I hugged back.

A week ago I was sitting on a ferry with Aimee and Sarah, crossing the Equator and Lake Victoria to camp on the Ssese Islands. It docked on Kilangala and we walked down the white sand beach until it ended. Then we kept walking through the bush until we realized that perhaps the beach didn’t start back up again and turned around to set up our tent on the last patch of beach. Looking out at other islands and the sunset, I built a fire- years of camping with Uncle Stevie taught me well. We toasted bread for pb&j sandwiches, followed up by several rounds of marshmallows toasted to varying degrees of perfection. Saturday was our own self-proclaimed debrief time, reading and preparing for the final stretch of this semester. We collected extra wood for our beach fire that night and cuddled up to roast more marshmallows. At a point of quiet stillness, our heads leaned together and I wondered aloud: Since when are we old enough to be off camping by ourselves? In Africa? We are so far from home right now.

Perhaps the sharp reverberating pains that put me in a fetal position on my bed for a day and a half this week were the excuse I needed to curl up and feel young again. I cross the line from 2 decades to two decades and a year old this Sunday. In six months, somehow, I will be a college graduate. Really? Oh gosh, and I’ll be an auntie. In Luganda, the mother’s sisters are also referred to as mother. So, in four months, in the Buganda kingdom of Uganda, I’ll be a mother. Sheesh. More fetal position time.

“Franny now lay sleeping on her left side, facing into the back of the couch and the wall, her chin just grazing one of the several toss pillows all around her. Her mouth was closed, but only just. Her right hand, however, on the coverlet, was not merely closed but shut tight; the fingers were clenched, the thumb tucked in- it was as though, at twenty, she had checked back into the mute, fisty defenses of the nursery” (Franny and Zooey, 123).

Now I sit upright, and the antibiotic for the bacteria that might be hanging out in my intestines sits on my desk. And though I reserve the right to a good fetal position moment whenever necessary, I also embrace the exhausting joys of being here, so far from home and the nursery.

Through an enjoyable string of events (hooray for Aimee and her inclinations), I recently began to volunteer with a community center called Life in Africa (which does microfinance loans, craft sales, and community groups- all sustainable aid and change, organized by and for Ugandans). Once a week I go to either Banda or Ntenda and survey families (LiA members). The center is located in an Acholi IDP* camp and many of the members live in slum-like conditions. On Wednesday I surveyed Zuan Chandini who provides for her sisters five orphaned children. The 5 year old, second to youngest, is HIV positive. Even with the prevalent reality of HIV/AIDS here, the translator I was working with struggled to move to the next question after hearing of an infected toddler.

“Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who indeed knows why there can be comfort in a world of desolation? Now God be thanked that here is a beloved one who can lift up the heart in suffering, that one can play with a child in the face of such misery…Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Who knows what keeps us living and struggling, while all things break about us? Who knows why the warm flesh of a child is such comfort…” (Cry, The Beloved Country, 56-7).

The experiences of the LiA work refuse to sink into my reality. I think asking questions of food intake, future goals, past experiences with child abduction, etc. put my emotions in a distanced state for the sake of sanity. Sitting in a mud room that is home to three adults and three children, with the walls covered in cardboard and newspaper soccer clippings, I attempt to acknowledge the depth of the interaction. Instead I am left with an inarticulate flow of facts. In return for two hours of questions Molly Kyomukama gave me half an ear of roasted corn and a hug. What else could I give her? I hugged her back.

(^ Molly)

*IDP: Internally Displaced Persons

Feelings change from want to must.

I do not recall the earliest point at which I dreamed about a hut in Africa. I ought to find the pictures Russell MacGregor drew of me in a “shack in Africa” from across Mr. Avila’s seventh grade History classroom. I think I still have one tucked in a drawer in Connecticut, drawn in red pen, where stick-figure me holds a playbill and smiles, posing in front of an African hut.

Imagining Russell’s artistry, I laughed nervously and placed my head in my hands as the truck turned off the main dirt road and began the 15 minute drive through the bush to my rural homestay. The driver rolled up the windows to keep snakes from coming in off the branches that hugged against the vehicle. Potbellied children could still be heard yelling, even through the closed windows, anticipating the tears I would soon receive from the two year old twins that became my niece and nephew, frightened at the anomaly of my white skin.

My life (thus far) felt as if it were culminating when I was suddenly ushered to my hut by Toto (Iteso for Mom). This clearing in the midst of African bush- a small compound of huts, a latrine, and several graves, was my home. Toto and Papa, a couple in their seventies, became yet another pair of parents. I was alone in my whiteness, and incredibly welcome in my self. And despite five days of diarrhea on a pit latrine, I crumbled when I rode back along those footpaths. Mercy and Opio had stopped crying at that point- stopped “fearing.” I cradled Mercy in my arms in the moments before leaving. Toto gave me millet flour we had pound and ground together. Ruth, my sister, gave me cookies I watched her fry earlier in the afternoon (they taste like fried shortbread cookies). Papa picked me a dozen oranges from the three trees that centered our compound. The taste of one lingers in my mouth now as I type.

It is difficult for me to summarize this experience. More difficult than any other portion of the semester has been. I arrived feeling as if it was about time I got there, and something inside me wondered what had taken so long. I left feeling, more than ever, the risk of forgetting. I cannot risk forgetting this place where my heart sat down and my arms stopped shaking. Where the lyrics Stevie gave me at the start of this semester inbreathed- “feelings change from want to must.” I must, even though I still do not quite know what.

I missed most of the jokes, but enjoyed the laughter. Most of my family spoke at least broken English, but when jesting, Iteso prevailed. I weeded cassava, dug potatoes and groundnuts, cleaned, roasted, and ground the groundnuts, ground millet, and carried water on my head from the boar hole. We ate everything with our hands, including beef, chicken, mud fish, silver fish, pork, and goat (which lead to the vomitous and diarrhea-ed proof that my stomach is actually having difficulty with digesting meat after two years and it’s not completely mental, as some have accused!). I visited a primary school and left wanting to build my own hut right there, teach at the school, and start a drama program for the girls to promote self-respect. We visited a neighboring compound, home to at least eleven orphan children, two of which are severely disabled. Every night after dinner, which we ate varying between 10 and 11:30 pm, we prayed and sang together. One song included the line “even militia bow before Him.”

I crumbled upon departure. Days later I continued to crumble, though less. And I will continue to pick up these pieces for a long time, but I hope I will not be able to gather them all. I do not want to recover from this. I feel as if I am on the decline to the semester- this rural departure was the beginning of the end, and I embrace that only in the promise that this semester will not end in me.

“Feelings change from want to must, so I push a meaning to it all.”

Glossary of Characters

Consistently present within the compound were:

Toto- Joyce is the mother of eleven children, eight of whom are still alive. The seven graves within our compound belong to her son, daughter-in-law, and five grandchildren than have been lost to “extended illness,” which means HIV/AIDS. Atop the strenuous nature of life for an African woman, she also distributes anti-malarial medicine to children of their village, attempting to lessen the depressing rate of avoidable infant mortality. Papa paid 20 cows and 8 goats in dowry for her.

Papa- Moses is a retired Primary School headmaster of 36 years, still passionate about education. I learned this is full when he took me to a “local” primary school (about a 30 minute walk through the bush), and upon arrival I found out I was about to talk to a group of P7 girls about such. The school we visited has about 1,900 students and 22 teachers. The P1 classroom I was ushered into barely had enough room for me to stand. I peered through the window-less window to watch the 75-100 first graders, in a classroom comparable in size to my 30 student classrooms from elementary school, sing me a song. They sat on the floor, laughing and singing and climbing on top of each other. There are no textbooks.

Tata- Toto’s mother lives in a hut set apart from the rest. As Toto and Papa are in their seventies, I assume she is in her nineties. She is the picturesque, elderly, African woman. When not walking with her 6ft tall stick, she would crawl across the compound to greet me in the morning. She does not speak a syllable of English, but we still managed to have meager conversation. She was most typically seen peeling cassava, hand washing sheets, or slaughtering chickens.

Ruth- Toto and Papa’s “daughter in Christ,” a poor, single mother visiting to help farm, cook, and keep me company. Her husband left with her second daughter about a decade ago and she does not know where they are- she said she would not recognize her daughter. Her elder daughter, Juliet, is in P7 now though and Ruth continues to struggle to pay her school fees. Toto and Papa paid them while I was there as Ruth had no money, and without it Juliet would not continue. The fee was 5000 shillings, about $2.50.

Opio and Mercy- 2 year old twins; son and daughter of Betty, who is a teacher so she is often gone, even staying at the school overnight frequently. Betty was unwilling to allow their father to take a second wife, so he left them. Opio’s name is actually Emmanuel, but he is called the Iteso word for first born twin.

Check out new pictures through the facebook link.
Lovelove.

Boy Meets Blog

Remember the Boy Meets World episode when Corey and Topanga are on their honeymoon? They go to an exotic paradise of some kind (Hawaii, perhaps?) and Corey doesn’t want to leave. Ever. So they stay. Of course, by the end of the thirty minutes, with sufficient commercial break-age, he realizes vacation ceases to be such when it becomes perpetual. Topanga misses “home.” Tropical paradise became less exotic.

I look up at the trees here and remember (an incessant theme in my blog, perhaps) I’m in East Africa. Palm and banana leaves swept across the sunset outside Josephine Tucker (my dorm) and I didn’t notice until I looked at pictures. I often let this “exotic” escapade fall into mere school and life. I think of Corey and Topanga realizing how far vacation is from reality, and wonder if this experience will persist in the reality I am bound to re-enter in a mere two months.

Then I realize that Topanga’s name is Topanga. Where did that name come from and why did it take until now for me to realize its, well, weird?

Last Saturday I flew through the air over a Class 5 white water rapid called “Big Brother” when our raft flipped. Our instructor, Roberto, had never flipped a raft on that rapid in his six years of experience on the Nile. The next day I watched several USP students bungee jump 140ft, dipping their upper halves in the Nile as they climaxed (div-axed?) their initial decline. The jump is free if you do it naked. No one took the offer last weekend, but apparently it’s not a rare occurrence for the boaters below to hand the jumper a towel for modesty as they take the straps off their ankles.

In two days we leave for rural home stays. As Uganda’s population is 80% rural, it seems next week will be my first interaction with “typical” Uganda. I was told I will probably be in a hut, sleeping on a floor. I will definitely not have electricity or running water. I may be 30-45 kilometers from the nearest white person. Here I go…

Look your fill.

I sat on the banks of the Nile; wrote Linda a letter and listened to SongaDaySibs under a thatch-awning. SongaDay haunts me every time I try to concentrate. I turn on the iPod shuffle, inherited from that melodic sib, and attempt to read “Mission to Kala” for literature class, or write a letter to the ‘rents and suddenly mio fratello is strumming and humming in my ears. I hit the halfway point like a brick, lonely at the idea of returning to a continent and a campus that has gone on without me. My dear roommate Aimee is from California. Sarah, who’s frequent “meow” still kicks up my feet at the idea of an actual cat at my heels, is a Chicago chick. Goodbyes seem far away, until I think of how quickly and richly this time has already passed. And those new friends will at least be in the states, n’er mind Mercy, Florence, Nyio… So I find myself pining for home, but only because it seems safer than continuing to invest in what is bound to be left behind. The honeymoon is over. Now I’m choosing to love this, fearful of what leaving love will feel like. Within fear though, there is faith. In that letter written to Mom: “I can’t help but reflect on the past two year’s intensity…In spite of the intimidatingly open future I am bound to faith by what has been incessantly made manifest. Faith that, though unknown, the future is worth waiting for. I’m sitting under a thatch roof, looking out at Lake Victoria and the Nile, joyfully fearful at what could possibly come next.”

My arms are sore from planting grass at St. Stephen’s Primary School on Tuesday. I arrived to start my service project, and was presented with a large metal hoe and pointed toward a grassless red dirt area about a ½ basketball court. Hard, cracked, and dry dirt, aching to be dug and planted so the rag-clothed children could play barefooted on green rather than perpetual red. For the next thirty minutes eight year old boys put my hoe-digging ability to shame. Each girl who kneeled down to hand me a chunk of grass roots incited guilt that I would be bowed down to, simply because of my skin color. Kneeling is a strong form in this culture- my homestay siblings always kneeled when giving our parents anything- representing respect for those older or of “higher” stature. The grass-kneelers reminded me of saying “I love you” to my Southern campers a few summers ago, and receiving “yes maam” in reply. So, I remind myself that guilt is general and conviction is specific- this guilt is a superficial knee-jerk, and I need to accept ‘the kneel’ as oddly, but sincerely, kind.

When we ran out of grass to be planted the project paused until next week. The teacher supervising retrieved four badminton rackets and a birdie, handed them to me, and suddenly the 50 or so boys were clamoring to be the first to play. Yes, at least a 50 students to 4 rackets ratio, with one non-Luganda-speaking mzungu to organize. Thirty minutes later I was laughing amidst them all though, watching this somehow work, and remembered once again that I am in Africa. I stood on a hillside, amidst so many dark faces, looking out at the Mukono dusk, and wondered again how it is that I got here.

“Every evening as the sun went down, the distinct features of the village and surrounding forest merged in dark anonymity, and night spread across the sky like a great velvet cloth, yet scarcely more somber than the tropical undergrowth which it obscured. And every evening, watching this metamorphosis, I thought: look your fill. A darkening picture, perhaps; but look closely, you cannot risk forgetting it. When you remember it in after time, think of your pleasure at recalling every minutest detail, even the infinite gradations of shading in the evening sky, or the bird in the distant forest, sadly celebrating the faithlessness of each fickle day, like a boy weeping for his mother’s death. Think of the grey, neutral banana-trees, their sharp outlines melting into the darkness till they take on the semblance of ghosts. Think, last, of the moon, rising in splendid self-annunciation behind the tangled trees, unlooked-for and incredible, slowly climbing till she rode clear at least, tranquil as a goddess, gleaming, radiant” (Mission to Kala, 51).

I cannot risk forgetting this. Thanks for helping me set it down for remembrance sake.

Minuscule me.

I was the only mzungu (white person) at my friend Florence’s graduation party.

There was a monkey outside my bedroom window.

I took a matatu (taxi) by myself.

The sunset last night made me feel very small.

The stars that followed…I am minuscule.

There are points at which my heart screams and the words that escape are “We’re in Africa right now.”

I know college is the “easiest” time to travel- program, scholarships, educational excuse- but my current frustration is that I have college impeding on my attempt to merely exist in this place. Be present in this place. College also happens to be among the busiest and most confusing times of life (or so I hear). I don’t like dealing with the crunch of papers due next week. I don’t want to pull an all-nighter in Africa! I am thankful for the safety net of program and departure date, just like I was thankful for my brotherly safety net in New York City this summer. Leaving the city I hoped for the courage to move back without such safeties if ever I receive the chance though. Now I hope that someday I may work up the courage to exist outside myself in the ways this semester has pulled me to do, without a safety net.

I hope to exist someday.

Last Friday was a UCU graduation, and my friend Florence graduated First Class in Literature. Saturday I ate lunch at her apartment (beef and rice, yum) before going to “Rest Gardens” with Lucky, Mercy, and Grace to decorate for the graduation party. I blew up balloons and learned how to “make ribbons” for a few hours before donning a dress of Lucky’s and welcoming the guest of honor. As a thank you Florence again had me to her apartment: on Tuesday I sat amidst 6 or 7 Ugandan girls on the floor and ate lunch. Then Mercy fell asleep while I helped Lucky type a paper about the internet. When sleeping beauty arose, she and I walked backed to campus. We are sisters, Mercy and I, because both our fathers are pastors and our mothers are primary teachers.

That’s the kind of existing parade I want my papers to quick raining on. I know, I know- I wouldn’t have met Florence without studying here. None-the-less…

^ Mercy and I after we decorated, looking "smart" for the party.

^Florence and Lucky (the cap-and-gowned left to right) prepare to cut the cake.