Flying Westward

I tried to take my time. The whole trip was set up with the goal of not only visiting some fancy locales, visiting some old friends, but also just to breath in time. Even the flights themselves promised me some relaxation. Sitting in Gulu I fantasized about sitting in the comfortable seats, slightly reclined as my small television screen played movies I hadn’t seen or maybe even heard of, kindly men and women passed by me at regular intervals dropping food and drinks in my laptop tray table, and I slept as much as I could watching land and sea and clouds carpet the world below me as swinging past and behind me. As I still sat in Gulu, trying to imagine the best way to return, a trip laden with layovers seemed like the best way to slow to a gradual progression what must surely shock. Of course, I didn’t exactly plan on the itinerary I received. Four days of travel spanning four continents (technically). But without any idea of what could be better, I set off on the plane last Friday.

Before that moment, of handing over passports for one last exit stamp and loading of bags in the hopes that fragiles wouldn’t be ruined, there were a series of good-byes. Perhaps over the next weeks, I’d like to detail a little bit more about the last month in Gulu, some retrospect covering the times that I couldn’t elaborate on while I was still there. It was hard enough to digest the experience while it was happening and even with the distance of days, I still have difficulty assessing everything. I’ll talk someday of the celebrations and the stories, the tearful good-byes, the longing looks for the last time around, wondering what was happened, what has been accomplished, how will I or the people I’ve met be remembered.

I made it down to Entebbe airport with Adam, each of us trying to get in our last thoughts about life and work and everything. I’m sure we could have talked more about deeper things and less about the same struggles of our lives and the same easy jokes we always through out, but there is something nice about enjoying the comfort of a friend’s conversation for the last time. It’s difficult to imagine if I will ever see these people again. One of the largest questions I was asked as I was leaving was, “When are you coming back?” I don’t know. I’m heading off to five years of school during which I hope to do some small amount of traveling and after which I would love to return to the developing world and begin work anew. But where will I go? Can I return to this place where I’ve built up relationships, see what has occurred in my absence, pick up some things again? Should I head off to some new adventure, take the lessons I’ve learned and try to apply them in new surroundings, spreading the influence around? The whole decision is too far away for me to make any real attempt at a decision.

On a side note, it is remarkable that this question continuously arises. The Acholi peoples’ contacts with Westerners have been so full of people coming for a period of their lives and then leaving. The times where these people actually return are not extensive. I’ve always feared that this is one of the reasons for how when the children run to greet me the roadside, they scream, “Muno Bye!” instead of a more welcoming salutation. They are used to seeing me leave. Perhaps we have made some changes in this. In our organization, it is common for people to return. Bobby, Laren, and Jason have all come back numerous times. Katie has come and gone with great regularity. Many of us have taken vacations to the States and returned. When I talked with people and they saw that I wasn’t making the return trip or at least didn’t know when I would do it, there was this additional level of shock. Some of my friends pleaded with their eyes and sometimes half laughing voices for this to be another joke of mine, that surely I would return. It broke me a little each time to say no, that I had responsibilities at home that I had to return to, investments that would keep me away. Regardless of how much I would love to continue to be involved in their lives, mine pulled me away.

And so I left, on these and other circumstances that still swim about in my memory, I boarded the plane. All of my dreaming about the comforts are air travel were realized on the first few trips. Good beer, pleantiful food (as long as you continue to ask for it), and comfortable seats. I enjoyed the silence and the room for reading, the ability to look out the window and watch my home fly away beneath me. I ran through my insane itinerary (Entebbe→Nairobi→Dubai (7 hours)→Amsterdam (22 hours)→Detroit→New York City (26 hours)→Detroit (again)→San Diego. Four days of travel, I had spread it out to delay the onset of jet lag, to meet up with friends in distant cities, and to attempt to enjoy the return voyage. It worked like a charm.

In Dubai, I got to remember what fast wireless internet was all about. With simple clicks I managed to check emails, download, at amazing speeds that I had forgotten was possible. When sleep finally started to push towards me around 3 in the morning, I found myself wandering the halls with numerous others in the same vain, many spread out on the floors under blankets they had stolen from their arriving flights. Luckily, I had done the same, and I found a comfortable spot and tried to push out the noise, lights, and brilliance of the duty free shops below me. The sheer extravagance of those stores had been hard to walk through. The selections and the prices and the throngs still striving to purchase at a time that could not yet even be called morning through me back into the consumptive world I had left behind. It was nice to close my eyes.

I had been to Amsterdam numerous times before (once even detailed in these passages) and always enjoyed the city. There was something even more enjoyable after the hassles of Kampala to sit at a café and have a cup of well-made coffee, to read just outside of a brasserie while sipping a dark ale, to push through the crowds at the only museum I braved and realize how my tastes in art might have changed. I now looked more towards Van Gogh’s pastorals as the source of genius. The lines spilled out from the fields and the colors of the sky that melded seamlessly with the trees and bounced in reds and greens and yellows that couldn’t help but remind me of Africa.

By the time I got to New York, I was anxious to see some friends that I have been missing for years. I met Meghan at the airport whom I hadn’t seen since UCSD and later in the city ran into Lance and ran over the years its been since we both went to Horizon and lived in that condo in La Jolla. Following an instinct that I should have acted on long ago, I pared the two and watched as they became great friends. Lance still finding his way in the city after a couple of years and Meghan just moving there, we all had an amazing time. Coffee in the village. The view from the Empire State Building as the sea buildings beneath me seemed to almost wash in the waves of people and vehicles and wind. The rooftop seating with live music barely making it from the bar below. We had set out for a quick trip—it wouldn’t be right to miss Manhattan at night. Somewhere around four in the morning we realized that we had probably done enough right by the place and turned in for some sleep only to try to push more into the day in the morning. I don’t think I could have done more in 24 hours, but the goal was far from whirlwind tourism, enjoying the city, taking it in with my friends was the real goal. I embraced all of that and all the while reeled from imaging how my Ugandan friends would have embraced the scene. How would Peter Paul have drunk in the heights of the buildings, and Peter Abiyo with the streets and the cars. Tony with the music and the crowds. The mixtures of love and awe and fear that would have pored out from my friends found some small expression in my own perceptions. Nothing significant, but at least a nod to the effect they’ve had in my life.

And then the doldrums. After New York was civil commuting. Layovers, crowded delays in airports, bad expensive food, no movies, worse than babies are the teenagers and barely older kids and their prattle. Soon enough, with the energy for the trip draining me, I landed in San Diego. Straight from the airport to burritos, carne asada fries, a nice beer, a friend’s house in which I’ve spent countless relaxing nights, and sleep. The morning held views of the ocean, the great Park, a breakfast burrito (technically a “Lunch Burrito”—the horribly misnamed conglomeration of eggs, cheese, bacon, hash browns, and beans.) I had reached the shores I had known for so long.