Two weeks home

I am sitting at home, snug in front of a blazing fire with a warm sweater on and a scarf around my neck. I have a little bit of a cold - just enough to compel me to stay home and sit still for once. Life is quickly settling back into a routine, and the frenzied urgency of American life is taking back hold.

It's winter here, and the weather has been gloomy and overcast. I remember that once I liked this weather. I saw it as romantic and pensive; it was free license to be lazy and immobile. But right now I am thinking about Uganda's warm moist air one can just about drink, the braising equatorial sun, and the brief spontaneous baptisms of thundering rains.

I want to be practicing Rukiga (ru-chi-ga) and Luganda, learning about African history and politics. I want to be dancing with women in the village and learning how to make a new friend without sharing a common language. I want to remimber how simple life really is.

I want to live in the real world - not in a fantasy land of Toyota 2008 models, white carpets, and $300 sunglasses (or shoes, haircuts, purses, etc). The coffee we drink for $3 a cup - people in Uganda may grow the beans and earn less than $1 a day. They have HIV and malaria and worms and no clean water or electricity or health care. And we sit around discussing what the other thinks of the new Peppermint Latte at starbucks. Gross. I am not saying we're bad people, it's more that we're asleep.

We're not only asleep to the poverty and suffering - we are asleep to our immense power and capacity to change things. We simply have to decide that it is more important to bring balance to the world than it is to go on living in fantasy land. We have to realize that bringing the rest of world along would be more nourishing than the fake emotional food we consume - tv, cars, long hot showers, perfect bodies, home remodeling, dance clubs. It's not as though we even happy living here! Come on, we're miserable; spiritually malnourished; emotionally isolated.

I can't be happy - deep in my soul at peace happy - when so much of the world has so much suffering.

It's kind of like when your house is really messy, and your mind keeps stressing out about it, and you get a little paralyzed because the mess is so big that you don't even know where to start. You know how once you just START, once you start moving and cleaning and addressing the problem little by little, you start to feel more at peace.

That's how I feel, and I won't have peace until I start putting my efforts on the side of the scale to bring more balance to the world.

I feel as though sitting on a meditation cushion seeking spiritual awakening, and "taking care of myself" with expensive massages is not going to set my soul free. I feel like sitting still in meditation and listening to my breath simply allows me to percieve ever more clearly the hurt that exists in the world. The more I "treat myself" with pedicures, and shopping trips the more lost I feel.

In Africa I felt connected to life again, and now that I am home I feel like things are not right and they won't be quite right again until I get back.

Dayz wth Sara

It's Charity again, Saraz friend,.....

With all the perceptions I and everyone had about the Muzungu it turned out not to be true. She was just like any other person. That we knew right from the day that she didn't ran away the day of the floods!!!!,.... Each day was of such a great experience being wth Sara.

Actually suprisng one of our friends Timothy took her to one of the good hotels and guess what her comment was? That its a good place but she sees that all the time in Califonia! hmmmmm.....

Things became normal and we all treated her just like anyone else. I missed going with her to the village, I wonder what her first expression was, I am personally not comfortable with the village, and the fact that she was a muzungu! I wasnt suprised looking at the crowds in the pictures that were always following her, I even think nyakarambi people are more enlightened than other villages coz if she moved to mine....I am sure people would want to camp in my home to see even how the muzungu chews her food. Here everything good or unique is said to be like a muzungu or from bazungu or done like bazungu!!!!!!!!!!!

4 am California time

I am home. I absorb the words as I flip up the water facet handle to find clean, heated water limitlessly flow forth, just so I can splash off the bit of milk that spilled on my hand as I prepared my African tea this morning just before 4 am.

I continue preparing my tea, following the instructions from Clara's aunt; three parts milk, one part water, black tea (i use djarling), fresh ginger and a blend of spices called tea masala that includes things like cinnamon, black pepper, cardamon, nutmeg and others. As I flippantly turn on the stove, I don't worry about my electricity bill jumping unaffordably high just from making this pot of tea. Nor do I wonder if an unexpected "load shedding" might force me to resort to lighting the charcoal stove.

I don't begin boiling several pots of water for drinking water - or to prepare warm water for bathing this morning.

All the clothing I took with me to Uganda lies crumpled and warm, soft and smelling of dryer sheets - waiting to be folded. The red clay dirt has been washed away from my old jeans at the push of a button.

I don't make extra tea to put into a flask for the rest of the family nor do I start a big pot of white porridge. There is no one else here. My sister lives several miles away, and despite being the unmarried younger sister, I don't live with her.

As I pour this luxuriously, deliciously spiced tea into my favorite (and well missed) mug, I consider how it came to lay clean in the cabinet; placed there after being washed by a machine that swirled gallons of hot soapy water, and followed by a rinsing with more surging gallons of hot clean water. Wow.

It's still dark outside and I am wide awake. It may be 4 am here, but it's 2 pm there.

By day I am back in California - driving on smooth paved roads, past gutters that drain into a sewage system which flows underneath the roads. I spend the days reconnecting in increments with my much loved community of friends and family - turning my attention to the coming holiday. I am relishing the loving reaction of surprise and affection that I get every time I see someone again for the first time. It's beautiful and affirming. Throughout the day I feel so thankful and filled with gratitude for my friends and family. I know this will continue for some time as I re-engage my life in California.

But at night I return to Africa. I mean this as close to literally as I possibly can, considering the undeniable reality that I am in fact, physically in California. But there is a part of me, I perceive, that did not accompany me home. I know this sounds silly and over dramatic - but I am simply trying to describe the feeling that I have - my experience - and the only way I can describe it is to say that I feel split into two and stretched over the two places - a ghost like split - with a taut weave of cords or threads binding the two .

For the third night in a row I have woken utterly confused about where I am; I sit eyes-wide-open trying to remember. Seriously it's weird. I think it might be what it feels like to have Alzheimer's disease.

This morning I couldn't remember where I lived or who my roommate was. I was no longer asleep and sitting upright in bed racking my brain. An image of a dark skinned woman kept coming forward. Not Clara, but she looked like Clara. "No, I don't know that woman", I thought, "who lives here with me?", I asked myself, struggling to remember. "Laura!", I breathed in relief, the image of my actual roommate returning to me, orienting me to the correct continent and life I physically occupy.

I know that at this moment in time, Clara is sitting at the movie library - probably alone since Marcy, her only employee, traveled home to Kenya for the election. The girls who are out of school right now are probably with her - playing solitaire on the computer or dancing to music. I picture Millie energetically beating a broom (made from a collection of sticks tied together with string) to accompany the beat of the music as both she and Maris dance skillfully on the porch of the shop.

The men who sell newspapers on the street are thousands of miles away, I picture them determinedly bypassing women with baskets of oranges or bananas on their head as both compete for the attention of drivers who wait patiently for the police man to waive their lane through the intersection.

I wonder how Johnson's daughter Chantal is doing - the day I left she was in hospital being treated for malaria. She was doing much better and was expected to be sent home the next day, but I would like to have it confirmed that all is well.

Coming home, I am grateful for the generosity of attention I have received. I know that I am not unique in traveling to a distant country. I have no fewer than 5 other friends who've traveled to exciting places this autumn, and most of us have an experience in the somewhat recent past where we've traveled and loved another place and culture.

This was my adventure - and I do feel some sadness that it's in the past tense. I love my friends and family for wanting to share it with me. It makes it so much more real and tangible.

I love my friend Elizabeth for pointing out that it is also in the future tense. I feel truth in that.

While I was in Uganda I opened myself fully to it and connected deeply with it. Life normalized somewhat in the short time I was there and aside from the occasional hour or two I spent in the internet cafe writing this blog, my my whole being was there. Everyday I awoke with a sense of connection and curiosity, openness and presence to whatever the day might bring. Coming home I'd like to cultivate that same feeling wherever I am.

Amsterdam, the return

I am now sitting in precisely the same internet cafe as I did for my very first post over a month ago. I have just returned to the airport from a gorgeous excursion to the city center; just long enough to get my passport stamped, absorb the stunning canals and mismatched, patched together archtecture of red brick buildings, grey cathedrals and clock towers, and gluttony of tall blond men with striking blue eyes.

I haven't seen one speck of dirt. No. I mean it. Not only are the roads impeccably clean - only a cigarette butt here and there to be found, but literally every square inch of the city center is paved or cobbled or a canal. It's not just that there's not any dirt - there's not any earth to be found either.

My boots and the hem of my jeans are still caked with the red clay mud we passed through late last night (or was it only earlier today) after hopping over the drainage canal since for some reason the makeshift bridge we'd been using was gone. I am finding myself looking down and smiling. "Now where did that mud come from?" "Oh, that's right - it came from Africa"

My flight was uneventful, and fine except that the woman next to me somehow didn't understand that I'd been promised by Laura Kerr that headphones were the international signal for "don't talk to me". I didn't want to talk to her, to hear about her firm that she started or to answer her questions about my personal life.

As the plane left the ground, I wanted only to stay connected to the people and country that I really have come to love in such a short time. I felt so SAD to leave, in a way that I somehow did not feel when I left Bolivia.

I arrived early in the morning - and by 7 am the city was still completely dark and asleep and FREAKING COLD. Of course I am not wearing appropriate attire here, just a warm sweater and scarf (I bought a hat), and with nothing open I was starting to get really cold. So cold in fact that when a young man asked me "Do you speak English?", I could barely get my mouth to move to reply "Yes, but I'm American too and won't be much help."

Sam, it turned out is a college student who just arrived and (like any self respecting college student in Amsterdam) got really drunk with his friends the night before and was alone looking for someplace to feed his hangover. We decided to pool our efforts and found ourself a nice buffet of eggs and toast for a modest 9 Euros (I think that's like 20 dollars). Sweet. Afterward he suggested we go get a Heineikin (afterall we are in Amsterdam), but I declined, wanting instead to just walk around and see the city.

I feel good. So grateful. So grateful for this wonderful experience - I am definately a better person for having been in Uganda.

A few days ago I finally met Dr. Rugunda who I had been hoping to meet throughout my trip. He is a good friend of Richard Quint who is a physician I work with on health reform. Rugunda also happens to be the Minister of Internal Affairs for Uganda and is a lifetime civil servant and a right hand man to the Prime Minister of Uganda.

I was able to have lunch with him on Friday and afterward was invited to a dinner party with him, his wife, his son Kwame and his new wife Roberta, as well as a few other people. They were wonderful people. Before meeting Dr. Rugunda in person I heard nothing but good things about him. In a country where most government workers are sterotyped as corrupt, most people praised him as a rare breed of honorable civil servants. "At least", people said, "he's had no scandals that I've ever heard of". When I entered his office he was immediately warm and inviting and had a very large commanding presence.

The experience was a sharp contrast to my time in the village and with Clara. It was surreal driving around the same Kampala I'd been navigating with boda's and public taxi vans, but now in a nice SUV driven by the police. Dr. Rugunda reminded me greatly of the men and women I work with in the California legislature. Longtime public servants - good people - who chose their career out of a genuine desire to "make a difference" but whose expectations for change become steadily diminished. You can't be the passionate reform candidate when you're the long time incumbant. I recognized the all-to-familiar look I get at home from many older colleagues - amused condecension as they nostagically appreciate my youthful naiveity.

With an Ebola viral outbreak that had just been announced (3 months after the first indications of a strange viral disease), the just completed Commonwealth Summit, protests in which the opposition leader of their parliament was pretty badly beaten, among other major issues, there were loads of dicey topics for me to try to ask about. I figured here this is where my youthful naiveity pays off.

The next day I spent luxuriously ordering cocktails poolside at a swanky resort - trying in vain to get some sun on the rest of my body. It was pretty much the only day I spent doing anything of the sort. My awkward tan is just gonna have to be a testament to my decison to live normal life in Uganda...

Charity wrote such a nice post - I told her about my blog and realized it would be so much more interesting to have my friends there add their perspective, rather than just hear mine. My last days were such wonderful love fests of gifts and friendship. Charity actually asked a woman in her village to make for me a traditonal basket that "no mother allows her daughter to marry without one". So, now I'm all set. I was so touched that this beautiful basket was actually made especially for me! I am supposed to serve Kalo (a food made from ground millet) to my future husband out of it.

Bob, Clara and Charles wished me off at the airport - Charity and Agaba couldn't come for lack of space in the car. It was so so hard to say goodbye to everyone. I guess that's exactly how I wanted it - I wanted to connect - and when you do that leaving hurts.

So onward home. Thanks to all who cared to read my posts. Love to you all. I can't wait to see you!!!

Sara

FROM CHARITY SARAZ FRIEND!

Being a friend to Clara i was among the first people to know about the American visitor.Sara was her name, guess what; just like anyother African/Ugandan i expected a true ''American'', what do i mean by this; a typical muzungu, that is a white who cant eat certain foods,is only confirtable with the likes of five star hotels,can share a bed room,with the white persons perspectives that africans are not anygood but idiots,not educated and cant do anything good for them selves.It made me alittle bit uncorfitable and worried especially for clara the host because i knew it wld be alittle hard for her to try and make the muzungu not to run way!

why did i have this in mind....
its because of my past experience with people from the western world.Every muzungu comes with this idea that he/she knows more than any ugandan. They give this impression that Africans are nothing but stupid. i never figure out why, maybe its because of what is only written about africa and its people, everyone here knows how africans are thought of being bushmen, stay with lions in the wilderness(homes) and so they are more less wild.
But on the other hand i said to myself, why shld we(Ugandans) worry abt criticism, coz in the end its what everyone is scared of.
i thought 2myself that this is my home and its my responsibility so is evryones to make it a better place for even a muzungu to realise that theres the good in africans that most bazungu dont know yet.i went straight to clara and told her to relax and welcome the muzungu just like she would welcome anyother visitor in her house, she was not to put the skin colour differences in consideration.so she was to recieve Sara as Sara not as amuzungu!we all agreed to that and looked forward to meeting her. The 9th of november was getting closer eachday.

The 9th november came.......................
Oh mygoodness, everyone was waiting, though the unfortunate bit of it is that the galz ie me clara,and rita would be away that day to the village for a friendz traditional marriege ceremony.
You cant believe that our phones worked more than they had ever that day, Johnson and Agaba who were to pick her from the airport were not left to rest from their Phones, we called them each minute from the time she was to arrived.
There had never been any relief that occured to us than when Johnson told us that she looked very friendly and nimurungi munonga okukira abazungu abalarebire(that she is very beautiful, more than any muzungu he had ever met) you should have been there to see the excitment on our faces we got more excited and anxious to meet Sara.

I spend most of my time at Claras house but i wasnt there the time Sara was brought to the house, but i was told only good things that were already noticed about her be4 i met her myself. i was actually told that ninko mukigga(literally meaning that just like a mukigga,the hosts tribe, she was ok not a muzungu but Sara as in Sara her self)
I didnt take it wholesomely i had to first get used to her and know more about her, the truth for sure i was not so so free with her, i always tried to be conscience of what ever i said and did when with her...this happened an intensionally because of what experince i had with other bazunguz i happened to meet be4.

Each day Sara turned out not to be a real muzungu, she seemed to look at things in a more realistic way than anyother muzungu i had met be4. i liked her for that, but i again said to myself is she real or shes acting or something, maybe she wanted to study us and get stories to write and tell people back home but i neva said any of this to myfriends i just kept on thinking abt it.

It was one day wen i dropped all this craziness.... coz i realised she was not ''muzungu'',
we were in claras car we call it emamba coz it an old car, we re going to claraz video shop and it had rained heavily the previous nite, guess what the africa showed its self to Sara, floods were every where, we didnt have where to pass, clara cld not drive through herself, she was terrified, i was seated at the back seat worried abt the muzungu than myself, coz i was very sure that this was the most disgusting thing that would happen to make her ran away.It had to be someone else to help drive through,Sara sat relaxed, she could have been scared but didnt show it which was ok, but deep down in my heart i knew that she was going to ask clara to get her another place some where in the town maybe a hotel room, o as she moved around in town, she would meet fellow bazungu and find away of ranning away.can u imagine that craziness!!!!!!!!! oh my goodness it will take me more time to write it all that i experinced with Sara, it alot more .........................u want to know everything????????..........next time....wil be back to write it all i cant do it now but its unbelievable.................

Staying here

The title of this post is a little alarmist since it may give the impression that I am hereby announcing my intent on ditching my return ticket and staying in Uganda -- a thought which I admit has crossed my mind, but the practical realities of such an idea quickly assert themselves.

Staying here is what I am trying to do, while I am still actually here. Facing the last days of this trip, and the gripping reality that I am about to go back to (ominous music begins)....WORK.... it's been a struggle to accept that I will leave here without having some kind of transcendental life altering spiritual awakening like the one described by the author of "eat, pray, love" or without having any kind of deep understanding of what I am actually seeing and experiencing living in the middle of what is regularly referred to as one of the slums of Kampala.

Reading the book "eat, pray, love", Elizabeth Gilbert writes how it was only after deciding to spend one year traveling to Italy, India and Indonesia did she realize that all three destinations shared the same first letter, "I". reflecting her voyage of self discovery. In looking at my recent travels to Bolivia and Uganda I put the first letters together to happily discover the letters B and U. B U. Be You. My own new mantra to take home with me.

Despite this fun little realization, I still feel a little jealous of the nutritious, beautiful, fulfilling, peaceful experience that the author of "eat, pray, love" describes at the end of her trip. My experience honestly doesn't feel like that. Instead of returning home all serene and at peace you can expect me to come home covered with mosquito bites and huge bruises (the result I believe of my very limited carb heavy diet and countless bumpy bus and microbus taxi rides). I've gained weight - and got a great tan on the upper half of my body.

More challenging for is not to become overwhelmed by the incomprehensible contrasts and heart breaking sights -- massive piles of garbage on the side of the road, (or as I found today) being industriously used to fill pot holes and a bridge over a water drainage trench. The ubiquitous Toyota Land Cruisers bypassing a disabled woman begging for spare change, her bent back forcing her to walk on all fours as she manuvers speeding cars. Reading the political cartoon in the paper depicting women in Gulu living in IDP camps who, facing hunger, have been forced into prostitution selling sex for 200 shillings (about 15 cents). The cartoon features a fat man asking a woman, "would you rather die in 4 days of hunger or 10 years from AIDS".

I don't want to look around and just see the poverty and desperation - because there is so much more - but it's hard. Really hard to see the beauty underneath/within/throughout the suffering.

Clara's water is now shut off. Something happened to the pipes, and she'll probably have to bribe someone to come and fix it anytime in the next month. So no running water. As it was the only running water we had was through one single tap in the bathroom/washroom. Now she's forced to pay a young boy to fetch water in yellow jerrycans - the same ones I watched people carrying around the village. The boy is maybe 8 years old and those suckers are freaking heavy. He lugs 4 full ones over and earns about 1000 shillings (less than a dollar).

Last night we went to a club which charged a 10,000 shilling cover.

At the same time the house was hit with an unexpected "load shedding" so no water no electricity. Just like in the village. Clara tells me that her electricity bill reaches nearly 100 dollars per month - and this is with regular load shedding and few of the electrical appliances that fill our houses. In fact, their per unit cost is about 3 times ours. Water is similarly unaffordable. Just the basic necessities of sending her children to a decent school, food, water and electricity leaves her regularly in the red. She's very well off, at least she owns her own home and doesn't pay rent....

I can totally understand people at home probably looking at these posts and finding them unreasonably depressing. I get it. Right now I am feeling it a little. I am about to leave and with the realization that I have come to "see" and will be able to do very little to change anything at all. I really can't blame anyone for simply thanking their lucky stars they were born in the United States, shaking their heads in sympathy, and then accepting their inability to hold space for both realities in their life.

One beautiful thing is that my family I have heard has decided to forgo the traditional gluttonous gift giving and instead pool money to help people in the village I visited. I love my family.

Also, I will leave with very deep and lasting personal connections and love with Hilda and Clara's family and friends. I believe these connections ultimately matter a great deal - both in a practical and metaphysical sense.

Me, I don't know exactly what I will do with this information after I return. In the meantime, Gilbert is right. You have to eat, pray and love. Only now I believe that my circle of love is going to be greatly extended.

Gulu

Back safely from Gulu, which less than two years ago would have been a much more dangerous trip. The city center was always a reasonably safe place, but anywhere outside of it - and travelling to and from - was traveling into or through a true war zone.

I visited a camp but took no pictures, it did not feel right or respectful, and even somewhat awkward even to be there. Despite all of my good intentions, I am still little more than a disaster tourist there, and there is little my good intentions can do to help people here on a practical basis.

I learned a few important things. One - trust my instincts. The man who was to be our guide gave me an immediate sense of distrust, and luckily I did follow my instincts and ditched the guy at the first sign that my instincts were on. I'm almost out to time so I'll save that story for later. Two - the people living in these camps were largely involuntarily placed there. The people here call the camps concentration camps and they are equally angry at the government soldiers who brutalized and terrorized them as they are the Lords Resistance Army who is publicly blamed for the atrocities.

Families living in these camps were denied the ability to continue farming their land - thus leading to major food insecurity. Most people I talked to said that the lack of food here was due to the policies of Aid providers and government. People were rounded up into camps, supposedly for their own protection, and yet the camps were precisely where many of the atrocities occured.

Having now lived in the camps for more than a decade, they are now being asked to go home. To farms that are not developed, huts that have disintegrated, with very little assistance. Gulu is an Aid economy city, and yet it seemed very unclear just what the NGO's were doing. It seems to me that the help people need here is for some people to pick up a fucking hammer and start building some god damned houses, plowing some land. But when I asked what they were in fact doing the answer was "sensitizing". Now there are some organizations that were exceptioms here - and I will name them, but there is some major evidence that the notion of Aid is nonsense. I just saw alot of nice hotels and big 4 wheel drive cars and lots and lots of hungry poorly clothed children.... More on this later.