A Blog from Kevin

Is it better to be poor in a land of poor, or poor in the land of plenty?

No one will believe us here when we tell them there are poor in America. They laugh. We have to tell them several times with serious expressions on our faces before they start to suspect we are serious. Then they ask if everyone has a flush toilet, and we say, “Well, just about everyone,” and they laugh and laugh and say, “Don’t be ridiculous! How do you say that everyone is not rich when everyone has a flush toilet?!”

And then what? How do we respond? How to explain to these people who make… what? a dollar a day? less? How do I explain to them that we are not rich? Of course we are. In Uganda we are the richest of the rich. But then we try to explain to them how expensive it is in America. We try to explain how we are students and how the money we have is from the bank. We try to explain debt. It’s no use.

We see the struggle of these people, to be sure, but we also see the joy. We see the way that everyone greets everyone when they pass, “Good morning. Hello. How are you?” We see a kind of community that has been rare in our country since… since when? World War II? Since the television began the process of isolating and dividing families from one another and from themselves? Since what were once porches of chatting families and neighbors became silent living rooms emanating blue light onto the sidewalks of America? Perhaps I romanticize…

They tell us that their idea is that everything is great in America and that everyone is welcomed with open arms, that jobs are easily found and that everyone is wealthy. And then they see us here, buying gifts for people at home, not arguing too much with the market vendors because we realize that we are fighting for twenty-five cents. So of course we are rich and everything is better in New York… But then they screw their faces when we try to tell them that we don’t know the names of our neighbors, and that the man next door looks at the floor and grunts when we’ve tried to greet him – for three years! They can’t comprehend it. Our neighbor has not once in three years said hello to us. His great stab at communication was scotch taping the front page of the Post, “BUSH WINS!” on his door in 2004. A man tells us that it would be a great dishonor if he failed to greet his neighbor each morning: “The first thing I do is greet my neighbors. Otherwise, how can we remain at peace?” Good question. Our solution, it seems, is good fences…

We are struggling with giving. Everyone we meet asks us to help them. Children ask for money. Teenagers explain that they would like to finish school and can we help them? The chief nurse at the hospital looked Aimee in the face yesterday and said, “Can you please take me to America with you?” Each time we strike up a conversation with a bodha driver, the ride ends with a payment by us and a request by him that we help... somehow. They seem ashamed to ask for help. They stare at the ground as they explain that their father or mother or brothers and sisters were killed by the rebels and they have no money for school fees. “Can you please help me?” It is utterly heartbreaking. What to do? The price to send one child to a year of private primary school is 200,000 shillings – just over 100 dollars. For private secondary school, it is between 400,000 and 500,000 – between $250 & $300. To send someone to the top University is about $1600 per year. And the NGO we are with, IC, is supporting children to go to school. To date, they are supporting nearly 500 children. But there are so many who apply. How can we support more? (just now, I stopped writing because Aimee’s bodha driver arrived to take her to the hospital for work. She was still getting ready so I went out to greet him. We said hello and then stood for a moment. I was taking in the morning. A beautiful, cool day; the sun was just beginning to warm the red soil and the tops of the huts across from where we live. After a moment of silence, he said to me, “Yes, I want to return to school. Can you help me? Last year my mother and father were killed. I am trying to save money with this work – indicating his moped – but it is difficult to raise school fees”).

On Christmas night we ate a restaurant in town. All thirteen of the muzungus were there (it was the night of the first great spiritual/philosophical debates). We were laughing and arguing and drinking beer. A young man in a beautiful red and black African shirt came over to ask if he could take a photo with us. With him were his two brothers, his wife and his two-month old infant. We stood and snapped a photo with him. Then Aimee and I, happy and open, went over to their table to hold the baby, ask about them and their lives. We chatted for a while and snapped some more photos. Then we were invited to lunch the next day. “Please call.” I promised I would. Then he said, with a shy smile, “Don’t disappoint me. Please.” I said I would not and that we would call the next day. The next day I planned to call at the appointed time. But we awoke early and we decided to do some washing for the first time since we’d arrived. To make the story short, I washed my jeans that held the scrap of paper upon which I had written Kenny’s phone number. I had lost the number. The paper was completely white except for the name, “Kenny”. I was horrified. It was like a movie. I imagined the brothers waiting by the phone, expecting my call, thinking I was a liar. I had disappointed them after all.

We decided to take a bodha to the restaurant where we had met them; perhaps someone knew them from town. And luckily, it worked. One of the managers was an “OB”. (If you went to school with someone as a child, or grew up in the same village, and then parted ways for school or relocation or whatever, this person, upon meeting them again, was an OB – “Old Boy”. You could also have an OG – “Old Girl”.) So he drew us a map and called another bodha and we were taken to the village home. They were overjoyed and told us that, yes, in fact they had been waiting by the phone fearing that we had “deceived” them. We spent a wonderful afternoon with them. They had invited all of their relatives to the house to meet us. Apparently it was a very big honor for them to have us at their house. The family is well off compared to most we have met. They struggle, but they are able to send one child, Tonny, to university in Kampala. Kenny’s wife, Teddy, works for an HIV/AIDS organization and is able to put herself through the local university. She raises her two children and works during the week and then attends classes all day on the weekends. Through her, Aimee made her connection with Sister Florence, a head maternity nurse at the hospital. The father has begun building what he hopes will be a small hostel for local university students as a way to generate income. He was once a municipal engineer but he is now retired and his retirement package is used up. The hostel – as well as the rest of the house – stands only partially built. Piles of sand and bricks, warped planks of wood, and half constructed cement walls litter the property. The father has dreams of building a private primary school on some property he owns but again, there is no money. He asks if we can help. We say that we, personally, can’t. He asks if we would be willing to talk some more about his ideas. We say of course. What’s the harm in talking…?

Now, days later, the relationship has become somewhat overwhelming. They do not ask for anything, but they want to spend time with us everyday. The young men, Kenny and Tonny, are 26 and 24. Tonny is on holiday from school. Kenny cannot find work. Their days are free and they don’t understand that we do not have hours and hours each day to come to lunch, to spend time. The work we have come to do is beginning and our days are full. The culture here doesn’t understand “grabbing a cup of coffee” for a half hour before parting ways to do one’s own thing. When we’ve agreed to see each other, we have been together for five or six hours. Last night, Kenny called my phone eight times in a row. I had already seen them that morning, to bring Teddy some herbal tea that Aimee recommended for some lactation issues she was having. Instead of dropping off the tea and departing, I was implored to stay. Knowing I was coming they ran out and bought food especially for me. They told me that to leave would be a dishonor for them. I ate. Instead of getting to work on some NYU stuff I had been putting off, my afternoon was swallowed with this obligatory meal. Then the phone rings eight times in the evening and I am trying to avoid it. Finally I answer and he tells me that he has come to town with a traditional dish for us. He has carried it all the way from the village. I leave the compound in frustration, now angry at their generosity. Or, more precisely, angry at the complexity of relationships here. How to explain “down time”?

We are told by IC not to give away money on the street, not to give food away to the workers here. Even this was difficult for us, but we understand. We cannot solve all of the problems. While the intention is from the heart, giving handouts only breeds resentment when the next muzungu refuses to give. We will perpetuate the idea that we are all rich; then, if we don’t give, we will be seen as harsh and uncaring… And the truth is, these people have survived for centuries without Westerners here, and they will survive for many more centuries, with or without Westerners here. But how to not give from the heart? How to contain Love? Aimee and I opened our hearts, which brought us into this wonderful opportunity to know, to become friends with, and to experience the quotidian routines of an African family. And we are grateful to know them. But if we are honest with our love, we see that we must also be honest with our limits. When Kenny said that they had bought food for the new year and that they hope we will arrive on the 1st of January at 9 am and stay until 6 pm… well now, how does one explain that we are actually planning to celebrate with the other Americans that night and that, well, American New Year’s Eve parties could end at nine in the morning?!?!?

The last thing we ever want to do is disappoint anyone. Yet, we see that we need to risk disappointing for the sake of honesty. We cannot be saviors. We are not saviors.

It seems clear that so many see the Westerners as a potential way out their plight. As pleasant and kind as everyone has been, we have to remember that this year – the spring of 2006 – the rebels were still terrorizing the villages. This is a war-zone, still. This is the South after the American Civil War. People are walking around traumatized, heartbroken and angry. And many, many people are hoping to find a muzungu who will help them. As Kenny said to me on the second day, “I have wanted to have an American friend for so long, and now I finally do.” What does that mean? Why would he want an “American” friend? Because we are so innately good? Or is it, partly, as one NGO volunteer said, “…because they are looking for tickets out of hell.”

Speaking of hells, I have been visiting the prison here for the past few days, talking to the chief officers and also the head of the prison ministry program. His name is Walter. The more I spoke to him, the clearer it was that “prison theatre” wasn’t happening. It was all about preaching the gospel and hoping that by getting the inmates to “accept Jesus Christ into their hearts,” they would abstain from committing further crimes upon their release. I asked if there were services for different religions. He said, “Of course. At 8:30 am there are services for the Catholics. At 10:30, we have services for the Protestants, and at 4:30 there are services for the Pentecostals.” So much for religious diversity.

It is not my intention to continue harping on religion, but it is so much of our experience here, so much of what I am reading about, as well as so much of the experience of the African continent, that I feel compelled to write about it. The conversations with the Christian students at the IC house are both fascinating and exhaustingly mind numbing. We sit and eat, passing salt, pepper and Top-Up brand Ketchup, and having intense religious debates. I really like everyone we are living with. We both do. We laugh together a lot, and it has been wonderful to learn about their lives and aspirations. They are young, enthusiastic, and deeply desirous to find ways to give service, but I can only go with them, philosophically, to a point. I see the love of Jesus as it has been presented to us through history. I can see and deeply appreciate the message of love and service and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. I think that the message of turning the other cheek was a radical departure from the Western and Near/Middle-Eastern traditions and customs that had come before. But I can also see those same virtues in Gandhi, in Rabbi Hillel, in Gautama Buddha, in Ramana Maharshi. Shall we dismiss Gandhi because he does not call Jesus “God’s only son”? I can’t get into it. And the fact is, there is actually little room for discussions because after a time, it becomes clear that our paradigms are completely different. I am not going to be convinced that the Bible is literal, and that every word is a direct transmission from God; they won’t buy my point that it is poetry and metaphor, pointing to that which is too enormous for humans to contain in language. They will never convince me that Jesus is the “only” way to God. I will never convince them that, as Jiddu Krishnamurti says, “the path to Truth is pathless,” and that, as far as I can see, you can call yourself whatever you want – what counts is the way you treat the other creatures of the Earth. At some point, the discussion just has to end. Going around in circles for too long makes me a bit queasy. I will believe what I believe, and they will believe I’m doomed to Hell. Pass the salt, please…

But back to prison: So I’m talking to Walter and he’s telling me about the Gospel preaching. I like him. He is a big man with a wide, stained smile and a laugh that is discordantly high and giggly. When he makes a joke, he giggles and his whole big belly shakes and shakes. Then he holds out his hand and I grab it and we hold each other’s hands, laughing together. Walter finally asks what I do in the States and I tell him about my work in prison. Suddenly he says, “Oh yes! We also do drama here!” I am shocked. Maybe he’s misunderstood. Drama? Oh yes. In fact, they’ve just done a play about HIV/AIDS. I tell him that the last prison play I was involved in was an educational piece about HIV and Hepatitis C. I ask if I can observe and he says, in typical understated Acholi-speak, “It is OK.”

Next day: Walter passes me on his moped in the street and waves at me. I don’t recognize him, but think he is a bodha driver offering a ride. I dismiss him, “No thank you.” He says something and I look back to realize that it’s Walter. I tell him I thought he was a bodha bodha and he shakes and giggles and extends his fleshy hand. He tells me to come to the prison at 3pm to meet the “big boss”. I do so but Walter is at lunch and the big boss is not around. I return at 4pm. I sit and talk to Walter. He asks me what I think of the Gospels. I tell him I’m not so much of a preacher. He laughs and tells me that he likes what I am doing with the drama work and he wants me to come and work for him in Gulu. “To do ministry.” I tell him I’m not much of a missionary; I am more of a teacher. He says that he is a preacher and a teacher, “But I have no talent for drama.” I tell him that drama is my talent. He says, “So you do not have to do the Gospels to do ministry. Your drama is your ministry.” I agree with him. “I can see becoming the director of the prison drama in all of East Africa!” I laugh but he is persistent. “Why not? You love Gulu. You can do your drama work in the North here. We have twenty prisons. Then you can begin to spread out. We will bring you to Kenya and Tanzania also.” Then the kicker: “You will do some dramas about Jesus and the Gospels…”

In the words of my in-laws, oy vey!

The prisoners are performing a drama on New Year’s Day at 2pm. Aimee and I are invited. We don’t know the theme, but I have a sneaking suspicion. There is an entry fee for me, the muzungu: two boxes of mukwano, a crumbly blue soap. Apparently they have no soap for the prisoners. No extra blankets, either, and prison uniforms come from the district office when they come. The young men I’ve seen are either wearing the yellow uniform – short sleeves and loose shorts, with flip-flops, or they are barefoot and shirtless wearing whatever pants they had on when they were arrested.

Ugh. I guess that’s all for now. There is so much more. I haven’t even mentioned the days we’ve spent at H.E.A.L.S. (I can’t remember what the acronym stands for), an NGO that serves young children using art and play as therapy. It was started by a local woman named Joely. I have begun working with a few of the children developing short dramas based on their experiences during the war. They will perform their work next week. Aimee has bonded very closely with some of the young girls at H.E.A.L.S., especially an AIDS orphan named Nancy. We suspect she has AIDS, too, and it is very sweet and melancholy to spend time with her. She and the other girls have been teaching Aimee the local Acholi songs and they have given her an Acholi name, Lakisa. It means something like, “merciful from God”.

Aimee has so much exciting news to report but I will leave it to her. She started in the hospital maternity ward yesterday and she is there again today. Her shift is from 9am until 3pm. She looks like a real nurse – scrubs, white sneakers, hair pulled back in neat braids. The nurses at the hospital are so pleased with her professionalism and appearance. They have really taken to her and have taken her under their wings. She is learning a lot! But as I say, I will leave her story to her. It’s a doozy!

Happy New Year.
Until next time,
love and blessings to you all… and a special shout-out to Messr. Harvey Bruce Brill-Bott whom we miss terribly!
kevin
p.s. - famiglia! avete visto il foto?! gli italiani sono anche in Africa! venite qua, tutti! abracci e baci! vi manchiamo moltissimo! a prestissimo...

Christmas in Gulu

It is December 24th and it is 9am and we are chugging down the choked highways of Kampala toward the bus park. We are determined to get to Gulu. We have been communicating with the organization, “Invisible Children”, for some months, ever since our friend introduced the documentary of the same name to us. The film tells the story of the children who have been displaced by the civil war in northern Uganda…

A bit of history: Alice Lukwena was a woman who in the 1980s decided that she was on a holy mission. Lukwena mixed some African tribal superstition with some questionable Christian scripture to convince some of the people that a crusade was needed to make northern Uganda a Christian state. Eventually she died and a man came along, Joseph Kony, claiming to be Alice’s nephew. He took up the cause in a new and brutal way. Kony formed the LRA, the Lord’s Resistance Army, a guerrilla rebel group. This group kept their troupe numbers high by abducting children from their village homes and forcing them, many times, to kill their parents before stealing them away to fight in the rebel army. This went on for 15-20 years. Thousands of children between the ages of five and twelve were abducted. Needless to say, when a five-year-old child is forced to kill (with machete, in most cases) their family and friends (when those friends tried to escape from the rebels), that child is severely traumatized. We will be happy to let any of you have or borrow our videotape of “Invisible Children” if you have an interest – it is too much to get into here. Basically, we were both moved when we saw the film and saw the thousands of children who were displaced and orphaned as a result of the war between Kony’s rebels and the Ugandan government army. The army was hampered by the fact that Kony’s rebels moved in numbers of five or six. One former government army man told us that they were no match for the bandits, who were getting financial and arms support from the government of Sudan (who were angry with Uganda for supporting a Sudanese rebel group, the SPLA … Africa is complex, and has many of these kinds of inter-tribal wars going on).

Anyway, our initial movement toward Uganda came as a result of the film. Last Spring we started planning. Kevin has a friend at NYU who works for Invisible Children, now an NGO (non-government organization), and over the course of the last several months we have been speaking with her and also e-mailing the Ugandan staff. Aimee, who has been working as a doula for over two years, hoped to assist in some way. Kevin, who has been working in educational theater, was curious to see if there was a place for him to work with children or prisoners. Our plan was to arrive in Kampala, settle for a day, then meet up with a group from Invisible Children and take a bus with them to Gulu – 360 kilometers (1 k = 2/3 mile) to the North; just 80 kilometers from the Sudanese border.

In many ways we are so glad that our luggage never arrived. Kevin has been wearing the same jeans for eight days. Aimee has managed, somehow, to find the perfect African style. She has her African dress (see: mu-mu) and a wrap, which she manages to finagle into several strikingly different looking outfits. She’s getting a lot of compliments from Ugandan and muzungu alike.

Now: It is December 24th and it is 9am and we are chugging down the choked highways of Kampala toward the bus park. We are determined to get to Gulu. James, our private hire taxi driver is more than helpful. He is not simply dropping us at the bus park; he is asking people on the street where we can find the next bus to Gulu. We get the information and easily find the bus through the swarming Christmas crowds. Apparently, Kampala – and the rest of Uganda – is a different place at Christmas. Like anywhere else, those who are from the country, come to the Big City; those from the City take off for their homes in the country. The scene at the bus park is wild. We get on the bus at 9:15. People are prodding us in every direction, each trying to draw us to their particular bus. Others try to take our bags so that they can get the tip we will be obligated to give if we allow them to tote for us. We are happy to get to the bus early. Aimee needs a window seat to stave off bus-sickness, and we are hopeful that, having a three seater, we’ll have room for our oversize (and very heavy) camera bag.

After sitting on the bus for two hours, we depart. In the meantime, both the bus and our bladders fill considerably. Leaving the bus is not an option. Outside the safe confines of the bus (which idles along with about fifty other black-smoke-spewing busses for the entire two hours) is a mad scene. We are not firghtened, but we don’t want to risk losing our seats. Literally hundreds of vendors, both men and women, pass our window to offer us everything from water to whole loaves of white bread to socks, shoes, belts, coca cola, frozen icees, cheap plastic toys, transistor radios, jewelry, to herbal remedies promising to cure both malaria and the common cold. In the midst of this, thousands of travelers search for their busses. They are carrying bags, suitcases, chickens, linoleum flooring, bicycles, and many, many small children. The ground is red dirt and no one at all seems to notice the thick clouds of diesel smoke that blow into their faces as they talk, laugh, fight, and yell to one another, shouting directions. Behind the busses sit dirtied men, barefoot, on small piles of refuse and mud. And now, the outside scene becomes the inside scene. The vendors pass up and down the aisles of the bus, sometimes two and three at a time, and often selling the same thing. Amazingly, some would-be passengers who passed on the first woman’s loaf of bread, decided thirty seconds later, to buy the next man’s.

Finally, the bus lurches out of the bus park and we snail our way through the clogged arteries of the city. It takes nearly an hour to get out of the center of town (sound familiar, New Yorkers?) and soon enough, the tin roofs and ramshackle structures that serve as joints, shops, barbershops, furniture makers’ stands, and countless other businesses fall away. The landscape becomes increasingly greener. We start to see another side of Africa! In the not-too-far distance, beyond the trees and shrubs, we see hundreds of small thatched huts. These are the villages that dot the Ugandan landscape from Tanzania to the Sudan. The huts are made of red mud and clay. They are round and topped with conical thatches. Women may sit before the black hole of a doorway, doing some chore that is impossible to know from the confines of the speeding bus. Sometimes, children run around the yard. If and when they see us, they stare, scream, wave, yell, “muzungu! muzungu!”

Sometimes, when we reach a local town, the bus stops and vendors rush at the window. They thrust bottles of water, skewered pieces of cooked goat meat, and whole, live chickens up to the passengers. Chickens are everywhere, including what sound like five or six toward the front of the bus. They have ridden with us since Kampala, clucking all the way, unaware that their final destination is Christmas dinner in Gulu.

We start again and soon we hear a strange hissing from the window. “Are we getting a flat?” Aimee looks out the window. “I think so. It doesn’t look good.” The bus motors on. We stop again after two or three miles and the driver gets out and looks at the tire. After some time, we roll on again. Five more miles and the bus is keening noticeably to the right. On good tires, driving in Uganda has been an adventure. First of all, as a former colony of the British Empire, everyone drives on the left. This is disconcerting if one is unused to it. As pedestrians, we have both looked carefully to our right before crossing the street, only to be startled back to the sidewalk by the blaring horn of a bodha or matatu. On the road, the drivers careen down the broken and potholed corridors like race car drivers. They pass four and five other vehicles in one clip. They avoid broken stretches of road by veering all the way to the right hand side of the road, into the sandy strip separating the road from the bush, and tilt the bus so far that we are sure that we will tip. The Ugandans see our fear and laugh – but only after the bus has tilted safely back to center.

Now we are in the middle of nowhere. A long stretch of highway with no towns to be seen in either direction. Indeed, we have a flat. The bus stops. We all exit into the baking sun. It is 3 pm. We make a bet on whether they have a spare and/or the means to change the tire. We cross the road as the driver and his assistant (the man who collects the money from each passenger, and who also deals with the army officers at the various checkpoints) climb under the bus and pull out a perfectly good-looking spare tire. They proceed to unlock the bolts on the flat and we stand and bake in the road as a multitude of bicyclists and pedestrians pass the broken bus. After half an hour we are all aboard and on our way.

The rest of the trip is only eventful in the best sense. We cross the Nile at Kumba falls. The rapids rush under us as we cross into the North. On the other side, a team of clever, red-assed baboons waits by the side of the road for travelers to throw them some fruit. Everyone points and laughs to see the beautiful animals.

GULU!!! We finally arrive in Gulu on Christmas Eve at 5pm. What a day! But there is no time to rest. We are on alert because we are in a new place and expect that there will be a horde of bodha drivers waiting to bombard us with offers to drive us wherever we want to go. All we want, when we exit the bus, is to be able to look around, get our bearings, secure our backpacks, and find where we need to go. We are also dying of thirst. Though water was often offered to us on the bus, we had been warned to check the bottoms of the bottles we buy very closely; street vendors can stick a pin in the bottom of a bottle, drain the good water for themselves and refill the bottle with tap. They then melt the plastic closed. If one isn’t careful, it could be diarrhea city! We were desperate on the bus and we spent 500 shillings for a bottle. Sure enough, when we turned the bottle over, we saw the mark of a phony. But the seller was long gone. We spent the next three hours parched, feeling the cool touch of the bad water bottle on our legs…

We find a phone stand. We need to call our Invisible Children (henceforth, IC) contact and let her know we’ve arrived. Phone stands are little wooden booths behind which sit operators and atop which sit standard home telephones. They are pretty much pay phones with live assistants. We ask to make a local call and the man dials our number. We pay 200 shillings, look in vain for a bottle of water in one of the shops for a few minutes, then grab the first bodha drivers we see to take us to the IC house.

The IC house is where the volunteers stay when they come to Gulu. The house is gated and protected by a high, brick fence and barbed wire. There is a guard on duty each night whom we’ve befriended named Francis. The first night we meet him, he tells us that his 12-year-old daughter has just died of cancer. We are shocked. When? Just yesterday. We can’t understand how or why he is working. Do the others know? Does IC? We don’t know… We ask if he needs anything? Water? A blanket? He tells us he needs food. We heat up leftovers from our dinner and bring him a plate.

Each room in the house has two triple-decker bunk beds covered in mosquito netting. We’re thrown back into a dorm setting. It’s a mix between a beaten up fraternity house and an army compound, although in Gulu this house is considered high end. Strangely, the walls and the wire and the guard give us both the feeling that, rather than being protected, we are trapped. Kevin says he feels like he is in a prison. After the freedom of Kampala & Jinja, we suddenly feel that perhaps there is reason to fear.

We meet the group that will be here with us for the duration. They are a group of 10 from Illinois. They all go to the same Christian University. IC also has a strong Christian foundation. This all comes as a surprise to us, and at first is a challenge. We have been reading a lot about the missionary movement in Africa since the mid-1850s. The Christians have done wonderful work here; they have built many schools, hospitals, and of course, churches. But there is a large amount of criticism, too. Not just about the Christian aid, but the whole aid movement in general. The locals we’ve spoken to talk quite a bit about the corruption they see in many of the aid organizations, including the Christian groups. Again, too much to go into here, but suffice to say that we felt challenged. It wasn’t until the second night that we were able to break the ice and dialogue about religion, spirituality, and philosophical perspectives – a dialogue that eased the tension for all of us. Since then we have been becoming friends, many of the students expressing their gratitude for the different perspectives that we’ve brought to the group. And we must say that we, too, are grateful to have been able to see where they are coming from. Aside from our philosophical differences, we’ve discovered that we are here in Northern Uganda for essentially the same reason: to gain understanding of and to serve the people that have suffered so greatly as a result of this war.


Christmas Morning
An I.D.P. camp is an “internally displaced persons” camp. Hundreds of thousands of people from Gulu and the surrounding villages are living in these places since the war. Some, we find out, have been living in camps for almost twenty years. The IC group invites us to join them for the Christmas Mass at Koche Goma, the largest of the local camps. We are at once curious and nervous to see what we imagine will be rough conditions. We load up a matatu driven by a boy of about nineteen or twenty. His name is Steven. The IC volunteer coordinator, Valerie, found him in the bus park. Steven undercut his competitors by some thirty thousand shillings and Valerie hired him. Apparently, the older matatu drivers were not happy with him. They yelled at him as he drove away… His matatu is old and rickety. The two passenger doors are barely hanging on. They rattle and shake as we take the long drive (15k?) down the bumpy dirt road toward Koche Goma. After what seems like a very long drive, we start to pass a couple of the smaller camps. They look like the villages that we passed on the way to Gulu, but are much more densely concentrated. Thatched huts jammed together. Many people stand near the road and watch as the muzungu-filled bus passes. Finally we reach the main camp. As we reach the top of a small crest in the road, we find ourselves looking down on a canopy of the brown grass, which covers each small hut. Driving through the camp, hundreds of children, some half-naked, many dressed in surprisingly clean and new-looking church clothes, come to stare or smile as we pass. We park in front of a makeshift veranda, what we find out later is the Protestant church. As we exit the minivan, the children laugh and point. Many rush to us, touch us, shake our hands, and say “Hello. How are you?” Many only speak the local language, Acholi, but nearly every schoolchild we've met in Uganda can say, “Hello. How are you?” We say, “Fine. How are you?” They always say the same thing: “I am fine.” Soon we ask them first, because we know they will be eager to respond… “How are you?” “I am fine”.

The story of the service is a small novel in itself. In the heart of great sadness, poverty, and sorrow, what a celebration! One of the bishops from Northern Uganda comes to give the service and there are several deacons and archdeacons in attendance. The children sit in front on a small, white tarp. The adults sit under a veranda, protected by the sun. The children will come to us, but we see that the adults look at us warily. We decide to approach them, as a sign of respect. They smile warmly once contact is made. We wonder what they think of us, how many muzungus they have seen, how many people have walked into their village to help. How many have come and gone? We shake hands with them and they thank us for coming. “Afoyo. Afoyo.” Thank you. Thank you. We try to express how grateful we are to be with them on this day. We are so thankful and feel that it is a great honor. What perspective it gives us to see these barefoot people dancing and clapping with enormous smiles stretching their faces even as mucous and blood comes from the children’s noses, even as they tell us of the fact that the U.N. only provides seven days worth of food every two to three weeks. They are hungry. They are bored. There is no work, even for the strongest and healthiest of the young men. They sit around, play cards, watch the sky, wash their few articles of clothing. Kevin steals away from the service. Steven, the driver, had gone off to visit his grandmother, who lives within the camp. I (Kevin) see him return and I walk over to him. I ask how his grandmother is and he says, “fine” before casually mentioning that she’s just contracted malaria. I tell him how sorry I am. He looks at the ground. We stand for a while before he tells me that he has no parents. I look at him and he points to a large tree way off in the distance. “That is where our house was. When I was five years old, the LRA came out of the bush and tied my father to this tree. I cried and asked them to please not kill my father, but they take the machete and they cut, cut him and they kill him. I run home to tell my mother but she thinks that I am only joking. But I am crying and then she follows me and sees that my father is in many pieces.” I don’t know what to say. There is nothing to say. I tell him, again, that I am so sorry. He shows no emotion that I can discern. If I begin to see some wetness in his eye, he looks at the ground too quickly for me to be sure. He continues, “My mother screams at the LRA and they beat her very badly and she does not wake up even for one week. Then my grandmother takes care of me and my brothers.” I find out later that Steven’s mother died three years back of a heart attack. I ask if he will walk me through the camp. He agrees and we walk together and I ask him about different things we are seeing – the latrines, the fire pits, the animals, the older men and women who come to shake my hand and speak to me quickly in Acholi language.

The celebration goes on for over three hours. We dance and clap with the children. We are laughing and, yes, being laughed at. We are curiosities to them at first but soon a genuine warmth grows between us. Without the hindrance of language, we communicate heart to heart, human to human. At one point, the bishop calls up all of the muzungus to the front of the congregation. Kevin is talking to Steven, but he watches Aimee and the rest as they are thanked and applauded by the whole group. The people seem so grateful for our presence. Perhaps they see us as a sign that the rest of the world has not completely forgotten them. We are not so sure. How can this ever get fixed? Is it naïve to ask how this modern world can allow such degradation?

Communion is broken pieces of sweet biscuits dipped in red wine. The Ugandan musicians play one more wonderful, jubilant song, and then we thank everyone we see. They think that it is special that we have come to visit them, but they can’t know how much it means to us to be with them on this Christmas morning. They have nothing but they make every attempt to give us everything they have. We in the West have everything and make only pitiful attempts to give anything to anyone. How much we’ve learned today… Every child of the village comes to touch us. Out of respect, they kneel to the ground when they shake our hands. And not only to the muzungus, but also to their own elders. We ask how long they will continue to do this and we are told that it will never end. Even a grown man or woman will kneel before an elder.

We pile back into the matatu and drive away. As we drive toward the main road we see one teenage boy make a violent gesture toward the van as we pass. This young man sees us and feigns throwing a punch. A joke or a genuine, if crude, attempt to express some rage or anger he feels toward us or about his situation? We drive. Did anyone else notice? No one says so if they do. We ride back to the IC house. The day has been long. We arrived at the camp at 11am. It is now nearly 5pm. Oddly, no one speaks about the day. We (a. & k.) do, with each other. Perhaps the others do, too, without us. But it is strange that there is no debrief of the day.

We are both filled with so many ideas, so many questions. What can we do to help, really? What can we do to make some meaningful contribution to try to alleviate this suffering? And what of the suffering in our own backyards? In Brooklyn and New York? We are faced with so many… what? contradictions? realities? All of it… All of it…

Today (12/27) Aimee meets with Sister Florence, the head midwife at the Gulu Regional Hospital. Kevin has been invited to assist with a nascent theater program where one of the students is struggling to organize a performance. We are excited... And they tell us that our luggage has arrived in Entebbe and that British Air is sending it to us here. We'll believe it when we see it!

Until next time…
Sending love to all.
a & k

Back in Kampala... Again...

Hello! It the 24th and we're back in Kampala, the capital. still no bags! you'd be amazed how far one pair of jeans and underwear will get you these days...basically, we've resigned to thinking that we'll never see our bags again. Fine by us. After a few days of going back and forth to the airport, we decided to move on with things and head to Jinja, a town along the Nile. Everywhere we go we meet other travelers, each with their own recommendations. Our friends Annie and Winter recommended the Haven so off we went for two days. We took a matatu up (the trip was two hours). A matatu is the way that most people travel around in Uganda. It's a mini-van that probably holds 12 people normally but most are filled with 16-18. We got to the bus park and found Jinja "stage". At first we thought it was gong to be a roomy ride but after 45 minutes we were 16 adults, 4 children, and one chicken. We thought the chicken was dead but we came to realize it was just sedated...we got off in Njeru and took bodhas (mopeds) to the Haven. It was about a five mile ride...we turned off a dirt road and rode through a local, traditional village. The children scream, "Muzungo, how are you? I am fine" all at once, huge smiles on their faces. They cheer at the sight of muzungos. The Haven felt like a total oasis. Huge grass huts that peered out to the roaring rapids of the Nile. Absolutely beautiful! After being in Kampala and dealing with the luggage this was the perfect respite. We made friends with a man named Charles from the village (he works at the Haven). The next day he took us into the village for a 3 hour walk. Again, the children run out to greet but this time we were able to spend time with them. Their genuine joy is contagious--they seem to live a very simple life that is sustained mainly by farming and the selling of their crops. There are also a few shops and a few "joints" - places to get some beer and sugarcane liquor that they make in the village... We wonder what the effect of The Haven will be on these people. Rainer, the German owner and visionary of the resort, is 33 years old and bought the land for a song. He says that the locals find it worthless. It is just a view of the Nile. No place to plant crops. He says, "They don't even see the river; it's just water to them." We can't begin to decipher the reality of his perspective. of course, we will never hear the other side of the story. Anyway, he is worried that the local way of life will be too disrupted and he seemed genuinely upset when we told him that we bought the children biscuits (or, as they say, "bee-squeets") when we passed one of the village shops with them. He said that we really just need to "leave these people alone". Hmmm... We buy biscuits for a few children; he builds a hotel and offers tours through it via a local guide... Who is affecting the village more, we wonder? Kevin tells him that the natural impulse is to offer something when asked. He is silent.

The villagers asked us again and again for "snaps" - wanting their photos taken. Charles tells us that some are fearful that we are photojournalists who will return to the West and sell their images. We tell Charles that it is a legitimate fear on their part but that we will not sell anything. They ask if we can send back "copy-ays" - copies. We agree and take Charles last name and promise to send photos to him via the Haven... The people are so proud and dignified. The older men button up their shirts and take a very serious look on their faces when we aim the camera. The children smile shyly but with a bright gleam in their eyes. The women call and gesture for all of the family and neighbors to gather for the photos. Those who have been working and who have mud on their dresses, refuse.

Have we interacted too much? Should we not give? Should we walk through the village as if it is a theme park -- only taking what we want from them -- great memories, great stories to tell to all of you -- and giving nothing back? Contact has already been made. The Haven made sure of that. Is it wrong? The living standard of so many has been raised through work at the place. The villagers tell us what great pride they have that The Haven is there. "We are the only village where the muzungo come. We are very proud of this. The other villages look up to this village." But parts of their lifestyles, we feel sure, are already lost. It is complicated. More to say about this, to be sure. We will write again soon. And we promise, many photos to come!

A taxi is on the way to the Backpacker's Hostel, where we stayed last night, to take us to the old bus park downtown. It is 9 am. We are finally ready to go to Gulu. And we will really get there today! The newspapers say that all of the prices in the North have been doubled because the muzungos come for Christmas... Oy! Our taxi has been waiting for 20 minutes! We are off now. We think there is a computer shop in Gulu but it will most likely be closed for the holiday. More after...

Happy holidays to you all.

we miss you and love you. thanks to those who have commented. so fun to read. makes us feel connected. more soon..
aimee and kevin.

adventures in smog

Day 2 –
How to even begin? Let me first say how we’ve decided to write this blog. This is Kevin writing now. For those who know me well, you know how much I enjoy writing and how I could go on and on. So I’m aware that I could definitely hog the computer. I proposed to Aimee that I write my observations and then she write her observations, but she decided that we’ll both just sort of write it together, side-by-side… I’ll just be doing the actual, physical typing. So we’ll give it a go. The other thing I’ll say is that, at least at the Blue Mango, we buy an internet access card to get online with our own laptop. The cards cost 5000 Ugandan shillings and give an hour’s worth of internet service. One US dollar is worth about 1750 shillings. So what I’m doing now is writing the blog in Word. When I’m finished I’ll buy the card, get online, and copy and paste this entry into the blogsite.

So! Africa! Gosh, how do I start? We have been simply bombarded with so many sensational sounds, sights, smells, and experiences in the first 24 hours that I just don’t know how to slice it up into a coherent narrative. However, if I try to make excuses for not being able to find the words, Margot Ely, my friend and qualitative research professor, will have my head. So here it goes:

The roads are red. Red is the color of the thick dirt that creeps and climbs into and onto every pore and crevice. White smoke screams from the exhaust pipes of a million, billion bodhas, the one-stoke mopeds that act as the cheapest mode of transportation between two points. We could take matatus, the minivans that stuff themselves with people and stop every few hundred feet to drop off or pick up. They are slightly more expensive. Then there are the private taxis, which we took from the airport into the city. They are the most expensive way to fly, but probably the safest. We take bodhas today. Our new friends, four American women who have been here from two weeks to seven months, teach us how to bargain. We go to the end of the road and wave down one of the many mopeds that whizz past. They are all quick to stop. They see Westerners, who clearly have money – more money than they. They stop and we say something in a kind of clipped, British accent with questionable syntax, that they seem to understand much better than New York-ese: “We go to British Airways office. You know it?” He says, “British Airways. Yes, I know.” We say, “OK. We go. You take 3000 for two.” I nod toward Aimee, and I and I don’t ask; I tell. He smiles playfully and rolls his eyes, “No. It is too far. You pay me 5000.” Aimee protests gently (the MUCH better bargainer of the two of us), “No. It is close. You take 3500 to British Airways. For two.” The bodha driver explains that we are two and petrol is very expensive. “No. Please 4000.” We all agree and Aimee and I squeeze behind the man. We are Muzungu, “White Man”. He is Mudugav, “Black Man.”

Now we are flying, squeezing, somehow managing to make it through the wild streets of Kampala. I sit behind Aimee and see her pulling her shirt up above her nose to try and screen some of the ubiquitous black and white smoke that pours from every tailpipe. We nearly hit everything, but never do (except the one time our driver looked right to see how well he could manage the circle and wound up braking too late and hit our friend on another bodha). Laura, our friend from Blue Point, Long Island, scolded him in a clipped, British accent with questionable syntax. He reached and put her leg from one moped peg to another, as if it was her positioning that had caused the incident. She laughed and said, “Still you would have hit me. It is not my fault.” And as we sped further down the road, Aimee says in a loud, British voice, “Now you drive careful, yes?” “OK, OK”, he nodded.

Now, despite the fact that he assured us he knew the way back to Blue Mango, we are stopped on the side of the road in a random neighborhood street. Rows of houses painted in indigos and oranges line the red-clay road. Stopped, the two muzungos on the back of the bodha attract great attention from the residents, who now gather around to find out what’s going on. “Do you not know where is the Blue Mango?” He does not answer but gets off and asks some of the children if they know. There is a lot of pointing and gesticulating. They all speak the one of the main languages of the region, Luganda. After some discussion, he returns: “Now I know. I know.” Laura and Deb, our friends who had hired a bodha at the same time we did, but who were going to a different hostel, are somehow with us now. They are angry because they have tried to explain that, despite the fact that we are all muzungu, we are not all going to the same place. Now they are off their bodha, and walking away. Their bodha man is telling our man, who speaks better English, that they are not paying. A bit of tension ensues, Eventually, Laura and Deb flag another bodha and hop on. Laura says, “We do not know where we are and you do not know where we are. We will not pay.” They ride off and I am afraid that now, somehow we are in the middle. Out of fear, I say that we do not know them. Our bodha man drives off and we are again flying down the road, this time safely to the Mango. We get indoors, pull the mosquito net over the bed and sleep hard for three hours. I said I wanted to try to stay awake because I wanted to beat the jetlag, but I sleep. We wake up at 6pm and come to the restaurant, to write and relax. We meet some folks from Ottawa who are also waiting to see if their luggage arrives tomorrow. They are awaiting kayaks and are disappointed that their plan, to kayak down the Nile, has been delayed. It is night. A light rain falls as we eat outside, under a canopy. We hear loud drumming in the distance, through the palm trees. We are tired again. Tomorrow morning we will take a taxi to the airport to see if our luggage has arrived. If not, we will have to wait here in Kampala until Friday. We want desperately to head north to start our volunteer work. At the same time, what else can we do? I am reminded of my time in India. The only option is to surrender; fighting is useless. Nothing will come from resisting. Aimee has already mastered the art of insistence without pushiness. I am learning. We are a good team. We laugh a lot and marvel at all of the newness, all of the chaos and beauty.

We will write again tomorrow, unless we head to Gulu. We are told the trip north will be one that can take as few as four and as many as eight hours. We also understand that internet access is spotty up there. So we’ll see. More to come. Love to all at home.
A & K

hello friends and family, this is Aimee. As you can already tell, we are on a true adventure! I am excited to get up to Gulu and start volunteering in the Gulu Regional Hosptial. Our friends Jess and Meg have started a program called RENEW ( a program to rejuvenate the local hospital) and Valerie, from Invisible Children, has set up work for me once I get. The situation sounds dire and dramatic. They have so few resources. Jess and Meg are working on trying to get running water at the hospital. That’s one of their main goals. They can use all the help they can get. I remind myself that I am here to offer myself completely, and I am already receiving the gift of learning from everyone that I meet. In such a short time, this trip has fulfilled me, challenged me, and exhilirated me. The world is big! I’m reminded of the abundance back home, and humbled by the tenacity of the human spirit that I witness here. It is wonderful to be with my best friend and partner. We’re lucky to have crossed paths with so many helpful and kind hearted people. We haven’t even been here for two full days! I’ll write again soon…jetlag has caught up and I’m ready for a solid night of rest. sending love-a

arrival!

Whew! We made it. It is 7pm here on Monday (11am EST) night in the capital city of Uganda. We left JFK at 8pm on Saturday night and arrived in Kampala some 38 hours later... only to find that they failed to load our luggage onto our flight from London! Oy! Somehow, this doesn't feel like too big a deal. We have all of our camera equipment, our computer and, most importantly, our malaria medication. There were about 30 other people who were in the same predicament. Some had stowed their malaria pills under the plane and were stressing out!

We are going to keep this short tonight. Basically we want our families to know we are here and we are safe, but since all of our power converters for the computer are in the luggage, we don't want to use up too much energy. The next flight in from London is Wednesday morning. If our luggage comes in then, we will travel north to Gulu with the volunteer organization, Invisible Children. But if not, we will have to wait here in the smoky, congested, crazy(!)capital (which has been pretty amazing) until Friday.

Since we lost our bags, we had to decide whether to head straight to the hotel (The Blue Mango) or to try to head to town and buy some clothes. Neither of us had any spare underwear, socks, flip flops... We were still in our winter clothes. We had the taxi driver drop us off at the local market (where, among the tens of thousands of people, we were the only who seemed to be Westerners) which we found out was called the "Nashville Exchange", and left looking like natives. I am now wearing a loose-fitting, blue African print short-sleeve shirt, my own jeans, and plastic shower sandals. Aimee wears a moo-moo that will fit perfectly should she ever get pregnant with triplets.

Thanks to Karen and Edward for your one-day London itinerary (we had a 12 hour layover there). We hit all the spots -- Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden (where we enjoyed some delicious mulled wine), Spitalsfield market, Spitz restaurant, Westminster, Trafalgar square, the Thames, Big Ben... It was a full day and I have the painful blisters to prove it!

So we are in the lovely Blue Mango now, settling down for a relaxing evening after a long, beautiful (!!) nap. We are refreshed and looking forward to adventures to come.

Just a note to family. Cell phone access may be a problem for a few days. It's more of a hassle than we were told it would be. So check this site for updates. As long as we are here in Kampala, e-mail will be easy and we will check everyday.

Alright, time for a delicious meal and a well-deserved beverage. We love you all and we will write soon with a richer description of this amazing place!

yours-
Aimee and Kevin