.

“Very good, Aggie!” I was very proud of her, never mind the fact that she was a sixteen year-old running against eleven year-olds.

But as the needle hung from her arm for several long moments she couldn’t remember why she was so excited about running for her school and getting to ride on a bus for probably the second time in her life, the first just a few months ago when she went to Entebbe as part of a class trip to see the zoo and airport, and I tried to forget for those long moments as the needle pulled her blood, watching red flood into the tube, why we were there in that eight by eight foot lab with the stinking latrines in the courtyard just outside, and I tried to forget for the thirty minutes thereafter, waiting dully for the test results, just as I had tried to forget all those previous weeks, this belittling my assurance, reproaching my peace of mind, and I didn’t realize how anxious I was until the little woman in the lab handed me the results and I looked down at the handwritten notes and ran outside, bounding across the center of town for some 50 yards, splashing through the soggy red soil, running up the crumbling shop steps, shoving the paper in Ester’s face, her brow furrowing as she read it aloud, “Agnes. Female. 16 years. Bloo-“

“No! Read the bottom!”

“HIV Negative!” She says her face spread in a huge smile.

“Yes! HIV Negative! They are all negative!” I practically yelled.

“Yes! That is so good! So good.”

Kids playing at Shop before HIV tests - and yes, B2 is wearing a Black to the Future T-shirt! ;)

School Daze

It has been scorching hot here these last two days, coinciding with this week's "fielding" activities at the local school whereby the schoolchildren forgo their regular classroom learning and participate in track and field events. Some of you have been curious as to what the classes and schools look like, so below are some pictures. You can see more of them at my flickr page.

Jumping rope during break time


School yard and latrines


There are signs painted and erected all over the schools here reminding the children how to behave. Some are actually quite amusing, others are sobering reminders of the unique challenges the children here face.


Kids hanging out in classroom doorway - there are usually several classrooms in one concrete block.


Kids don't have their own chairs and desks - they are usually crammed together on benches.


Race time!

All Things Both Great and Small (A Rime of Lessons Learned)

Anytime you do something for the first time there are bound to be mistakes made substantial and insignificant that make the first few steps of your new venture wobbly. You sort of stumble along initially with no small amount of adrenaline and energy surging you through your fresh undertaking with the anticipation that in a few months time your endeavor won’t take so much focus, that the bumps will smooth over with the knowledge you acquired through first-hand experience. New jobs, parenthood, traveling abroad, living in a new city, new co-workers, new circles of friends – they all take some getting used to and inevitably you will learn from them and unavoidably at times you will learn the hard way. Okay, now imagine all the things listed above sort of happening at once in a place so different you can’t believe you are still on the same planet.

Well, as my year in Uganda winds to a close in just a few short weeks, I am already starting to look back, kind of looking ahead preparing to look back, mentally accustoming myself to the huge shift that is about to take place, going from a place where I am constantly dirty and constantly different, am the focus of constant attention and the target of constant questions, I will become reacquainted with what was formerly familiar: cleanliness and anonymity, and a host of other things precious, most importantly family, friends, Western food, high speed internet, oh and of course wine.

Below are some of the lessons I’ve learned both great and small. For those of you thinking of moving abroad, especially to establish or manage a sustainable project, hopefully this post will make you all the wiser.

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

1) Managing Tropical Diseases
If you start to feel under the weather, strange headache, stiff joints, unusually tired, diarrhea, go get a malaria test, but go to a good hospital preferably in Kampala rather than a local clinic or lab because the latter will almost always say you have malaria even if you don’t. For example, maybe the local lab will say, yes, you have malaria then treat you for it, but after you complete the treatment you still feel bad so then you go to the better hospital in the nation’s capital and they tell you, no, you don’t have malaria, you have another parasite, a thread worm, but you have to be careful because you can have something else and malaria, in fact many times you will have both since the two will work hand-in-hand weakening your immune system, and, of course, you can get malaria despite being on prophylactics. I've lost count, but I believe I’ve had positive malaria results somewhere around eight times now, two times I was so sick I ended up in the hospital and during my second hospitalization I had the pleasure of also having of H. pylori, an ulcer-causing bacteria, in addition to the severe malaria flare-up, so, really it’s actually advisable to also get full blood work and a stool sample along with the malaria test whenever you are starting to feel bad just to be sure.

"And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.

2) Managing Your Pocketbook
Get to know the costs of goods and services. Do all the purchases for your projects for some time yourself so that people you later leave in charge will have a more difficult time ripping you off. Ask people you know before you buy anything or take a boda or taxi anywhere how much they think the item or fare should cost because generally speaking when Ugandans see a muzungu they assume money magically grows from your hand and will attempt to overcharge you, sometimes in ways nothing short of ridiculous. At first this habit of fleecing might not annoy you so much and maybe you will take the stance that yes, I do have a lot more money than them relatively speaking, so it is somewhat fair, but then after you’ve been living with Ugandans for some time, sleeping under their roof, taking their food, laughing with them, commiserating with them, celebrating with them, mourning with them, forgetting oftentimes you are in fact a muzungu (maybe you’ll even catch a reflection of a fair arm in the rear view mirror of a car and think, what is a muzungu doing in here ? and then realize the reflection is of you) and so you feel like you are also a Ugandan in so many ways including that you like them do not have a job and have very little money and so the constant attempts to cheat you become offensive and tiresome and instead of thinking that such unofficial racially-based pricing policies are okay, you begin to think, but does Starbucks charge Bill Gates $10,000 for a latte just because he can afford it?

At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.

3) Managing Men
When strange men, including boda drivers, taxi drivers, or any of the scores of men just standing around or taking drink at the small bars in town want to talk to you, ignore them or politely, but quickly respond to their greetings while continuing to move. The first weeks I was here I would try and talk to everyone, but I quickly realized that 1) I would never get anywhere if I talked to everyone that wanted to speak with me because it is just too time-consuming, and 2) generally the strange men can be categorized as respectful, but not as good conversationalist and they will employ rather unoriginal tactics to accomplish their two objectives: sleeping with you and parting you with your money, and while they have been entirely unsuccessful with me in both attempts, their aims become exceedingly clear and boring after a short while.

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!

4) Managing Sustainable Projects
I had heard it was difficult, extremely so, to establish successful sustainable project in Africa – I had many, many tell this before, but they wouldn’t really say why. Well, here is the why.

When setting up sustainable projects, and I would imagine through the entire course of administering them, operate with extreme skepticism of all people involved regardless of how sincere they are, how much they may sweet talk you, particularly if those assisting you with the project administration and management are not direct beneficiaries; in fact, assume these people are always looking to take something on the side for themselves in addition to whatever you agree with them openly. And never, under any circumstances have one person or a group of people who know each other be responsible for everything, including finances, reporting, oversight, management, etc. There must, must, MUST be layers of accountability and no one point of contact. To be sincere, charities here regardless of the size and level of funding are viewed as gold mines. Working for a charity in Africa is like working for a blue chip company in the West – they are well-paying, highly-coveted jobs. Why? Well, because charitable organizations, unlike everything else here in Africa, receive a continuous stream of revenue by wealthy outsiders who have a vested interest in seeing that their projects continue. In other words, Africans know that in most cases the money will keep coming generally no matter what happens. It is exactly the opposite of charities in the West where the low-paying work is done out of compassion, so BE CAREFUL!

I just had the pleasure of meeting an American woman who set up a charity that operates as a support group for AIDS/HIV orphans. A wonderful woman with a big heart decided to try and offer support to children affected by HIV some nine years ago, but for some reason or another, and candidly I think rather foolishly, hadn’t come to visit her programs in person in as long. And over the course of the last nearly decade she has had one person responsible for running her organization, one person responsible for receiving the money and in-kind donations for the kids, one person reporting to her results and finances, etc. and as she sat describing to me the things she has seen during her less than two-week trip, including some weird situation with an interpreter that her one contact insist they use and finding half the boxes of clothes she had shipped to him for the kids still sitting in his home, I just shook my head and told her that this guy she has left in charge of everything is just stealing from her and she needs to slowly take all control away from him, completely reorganize, take inventory, consult an attorney and not send this one guy working for her anything in the meantime, but that she also shouldn’t confront him or act like she is suspicious of him as he will probably bolt and take all of her organization’s possession, including a car, microscope, computer, etc. with him. I didn’t tell her that the little work she did see while here, the orphans’ meeting she attended, one of the meetings that has supposedly been taking place regularly these last nine years could very well have been a shame, the kids not really beneficiaries of her program and this guy could have just told the villagers to bring some kids together for the visiting muzungus to look at and they wouldn’t know any different because of the language barrier. And at the end of my conversation with her I thought, God, I’ve made some mistakes, but at least I figured it out in a month and not nine years!

`God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus! -
Why look'st thou so?' -"With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross."

5) Managing School
When it comes to school for kids under your care there are some things you should keep in mind. First, buy them sturdy black sneakers that Velcro and not the standard patten-leather school shoes because all the wear and tear coupled with the Ugandan red dirt and mud means the non-sneakers fall apart very easily, buckles crumpling apart, soles ripping to shreds, toes poking through holes, and require the constant annoyance of repair and polishing. Second, go talk to the kids’ teachers so that they might give more attention to your children. Your children are just a few in classrooms of scores, at times a hundred kids; one of many little bodies squeezed into hot, airless rooms crowded together on wooden benches, hand-made posters with lessons hung from the concrete walls, all the children looking the same in their school uniforms scribbling in small, flimsy exercise books with broken pencils with just one teacher trying to dictate lessons; if you want your child to have a bit more of an edge in learning, go talk to that teacher.

"The sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.

6) Managing Wishes
If you are looking after children who were once destitute and often without basic living requirements, they will find happiness in and be thankful for the smallest things you give them, and although they are never demanding or act entitled, in fact, hardly ever even ask you for anything, they do, nonetheless, enjoy their new lives and its new benefits so much so that maybe at times your four-year old, having spent the afternoon with you in your snack shop, keeps telling you she is hungry despite just being fed an entire plate of food complete with meat, matoke, nakati, rice and beans for lunch, despite also just being given a pancake (a fried sweet made of cassava flour and ripe bananas), despite also just being given a cowpea samosa (a fried pocket filled with cowpeas, which are like big lentils), know that your child is just trying to eat as possible because her previous life didn’t include so much food and delicious food prepared and bought in town at that, her previous diet probably consisting of just boiled cassava and roasted maize from her family’s garden, and as much as you love her you turn to her and smile and tell her, No, Rachel. Your Mommy knows you are not hungry, do you want water instead? And oftentimes she will say, Yes, is water, because she still doesn’t quite grasp English well enough to properly ask for things and because, well, she just likes you giving her something, mostly, attention. Which bring me to one of the most important things I’ve learned here so far….

7) In a Word
There are so many, many children here – products of consistently one of the highest fertility rates in the world, about seven children per woman – it is impossible to step outside here in Uganda and not see so many children and all of them responding in very noticeable ways to your very noticeable muzungu presence. And all those children giggling and screaming and greeting you are at times without shoes and aren’t in school and don’t get all the food and medicine they need and drink dirty water from wells and springs and play in fields of filth with toys of trash – balled up plastic bags and old bicycle tires, smashed water bottles and bent bottle caps. And these dirty, shoeless, undernourished and poorly educated children, believe it or not, despite lives of poverty as we would describe it, are incredibly, inspiringly joyful. In fact, Ugandan children are in my humble opinion generally happier than American kids who are blessed with proper nutrition and regular schooling and modern medicine and modern homes and mattresses and toys and TVs and Segas - children who have everything in some senses, but little to none in others.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

Of course extreme circumstances like drought and war and natural disasters and the like withstanding, African children are refreshingly content and beautifully resilient despite their relative lives of need and want and I can only conclude that their happiness is an outcome of their culture of inclusion: African children are a part of expansive African families and clans and tribes giving them a sense of belonging, a sprawling context and substantial support to their lives. And in seeing so many glad, but “poor” children, I have learned what a child really needs to live successfully, more than food, water, clothes, shelter, medicine, or educations. A child really, truly, deeply needs more than any one other thing essentially is love.


He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."

The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

Time After Time

They say you can’t travel thorough time, but I can and do all of the time, actually oftentimes moving forwards and backwards at once, my head spinning with thoughts on what has happened and what is about to occur. I engaged in this type of time warp in my old space, during my time in the fast-paced West where unlike here most people think of all times except the present, spending most of their time lagging in the past and accelerating into the future. And as I am just about to reenter that old space that mixes the former and the following, as I verge on breaking the time-space continuum, I find that I am no longer thinking of only the present here and now, which I have been doing for some time, for these many months; I am preparing as it were to leave this space and return to the future, and I find myself more and more of the time thinking of exactly that, moving back and forth.

Nearly a year has passed since I came to Uganda and nearly 10 months since I first met my beloved five children. It is impossible to really ascertain much less describe how much I have changed during that time, as well as how much the children have developed. I think back to the places we occupied before, me in a comfortable Western life complete with luxury cars and fancy flat screens and high speed internet and paved roads and quality medicine and quality food and quality everything and they in impoverished Third World existences of mud houses and unclean water and field labor and uneducated minds and poor nutrition and poor medical treatment and poor everything , and how our lives crashed into wild convergence this last year and how our lives will swiftly diverge breaking apart again in just a few short weeks, in a time too soon happening.

Thinking back to the children they were when we found them, sometimes I want to laugh. Rachel the first few months we had her took to opening and shutting doors in the Balaza’s home over and again, me realizing later that she engaged in this rather annoying habit because the kids’ home and those they visited in the village didn’t have doors, opening and closing a door was in fact for her an endlessly fascinating form of entertainment. And fast-forwarding to now, likewise the three youngest girls to this day insist on bathing at their jaaja’s (grandparents) because the house has a shower head, which still doesn’t yield hot water, but a shower head nonetheless, which the children stand under squealing and splashing, revealing in the novelty of (sort-of) modern plumbing.

Thinking back to the children they were, sometimes I want to cry. Despite knowing that their lives have altered drastically, the images of those five desperate faces in the village that me, Ester, Aunt Vinnie and Sumete first found last June still haunt my mind, the past lingering into the present pressing ominously against the future. I see those faces again in my memory, in recalling what was, and am reminded of them, and what still is, at times when I turn on the TV, floating before my eyes again in the aftermath of earthquakes and famines, floods and wars, tiny faces that are at once tense and apathetic, shocked and hopeless, ruined from the past, tortured in the present, uncertain of the future; I knew those faces before, didn’t understand them until now, and will commiserate them forever going forward: those are the young faces of trauma.

And in thinking ahead, imagining the lives we will lead, me and my children, sometimes I am excited; for me to be back in the comforts of modern society and the like-minded, to be clean and understood, to be healthy and heard, to eat well and to be anonymous, for that I am anxious; and for them to continue their lives with the comforts that Africa can at the very least offer: regular food, clean water, educations, something that passes for health care and, most importantly, love.

And in thinking ahead, imaging the lives we will lead, me and my children, sometimes I am scared. Will I be able to catch the things that fade and fall through time and space? Will the children be forced back into their dark pasts if not for bright futures? What will remain when dreams and expectations, intentions and understandings are entangled in the circles of backwards and forwards in the gaps of here and there? I think back, I think ahead, my mind racing out of the past and into the future, who I was, who I will be, who they have been, who they will become; I consider, I dream, I hope, I wonder…time after time…

After my pictures fades

And darkness has turned to grey

Watching through windows

You’re wondering if I’m okay

Secrets stolen from deep inside

The drum beats out of time

If you’re lost

You can look

And you will find me

Time after time

If you fall

I will catch you

I’ll be waiting

Time after time

Time after time

Time after time

Something to Call Their Own

Africa is very much a culture of community, more precisely it is a society revolving around the family. What’s yours is also your brothers, including your children, what’s yours is also your nieces and nephews and cousins and second cousins, and if you are a woman, what’s yours is also your husband’s entire family. The communes that are families provide a security that is otherwise lacking here. In the United States we often want big daddy government to help us solve all our problems, from health care to finances to job security to natural disasters to vulnerable children to worker’s rights; in Africa, a continent rife with ineffective and inefficient government, daddy’s big family serves the same purpose. And when problems arise, as they inevitably do, they are handled with a certain African protocol, with an eye towards who or whom in the family should handle any given situation bearing in mind matriarchs and patriarchs and relations between the people involved and in-laws and who lives where and who is married to whom and so on so as to not step on toes, so as not to offend, to avoid appearing as if you are trying to undermine or sabotage another; African families members are dependent on and generous with one another in many ways that puts Americans to shame, but are oftentimes also cautious and untrusting of each other. It is tricky to insert yourself into these familial relationships and graces without an understanding of African culture and the specific dynamics of any given family.

And so now you may have an idea of some of the many challenges I’ve faced in setting up projects on my needy children’s behalf: the contention between family members whispered to me in private meetings around dinner tables and the open clashes between the family and outsiders I’ve involved on the projects and the all the whirling rumors and innuendo. And so now you may also understand how sharing works here and how individual ownership of any given thing from knickknacks and shoes and books to businesses and homes and farms does not have, like most everything else, quite the same meaning as it does in the United States.

And so now you might also see why it is amusing that Richard, my 14-year-old with the chronically infected leg, has taken to locking the toys given to him by my mom, his Jaaja Muzungu, in the flimsy cupboard crammed to the side of the kid’s small sitting room. He of course lets his sisters and little cousin play with them, more than willing to share, but he eyes them closely, watching them for unnecessary roughness or absentminded placement, sweeping up the dump trucks and motorcycles, sticking them into the cupboard after playtime is finished with a big grin, chatting and laughing, his pleasure impossible to mask in finally owning the shiny and unique. For a kid that maybe only had two torn shirts and a pair of pants to his name some months ago, not even having a toothbrush, a book, a hangar, a towel, a bed, a sheet, a pencil, a jacket to call his own, he was understandably a little possessive in a manner unusual to the culture, humorously so.

And it was also amusing last night as the kids bent over a large map I bought them, staring I suspected for the first time at the outline of the world and its wide lands and spacious seas and mazes of borders and networks of rivers, having asked the kids to find Uganda, which they did after a short while then asking them to find America and noticing that my 16-year-old, Agnes’ eyes continued to search over Africa scrutinizing the names of countries and cities in its midst for the letters U.S.A.

“No,” I said laughing, “it’s over here,” pointing across the large laminated page to the far right explaining to her the differences between the continents and oceans, which I knew she understood because I had just read through the neatly-printed notes in her exercise book on the subject. I saw little lights in her head flickering on connecting what she had learned in school with the map. Then as we tried hanging the map on the wall my four-year-old Rachel pointed to the wall opposite where another educational poster hung of the human body and she said, “Mommy, skeleton.”

And I responded surprised and proud, “Yes, Rachel it is a skeleton.”

And she said, “Skeletons’ bad.”

And then I made a face and giggled saying, “No, skeletons aren’t bad, they are good. You wouldn’t be able to move without them.” She didn’t understand exactly what I was meant I am sure, but she knew what a skeleton was and she wouldn’t have known and maybe never would have known if it weren’t for my being there through strange twists of fate and all the tremendous, absolutely critical support I’ve been given from friends, family and especially my parents to help these kids, so many close to me giving to five needy kids they don’t even know on the other side of the world.

And then I looked back up at the four older kids all still crowded around the map showing each other different places, eyes glowing, minds buzzing, the whole world opening up to them and it became all the more clear that they had in fact never even seen a world map before, and MIA’s lyrics flashed through my head:

I put people on a map who’ve never seen a map

I showed ‘em something they’ve never seen

And I hope they make it back

And I felt as if I stepped into the song, feeling like I was giving these children tools to make their lives better, but knowing that I could only do so much and they would have to do the rest with what they were given. But I was hopeful, am hopeful that they will proceed wisely since I know how far they have come, watching their tremendous progress, their great strides, their hard work before my eyes, witnessing reminders of what they’ve gained from knowledge in school subjects to life lessons taught at home, learning geography and biology as well as how to take care of what is theirs, toys and maps, family and love.

Rebounding in the Big Sky

Sitting in the back of the taxi van bumping along pot-holed, congested, polluted Jinja Road, beat-up cars and disheveled lorries and sagging taxi vans running past each other and bodas lining the road’s edges, I stared out the window into the grey afternoon, thick equatorial clouds squeezing the dark green hillsides. I had grown accustomed to the route having traveled often between Lugazi and Kampala, I knew all the rest stops, the speed bumps, the markets, the shanties. Watching the world rush by, the world now familiar, but lingering in the back of my mind, soon again to be foreign, I withdrew inwards, daydreaming, listening to my Ipod.

Big sky
I’m gonna hurt you
Big sky
you’ll remember this
Big sky
up above the rain
How can I ever put a stop to it
look you in the face again?

How could I stop? Where did I restart? Why was I feeling so disconnected? No, I knew, I knew: the uncertainty of my projects and the thieves trying to destroy them, the lingering strangeness of my surroundings and the impending shift from it. I was about to reemerge, about to surface from dark, cool waters back into my old comfortable life, entering a strange vortex of the familiar and foreign and what was once one would then, poof, become the other and it would be confusing and maybe a bit upsetting and all the while I was acclimating, readjusting to life as I had known it for decades before I would be thinking how are my projects going? what about the kids? but then how long would I think that 15,000 miles away; I might as well be on another planet as it certainly was a different world. I was drifting, losing sight, feeling worn and muddled.

When I’m breathing
When I’m sleeping
I can’t think of nothing else
All my longin'
All my waitin'
All the things you never felt
All weepin'
All my wailin'
All my standing on the shelf
How am I ever going to get through this
back to myself again?

I stared into the fields, the workers dotted along the hillsides, digging as they did everyday; I watched the vendors along the street side carrying baskets of fruit on their heads, pushing their wares as they did everyday; most here are without much choice as to what they do, performing their daily tasks without mind of the monotony; maybe there was assurance in the routine, maybe they felt grounded in the certainty of their habits.

But where was my center? What was holding me, what was holding all this together? I stared through the grimy taxi window dust and exhaust blowing in my face, looking into the billowing clouds masking the huge blue sky beyond and continued to listen.

Won't you say it isn't so?
Watch me fallin'
See me fallin'
I slipped through
the vortex of the sky
Darkness and light
That’s what’s inside
Darkness and light
It’s what’s inside

And in listening I recalled. I recalled what I already knew; what I had known all along. I just had to remember what I had forgotten…

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

I wrote the above paragraph last spring, just a few weeks into my African stay, questioning who I would be when confronted with then unknown challenges while spending months on unfamiliar terrain; yes, within all of us is incredible potential for darkness and light falling across the span of our lives filled with endless possibilities in what we experience and encounter, and the one certainty in all the uncertainty is choice: how will you respond? Which will you be? Darkness or light?

The last couple of weeks and their corresponding blog entries have been the dark sequel to my story, the sort of Godfather II to my saga. Weighted and disappointed, bruised and disgusted, I entered the dimmest hours after months of slowly walking away from the light. I felt everyone around me to be suspicious, a society fat with poverty and corruption forces you to be untrusting, and my particular circumstances absolutely required me to be calculating and dubious, but in guarding your interests, in protecting yourself and that which you hold dear, you cannot forget the good, you cannot forget those around you who are honest and faithful and inspiring because then you are no longer a little bit of light, darkness has taken over.

In remembering this, in considering all this while staring out the taxi van, pollution and dirt whirling from passing trucks obscuring the peaceful emerald green horizon, I recalled a conversation that I am sure never to forget. A young American woman and I were speaking some months back about the extraordinarily unscrupulous things people will do here in the land of the have-nots: stealing from family members, leveraging disabled children, using charity for personal enrichment, etc. Then the hippyish teenager donning African jewelry and a long flowing dress, dirty feet and unkept hair whimsically said, “I love them even though I can’t trust them.” I watched her dance across the room after she said it, staring hard at her, I am sure my face furrowed in confusion, unable to decide if it was one of the stupidest or most profound things I had ever heard.

But in the months that I’ve been here I’ve come to realize it doesn’t much matter which you think the statement is, naive or compassionate, sophomoric or philosophical, childish or selfless, it is just true: here you learn to love people even if you can’t trust them, here you learn to love the darkness as well as the light; in a word you learn forgiveness.

Through the Looking -Glass

After living with Africans for nearly a year I was beginning to feel trapped in a wonderland; a wonderland of surreal characters speaking another language, some there to genuinely help me, others to genuinely hurt me, but all completely, utterly ununderstandable, their words at time falling on my ears like jibberish. I had to get away for a few days. I was finally, just absolutely having it – having it with Africans and their bizzare ways. I needed to step outside the looking-glass, outside the closing in absurdity that was Africa, outside my projects and their web of problems and regroup, refocus, re-energize; gain a brighter, bigger , more beautiful perspective. I felt myself growing hard, weighted, cynical; I felt trapped on the other side of a looking-glass.

The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

So I spent a few days at The Red Chili Hideaway – a compound just outside of Kampala frequented by ex-pats, back-backers and aid workers galore. I found solace in speaking with a menagerie of interesting travelers and volunteers from all over the globe: a young British lawyer working death penalty cases in Malawi who revealed the horrors the prisoners and people awaiting trial endure: 180 people packed into a cell maybe 30 by 15 feet, sleeping at night sitting up with their legs on the shoulders of the people next to them, a whistle being blown every few hours so they can all turn at the same time and rest in a different position on the concrete, dying in prison en mass because they only receive one meal of beans and maize meal a day and medical treatment days too late, all the while waiting five, six, ten years for trial; or the South African woman working outside Gulu in the north of Uganda on a rehabilitation project for former child soldiers/child mothers and her work in getting the community to learn a marketable skill, her teaching them bead-making so that they might earn their own living after receiving hand-outs from aid agencies for nearly a quarter a century, many not ever learning how to provide for themselves; then there was the crazy young British man driving his car by himself from England down to Cape Town, having received 15 flat tires through a rugged expanse of Northern Africa alone, and then of course the equally crazy couple of energetic South Africans on a similar journey, riding their bikes from England to Cape Town, and, of course, the even crazier American doing the same north to south journey on his bike, but alone, but the most insane of all I didn’t actually meet, I only heard of him as a bit of a backpacker’s legend: a single man of an unknown origin, paddling, yes, paddling his canoe or kayak through the war-torn, collapsed-government Congo.

Their stories were fascinating, invigorating, inspiring and soothing; swapping tales and thoughts with the aid workers was particularly therapeutic:

Yes, you just need to get away sometimes; it’s the only way to cope. Yes, you grow a bit hard, not entirely befriending the people around you. Yes, everyone is always trying to get something from you. Yes, it’s hard going back home; nobody else quite understands what you’ve been through. Yes, development books can’t really teach you about how to run sustainable projects. No. No. I don’t know what I am doing in a few weeks when my project is over either. I’ll figure it out when I get home. I don’t know what kind of life I want anymore.

And so it was. A gated compound filled with Western food, a miniature swimming pool, dorms, tents, flushing toilets, beat-up vehicles, and, most importantly, people who spoke the same language, who had the same dreams, fears, passions, challenges, hopes, worries, aspiration, uncertainties, highs and lows; a walled-in sanctuary, a brief encounter with serenity and understanding. But. Then. Back to the ridiculous and the duplicitous looming outside…

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,
“You had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?”
But answer came there none—
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.

But going back through the looking-glass this time I felt more at peace, more in piece, with a clearer perspective like glass perfectly cleaned remembering all of the good and not just the bad around me, and my conversation with my real family waiting patiently in California, just six more weeks and you’ll be home!, as always offered important reminders; you’ve helped so many people already, you have to expect some of these things are going to happen, even major corporations suffer losses.

And, as always, the best reminder was the children. Despite anything else going on, stealing, cheating, lying, backstabbing, rumors, gossip, power-plays, insincerity, lapses in logic, lapses in integrity, I can always, always find solace and happiness in the kids, their laughter, honesty, purity and genuine gratitude are a constant source of strength and joy.

“Sylvia. Put on your new uniform so I can take a picture,” I asked my eight year old yesterday after returning from Red Chili, my little girl who didn’t know a single letter or digit when we took her in last summer and within a period of a few months learned enough to spell simple words and complete basic arithmetic; I was incredibly proud of her as she was of herself. She had been advanced from nursery school to primary school after one three month term and I knew she loved her new, big-girl school’s red and white gingham uniform.

Sylvia ran inside the house to put on the dress then me and her and the rest of the kids played and laughed in the late Sunday sun before I slipped to the children’s village with Aunt Jennifer to check on the land we had cleared and planted on behalf of the kids to ensure their food security when I leave in just a few weeks; happy children, growing food, bright futures… I felt okay despite all the troubles, all the absurdity...

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

part of the land we have cleared to plant crops for the children

The Matrix: In and Out

There are fewer things more difficult in life than finding yourself caught in a set of circumstances that force you to operate in a fashion that goes against your very nature, to find yourself confined in a situation that at once highlights the characteristics that comprise you at your core and also forces you to control or alter those defining qualities; it is a challenge of one’s strength, will, fortitude, resourcefulness and ingenuity.

Say, for example, you have been moving through your life, your entire life thus far, going to school, getting a job, starting a family, retiring, becoming grandparents, and so on, playing out patterns of existence, and then one day, like a shocking jolt, you realize it’s all a ruse and actually nothing was as you had always perceived it: rather than individuals carving unique paths, you were drones following a nefarious plan; you and everyone you knew were not people in cycles, but a cogs in wheels; you were not living a life, but stuck in a matrix.

How do you pull yourself out of the matrix? Could you even have the correct set of tools to guide you? Everything you knew until just now was just wrong. Maybe you would ignore the new found reality, pretend that you didn’t know - that everything was as it had always been? Maybe you would just hope that things would continue as they had, as if they didn’t require some kind of massive, scary change for everything to be right.

For those of you who might have been on this site a few days ago and now see, strange, a missing entry, no, your eyes are not deceiving you, and no, there is not a glitch in the matrix. In fact, I had posted a blog some days ago, but the evil machines are again looking for any opportunity to separate the muzungu from her money and some of those machines are at least partially computer literate and know this website; as such, the post was removed as it is not the time to reveal any information on the matrix that could be used against me.

So what is so difficult here? Everything and nothing. Like the matrix, most people here are not what they seem – you have to look closely, find the patterns and inconsistencies to know the truth. Everything can come crashing down if not played properly, and so I move with caution to ensure the machines will not continue to suck energy from me and my projects, but I have confidence as I have swallowed the little red pill of truth and have learned my true nature and how to control it… and so, yes, I am now for the remainder of my time here in an alternate reality, wholly untrusting.