The terminals and the baggage claims have vanished, but the traveling has yet to cease. A few days more and I’ll actually have settled into home. For the past week, while in some respects I’ve had the easy luxury of returning to the leisure of the unemployed and spending the whole day playing with my nephew, I’ve been missing some of that real ease that begins with quiet. Even now as I push a few moments into my schedule, I’m a little lost at how to sort through the memories that sometimes run at me blindly while staring out the windows of moving cars.
The changes and revelations that I’ve seen over the past week have come in fits and flashes. While eating, pushing in the same favorite foods, the ones automatically ordered without even barely consulting the menu, I catch—usually somewhere in the middle of the meal—the idea that I really haven’t had this taste in quite some time. I try to recall all the sitting and wishing for that taste that have flooded me over the year.
It is mostly at these moments that I notice how the past year somehow seems like a bump of a skipped record. Life has continued so steadily, as it should, as it couldn’t have been expected to otherwise do. And not in the great leaps and bounds of the imagination. It is not the great advances that I oddly find myself looking for every time I return to my former homes. Old buildings should be ravaged or removed, new efforts stretching up skyward. Mostly, life plods on. Even advancement takes the same pace it always has—eating up the occasional empty field and replacing it with the pre-formed boxes and signs of an America ready for consumption. And its easy to find myself slipping into the groove I left a year ago, filling the time and space with movies and fast food, coffee and cold beer.
I’m still waiting for the chances to feel the differences more than I do now. They are there, impossible to confuse. When I look into a sky that I once might have thought was glorious and now I find the texture flat, when on the long car rides I fail to see huts disappearing beneath the green growth on the side of the road, when I’m going to bed and my friends are waking up facing a day I can’t help them with and experiencing things I’ll only know about if somehow we can both struggle against the tide of life and find the time to write each other.
Nothing seems as shocking, and also ghastly familiar, as the excesses. Walking through the nicer outdoor malls of San Diego, where people are quite as plentiful as in the camps back there, except that here their lack of covered skin is carefully placed and far from accidental or the result of natural feeding or tattered clothing. Something about the gatherings, especially in food courts and clothing stores unsettles. There was one mall, this one in Phoenix, with a constant vigil of three flame-topped pillars, each tall and blasting enough fire to cook decent meals. The worst, to me, wasn’t the waste or the fuel that spilled out burnt into the air as heat and pollution. The unease, I think, in retrospect, comes from the knowledge that in this world somebody always pays for the excess, that is isn’t just bits and pieces of flashery to amuse the citizens, but it always gets divided and placed on the bill and we pay it unheeding.
The comfort can set it off as well. After switching around with nights on couches and floors and sleeping in cars, I was lying in bed last night, a non-descript hotel room with their standard huge beds and slightly heavy blankets, including the one everyone knows they never clean. I kept thinking about how huge the bed seemed, especially when compared to my rocking bunk bed that swayed whenever Adam or I dared to roll over in our sleep. The luxury seemed fitting and not too indulgent: to spread out and feel the mattress underneath every inch of any direction I might sprawl out to. And I thought how odd it was to have this now, until I remembered that I actually had much more comfortable beds, like the soft mattress and blankets in Masindi when we went to visit Peter’s family, or in Zanzibar, or wherever, and Masindi’s night cost five dollars.
The whole experience amazes me in other ways as well. One night, I was invited to a gathering of friends at my grandmother’s house. A few of her acquaintances from church had their weekly meeting and they wanted me to come and share. Here was the entire thing that I was wrestling with condensed. How do you turn the experience into a speech or some slideshow presentation. It was easy when I set my laptop to display the many-foldered photos at the pizza shop and I sat around enjoying dinner with my friends and family, randomly telling stories whenever they surfaced in my head and the monitor at the same time. This was more like the days I stood in front of audiences, theaters and classrooms and tried to leave them with something about Uganda to dwell on that would hopefully grow someday into action. I was surprised when it felt warm and comforting to talk about everything again in this way. Even with people who didn’t know the exact circumstances, these men and women had lived through quite a bit themselves and drew from childhoods on farms and lives in wars and other struggles. They saw the folly of the world for what it was.
The perspectives of my grandmother and her friends grounded me for a while. They saw fear in the world, and hope in the youth and all of these things that I tried to bring out in them and myself. They enjoyed the pictures and the media and opening their eyes and telling stories that placed the events in their own considerable perspectives. I tried to see through their conversations and my still unformed thoughts to an idea of the world. It must be something more than people and places, but it is hard to see from hotel lobbies.
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Learning to Love French
Looking back it was one of the most fulfilling trips I’ve taken. Looking forward, I can sympathize with all of those who looked at us slanted and questioned. “Why the Congo? What do you hope to do or see there that might be worth the trip, and—of course—the ever-hyped danger?” Of course, these same questions rang considerably when I was first considering the move to Uganda. Then, I had a solid answer, a plan that—even if my eventual tasks here turned out to be completely different—at least I had something secure that I could offer as a reason for the trip. But at the beginning of this last excursion, I lacked anything so definite.
I knew we were neighbors, that these simultaneous and largely unlinked, though at times similar, conflicts raged beyond and sometimes across the borders of the two countries. I knew people suffered and longed and some people strove for peace. I knew a bit of the history, but nothing extensive. And I knew it seemed alright to go. This last art troubled me because I know how I have spoken and how I feel about people who travel to Gulu to see, first-hand, the suffering of the Internally Displaced Persons Camps. As if somehow the tragedy wouldn’t be real unless they stood as witness to it. People travel and let the tears brim up in their eyes and the wringing hands clench tight before returning down south. And partly, they are right. There is something about visiting the place and knowing the people that makes the reality of Gulu live. But I always question what they do, what they offer, and how they present themselves—ever wary of those loathsome words that have been regularly lobbed at our organization—conflict tourism.
We had the idea of going as investigators, not for any special purpose other than trying to gain a wider understanding of the area we lived in, having read too many books about how Africa is both more than and less then the political boundaries of formerly imperial borders and hoping to learn what linked and what differentiated. None of this was for formal research, and possibly we could have dove into JSTOR and other locations for similar information, but the vividness of experience called stronger than academic publications. And, to be perfectly honest, the slight amounts of danger, of walking into a country most people don’t go to for fear of rebels—numerous Congolese factions, the Interahamwe, other Rwandese groups—and other travesties. Anyway, we had a contact. Our friend Julia had been about a month before with a Congolese friend of hers from Kampala. I called him, and he happened to be in Goma at the time so I asked if I could join him. “Perfect.” So we left.
The two o’clock bus from Kampala to Kigali, Rwanda bursts through small towns, over darkened potholes and through the pre-dawn fog of the increasingly vegetation-filled countryside of southern Uganda with enough speed to rock us occasionally out of sleep for fear and to get us to the bus park by ten in the morning, plenty of time to push on to the border. The officials as we first entered the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the Goma crossing were friendly as people normally are when we are first friendly with them. We laughed about American tourists, very large passport stamps, and numerous other things (not so much about the $50 it cost to cross over) and met Petna’s friends. I had called Petna at the border, introduced myself again as Julia’s friend and he excitedly sent some people down to pick us up.
During the whole trip we struggled with language. In the Congo, they speak French and Kiswahili. I’ve learned about as much Kiswahili as I can from a song that runs through greetings. “Mambo, Jambo Sana, Habari Gani… Hakuna Mutata.” And as for French, honestly, I’ve never cared for the language. Too visceral, almost venereal, too many letters that aren’t actually pronounced and odd comas and hyphens thrown in for no reasons I can discern. Then there was the friend who offered to teach me but instead ridiculed my poor pronunciations at every step. But there are kids, and when beautiful kids speak, and wonderful people speak, I can listen and almost love it. And when our well-armed guard speaks (more to come) I can struggle to understand. I can imagine living in a place like this and learning more than I could hope for, more than when English and ease is such a simple recourse. I’d be forced to do what everyone we met did, struggle forward with a language they don’t quite grasp. But we met somewhere and still exchanged stories and laughed a bunch, right from the beginning when we met Petna’s friends.
The took us to Petna’s offices, a decent sized compound out of which he runs a film and television production studio, a music group, and other initiatives through which he tries to create Goma as a cultural center for the Congo. Having little to no idea what he did or who he was before we got there, we were amazed to meet musicians, cinematographers, and all kinds of folks as we entered the place, everyone friendly and promising a great time over the next week. They almost ushered us to a local hotel, until we ran into two of their mzungu friends who subsequently offered a spot at their guest house. They warned us as we drove over there, “It’s not what we expected when we came here, we live rather well.” Knowing how I am pampered in Gulu with a nice compound, a great cook, and other niceties, we tried to assuage them, “No, we understand.” But we didn’t. They work for HEAL-Africa, an organization that runs a hospital in Goma and numerous community programs in the surrounding areas.
The director is a former Member of Parliament and current orthopedic surgeon who runs the hospital and the organization and allows many of those involved to stay at a magnificent house he acquired right on the shores of Lake Kivu. While doing amazing work in the peripheral areas with local leadership, they seek out special cases for his orthopedic skills as well as for a group that works on the incredibly high rate of vaginal fistulas in the area (due a record setting number of unskilled deliveries in the rural areas and Goma’s tragic claim as the world leader in violent gang rape.) They opened their home to us, began explaining their programs, allowed us to jump off the rock outcrop of the garden into the lake, and fed us well. We took a small side trip up north about 80 kilometers (more than 100 km and it begins to get too dangerous due to the rebel groups, even the place we went is often off limits) with a group that was setting up a new operation to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV. (We also made a small trip to a dairy farm in the mountains that easily resemble Europe where we got what is easily the best cheese I’ve had in over a year.)
Tired, making it home and then swimming, we rejoined with Petna to celebrate the world premier of a film he made about the lives and thoughts of the children in the area, tying it in artistically to the hopes of the continent with the coming of the South African World Cup. After each film we saw, we enjoyed a spread of beers (not those small Ugandan beers, but serious, 720mL bottles) cheese, sausages, nuts, anything we could think of, and asked the various directors questions about their works in between rounds of applause. The evening offered us a homegrown film festival intimately celebrated and lovingly shared.
The next day was a big one for us, we had set up to climb to the top of ________, an active volcano. I thought I’d be ready, but the two years I’d taken off from backpacking apparently weakened my legs, which were about ready to quit when we finally reached the top. Everything seemed fine, though, as the sunset and the lake of fire and lava erupted below us in ever-changing patterns of continuous explosions. I could try to explain how the lava stands as one of the most amazing natural spectacles I’ve seen, but the words are dainty compared to the quite literal center of the Earth exploding below us. So, we sat and sometimes joked, but regularly watched in silence, then slept through our tired muscles easily and thoroughly.
The morning was cold and we rushed to get down the mountain without letting gravity push us too hard all of the time. Regularly we failed at that and everyone ended up with scrapes and torn clothing. (Each step made Adam and myself question the validity of making the entire trip in Chacos.) Half the decent lay in the path of a lava flow created by an eruption in 2002, making every step a struggle to keep your ankles intact on the rolling and crumbling igneous rocks. We pushed ahead and only slightly noticed as our ranger guide (adequately equipped with an AK-47) kept intently staring off to the right. Remember our conversation the other day about any dangerous animals in the area. “Non, non, les personne dangerouise.”) [I have no idea how to spell in French.] We became a little worried. Asking him what it was, we finally got the reply “Les Bandit,” and instructions to move quickly down the mountain. We started moving quickly then even quicker after a shot fired behind us. I tried to remember what I had learned, that a single shot is a warning shot, that people with AK-47s don’t tend to take single, well-aimed shots at their targets, and that the situation wasn’t as bad as it might seem, but that was difficult. So we ran down the hill. We kept running until advised and allowed to stop, rested, then continued down the hill until we found someone coming up. We explained to her in English and she translated a little French for us so we understood that two men with black barrettes and uniforms but no guns(?) were crossing up above. Probably Rwandan militia trying to make it home. The Congolese Army was called to scout the area and our photographer/translator friend who wanted to go up the hill waited until they were finished. We were close enough, so felt it best to go home.
That night was filled with lively retellings of the story to our mzungu friends, to Petna, the whole crew, through drinking and dancing and wishing we weren’t so tired and aching and that we didn’t have to leave the next day. I said I’d try to come back. And I will try. I don’t know. We here it all the time in Gulu, but I loved the place. Their was music, amazing food, amazing people, all of these aspects of African life that I loved. I wanted to stay and learn from the solid organization. I can see myself returning on a rotation in 3rd/4th year, or maybe once I start my MPH studies. I’m not sure, it’s hard to promise these things, but I want to.
The whole trip didn’t offer us much rest, the main cause for the vacation, so we took an extra couple of days at Lake Bunyoni on Bunyo-Amagara Island. The place is seriously the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in Uganda. Perfect lakes and islands, wonderful food and people, a rope swing to dive into the clear actually safe waters, canoes to paddle around in, everything that promises a great vacation. It took a couple of days, but we finally felt rested, completely rejuvenated, and hopefully ready.
I had about a month left. Since that time (about three weeks) I’ve encountered numerous struggles as I attempt to prepare to leave. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be ready or if my tasks will ever near completion, but more and more it looks like things will be fine. I trust in this as I try to trust that all the complications with money and school will work out, as I try to trust on every trip I take, leaving that silly book behind and knowing that I’ll meet great people and that things work out. If I can try to make something bigger out of it, that this is how God works, but I don’t feel like I have the distance from the occasions for that sort of philosophizing. I’m not yet good enough to fold it in like I should have learned from Garrison Keillor, but now I’ll spit out my quick experiences and ideas. For now, what I can offer is just trust, and more hope. But it seems to work.
Pictures to come, hopefully.
(NB – While writing this, I attempted to relax outside in the shade and chose a spot next to the Kampala Golf Course, watching the players. The afternoon was pleasant as I enjoyed a sandwich and tried to put my thoughts together. However, after a little while, two men—introduced as Inspector William and Moses—came up to me and said I was frightening the golfers. I had selected a spot just on the edge of the course to stay out of people’s way but apparently, that was too obtrusive. At first, I thought of just apologizing and leaving, but instead I just asked if there was somewhere else I could sit. After a long talk and pleasantries, the two men offered me a bit of shade at the end of one green. This advised spot actually lay considerably further into the course than my first choice, but it seemed nice enough so I sat down and finished my sandwich.)
I knew we were neighbors, that these simultaneous and largely unlinked, though at times similar, conflicts raged beyond and sometimes across the borders of the two countries. I knew people suffered and longed and some people strove for peace. I knew a bit of the history, but nothing extensive. And I knew it seemed alright to go. This last art troubled me because I know how I have spoken and how I feel about people who travel to Gulu to see, first-hand, the suffering of the Internally Displaced Persons Camps. As if somehow the tragedy wouldn’t be real unless they stood as witness to it. People travel and let the tears brim up in their eyes and the wringing hands clench tight before returning down south. And partly, they are right. There is something about visiting the place and knowing the people that makes the reality of Gulu live. But I always question what they do, what they offer, and how they present themselves—ever wary of those loathsome words that have been regularly lobbed at our organization—conflict tourism.
We had the idea of going as investigators, not for any special purpose other than trying to gain a wider understanding of the area we lived in, having read too many books about how Africa is both more than and less then the political boundaries of formerly imperial borders and hoping to learn what linked and what differentiated. None of this was for formal research, and possibly we could have dove into JSTOR and other locations for similar information, but the vividness of experience called stronger than academic publications. And, to be perfectly honest, the slight amounts of danger, of walking into a country most people don’t go to for fear of rebels—numerous Congolese factions, the Interahamwe, other Rwandese groups—and other travesties. Anyway, we had a contact. Our friend Julia had been about a month before with a Congolese friend of hers from Kampala. I called him, and he happened to be in Goma at the time so I asked if I could join him. “Perfect.” So we left.
The two o’clock bus from Kampala to Kigali, Rwanda bursts through small towns, over darkened potholes and through the pre-dawn fog of the increasingly vegetation-filled countryside of southern Uganda with enough speed to rock us occasionally out of sleep for fear and to get us to the bus park by ten in the morning, plenty of time to push on to the border. The officials as we first entered the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the Goma crossing were friendly as people normally are when we are first friendly with them. We laughed about American tourists, very large passport stamps, and numerous other things (not so much about the $50 it cost to cross over) and met Petna’s friends. I had called Petna at the border, introduced myself again as Julia’s friend and he excitedly sent some people down to pick us up.
During the whole trip we struggled with language. In the Congo, they speak French and Kiswahili. I’ve learned about as much Kiswahili as I can from a song that runs through greetings. “Mambo, Jambo Sana, Habari Gani… Hakuna Mutata.” And as for French, honestly, I’ve never cared for the language. Too visceral, almost venereal, too many letters that aren’t actually pronounced and odd comas and hyphens thrown in for no reasons I can discern. Then there was the friend who offered to teach me but instead ridiculed my poor pronunciations at every step. But there are kids, and when beautiful kids speak, and wonderful people speak, I can listen and almost love it. And when our well-armed guard speaks (more to come) I can struggle to understand. I can imagine living in a place like this and learning more than I could hope for, more than when English and ease is such a simple recourse. I’d be forced to do what everyone we met did, struggle forward with a language they don’t quite grasp. But we met somewhere and still exchanged stories and laughed a bunch, right from the beginning when we met Petna’s friends.
The took us to Petna’s offices, a decent sized compound out of which he runs a film and television production studio, a music group, and other initiatives through which he tries to create Goma as a cultural center for the Congo. Having little to no idea what he did or who he was before we got there, we were amazed to meet musicians, cinematographers, and all kinds of folks as we entered the place, everyone friendly and promising a great time over the next week. They almost ushered us to a local hotel, until we ran into two of their mzungu friends who subsequently offered a spot at their guest house. They warned us as we drove over there, “It’s not what we expected when we came here, we live rather well.” Knowing how I am pampered in Gulu with a nice compound, a great cook, and other niceties, we tried to assuage them, “No, we understand.” But we didn’t. They work for HEAL-Africa, an organization that runs a hospital in Goma and numerous community programs in the surrounding areas.
The director is a former Member of Parliament and current orthopedic surgeon who runs the hospital and the organization and allows many of those involved to stay at a magnificent house he acquired right on the shores of Lake Kivu. While doing amazing work in the peripheral areas with local leadership, they seek out special cases for his orthopedic skills as well as for a group that works on the incredibly high rate of vaginal fistulas in the area (due a record setting number of unskilled deliveries in the rural areas and Goma’s tragic claim as the world leader in violent gang rape.) They opened their home to us, began explaining their programs, allowed us to jump off the rock outcrop of the garden into the lake, and fed us well. We took a small side trip up north about 80 kilometers (more than 100 km and it begins to get too dangerous due to the rebel groups, even the place we went is often off limits) with a group that was setting up a new operation to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV. (We also made a small trip to a dairy farm in the mountains that easily resemble Europe where we got what is easily the best cheese I’ve had in over a year.)
Tired, making it home and then swimming, we rejoined with Petna to celebrate the world premier of a film he made about the lives and thoughts of the children in the area, tying it in artistically to the hopes of the continent with the coming of the South African World Cup. After each film we saw, we enjoyed a spread of beers (not those small Ugandan beers, but serious, 720mL bottles) cheese, sausages, nuts, anything we could think of, and asked the various directors questions about their works in between rounds of applause. The evening offered us a homegrown film festival intimately celebrated and lovingly shared.
The next day was a big one for us, we had set up to climb to the top of ________, an active volcano. I thought I’d be ready, but the two years I’d taken off from backpacking apparently weakened my legs, which were about ready to quit when we finally reached the top. Everything seemed fine, though, as the sunset and the lake of fire and lava erupted below us in ever-changing patterns of continuous explosions. I could try to explain how the lava stands as one of the most amazing natural spectacles I’ve seen, but the words are dainty compared to the quite literal center of the Earth exploding below us. So, we sat and sometimes joked, but regularly watched in silence, then slept through our tired muscles easily and thoroughly.
The morning was cold and we rushed to get down the mountain without letting gravity push us too hard all of the time. Regularly we failed at that and everyone ended up with scrapes and torn clothing. (Each step made Adam and myself question the validity of making the entire trip in Chacos.) Half the decent lay in the path of a lava flow created by an eruption in 2002, making every step a struggle to keep your ankles intact on the rolling and crumbling igneous rocks. We pushed ahead and only slightly noticed as our ranger guide (adequately equipped with an AK-47) kept intently staring off to the right. Remember our conversation the other day about any dangerous animals in the area. “Non, non, les personne dangerouise.”) [I have no idea how to spell in French.] We became a little worried. Asking him what it was, we finally got the reply “Les Bandit,” and instructions to move quickly down the mountain. We started moving quickly then even quicker after a shot fired behind us. I tried to remember what I had learned, that a single shot is a warning shot, that people with AK-47s don’t tend to take single, well-aimed shots at their targets, and that the situation wasn’t as bad as it might seem, but that was difficult. So we ran down the hill. We kept running until advised and allowed to stop, rested, then continued down the hill until we found someone coming up. We explained to her in English and she translated a little French for us so we understood that two men with black barrettes and uniforms but no guns(?) were crossing up above. Probably Rwandan militia trying to make it home. The Congolese Army was called to scout the area and our photographer/translator friend who wanted to go up the hill waited until they were finished. We were close enough, so felt it best to go home.
That night was filled with lively retellings of the story to our mzungu friends, to Petna, the whole crew, through drinking and dancing and wishing we weren’t so tired and aching and that we didn’t have to leave the next day. I said I’d try to come back. And I will try. I don’t know. We here it all the time in Gulu, but I loved the place. Their was music, amazing food, amazing people, all of these aspects of African life that I loved. I wanted to stay and learn from the solid organization. I can see myself returning on a rotation in 3rd/4th year, or maybe once I start my MPH studies. I’m not sure, it’s hard to promise these things, but I want to.
The whole trip didn’t offer us much rest, the main cause for the vacation, so we took an extra couple of days at Lake Bunyoni on Bunyo-Amagara Island. The place is seriously the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in Uganda. Perfect lakes and islands, wonderful food and people, a rope swing to dive into the clear actually safe waters, canoes to paddle around in, everything that promises a great vacation. It took a couple of days, but we finally felt rested, completely rejuvenated, and hopefully ready.
I had about a month left. Since that time (about three weeks) I’ve encountered numerous struggles as I attempt to prepare to leave. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be ready or if my tasks will ever near completion, but more and more it looks like things will be fine. I trust in this as I try to trust that all the complications with money and school will work out, as I try to trust on every trip I take, leaving that silly book behind and knowing that I’ll meet great people and that things work out. If I can try to make something bigger out of it, that this is how God works, but I don’t feel like I have the distance from the occasions for that sort of philosophizing. I’m not yet good enough to fold it in like I should have learned from Garrison Keillor, but now I’ll spit out my quick experiences and ideas. For now, what I can offer is just trust, and more hope. But it seems to work.
Pictures to come, hopefully.
(NB – While writing this, I attempted to relax outside in the shade and chose a spot next to the Kampala Golf Course, watching the players. The afternoon was pleasant as I enjoyed a sandwich and tried to put my thoughts together. However, after a little while, two men—introduced as Inspector William and Moses—came up to me and said I was frightening the golfers. I had selected a spot just on the edge of the course to stay out of people’s way but apparently, that was too obtrusive. At first, I thought of just apologizing and leaving, but instead I just asked if there was somewhere else I could sit. After a long talk and pleasantries, the two men offered me a bit of shade at the end of one green. This advised spot actually lay considerably further into the course than my first choice, but it seemed nice enough so I sat down and finished my sandwich.)
Sunday, April 15, 2007
The Island of Alone
The largest lake locked by land lies in Africa, or at least so purported one member of our boat. Alone, a French man I met some months ago at Backpackers Hostel in Kampala, quickly mentioned how it wasn’t the largest and how he thought it might be in Russia, or at least that one is the deepest. A Canadian girl then mentioned how it was, instead, Lake Superior between the US and Canada. The whole thing stood as little more than the recognition of the limitations of travelers, the sad and persistent need for the guidebook with all those little facts that attribute significances to locations. It could be enough, to sit in a boat with gentle waves lapping against it, feeling funny because the wet spray in the air lacked the salt that I was accustomed to—all this without the trivia debate, but these are the things we think about. I’m not sure how we learned this, if it was in the guidebooks, in National Geographic, on the Discovery Channel, but we come to places through facts, monuments, sites, and scenes. I am no different, except only if that I just wrote it down.
Alone scoffed for a short while about how Americans (the more holistic “Americans” which actually manage to include Canadians) felt the need to assert their superiority even in the size of their lakes before mentioning again that he was pretty sure it was in Russia. He tried to let the matter drop and return to his usual ambivalence to disputes between countries by explaining the reason why dropped out of school. Apparently in France they teach their students that there are five continents instead of the more English-accepted count of seven. At around fifteen, when Alone realized this discrepancy, he wondered how formal education could differ in such vast a category as that and deduced that the whole system was worthless.
The first time I met Alone, he was staying in a tent at the hostel I was at for a while. One of our first conversations was him remarking on how he hated it when people came to each other as citizens of a country first and people second. Apparently, he had been sitting on the couch in the hostel for a few months having the same conversation almost every night. Where are you from? How long have you been here? What are you doing? Few people seemed to listen to the actual responses and just nodded sometimes as if the other person was intensely interesting. After leaving school, he traveled the word for fifteen years, conducting himself in various ways, most of which I still haven’t heard about, but I know that at least he spent some time raising lions. At the time, he was stuck in Uganda, victim to some indigenous disease that kept him from traveling, but he was simultaneously prevented from seeing a doctor by a rather intense fear. Every day I would ask him if he had been to the clinic so he could leave. Every day he would respond, “Not yet, maybe tomorrow.”
By Easter weekend, I found Alone at the other end of the line when I was trying to see about space at a hostel on an island in the middle of Lake Victoria. After greeting me as we got on the boat, he explained that since the time I met him on the couches, after countless nights of similar conversations, he landed a job managing a once-defunct hostel on one of the Sese Islands. The stretch of land he now held was 40 acres, a considerable portion of the island stretching an entire tip of a peninsula jetting off the whole. On the trip, he pointed to a cliff and drew a line between a small set of rocky points. “That’s the equator. We found out one day when one guest had a GPS. A couple of weeks ago [April 1st], we drew a line in the sand about fifty feet from there and had people taking pictures in front of it.”
His section of the island represented a traveler’s paradise to Alone, who had definitely slept in enough hostels to conceive of one. His conceptions included vast plans for bungalows and a tree house with a bar and a pulley system for drinks and a series of pronouncements he wanted to write out and paste all over the place to explain his dreams. He wanted to write it all out when he was eloquent enough so that when every group came through he could convey himself even if the drinks and smoke, which were plentiful, inhibited his expression. In his dreams, the island was a sanctuary free from travelers’ squabbles between nationalities, missing the conflicts of backpackers and volunteers, and trying to accomplish what he could for the locals. (On one specific paper, Alone wanted to explain how he offered a nice house at the edge of his land to the staff, but they elect to stay in a shack because they don’t want to walk so far. He hated the idea that people would criticize him for racism, “It’s not that far, but they prefer the other. It’s not a black thing, it’s what they want.”)
Sitting on the small cliffs, the loft that allowed a view of both sides of the island, or even resting on the gravely beach, I could imagine it. Sometimes, it was infested somewhat with Alex Garland’s visions of a travelers’ utopia and other times with stories and dreams I’ve heard in the dorms of other hostels, but it was nice to imagine a small piece of it being acted out, that Alone had managed to secure for himself the exact thing that so many people have voiced their wishes for in the bunk beds of hostels around the world, “Man, I would create a small place, not like these resorts, but leave it untouched, people would only come if they had heard about it from friends, cheep beds, good food, nice drinks, yeah, and free weed!” After of couple of attempts I stopped trying to think what I would want from it and just enjoyed listening to Alone tell of the hopes he planned out in his head.
Part of the paradise came from the isolation of the place. Others I had talked with booked reservations for the holiday weekend. We happened to call Alone earlier in the day and slept that night with about ten other people. The second night, the only guests were Kevin and myself. Sometimes it was difficult to determine if Alone was hosting us or we were entertaining him in his isolation, but the breaks provided by solitude on the island were welcomed. (Of course, I also imagined the tedium of it, our young host sitting here on nights without guests singing to himself, “Je suis Alone. Tres, tres Alone.”) We had ample time to sit and imagine all the things we could do with time, lives spent appreciating Beauty and Joy, writing and making jokes all the time, without hours dedicated to reports and emails. I also planned the partial incorporation of these dreams; time dedicated to appreciation and reflection, set aside from work, but the fruition of those thoughts remains to be tested.
We were not completely isolated. As we walked through small paths on the island we passed fishermen and farmers that used these dirt throughways every day, I imagined the complexity of the island like a California roadmap, with branches and diversions that we tried to follow when the energy took us. It felt odd walking past the locals as they farmed and fished, struggled for a living, while we sought some sort of sanctuary. But this is the discussion I’ve had with James many times. What if the land next to the Internally Displaced Camps is beautiful? How can you go there and try to appreciate it? How can you strive for peaceful Joy while neighboring suffering? It must look odd to see pleasure-seekers strolling through your workplace.
The fish and farming offered by the island seemed bountiful enough, judging at least by the catches pulled from the waters in front of our small place. The island teemed with life, even wild hippos came by the shores and one crawled up the shore late at night despite the barking of dogs. Vast vegetation filled every inch of the island, which must have provided food and shelter to largest collection of insects I’ve ever seen. Every night we constantly swiped our arms and backs, killing four or five mosquitoes with every pass, putting that brave little tailor to shame. Despite the uncountable bites I suffered, the bugs offered another result—they fed the birds. The island not only sheltered us temporarily but also provided a temporary getaway for a ridiculous array of migratory and resident birds. Every tree filled to capacity with feathers and beaks with obvious hierarchies as eagles claimed the higher perches, several other species claimed the intermediate and kingfishers spread across the grass when they weren’t floating above and diving into the waters. The birds fought and, I would assume, mated with a tenacity that would have easily proved to be sheer delight for even moderate ornithologists. I almost felt guilty at the sheer childish joy that a birdwatcher would feel landing on the island, possibly an old man at the end of a life’s ambition, bearing dark green colors, high powered binoculars, and a notebook where he would make numerous checks and scribbles that day to the amazement and jealousy of his friends back home. And I took the island at a stroll, watching them dart in the air and hide in the bushes, swatting away their abundant food as it buzzed in my ears just as I brushed aside the deep foliage that barred my path. In the less dense bushes, I could watch as hundreds of frogs burst from the trail before my footsteps, spreading out like a living flower even as the dragonflies and other bugs floated beside me, following and accompanying the journey.
The island offered a distinctly pleasant place to pass Easter. It vastly differed from previous years spent with families gathered around tables. Even last year, I took up with an adopted family and was welcomed into a bounty of lamb and love. We had excellent food (Alone is French, after all) and solitude to match wherever our thoughts led. The beauty made it easy to celebrate the gifts of the holiday, the offering of hope amidst struggles—exactly what we were trying to seek in the vacation.
Never was it easier to appreciate the wonder and magnificence of God, with His intense juxtaposition of despair and hope, especially considering the historical context of the weekend, then into the beginning of Saturday morning as a storm rolled in. The day began, auspiciously enough, with Alone hoping that the sun would be out strong enough to lie on the beach but that his saying that would probably lead to a storm. We saw the clouds gathering over Entebbe just around breakfast, piling up heavy and dark while the sky above us still retained some aspect of blue. Soon in encroached, the sky growing and heaving and the dark storm twisting around and rolling towards us. As it approached, the clouds seemed inpatient with their burden the moisture inside them plummeting so quickly that they fell still as a cloud, a white whispering of rain that hung like a beard at the base of the darkness. The storm blew in ferociously casting water and wind over everything for an hour before passing over. The other guests left just after the storm, leaving the rest of the day to us as the sky cleared, the sun shown, and the heat grew enough to call for the coolness of the lake and a quick swim followed by lying about on the deck and thoroughly relaxing.
By the end of the weekend, we tried to tell ourselves we were rested, ready for work again, once more into the fray dear friends. We’ll see how prophetic that is, but every break, every chance to see something of this beautiful country reminds me of something deeper than the simple good I’m trying to do here. There was something selfish and universal that drew me to Africa in the first place, before I noticed the need and before I had some small idea that I might help. That’s something to hold onto as well.
***
Before I could return to Gulu, I had to negotiate Kampala. This can challenge me enough with the traffic, the smog, and the expenses, but as we were leaving this time a new obstacle was placed before us—riots. It seems the government here is set on giving away a significant portion of the remaining rain forests, Mabira Forest, here to a sugar company. Another unknowable natural resource will be sacrificed in the name of Gross Domestic Product. The inspiring portion of this story is that the entire country seems to be rising up in protests, in editorials, in conversations, and even from the pulpit on Easter Sunday. The disheartening part is that this protest is having no effect on policy. This last weekend a number of people staged a protest and delivered a petition to parliament, only to see their peaceful display dissolve into chaos as police shot tear gas and the wild mob attacked Indians because an Indian corporation owns the sugar company. Three Indians were killed in the chaos and the point of the demonstration was lost by the time the news hit reels that night, blood took the place of ecology easily enough. Something has to be done but it’s hard to see what. Mostly it comes down to a vast majority of the world being uninformed about the actions of governments with no accountability. The administration seems content to plow ahead hoping the electorate will forget within the next four years before elections—not a difficult supposition considering the previous actions that have gone ignored. Boycotts and protests seem ineffective and if the international community ignores millions of people starving in camps than it seems difficult to imagine them rallying behind trees. There’s hope somewhere, and that should be a more appropriate focus for especially this weekend, the embodiment of hope in my religion, where hope left us and then returned for good. But it’s difficult to find at times.
Alone scoffed for a short while about how Americans (the more holistic “Americans” which actually manage to include Canadians) felt the need to assert their superiority even in the size of their lakes before mentioning again that he was pretty sure it was in Russia. He tried to let the matter drop and return to his usual ambivalence to disputes between countries by explaining the reason why dropped out of school. Apparently in France they teach their students that there are five continents instead of the more English-accepted count of seven. At around fifteen, when Alone realized this discrepancy, he wondered how formal education could differ in such vast a category as that and deduced that the whole system was worthless.
The first time I met Alone, he was staying in a tent at the hostel I was at for a while. One of our first conversations was him remarking on how he hated it when people came to each other as citizens of a country first and people second. Apparently, he had been sitting on the couch in the hostel for a few months having the same conversation almost every night. Where are you from? How long have you been here? What are you doing? Few people seemed to listen to the actual responses and just nodded sometimes as if the other person was intensely interesting. After leaving school, he traveled the word for fifteen years, conducting himself in various ways, most of which I still haven’t heard about, but I know that at least he spent some time raising lions. At the time, he was stuck in Uganda, victim to some indigenous disease that kept him from traveling, but he was simultaneously prevented from seeing a doctor by a rather intense fear. Every day I would ask him if he had been to the clinic so he could leave. Every day he would respond, “Not yet, maybe tomorrow.”
By Easter weekend, I found Alone at the other end of the line when I was trying to see about space at a hostel on an island in the middle of Lake Victoria. After greeting me as we got on the boat, he explained that since the time I met him on the couches, after countless nights of similar conversations, he landed a job managing a once-defunct hostel on one of the Sese Islands. The stretch of land he now held was 40 acres, a considerable portion of the island stretching an entire tip of a peninsula jetting off the whole. On the trip, he pointed to a cliff and drew a line between a small set of rocky points. “That’s the equator. We found out one day when one guest had a GPS. A couple of weeks ago [April 1st], we drew a line in the sand about fifty feet from there and had people taking pictures in front of it.”
His section of the island represented a traveler’s paradise to Alone, who had definitely slept in enough hostels to conceive of one. His conceptions included vast plans for bungalows and a tree house with a bar and a pulley system for drinks and a series of pronouncements he wanted to write out and paste all over the place to explain his dreams. He wanted to write it all out when he was eloquent enough so that when every group came through he could convey himself even if the drinks and smoke, which were plentiful, inhibited his expression. In his dreams, the island was a sanctuary free from travelers’ squabbles between nationalities, missing the conflicts of backpackers and volunteers, and trying to accomplish what he could for the locals. (On one specific paper, Alone wanted to explain how he offered a nice house at the edge of his land to the staff, but they elect to stay in a shack because they don’t want to walk so far. He hated the idea that people would criticize him for racism, “It’s not that far, but they prefer the other. It’s not a black thing, it’s what they want.”)
Sitting on the small cliffs, the loft that allowed a view of both sides of the island, or even resting on the gravely beach, I could imagine it. Sometimes, it was infested somewhat with Alex Garland’s visions of a travelers’ utopia and other times with stories and dreams I’ve heard in the dorms of other hostels, but it was nice to imagine a small piece of it being acted out, that Alone had managed to secure for himself the exact thing that so many people have voiced their wishes for in the bunk beds of hostels around the world, “Man, I would create a small place, not like these resorts, but leave it untouched, people would only come if they had heard about it from friends, cheep beds, good food, nice drinks, yeah, and free weed!” After of couple of attempts I stopped trying to think what I would want from it and just enjoyed listening to Alone tell of the hopes he planned out in his head.
Part of the paradise came from the isolation of the place. Others I had talked with booked reservations for the holiday weekend. We happened to call Alone earlier in the day and slept that night with about ten other people. The second night, the only guests were Kevin and myself. Sometimes it was difficult to determine if Alone was hosting us or we were entertaining him in his isolation, but the breaks provided by solitude on the island were welcomed. (Of course, I also imagined the tedium of it, our young host sitting here on nights without guests singing to himself, “Je suis Alone. Tres, tres Alone.”) We had ample time to sit and imagine all the things we could do with time, lives spent appreciating Beauty and Joy, writing and making jokes all the time, without hours dedicated to reports and emails. I also planned the partial incorporation of these dreams; time dedicated to appreciation and reflection, set aside from work, but the fruition of those thoughts remains to be tested.
We were not completely isolated. As we walked through small paths on the island we passed fishermen and farmers that used these dirt throughways every day, I imagined the complexity of the island like a California roadmap, with branches and diversions that we tried to follow when the energy took us. It felt odd walking past the locals as they farmed and fished, struggled for a living, while we sought some sort of sanctuary. But this is the discussion I’ve had with James many times. What if the land next to the Internally Displaced Camps is beautiful? How can you go there and try to appreciate it? How can you strive for peaceful Joy while neighboring suffering? It must look odd to see pleasure-seekers strolling through your workplace.
The fish and farming offered by the island seemed bountiful enough, judging at least by the catches pulled from the waters in front of our small place. The island teemed with life, even wild hippos came by the shores and one crawled up the shore late at night despite the barking of dogs. Vast vegetation filled every inch of the island, which must have provided food and shelter to largest collection of insects I’ve ever seen. Every night we constantly swiped our arms and backs, killing four or five mosquitoes with every pass, putting that brave little tailor to shame. Despite the uncountable bites I suffered, the bugs offered another result—they fed the birds. The island not only sheltered us temporarily but also provided a temporary getaway for a ridiculous array of migratory and resident birds. Every tree filled to capacity with feathers and beaks with obvious hierarchies as eagles claimed the higher perches, several other species claimed the intermediate and kingfishers spread across the grass when they weren’t floating above and diving into the waters. The birds fought and, I would assume, mated with a tenacity that would have easily proved to be sheer delight for even moderate ornithologists. I almost felt guilty at the sheer childish joy that a birdwatcher would feel landing on the island, possibly an old man at the end of a life’s ambition, bearing dark green colors, high powered binoculars, and a notebook where he would make numerous checks and scribbles that day to the amazement and jealousy of his friends back home. And I took the island at a stroll, watching them dart in the air and hide in the bushes, swatting away their abundant food as it buzzed in my ears just as I brushed aside the deep foliage that barred my path. In the less dense bushes, I could watch as hundreds of frogs burst from the trail before my footsteps, spreading out like a living flower even as the dragonflies and other bugs floated beside me, following and accompanying the journey.
The island offered a distinctly pleasant place to pass Easter. It vastly differed from previous years spent with families gathered around tables. Even last year, I took up with an adopted family and was welcomed into a bounty of lamb and love. We had excellent food (Alone is French, after all) and solitude to match wherever our thoughts led. The beauty made it easy to celebrate the gifts of the holiday, the offering of hope amidst struggles—exactly what we were trying to seek in the vacation.
Never was it easier to appreciate the wonder and magnificence of God, with His intense juxtaposition of despair and hope, especially considering the historical context of the weekend, then into the beginning of Saturday morning as a storm rolled in. The day began, auspiciously enough, with Alone hoping that the sun would be out strong enough to lie on the beach but that his saying that would probably lead to a storm. We saw the clouds gathering over Entebbe just around breakfast, piling up heavy and dark while the sky above us still retained some aspect of blue. Soon in encroached, the sky growing and heaving and the dark storm twisting around and rolling towards us. As it approached, the clouds seemed inpatient with their burden the moisture inside them plummeting so quickly that they fell still as a cloud, a white whispering of rain that hung like a beard at the base of the darkness. The storm blew in ferociously casting water and wind over everything for an hour before passing over. The other guests left just after the storm, leaving the rest of the day to us as the sky cleared, the sun shown, and the heat grew enough to call for the coolness of the lake and a quick swim followed by lying about on the deck and thoroughly relaxing.
By the end of the weekend, we tried to tell ourselves we were rested, ready for work again, once more into the fray dear friends. We’ll see how prophetic that is, but every break, every chance to see something of this beautiful country reminds me of something deeper than the simple good I’m trying to do here. There was something selfish and universal that drew me to Africa in the first place, before I noticed the need and before I had some small idea that I might help. That’s something to hold onto as well.
***
Before I could return to Gulu, I had to negotiate Kampala. This can challenge me enough with the traffic, the smog, and the expenses, but as we were leaving this time a new obstacle was placed before us—riots. It seems the government here is set on giving away a significant portion of the remaining rain forests, Mabira Forest, here to a sugar company. Another unknowable natural resource will be sacrificed in the name of Gross Domestic Product. The inspiring portion of this story is that the entire country seems to be rising up in protests, in editorials, in conversations, and even from the pulpit on Easter Sunday. The disheartening part is that this protest is having no effect on policy. This last weekend a number of people staged a protest and delivered a petition to parliament, only to see their peaceful display dissolve into chaos as police shot tear gas and the wild mob attacked Indians because an Indian corporation owns the sugar company. Three Indians were killed in the chaos and the point of the demonstration was lost by the time the news hit reels that night, blood took the place of ecology easily enough. Something has to be done but it’s hard to see what. Mostly it comes down to a vast majority of the world being uninformed about the actions of governments with no accountability. The administration seems content to plow ahead hoping the electorate will forget within the next four years before elections—not a difficult supposition considering the previous actions that have gone ignored. Boycotts and protests seem ineffective and if the international community ignores millions of people starving in camps than it seems difficult to imagine them rallying behind trees. There’s hope somewhere, and that should be a more appropriate focus for especially this weekend, the embodiment of hope in my religion, where hope left us and then returned for good. But it’s difficult to find at times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
