uganda 10: in retrospect (+ pictures!)

Being under the raft rocketing through a swirling green oblivion was not as harrowing as I would have expected. We had flipped and I was trapped underneath and I knew there were air pockets up there somewhere but all I managed to find was more water. It must have only been maybe 10 or 15 seconds of struggle but it seemed much, much longer and it gave me time to think about all the other stupid things I’ve done in life. Repelling down a sheer, slick rock face of a mountain in Belize during a raging tropical wave. Swimming in the crock and piranha-infested waters of the Amazon. Riding down the most dangerous road in the world on a bike with dodgy breaks. SCUBA diving in Honduras with an oxygen hose I knew was leaking. The list was long and I was beginning to think that I was making my last entry when I burst through the surface, swallowed another wave and clung for dear life to the side of the careening raft. I was in the white waters of the Nile and I had just realized that my reward for 3 months of hard work was pretty much a suicide mission. Live and learn, I guess.

I spent the summer swimming in the alphabet soup of the world of humanitarian assistance. Greeting other whites in Uganda is a unique experience. The first question is not “where are you from?” or “what are you doing here?”, but “who are you with?” The implicit assumption is that no one is here for their health and must therefore be attached to some higher cause. And in Uganda, as with many African countries, there are many higher causes to choose from. The abbreviations and acronyms are dizzying. UNHCR, WHO, UNICEF. DFID, WFP, SNV, CARE, IRC, and on and on. Some of them are truly obscure. African Christians In Development, which boils down to the unfortunate “ACID”. Associating a Christian relief organization with a corrosive agent is a mixed message if ever there was one. And then there is the truly baffling “Pat the Child,” which I’m told has a website that gets an astounding number of hits, presumably from social deviants expecting something much different than pictures of AIDS orphans in yogurt production.

Who you’re with here becomes your field pedigree and inherent is that can be a perverse set of bragging rights. Who is here for the longest period? Who is dealing with the most desperate population? Who is in harm’s way? A friend told me about talking to a worker for the ICC who name-dropped the names of prominent LRA rebels he was in contact with. These men are vicious killers and the notion that in some circles there is some sexy cache to associating with them kind of tells you that the world of humanitarian assistance is a strange one. Our raft guide encouraged us to come up with a group cheer after gnarly rapids. Corny, yes, but we did it anyway. People tossed out different suggestions, one of which was “IDP CAMP!” This came from a woman who had spent all of 2 weeks wandering around in a pit of despair in the north on some sort of mission. The idea that she attached some sort of rah-rah spirit to it was disconcerting to say the least. Luckily we went with “MUCHUMBO”, which is a local word for “barbeque.” It makes no sense, but at least does not glorify horror. There are students doing field work (me), career humanitarians, and “disaster junkies” who are on a short vacation to a notorious place and want good pictures to show their friends after.

Finding my way through all this has been difficult. In a way, I guess I’ve been trying to develop a personal ethic of service. What kind of lifestyle can I handle? What kind of contribution am I able to make? What kind of contribution is it right to make? These are all hard questions and I have no answers. I’m just happy to feel like I’m asking myself the right things.

I feel good about what I did for CARE this summer. I worked on something called the Agricultural Marketing Initiative, which tries to get small-holder farmers in the north growing sesame collectively as a cash crop. I participated in business meetings, wrote up analyses and the proposal for the next 3 years of project funding. I also gave a workshop in conflict resolution to my colleagues. The workshop was geared to help them address tense relationships in the workplace and also with the farmers. Things went well and I feel that my work was helpful and appropriate. I didn’t take a job from an African and I shared a skill set they would not otherwise have been exposed to. If I can continue to find similar work in the future I’ll be doing well. But in the confused world of development this is not easily planned. Serendipity is fickle and my future in this field is far from certain. Still, so far, so good.

I’m glad I came to Uganda. I’m glad I was here just long enough to begin to see how certain paradoxes can coexist in a culture. How one day a man can tell me how peaceful Uganda is completely without irony, as millions of people are displaced and living in squalor and terror less then 100 km away. How someone can tell me how safe a neighborhood is and, as proof, tell me a story of a recent mob that “beat” an alleged thief all the way to the police station. As they corralled this man through the streets they would pause at each home so everyone could have a chance to beat him with sticks or throw stones at him. As appalling as this all sounds, when you’re here immersed in it you realize that maybe there isn’t just one reality. There are many and they shift and they all have their own rules and justice. The real danger then may not be reality itself, but not understanding the laws that govern it. I’m not trying to be an apologist for brutality by any means. I’m merely saying that however violent and shocking a culture may be, it is rarely as random and chaotic and unstructured as it seems at first glance.

The implications of all this are broad. They add incredible layers of complexity to outsiders in these cultures. Perhaps it explains why there are so few people here doing this work and also why so often the work itself falls short or is misdirected. And just as you start wondering what the point of it all is there are small moments that give reason to coming here. The scattered flickers of gratitude and grace. A child smiles. An old man tells you how happy he is to know you.

A few hours had passed since the last big rapid. We floated down river in placid waters that reflected the clouds above in shimmering glass. We lazed and watched the tall grass wave in the breeze and kingfishers swoop and dive. We were a boat full of random humanitarians. All of us in our own way had faced difficult things in unwelcoming places and on the river found balance. In the quiet of the float one of the other rafters spoke.

“Well if this is what Earth is like, imagine what’s waiting for us in heaven.”

It seemed we would be finding out very soon. The next category 5 was around the next bend and the rumbling of the waters could be heard from hundreds of yards away. We could see the white spray whipping over the water, full of menace and also catharsis, like so many things I’ve found here.

Riding home from a day in the field.
Workshop participants and me.
A village sesame farming group. The reason we're all here.
Me on a mountain of sesame seeds, feeling triumphant.

(NOTE: Next week I will be in Belize doing thesis research and will hopefully have the chance to write about it. Also, when I return to the US I will continue using this site as a forum for other pieces, so please continue to check this site out. And please do comment if you wish. I'm never sure who actually reads this thing!)

uganda 9: blood on the fairway, or arua, sport + me

My athletic forays since I’ve been here have been limited. I don’t play soccer, or as the rest of the world calls it, football. But I can watch football and watch I did. The World Cup was the beginning, middle and end of my social life for an entire month. I learned the rules and cheered the African teams until Ghana played the US and beat us. And then I became the focal point of the jeers of a nation, which was not pleasant. After the loss that sealed American fate I was walking home and a group of young men pointed and laughed and called out to me.

“US going back home!” One guy said and laughed.
“Yeah, well Uganda never LEFT home!” That got a collective nod of recognition and we all let the matter rest.

As far as sports that I actually DO, there is running. I run just about every day and as a white guy running I’m quite a sight. Some children see me coming and double over laughing. They smile and call out to me.

“How are YOOO!” they say. I think it’s the first English phrase they are taught. The proper response is “Fine!” The kids all call out in the same way and use the same note progression. “How” and “YOOOO” are on the same pitch and “are” is about a half-step lower. When groups of children call out together they sound like flocks of birds.

“How are YOOO – How are YOOO – How are YOOO!!!”

Sometimes people run with me for awhile. Once it was a pair of women with baskets balanced on their heads. Once it was 5 teenagers who ran with me for about a mile in a weird African version of a Rocky training sequence. The strangest of all was George. I encountered him while running up a hill overlooking Arua. He was standing on the path with a pile of rocks beside him, which he was shot-putting down the grassy slope. He was wearing nothing but boxer shorts, and not just any boxer shorts. They had shamrocks and Leprechauns on them and only came down to his upper thigh. They were pretty much hot-pants. A man wearing shamrock hot-pants shot-putting rocks down a hill is a strange sight if you’ve never seen it.

He ran with me up to the top of the hill and on the way down I thanked him for the company and said goodbye. He said goodbye but continued to run with me. Nearly-naked George and I ran together for 3 long, embarrassing miles. We finished and he asked me for some clothes. I demurred.

Most days, though, I run alone. Many people say hello as I run and I’ve developed this affectation where I run along absentmindedly waving to everyone I pass as though I were on a float in a parade. No wonder all those kids laugh. Sometimes I run through a small forest. I’ve been told to beware of cobras but the “see a snake, kill a snake” mentality that has pervaded here for generations has pretty much neutralized any threat. But if you hear of me succumbing to a mortal snake bite in the next week or so, know that I left this world having learned an important lesson.

Arua, strangely, has a 9-hole golf course, which I’ve been playing. I’m not a good golfer and do not keep score. I’m not yet ready to track failure as a way forward. Golf costs about $2.50 per round and you get 2 caddies, young boys you are expected to tip about 60 cents. You need one to carry your bag. (No one carries their own bags and to do so would be considered very rude because you would be depriving the caddies of a day’s pay.) You need the other caddie to stand in the middle distance and find your ball, which is invariably lost and found again on every shot. You are given 2 balls and are expected to return with 2 balls. You are given 1 tee and are expected to return with 1 tee. Actually, finding the tee after every drive is harder than finding the ball. Most people tie a piece of a plastic garbage bag to it or a long string to make it easier to locate in the bushes. You look like you’re teeing off on a small pile of trash.

The course is not what one might call “manicured.” Putting greens are like an uncut front lawn. The fairways have thick grass and weeds that come up as high as your calf. The rough consists of things like cornfields and impenetrable bush. The caddies find the ball and prop it up on beds of grass clippings or clods of dirt to give a better lie. A big no-no in regular golf, this is accepted practice in Arua.

The terrain is one thing but the people and animals are quite another. I’ve had to break for cattle being herded across the fairway and also for children who dash across the course to fill water jugs at the well in the middle of Hole #6. And then there are the students who treat the course as though it were a quiet park. They lay in groups of 4 and 5 along the edge of the fairway and often smack dab in the middle. If you’re about to hit you call out “BALL!” and then swing away. You shouldn’t wait for them to move because they never do. You’re lucky if they even turn in your direction. I hit one guy in the back on a bounce the other day. He wasn’t upset or even surprised, really. A country with Uganda’s history, dealing with a civil war and 2.5 million Internally Displace People, getting nailed with a golf ball is nothing.

I bent to retrieve my ball at one hole and looked at my hand to see a very large bug on it. It bit me and drew blood. I didn’t have time to dwell on this because I then noticed my bare legs were covered by about 30 fire ants, swarming and biting. I hopped around, all high-knees, like I was doing calisthenics and my caddies helped wipe me clean. And this was all on a putting green.

In a way, all this helps my game. I don’t fixate on my swing as I tee off. I have lots of other things to occupy my mind: innocent civilians, cobra strike, rhino charge. Though at first it seems strange that Arua has golf, the nature of the game makes it oddly appropriate. For better or worse, you become completely absorbed in it as you play. If you’re happy, it’s because of golf. If you’re cursing your own birth, it’s because of golf. It’s the ultimate, all-consuming, elating, frustrating diversion. If anything, struggling communities in developing countries need golf more than any of us.

Golf! Golf for everyone!

uganda 8: a birthday party + some other notable things

I didn’t see the fight start, but I saw the fight grow. People streamed out into the middle of the road and formed an amorphous mob surrounding a violent nucleus of two fighting men. I was in the town of Karuma waiting for my taxi to depart for Lira. Karuma isn’t a border town but it reminded me of one. It has all the earmarks of an important nowhere that exists mainly to serve the travelers that pass through on the way to somewhere better, in this case south to the capital or to the larger towns to the north. People there mostly hustle, trying to sell things to bus passengers or are agents in the service of taxis, finding passengers like me who need a ride. I watched the fight from the front seat of a dented station wagon. A Celine Dion tape blared on the stereo. It was kind of surreal. I didn’t recognize any of the songs, which is something. My mother is a pretty big fan and I’ve spent more childhood hours listening to Celine than I care to admit. (My father refers to Celine as “Horseface” and for the longest time my mother pronounced her last name the same way as the mustard: Dijon. But that’s neither here nor there.) I sat with increasing unease watching chaos unfurl while listening to an eclectic collection of Dion B-sides.

The men were apparently fighting about money, which wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was the speed with which the mob formed, and how gleeful it seemed to be. Women were high-fiving, screaming out things like “Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan!” A few off-duty soldiers were there but they just looked placidly on as if gazing at ducks on a pond or something. I’ve been told that mobs can form quickly in Africa and are unpredictable and I was a bit nervous. Finally a madwoman with tattered clothes and dust-caked dreadlocks jumped in the middle of the melee and broke it up. People saw this and laughed and cheered and high-fived some more and the mob evaporated just as quickly as it had formed. Soon the taxi was full, and then it was passed full, and then it was way passed full, and then we left, crammed like sardines.

I was on the way to Lira to meet my friend from grad school, Amanda, who is working with another NGO there. My last leg in the taxi was also interesting. It’s common in Africa for people to put very little gas in their vehicles, the rationale being that if it’s stolen, the thief won’t get far. Our driver had taken this to an ironic extreme. He would pour what amounted to a tea cup of gasoline into the tank and we’d drive 15 minutes, run out of gas, and do it all again. In preventing potential thieves from going anywhere, we also were not going anywhere. The driver also complained of something he referred to as a “break jam.” I didn’t know what that was but it definitely had an ominous sound to it. Whenever we stopped, usually on an uphill, thin wisps of grey smoke floated up from the front passenger side tire area and I smelled an unnatural smell like acrylic burning. After a lot of stopping and starting and mysterious and troubling smells, we rolled into Lira.

I waited at the bus depot for Amanda to pick me up. Lira is in northern Uganda and serves as a sort of base camp for NGO and UN programs addressing the IDP crisis in the northern districts. (Quick history: IDP=Internally Displaced Persons; for the past 20 years the Lords Resistance Army led by Joseph Kony has waged a war against the government of Uganda and has predated on the people of the north, abducting some, killing many. Virtually all of the villages have been abandoned and their residents have flooded to more populated towns and formed huge, cramped IDP camps where they live in squalor and despair. It’s an enormous humanitarian crisis. Kony has been greatly weakened in recent years and is now in hiding. He is wanted by the ICC and the government of Uganda is currently opening peace negotiations. It’s a contentious issue packed with nuance and conspiracy theories, but that is another blog entirely.)

As I waited I was surrounded by young men, asking me about America and also for money.

“We are the IDPs. Give us our money,” said one with disarming directness.
“You give me MY money, first,” I said. I’ve learned that the best response to being asked for money is to deflect it by asking for something yourself. Usually this is met with a wry laugh that suggests that I get it on some level, or a quizzical look that suggests that I really don’t get it on any level. Either way, the requests stop.

Amanda picked me up and we spent the next few days lazing about. Lira was like Arua, only there was more of it. More bodas, more stores with not as much in them as maybe you’d like, and so on. On Sunday we went to a birthday party thrown by a co-worker of Amanda’s, Teddy. The party was in honor of Teddy’s twin sons and also Amanda. It’s rare for Africans here to celebrate birthdays, so this was a big deal. We spent the day at their house preparing. First, Amanda, Teddy’s husband Tony and I drove to the market. We bought passion fruit for juice, cauliflower, hunks of beef and chickens for slaughter. We also bought a newspaper.

We got back to the house and Tony announced that he and I were going out again to do “man things” while the women worked in the kitchen. We left the paper, though Tony told Amanda that she would be so busy doing “woman things” that she wouldn’t have time to read it. I left, excited to learn about man things.

It turns out that man things include lots of driving and stopping and having many brief conversations with various people about various things. Man things used to be hunting, but now it seems we just network. We bought a second paper. We drove around inviting people to the party, visiting the radio station and leaving a birthday announcement, and buying soda. We gave the second newspaper away to someone and later bought a third. We were really burning through those papers.

We arrived back at the house and Amanda gave me a pale-faced and bewildered account of the carnage. Apparently the first chicken had gone quietly into the night but the second one had a fire in its belly and managed to wiggle free as its head was being sawed off. It ran around the yard, a blur of flapping feathers topped by a severely severed neck. What they say about chickens in those situations is true, Amanda informed me. The remaining chickens were more orderly and resigned to their fate but for Amanda the damage was done. She spent the next hour sitting in the living room looking shell-shocked.

The party was scheduled to start at 3 but really didn’t get underway until 5:30. As with many other things in Uganda, this party was very formal. Guests sat in a circle on the lawn and the twins’ uncle was a master of ceremonies. He gave some opening remarks and then we went around standing in turn and introducing ourselves and explaining our connection to the family. This took awhile. After this, there was a prayer. Then an evangelist was asked to say a few words. He rose and spoke in the local dialect and asked that a second evangelist translate for the benefit of Amanda and me. The evangelist proceeded to give a pretty lengthy sermon about the importance of women, as mothers and wives, and how men need to respect them. The man was in his 70s but that didn’t stop him from yelling at the top of his lungs and stomping around the yard, flailing his arms dramatically. It became quite the scene because the translator translated not only the words, but the inflection and the action as well. So the two men, one slightly behind the other, moved in staggered tandem around the yard, yelling and stomping and flailing in different languages. It was weird, wildly theatrical and hilarious.

After the prayer more people got up to speak. Most picked up on the woman theme. One man talked about women being like land that is useless unless cultivated with care. Another woman talked of women being like ticks that choose their animal and commit to it, even if the animal is slaughtered.

“If a tick chooses a goats head, it will STAY in that goat’s head EVEN IF it’s roasting in the fire! Women are faithful like ticks!”

The metaphors were reckless and flying around willy-nilly.

Finally it was time to cut the cake. But first it had to be blessed. The evangelist was asked to do this, and he turned it into another mini-sermon. Then the cake was cut, though I think I may be leaving out a prayer or two. We prayed so much and they really start to blend together after awhile.

We ate cake and then beef with rice. Amanda and I were invited to sit on a couch beside two very old men. They each had a metal crutch and were cute and diminished the way some old men are. They were frail and seemed to melt into the couch cushions as if being slowly swallowed by them. They spoke in soft, high voices and their eyes shined. They were delighted to meet me, an American, and Amanda, from Singapore. They took our hands and shook them and told us over and over how happy they were that we were there talking with them.

Throughout the meal we chatted on a number of subjects. How President Obote was at a conference in Singapore when he was overthrown. How President Bush is a good man and a friend to Uganda. I was asked about New York and also about space travel.

“Tell me, Jason, why do the Americans go to space?”
“Well, I guess for scientific research.”
“Is it because they want to find a place to live one day forever?””I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Because the population of the Earth is getting quite dense.”
“Yes. I know.”
“If you find out what they see in space will you tell me? Because you are young and I am old and you can give me good information to put in my head.”
“If I find out, I’ll tell you.”

One man told me that Coke gives him gas, so he drinks Mirinda, because of the gas, and that the gas was bad, and then he took a sip of orange Mirinda and burped discretely. The other took my hand and looked gravely into my eyes and told me that the old are closer to God than the young and that he was praying to God and asking for grace to be passed to me. I thanked him.

As dusk retreated and darkness fell the men told Amanda and me about northern Uganda, and how its people have not been favored by circumstance and have suffered as a result. They told us how lucky they were to live through such times and become old men. They tried to explain why things are the way they are. They spoke in hushed tones and nervously looked around, clearly afraid of what would happen if they were overheard criticizing the government. The grip of fear was strong on them.

The party began to break up. The men were being taken back to their homes and asked Amanda to take a picture of all of us with her digital camera. Those of us left at the party crowded together and posed. The men were shown the picture on the digital display. One pointed and smiled wide.

“It is exactly me!” he said.
“Yes, it is you exactly,” we said. He shook his head in amused disbelief. The other shook our hands a last time.
“I should not think I shall have another day this good ever again.”

That evening we watched France lose to the Italians in a quiet living room, with the twins playing with the toy cars they’d been given and their parents dozing on the couch. I left the next morning in the predawn darkness.

On the bus ride home I bumped along a bone-crushingly pockmarked road. The driver drove hard, as though he were angry at the bus and wanted to punish it. We passed IDP camps along the way. Huts crowded together and people looking despondent and directionless. Standing in the mud and the dust. Tending wilting gardens and chasing after starving goats.

It was a great weekend but a sad weekend. Uganda, for all the strides it has made, is still a country on a knife’s edge. Memories of past horrors are sharp and cutting. Current horrors are unfolding as I type this. Frightened old men on cushioned couches who can’t forget. Hopeless young children on forgotten roadsides who have nothing worth remembering.

uganda 7: some pictures

A typical meak (aka why I may be larger when you next see me)
Nile tributary with dugouts and fishnets. Below is a typical village.
A boda rider. His name is Thinfat Moses, which is the best name I think I've ever heard.

Women walking in Arua town. Also, the road I walk to work and all of its ruts and pockmarks.

The compound where I live. On the left is my house, on the right is the home of my landlord and his family and rear the house where the food is cooked. Above is the guard washing his chair. I'm not sure why, but he wanted me to take his picture washing his chair.



My room. It's a small room.

uganda 6: funeral

On Friday I went to the funeral of the uncle of a CARE staff member. I had actually met the uncle a few weeks before in passing. And then he died. He was around 45 and had been admitted to the hospital with high blood pressure and passed a day later. It took everyone by surprise.

We arrived at the uncle’s compound, a small collection of brick and mud huts with thatched roofs. The mourners were all gathered under the shade of an ad hoc canopy made of sticks and old UNHCR tarpaulins strung together. People were sitting in chairs and benches around the coffin and two ministers looked on. Some people had drums and rattles and they beat a rhythm and the mourners sang. The songs were in the Lugbara dialect and they were Christian songs about the dying body and everlasting soul. They were sung in a gentle cadence with harmonies that meandered and fractured suddenly into dissonance and then reconstituted themselves in the next verse. I didn’t understand the words of the hymns but they were repetitive and trancelike. The voices flowed together through the songs like a river.

Beyond the shade of the canopy were immediate family members. Woman knelt in the grass and stared up into the blazing sun and shrieked. Others flopped against walls and hid their faces and cried out. Some would be escorted to the casket with someone’s help and then be torn away as they lay down on top of it, or beat it with their fists. And still the singing continued, punctuated by sobs in the sunlight.

Finally the casket was nailed shut and carried to the gravesite. In Uganda people are buried near their homes, often in front of the hut they lived in. Usually the grave is well tended, with a discreet wooden cross and a bed of bright flowers to mark it. We proceeded from the canopy to the site, just outside the main hut. We walked there passed smoke pits and oinking pigs and scrawny dogs and stood together as the casket was lowered. The minister said a few words as logs were piled on top of the coffin, and papyrus mats lain on top of the stacked logs. This was to prevent dirt from touching the top of the coffin.

After the burial the mourners ate. Callo with pork stew was served. My friends and I had seats of honor inside one of the huts and were served by the three wives of the grieving staff member. We ate and talked and then it was time to go. Most mourners leave soon after the burial but close friends and family will stay through the night, singing and crying.

The late afternoon shadows were long as we left and the drumming had started and the voices rose again and the river began to flow, away from one place and toward another.

uganda 5: day in the life

I usually get up at 7 and aim to be at work by 8. I walk the fifteen minutes over an impossibly rough road. I pass children walking to school and local farmers working away in their gardens with hoes. The workday starts with tea. People mill around drinking weak tea mixed with copious sugar and powdered whole milk. Tea in the office can go on for quite some time, at least by Western standards. If you’re sitting down to do something productive by 10 you’re doing pretty well for yourself.

Some days I go out into the field. It’s an hour drive at least and we’re packed into the cab of one of the CARE pick-ups and jostle our way over the rugged land to sun-baked nowheres that are all but forgotten. We usually plan to be on the road by 10 but, given the requirements of tea and myriad other distractions, we don’t usually manage to depart until noon. And then it’s lunchtime. We often eat in little dining rooms in modest huts. There is no real choice in this and I’m often presented with a plate of mysterious and piping hot material.

“Don’t worry, Jay. It’s very hot. Very hot to kill the cholera.”

I know they tell me this to inspire confidence but it usually has the opposite effect. And then we eat. It’s always an adventure when you can’t identify the part of the animal you’re eating. Or the animal.

The ride home from the field is always longer than the ride out because we make many stops to pick up personal items for the household, like fresh fish from the Nile or wood charcoal which is cheaper in the rural areas than in town. I was told this is known as “field accountability” that proves to your wife that you actually went where you said you’d go. The person who told me this was kind of joking and kind of not. It also shows how professional and personal blend together here. People are always using office resources and vehicles for personal reasons but there is no stigma attached to it. The philosophy seems to be that if you have access to something you would be silly not to use it. This helps explain why fleets of NGO vehicles sit outside of bars on Saturday nights.

The workday can end at 5 or bleed on to as late as 7. No one is in a real hurry to leave work. I think it’s because work is a pretty nice place to be. There is always tea and the internet, and vehicles to take you places and the status of being at work at all, which in Arua is significant. Often people come in on Saturdays. Not much is done. Surf the web, nap on a couch, drink tea. Always drinking tea.

On the way home Ishmael is usually waiting for me. Ishmael is 18 years old and is very excited to be my friend. In East Africa it is common for men to walk holding hands. Ishmael immediately takes my hand and holds it with a forthrightness that is both unnerving and flattering. I think he does it to prove to me and himself and to everyone we pass that we are friends. Sometimes he swings his arm to and fro as he holds my hand which makes us look a little cuter than I’m comfortable with. But what can you do.

I come home and enter the compound where as many as 10 children from my landlord’s extended family are playing. I say hello to the women who are usually gathered around the house where the cooking happens. They laugh at me all the time. Apparently just looking at me is hilarious. Me going for a run is funny. Me returning from a run is funny. Me reading a book on the steps is funny. I change, go for a run, usually up a big hill overlooking Arua, and back. Then I shower and get ready for the evening feeding.

The family has been feeding me, or should I say over-feeding me, every night. Sometimes I receive two full dinners. This is because the women are curious about me. The food is always brought by someone different, which suggests that they take turns and that bringing me food is a fun thing to do. So I’m brought a lot of food. Trying to get rid of it has become a major source of anxiety for me. I don’t want to leave food unfinished, which is insulting. I also don’t want to eat all of it, which is terrifying. Let’s just say that there is a mangy cat at the office that is eating VERY well this month.

The guard comes on duty at around 6. Just about every house has a guard. Labor is really cheap and the surplus of young men means that there are lots of guys willing to sit around all night and collect a paycheck. Some guards carry AK-47s and Kalashnikovs. Always be nice to the guards carrying AK-47s and Kalashnikovs. Our guard has a plain old rifle. He is usually drunk by 11 and if you ever encounter him at that time he will talk to you for quite awhile, as though by having a conversation with you he’s proving he’s not drunk, which of course proves that he’s actually very drunk. It’s a dead giveaway. Actually, he’s kind of cute, the drunk guard in a uniform 2 sizes too big. But then I realize he’s carrying a loaded firearm and stumbling around outside in the garden in the dark seeing double. When I look at it that way it’s maybe not so cute. But he seems a happy drunk, as opposed to a trigger-happy drunk, so I guess I should count my blessings.

I spend my evenings writing and reading and thinking and then the electricity cuts out at midnight on the dot. And then it starts all over again.

uganda 4: hard pasts + new beginnings

Yesterday I went to see some old abandoned satellite dishes and a big antenna in the next village. I was not very interested in going at first but it really wasn’t up to me. I was spending the afternoon with my friend Fred and he was driving and you know how that goes.

Spending time with Fred is interesting. We leave to do one task, but it’s never a point A to point B affair. It’s point A and then a distraction bringing us to point C and then someone tells us a story about an antenna that’s really big a few miles off and it’s off to point D and pretty soon the afternoon is nearly over and we’ve forgotten what we set out for to begin with. Well I haven’t. Fred has. But again, he’s at the wheel so…

The dishes and antenna are relics of Idi Amin’s gruesome reign. They were the beginnings of an international surveillance system that he was developing with the help of the then-Soviet Union. He even had plans for a satellite. It was built in the 1970s and was very advanced for its time. Amin had military plans for the neighboring countries and even hopes to liberate South Africa from the British (he sometimes referred to himself as the “Conqueror of the British Empire.”). This system, when finished, would be used in developing military strategies. But Amin’s time in power was over before the project was completed and it now stands as a ghostly and gutted testament to the paranoid ambition of a madman. Anything of value was stripped from the site long ago and now a family lives in a little house in the shadows of the immense dishes, which make the most curious and surreal lawn ornaments I’ve ever seen.

On the way back Fred and I passed a school that was the scene of a bloody massacre during the early days of Amin’s successor, Obote. At the time the West Nile region was thought to be the last bastion for Amin’s former militia and therefore represented a potential stronghold for nascent insurgent activities. So one June day in 1981, acting on rumors of rebel activity in the area, government soldiers indiscriminately gathered together and killed scores of people suspected of being opposition sympathizers. Evidence of actual involvement with any presumed opposition movement is largely absent and it’s a safe assumption that most, if not all of those killed were innocent of any crime.

Not far from the school is an old monastery with a mass grave where those murdered that day lay. It doesn’t look like much, with goats grazing the field and kids playing football in the fields beside. It is unmarked and you could easily pass it without noticing.

Over the past week I’ve been going out into the field with the agriculture extension staff of a local NGO that is partnered with CARE. They are working with small-holder farmers on sesame seed production and marketing. The farmers’ need for inputs such as high-yield seeds and technical training, as well as their 2-acre outputs are aggregated to give cheaper prices on the production end, and more competitive farm-gate prices on the market end. We’ve been traveling to village after village where farmer groups meet under trees and haggle over seed loan rates and terms of sesame sale. These villages are miles from nowhere -- the edge of development, I think. Most of the villages were abandoned in the 1980s and resettled a decade later. These farmers had lost their livelihoods and have been struggling to re-establish them in these hot, dry, forgotten places ever since. They are often dirty and their children have the skinny legs and distended bellies of the malnourished. Everyone wears clothing that hangs in tatters and is worn through like cheese cloth. But there is a fire in their bellies and resolve in their voices. These people are proud, poor people stubbornly returning to the desiccated, recalcitrant land that their tribes have struggled with and loved for generations.

At times it has been difficult for me to witness some of this -- such poverty and utter isolation in the long dark shadow of a past that everyone remembers but would just as soon forget if they could. I’m lucky to have traveled to more than a few places and I have seen destitution before, but it has never been quite like this. The West Nile is like wound that refuses to heal. It seethes and breaths and stings just enough that you don’t for a second forget about it. But despite all there is a dignity and courage and refusal to quit trying like hell to reclaim what circumstances have stolen.

The farmers are often frustrated with the extension workers. They doubt they’re getting a fair deal sometimes. The extension workers can be frustrated with the farmers, too, who they feel have grown so reliant on NGO charity that they have forgotten how an honest business is supposed to run. But even after the heated exchanges and the disdainful shaking of heads, the next meeting is set and we leave. Hands are shaken, usually a soft handshake with the right hand, with your left hand touching the inside of your right elbow as a sign of respect. And we get into our big white truck and bounce off down the dusty pockmarked road. I sit in the front and squint off the bright sun and listen to my new friends talk to each other in African languages I don’t understand. The unfamiliar words are melodic and lyrical and the best thing to rest your mind to at the end of a long day in a sad and hopeful place.