And in the end...

I've never been afraid of goodbyes. But I sure don't like endings. Goodbyes are necessary, cathartic and we'd regret it if we didn't acknowledge the worth of whatever it is we are bidding farewell. But, an actual ending, reaching the finality of a time or an era in my life, is just something I'd rather not face. So maybe that is why I have yet to close this story of mine, the Somewhere Near Mbale tale, for almost a month.

Where did I leave off? Oh, yes, the tireless and stressful last weeks in Uganda. When it was all said and done I was thrilled with the progress Maama Suubi made: we finally built the energy-saving oven, received extra grant money to complete it, the Bungokho ladies completed basic bakery training, and it culminated in a beautiful Ugandan celebration of their work and a send-off for me. Looking back the celebration was a blur of carrot cake, gomesis (traditional dresses), baby spit up, 30 kilos of beef (which I saw getting hacked from the poor dead thing for our party), live performance, tears, bad Lumasaba to English translations, desperate and endearing goodbyes to the women who (while most of them are older than me) call me Mama.

Saying goodbye to all of our friends was of course, bittersweet. Tears flowed, last-minute money solicitations came out and arms held each other knowing how likely it is that we may not meet again, at least for a long time. Somewhere in those weeks Will could have died of malaria. (He lived! Good thing.) You may say it was an emotional time for us.

Now that I'm home and coddled firmly in the too-comfortable life Americans enjoy, I'm ambivalent about everything. It is hard not to appreciate (and loathe a little less) our ridiculous and frivolous lifestyle again-but I have tremendous guilt for being able to live it. I feel lucky to be safe and warm and hopeful about the future (rare luxuries in a lot of the world), but resentful about the unequal distribution of the opportunity. I'm inspired by the absolute drive for life to go on in a place like Uganda. People whose lives are ravaged by poverty, AIDS and gender inequality (to name a few) get up every morning to collect water and firewood and still smile at the wonderment in their children's eyes as they splash in the well. Little dramas of everyday life in the West are dwarfed by such pictures, now fired, in my mind. And while I am profoundly frustrated with international "development," I'm unprepared to devise a real viable alternative for global social justice. At least yet. Each parcel of truth I've found opens up one hundred new questions or doubts. But the real life experiences I've had, the people I know, keep me moving forward in a soup of uncertainties and cynicism.

While I'm settling back into American life, whatever that means, it is those people I've met that ground me, haunt me, remind me of what I'm really doing here and why I went to Africa at all. I'm flooded with faces I've seen and known all the time. Faces so far away. Dark, beautiful faces. Young, soiled, smiling faces. Cold, dead ones. Proud and hopeful faces. Sad, longing faces. The faces of the people who saw me (really, me?) as their last hope. The faces of those that challenged all of my faith, hopes and sensibilities. Those who broke me down just to build me up. The faces of the people who took me to their homes to hold their children, taste their food and gently touch their lives. I want their names to be known, their stories to be told. From them I feel like I was let in on a secret - shh, come here. This is what it's all about. This is the human story. Let the people call it out. Now, I could have realized this anywhere I suppose, but the urgent and visceral way of life in Africa jettisoned me to it. So everyday as I learn more of it I cannot ignore my secret, and those faces won't let me.

I just have to figure out a way to tell that secret. A way to speak their names and talk of their stories, to yell them out, or maybe just whisper them. To everyone, in everything I do, always.


***Thank you to everyone who followed my blog. I enjoyed letting you in to my experience. Stay tuned to see where I end up.

Angry Man, Hungry Woman

After a short bout of African tummy (food poisioning/water contamination/any damn thing) this week followed by a hectic training day with the Maama Suubi ladies (I taught them how to make real American chocolate chip cookies that muzungus will pay a pretty penny for), I'm forced to take a breath. With so much mounting in these next two weeks , it is hard to stand still, move outside myself and really take a look at what is happening. I'm about to leave Africa. As quickly as I came, I'll be gone. And there is not enough time in the world to do what I came here to do or to reflect on what that actually is, everything is a whizzing whir of questions, longings, unknowings and excitements.

A few of you (readers) have wondered why I have not posted in a while, but the truth is I've been so busy and overwhelmed it's hard to get a minute to myself, let alone for reflection. Our days are filled with field work and the always daunting tasks of getting there - do I take a crowded matatu (taxi bus), a slightly dangerous picky (motorcycle taxi), boda-boda or what? -, keeping the house clean, paying the bills (Will), figuring out dinner (Me), planning for lessons or training and trying to get a moment of relaxation. In some ways I'm strapped between the two continents: I want to be home but I want to finish my project and put a close to my life here with as much integrity as possible. The stress of life in Uganda, coupled with a volunteer's bank account, is piling up at the same time the responsibilities are piling high. Now I'm comfortable under stress, relative poverty and high productivity levels - but it is still wearing Will and I a bit thin.

Sometimes I think I couldn't do it without him, and he says the same of me, but we both know we would be able to do this without the other, but maybe not as well. After all the daily events that can wear on a psyche, both the tiny and monstrous sadnessess and dramas that play themselves out each day on this stage, I feel such a comfort to come home to Will. We can laugh (or cry) about the days events; make ramen, tuna sandwiches or grilled cheese over candlelight (not on account of romance, I assure you) and thank our lucky stars for our well-being, the possibility of a better tomorrows and mostly for one another.

The title of this post is from a great little James Taylor tune, and one that my parents quote as being "one of their songs." An homage to love in hard times, it's about holding on. Holding on to eachother, for a better day, for getting it right, even if it's next time around. But it also has a sense of humor, a coping skill too valuable to ever lose.

So, I thought it fits our crazy love story in Uganda. Life's a little messed up, sometimes we drive eachother crazy, but mostly we'd go crazy without eachother.

And everything's going to be alright, if we just hold on.

The White Shroud

shroud
n. a cloth or sheet in which a corpse is wrapped for burial

There are some days that stick with you for the rest of your life. On those days that begin as any other, something happens to forever alter what you thought was sound, true or fast - a bottle is thrown, glass shatters and there are suddenly not as many pieces as their once were. The shards will never form the same creation again.

With innocence forever lost, the white flag of youth is stained and buried with the dead. And by bearing witness yours is buried with it.

* * *

Yesterday was a dreary, soggy day in the village. While walking to the hut where I teach women, I noticed there weren't many people shouting "Maama Suubi, you're welcome!" or the less endearing "Muzungu, how are you?" So I trudged through the mud toward our hut, a white flip chart in hand and a backpack full of contraceptives and condoms for the family planning session I had planned for the afternoon. With my hiking shoes and bottoms of jeans covered in the earth, I thought about how old the dirt on my feet must be for the first time that day. Life began not far from here, I thought, and how many generations of humans must be buried in this very soil?
Finally, seeing a familiar face of one of my older members, I feel a sense of relief by her welcoming smile. "Mama Suubi, we are going for burial today," she says with a calm and somber, not sad, voice. "You come with us, won't you?"

I don't think I have much of a choice in the matter so I follow the processional of ladies, many of them the ones I see every week when we talk about how to feed children, prevent pregnancy or best market their goods. As we walk through the dirt foot paths through the village, the procession grows as we pick up new women and children along the way. When we reach the home where the burial will take place, which is nothing more than a two-roomed mud hut with a grass and mud surrounds, my mind flashes to any funeral I've ever been to. Church bells. Women dressed in dark dresses and black panyhose. The pristine smell of a Catholic cathedral hallway. The eucharist, the wine. The priest's ornate cloth, the holy water, the organ's dirge. My great-grandmother's hand, so cold, so beautiful in its old age. Then to an icy Michigan day, an intricate coffin lowered into the earth. A few shovels of dirt, a wail, and it's over.

But here the burial is but fifty villagers dressed in traditional clothes mixed with Salvation Army donatees, "Anaheim Mighty Ducks," "Don't Mess With Texas" shirts cover children with skin made dirty by a life without shoes. Some are wearing no pants on this chilly day by Ugandan standards. There is a dusty Bible held by a minister, which they read in their own language, but no ornate cloth or smell of cleanliness, Godliness and other church scents. No bells, only the soul-stirring African harmonies of songs more ancient than their Christianity. At the front of the processional, two men carry a body from the home wrapped in a white cloth. The singing swells, and so do eyes. A woman who is apparently the mother kneels in the mud wailing, tears and mucus staining her face. The body is carried in a white sheet tied in a single knot above his head.

I did not expect it to be a child, I think, standing but shattered, as the tiny frail body is lowered on to a straw mat. It's limp head is leaning to one side in the shroud. His shoeless feet are no bigger than my hands. He's wearing blue and white striped short suit.

"He was only three years," my friend Zainab whispers. "He is my sister's son. This is the third child she has lost," another woman, Scovia, says between lines in a song. The high-pitched wailing of the bereaved mother fills my ears and claws at my heart. My child will never die of malaria at three years old, I think, with bitterness at this unjust realization. I try to keep my composure, because I don't want to draw attention to myself - I am already a noticable visitor - and I bite back tears for only another 30 seconds until they push me to the front where a man unties the white sheet and shows me his face. Dark and beautiful, so young, and so lifeless. With that I no longer can hold any composure and I cry with them. I cry for this child, for the inability of life here to prevail over common diseases and maladies, for all the children who die in Africa and everywhere, for my privledged and contemptuous faith in goodness, an innocence forever lost by the sight of this dead child; for his mother who must endure so much pain which depsite its frequency never becomes any easier. And I think of how human suffering is all the same; ugly, desperately gruesome and everywhere.

The body is lifted and lowered just four feet into the earth of his back yard. Men we'd call paulbearers lay wooden planks over the boy and then heavy, wet earth. The same earth, I think, remembering my vague nostaligia earlier, that has already buried so much of humanity. His mother crawls away, not able to walk with the unbearable grief of losing another child, and the crowd dissipates; women chatting, some sobbing, men congregating in chairs. Soon life will return to normal, except something remains changed. For me I will never look at a white sheet and think of peace, justice or hope but what exists in their absence; death, suffering and in some ways, the human story.

Another baby was lowered into the earth that day, with only a white shroud separating his tiny body from the earth that consumed him.

The Big Picture

A few favortite shots of faces and places.
Location: the pearl of Africa. Time: October through Janurary. Mode: in collage.



From left:

1.View of the fierce and gorgeous Ssese Island paradise, taken during our first visit in October.

2. Little Debo, the most beautiful baby girl in Africa in my most biased opinion.

3. Shadows in Neverland. Simply a breathtaking photo with real-life mysticism, taken by Grant at Sipi Falls. We're standing in a cave underneath the waterfall.

4. Demonstrating how to correctly use a condom during an HIV seminar in Buwesswa village. They had the phallus for this purpose exactly, except most of the people had never seen a condom. Some things are just too strange to question...

5. Maama Suubi cake, symbolic of the many income-generating cakes they will make in the near future.

6. Dusk over the Karamoja plains: view from above the Sipi Falls.

7. Cooking mexican rice in Mbale in our homey little kitchen.

8. My feet, Africanized. Take a look at the tan lines, scabs, scars and various mosquito, ant and gnat bites. Cute, eh? Somebody needs a pedi...

9. Open air in Buwesswa village where Will and I hold HIV/AIDS and savings and credit seminars for farmers' cooperative members and their community.

10. Painting the youth center library at TASO, the first project of my internship.

11. Baby at Buwesswa village, with eyes that say it all. She was a beautiful, fat toddler with a face that could make anyone weep.

12. Will and I at our favorite little Indian place, enjoying eachother and slightly skunky Guinness.

13. Just a close-up of yours truly.

14. Little mommies at World AIDS Day in Nauyo, there are a thousand stories in their expressions, with the hope of our world sparkling in those dusty eyes.

15. Sunset over Lake Victoria.

16. Will in the world. Here he's with Jenepher after constructing an energy-saving stove, which uses less firewood and drastically cuts down on time women spend collecting firewood.

Kumquats and Subplots

For over four months now I've chronicled this story of mine via the modest web site you are now viewing. You've read about some of my struggles, triumphs, adventures, misadventures, discoveries, lessons and awakenings. But while my musings are as complete as possible given time and energy constraints (not to mention realities of the developing world like slow connection, power cuts) there is still much that you, the faraway reader don't get from my posts. Here are the back stories, the layers of context that give breath and breadth to any story, the subtext to the narrative of my life in Uganda.

Grin and Bear It

My poor boyfriend. Imagine the horror: the second time in NFL history that his beloved Chicago Bears have the kind of season that gets them to the Super Bowl and he's thousands of miles away from Soldier Field. The poor bloke has watched one game all season, after an intricate dance of knowing and paying the right people at the right time. An ever present undertone to life in our house, especially on game Sundays: Will and his tortuous love affair with the Bears. It's the "I love you, I need you, I can't have you" kind of love. Ah, but just wait until you hear what we have planned for the Super Bowl. Nothing will stop this fan from watching the game of, let's face it this might not happen again, his lifetime.

Party of Five

This is no real world. First of all there are five roommates, not seven. And this isn't the TV show: there's no fabulous gay character, the obligatory angry black man, or a "spicy" (read: bitchy) Latina. Okay, we're kind of close on that last one. But you get the drift: our apartment atmosphere is decidedly un-MTV. What we are is well, less dramatic and far less exciting: five well-educated kids from what would appear to be similar backgrounds. Let's start with the similarities. We all grew up in white suburbs (eyes slightly rolling) and went to good universities where we probably over-achieved to differing extents, and are poised for success of varying levels in several fields. We all believe in social and economic equality, if in different ways.

So where do our differences come in? Some are very rich, others not so much. Some are capitalists and free market diehards, others (me) have a democratic-socialist, anti-capitalist strain. Others don't really care about those things at all. Our interests differ from medicine to writing to economics to business to InTouch magazine to karaoke (guess who?)to art to working out to drinking (okay sometimes we share this one)... you get the point. We all get along well enough, with only the occasional blow out. Our small differences (the world over, none of us are very dissimilar) only highlight how much heart matters versus head. And the group dynamics have only taught me more about what kind of middle-class kid I am and will always be. Enough said. (Anyone sensing a subtext in the subplot?)

Politics, Schmolitics

I am not at liberty to talk about the current political situation in Uganda. But, I can tell you all about the country of, let us say, Maganda, a place very similar to the above mentioned republic. In Maganda, their president refuses to leave office after 21 years and has changed the constitution to undo term limits. Maganda is one of the poorest countries in the world, but their parliament (600 strong) have just received $30,000 each for luxury, four-wheel drive SUVs (the roads are far too poor for them to travel to their constituents). And thus, the poor country of Maganda does not have this kind of money to just dole out (for example money is not ear marked for roads), so they must borrow from commercial banks who are more than happy to increase Maganda's debt to the world. Meanwhile, most of the 25 million people of Maganda lack access to adequate health care, quality education and have little food security. The power system, water works, communication and economic infrastructures sorely need to be strengthened. And the president and the parliament sit and get fatter. Like Jon Stewart says, Democracy Inaction.

Teacher as Pupil

I work with a group of rural women, most have at least two children and range in age from 15 to 70 (quite a feat, life expectancy is 47). Their strength of body, mind and spirit is astounding and they inspire me every time I make a visit to their village. I've been teaching life skills such as family planning (reproductive health), nutrition, sanitation, business and marketing and the like to them three days a week. As I get practice teaching, they are learning necessary skills and practical knowledge to enrich their families, diets and wallets. We've just started training in baking skills so they can open a bakery co-op to sell their goods and improve their livelihoods. I've applied for funding for startup capital and it is looking promising.

Most of them did not have much schooling so I sense they enjoy holding a notebook and pen, already feeling a little more powerful, poised to learn and be heard. "Teacher!," they yell when I enter the room. Or they just call me Mama Suubi. I tell them Sarah is okay. They place a lot of their hopes in me - a daunting and touching gesture that I want so much to live up to. But little do they know, all the hope and strength they'll ever need is within them, and they don't need me at all. I have the world to learn from them, from the way they thrive and survive, love and lose, endure and endure again.

Ed's Note: A kumquat is a delicious Asian citrus fruit and for the record, the only thing I could think of that rhymes with subplot.

Ed's Note, ad naseum: Check out my new photos of the work I've been doing and the people that make it worthwhile. If anyone is interested in donating to Maama Suubi/Mothers of Hope Uganda (you'll know where your money is going: to the people!) we could use your support. Leave a message on this post if you are interested in giving.

What the Pig Should Learn from the Dog

Lessons big and small from the year of the dog, 2006

Years like this do not come very often in a lifetime. I'm not talking about in politics or world affairs (Go Dems, Boo to Bush and his war, Sudan suffers and Africa's on everyone's mind) or culture (the internet and youtube are king, but my media vices are tv on dvd - Arrested Development and Weeds – and myspace/facebook) or science (I was crushed to find Pluto demoted), although the world was rocked in all of those arenas. No, I'm talking about this year as a milestone for many reasons in my life and for my family. Maya is born. Julia and I graduate (high school and university respectively). I move to Uganda with Will for 6 months. I begin to figure out what the hell I'm doing with my life. And beyond these calendar moments lie the lessons: small, shining flecks of truth in the matte, hard slab of life we are handed. Here are 2006's brightest…

On being an outsider
If you look like me at all and come from America, living in East Africa is an experience loaded with expectation (You take me with you. You give me money.), misinformation (Is she 'a China'? Is she rich?) and a depressing, undeserved admiration (I don't think I need to elaborate here). While judgement based on color or race is not new to me (like it is to many whites in Africa for the first time) it has awakened me to the importance of identity and what you can mean to other people in the world. While I didn't choose my heritage, economic background or citizenship – I have to own it, and own up to it at times. The personal is always political, and not just to our benefit.

Yes, my thighs touch and doesn't it feel good to say so
Finally, and I mean finally, I think I am okay with me just as I am. My neo-feminist persona would suggest I am already this well-adjusted (ha!) but a childhood full of fat jokes dies hard (no hard feelings Big Bro). But being around hyper body-conscious women (not Ugandans) has paradoxically tamed my insecurities. In this crazy world who really has time to worry about that anymore?

Keepin' on Keepin' On
The strength of human life is astounding. In Uganda (where the life expectancy is a paltry 47) nothing is guaranteed. People live in a constant state of discomfort not to mention in all shades of poverty. Life is always on the edge. But the incredible scarcity of security does not make people more brutal, indeed it is quite the opposite in most cases. Human life is resilient. People here have breathless gratitude for life itself and many have remarkable faith in heavens of all kinds. Humanity must survive somehow and this is how. Life's only purpose is to continue. (…We were reminded of this beauty by the arrival of our Maya Therese.)

You made it! Who cares.
Graduating college is a necessary hurdle but it does not give you a damn thing (you'd think I would have figured this out by then!). There are no bells, no whistles, no six-figure job offers knocking at the door. However, you do get a decorative $50,000+ wall hanging. Woo hoo. Except no one tells you what happens if you can't afford the frame...

Stay away from these. Enough said.

Confessions of a globe trotter
Okay, I have long been the prodigal daughter – coming and going and coming again. But being so far away has taught me the importance of having a place to call home. The farther I get away from home, the more I long to shrink the size of the globe. If only I could run home to Michigan for dinner then jet back to East Africa to address AIDS and poverty among rural women the next morning. The more I expand my worldview, the more useful of a person I become, but, and here's the rub, the farther I go away the closer I long to be. (I seem to be subconsciously aware of the globe's spherical reality, perhaps I'll be forever chasing myself around it). Growing up as the bored teenager of the suburbs who resented her uninspiring hometown, I longed to escape what I viewed as bondage to mediocrity. Well as it turns out you can trump that mediocrity and still come home to your glamour-less, familiar and quirky home, and still love it.

Now as the pig is reigning I'm thinking of what 2007 may have in store. More challenges? Sure. More lessons? Certainly. Big changes? Yep - I'm movin with Will to NYC to teach inner city kids. But other than that I have no idea what I'll find on the other side of ' 07.When the rural women I work with learn something new (like about how to keep their children healthy or about their own reproductive freedom) their eyes light up and you can almost see a little fire starting that no one else can put out. And while I don't know what the future holds, I see a fleck of it in their eyes. They tell me there is something on the other side, something to hope for despite all odds, always.

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation, and Other Horror Stories for Children.

C raziness. The only way to describe our holiday time. First there was the ridiculous travel: take a boda boda to the taxi park, get shoved (literally) on a bus for 5 hours, drive an hour to the shore to meet the boat, sail for two days with the strangest pair of Dutchmen (one of which we nicknamed The Prize Hog because of his unfortunate looks and Guiness worthy snoring volume), and finally ride in a dinghy to the island where we were greeted with a truly impressive array of insects, cloudy weather, a deathly ill host and no one else in site. After the island followed a string of comedic errors. I won't bore with all the details but they included many, many bugs, too many uncomfortable and infested hostel beds, a few minor panic attacks, a large bump on my head, wretching up water and a missed ride home.

H appy Birthday to me. Despite a stressful "vacation," my 22cd was a really nice day. Will woke me up with orange roses and later gave me a beautiful and funky necklace and earrings. We spent the day with our friend Kate, who was on the island with us for Christmas. I got a manicure and pedicure courtesy of Nichole (American roommate and fellow intern), made a nice dinner of shrimp linguine in a tomato garlic cream sauce, got gussied up and went out on the town to ring in the new year. Definitely the highlight of the week, sans the killer hangover the next day.

R eally having to go with the flow. Literally, on the sailboat we had to rely on the winds to take us...and of course they were on African time (taking their time) so we were stuck in the boat with just enough winds to make me queasy, for far too long. Boat cuisine? Canned sardines and pasta, with a side of protein laden fish flies. We sailed through a fresh hatch - you can't help by swallow at least a dozen an hour!
Iis for INVASION. This is apparently what I screamed to Will during the said ant attack of below. I know I can be a little dramatic but those things were eating me with their evil little pinchers. I will never picnic the same again.

S moke. Since we spent most of our holiday in Kampala, aka The Big Smoke, there was a plenty of black clouds of exhaust and burning trash to turn the stomach. But we managed to fare well enough, and we munched on a few good meals in the city, namely Thai, pizza and the occasional burger. (p.s. these are serious luxury items in Mbale!)

T ime with Will. We had plenty of quality time on the sailboat swatting lake flies, on the beach fending off spiders and by the fire avoiding the skeeters. But when we did get some alone time (that is without the insects), it was very nice. It was our first Christmas together and despite not exchanging any presents (both an attempt at a unmaterial holiday and a well-calculated budget move), we enjoyed eachother, the sunsets and laughing at our circumstances. I couldn't ask for a better person to share life with.

M issing home. I made a little promise to myself that wherever I end up over the years I'll always spring for a plane ticket home for the holidays.

A nt attack causes abnormal anxiety levels! Okay it may not have been an INVASION...but it was the scariest thing that may have ever happened to me. Those things can kill a pig and leave only its bones in 45 minutes!

S olace, in salvaging so many strange stories for the grandkids. Every time I itch my ankles I think about how I'll relay the story of the wild Christmas in Uganda and the flesh-eating anthropods to all the wide-eyed children in my future. "Tell me the one about the fat Flemish man you slept next to on the sail boat in Lake Victoria, Grandma Sarah..."

Damn, I think a good scratch is coming on again.