Aotearoa.

I still think about the bike ride to the clinic a fair bit; racing past the nursery school and towering termite mounds, taking the sneaky secret path between two brick houses and coasting down through the beds of sweet potato and navigating between pieces of the newly lumbered jackfruit tree. I think about coming home to cries of ‘Shannoni! Osibye Otya nyabo?’, swatting mosquitoes, eating with my hands. It doesn’t hurt in the way I thought I would; there’s no insatiable yearning, just a gentle longing. I had the opportunity to clear up a lot of misconceptions about myself and about the state of our planet when I was in Uganda and as I watch the dust settle… I feel peace. I know my community felt my love, I know I felt theirs and I know I will go back. I don’t think I need to complicate it more than that.

I don’t count the days I’ve been gone. I think back in chapters.
Chapter 1
I cried a lot when I left the village. My good friend Robert was taking me to the airport at midday. All the children had come to say goodbye. Nomatov, my host sister, had run out past the sugarcane plantations again, I wouldn’t see her before I left. Jamali cried slow drippy streams and wouldn’t look me in the eye. I don’t think Zachi and Ashrof knew I was really going this time. They let me pick them up and squeeze them, their feet dangled at my knees. Mama Rose and Sylvia tried not to be sad or maybe they weren’t sad. It didn’t matter. I was leaving the village in a 4-door sedan, our wheels kicking dust up on the cyclists and women carrying kindling. My face has never been so hot; my stomach has never been so gutted. My flight was on time and our lights reflected off Lake Victoria as we took off. I sat next to a Baptist minister from Virginia and he taught me about the rosary. I couldn’t have cared less. Sula bulungi Uganda ni webele nyo.

Chapter 2
I had bought some Christmas wrapping paper from the FoodTown in downtown Auckland and tied up the gifts I’d brought over for my family; some jewelry and clothes, batiks and wooden things. I got to the Hyatt early in the morning hoping I’d arrive before the other 75% of the Harney tribe. Alas, this wasn’t the case. My vision was still a bit blurry, my head was still a bit droopy, I don’t like the word culture shock, but I guess it felt something like that. But it was overpowered by something different, it had collided with something much more powerful; an emotion that can only drawn up when you’ve been waiting for something this long. I told one of the South American bell boys to give me a hand up to their room; had him ring the buzzer and deliver an armful of gifts to my mother’s voice…I watched all sly and giddy from around the corner. Then I had South American bell boy II repeat the same… this time my mom couldn’t be bothered with the tom foolery. She came out in a huff, “Where is she? No, seriously. Not funny. Where is she?” I leapt into her arms, back into all 3 pairs of arms, a child returning home. I was returning home. And that Christmas day, the love shack had flown 16 hours to be reunited with their missing piece.

Chapter 3
I have a feeling Tyler just listened to the same 6 ipod songs on repeat our entire kiwi road trip. He would cram his cricket legs between the drivers seat and his chest or extend them over the center console until my dad would start making retching sounds and shout about how ‘those feet stink like dog doo’. Every once in a while his almost-man voice would penetrate the sounds of wind blowing through the window and the family would be blessed with a song lyric; ‘Jah bless!’ or ‘the state where you neva find a dance flo empty…’ or ‘emancipate yourself from mental slavery…’ Sometimes I would sock him in the arm or pull on pieces of his face to try and make him pay attention to me. He’s pretty mellowed out though, even the ancient powers of sibling teasing don’t seem to erk him anymore (I think my technique was just a bit rusty).

We drove a lot. We covered a hefty chunk of New Zealand in our bright blue bullet racer, cruising coastlines, scaling cliffs, passing sheep…lots of sheep. I spent a lot of time perfecting my scenery adjectives when I was in Africa and there’s no shortage of opportunities to employ them here…massive tropical looking trees, kauris and nikau, beautiful ferns, pastoral poplars and bursting hollyhock. We skirted through acres and acres of wild planes, tangled masses of eucalyptus and harakeke (flax), cragged seasides and cultivated pine forest, the lumber is very big industry here and its turned once lush foothills into checker boarded battle zones…mustn’t dwell on it though, one of the many realities that comes with how unreal New Zealand is.
We dove, rafted, swam, explored and generally basked in the glory of the family unit…a jolly time was had by all. I don’t think I cried as they pulled out of the one-way street and plowed onwards towards the airport. I tucked Tyler in the back seat and wiped what could have been a sob-fest onto my sleeve, told ma and pa I’d talk to them soon and that I would be safe. It was solo-traveling time and I had to reassess the wiring and reconfigure my vibes for the madness ahead …

Chapter 4

I played gypsy for a while. Bathing in streams, eating vegan from cans, sleeping in vans and reworking people’s dreads. It seemed some kind of alternate world, one where disrupted youth can sing songs about the revolution not being televised and call parents on the fly to wire them more cash. We were attractive and young, restless and unshaven, uncommitted and outspoken. We all knew chords on the guitar, spoke of our Mayan galactic signatures and were well versed in the glory of anarchy. Our brilliance was transposed between spliffs and jam sessions, we could curse the American government till our faces were blue and philosophize on monogamy till the sun came up. We knew everything and answered to nobody. It was wonderful because it was ephemeral, it was conceivable only because the reality of it was not my own. It is over and now I am living in a residence hall.

Lions and Hippos, Masai! Oh My!

Masai Mara.


The bus lurched to a stop at around 2:30am. Lucky for me, the Mzungu Privilege had landed me a bus upgrade to ‘Royal’ and the front row seat behind the driver. I’d spent the last 6 hours in and out of sleep, listening to Rachel’s and trying not to touch anything. As this was one of two designated potty breaks I decided to venture out into what proved to be a really bad psychedelic trip. The parking lot of this rest stop was infested with the huge passenger buses that litter East Africa; the cheapest companies’ vehicles are painted neon purple or gangsta gold, some even rock a black light interior; their back windshields are tagged with phrases like, “Jesus Saves” or “Cream Team”. I stumbled bleary eyed and sleep deprived out into this reality and stepped in line with fifty other women to wait for the latrine (you think gas station toilets are bad?) There is some cultural defect here that renders lines inconsequential, people literally will just squeeze in front of you, and when you tap them on the shoulder and flash a ‘bitch please’ smile they just nod their head in submission and squeeze in front of the person behind you. I then proceeded to the…cafeteria? The peeling pink linoleum floor was lit by badly chosen orange bulbs that flickered and buzzed with each fist sized flying bug that landed on them. People were frantically stuffing themselves and their children with 20 shilling beef hunks and sausages while the sounds of crying babies and popping oil clung to the sticky walls. This was just the first few hours of my 10-day Kenyan extravaganza! HaHa…uhhhhh.

I spent the next few days in Watamu, a small beach town north of Mombassa that plays host to a strange Italian diaspora. I was able to dive my first day there; a twenty minute boat ride on a crowded little speedster teeming with hairy old Italian men and their young beautiful girlfriends took us to our first dive spot: the Deep Place. Not so deep after all, at 18 meters the slanted reef was home to dozens of live coral, trumpet fish, puffers, lionfish, angelfish, octopi and a 5-foot moray eel named George… I had pleasure of scratching George beneath his gaping dagger-toothed mouth, much like a kitty…the joys and quirks of the marine world. Dive two was a 16-meter reef called Caracas. To be honest, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two dives; in my experience the purpose of doing two dives is to illustrate the variety of sea life…not to emphasize the similarities…alas. In any case it was great to be in that place again, to begin the descent and have all the skills come back like riding a bike. I love the ocean. I was able to play stowaway on a special chartered snorkel trip on day two; the boat crew saw me snorkeling alone just off shore and pulled up. They were smoking a joint and invited me to tag along with them and the British family they were picking up at one of the ritzy all-inclusive resorts…could I say no? We were able to go in to the Watamu Marine Preserve and I spent two hours lazily following parrotfish and looking for shells; the family turned out to be a grown up brother and sister with their partners and parents. They snuck me into the Turtle Bay Resort with them afterwards and I gorged myself on coconut tilapia and ‘chocolate balls’, all washed down with the worst pina colada I’ve ever had. Good ole’ British hospitality.

Watamu.

During my stay in Watamu, I made three or four trips to this unbelievable authentic Gelatoria; hand made gelato, crepes, cappuccinos, juices…it was heaven, it made me second guess my pledge to go on a raw food diet once I get to New Zealand. I spent my last night on the coast in Mombasa at a nice hotel with a king bed, television and a balcony view of the traffic below. Some friends of friends took me out to a club on the outskirts of town where I attempted to get drunk but could really only think raging thoughts of all the gross white men picking up the young Kenyan prostitutes and the stage where black girls in leopard print thongs were workin’ it to the soundtrack of The Lion King…it was all a little too exploitive for me. It highlighted the consequences of a successful tourist industry in a developing country; anything for money money money. See, Uganda doesn’t know all those dirty tricks yet because tourism is still a new industry, I have a sinking feeling I may be in for a rude return to Uganda in a few years.

I took the 10-hour bus ride from Mombassa to Nairobi early Saturday morning and arrived Saturday night with the biggest Nairobi chip on my shoulder, “I know this is Nairobbery. Don’t you take advantage of me! Hey, stop looking at my purse! Oh yeah, is that really how much that chapatti is…you trying to cheat me?!” Everyone probably thought I was crazy, but it didn’t deter me from wearing my passport around my neck even while bunked up in my mzungu hotel for the night.

I left Sunday morning for my obligatory safari adventure.
Myself, Kat, a 25 year old Korean-American from SF trying to find herself, and Jef, our 43 year old chain-smoking Spanish-speaking Kenyan guide, drove the 5 hours through the Great Rift Valley to Masai Mara, one of the most notorious game parks in the world. We had three days of bumping around in our pop-top vanagon through the 2000 sq km reserve, seeking out lions, buffalo, giraffes, elephants, eagles, hippos, crocodiles and every kind of deer-like creature that’s ever roamed the African expanse.

"Geelaughs" -Jef
It was all good fun and if it weren’t for the ever-looming Masai tribesmen trying to cajole us into paying for a traditional dance or a traditional meal or a traditional hike or a traditional cell-phone cover…than it would have been the most relaxed I’ve been for months. On the way back Jef made us stop at the hotel we’d had lunch at on the way to the park, everyone who ate the meat that day (everyone but me) had had heinous diarrhea for days. He wanted to set them straight and demand a refund, telling them, “You know, we all been shitting like this (explosive hand motion). You see? I’m bringin a blanket to the damn toilet, I can’t sleep. Just shit, fuck, just shit.” Jef was a great guide, in the safari business for 17 years, two teenage daughters and a wife who ran off to Canada and hasn’t contacted him for three years; he wants to marry a new Christian and live in the stone house he’s going to build. Go Jef!
I decided to forgo a second night in Nairobi and upon return from Masai Mara I immediately hopped on the overnight bus back to Jinja. That was a terrible decision. Cold, smelly, sticky, crowded, loud and roads that seem to have just been craggy rock plains that were moderately worn down by the heavy traffic, but would still throw you into the seat back in front every 15 seconds if you weren’t properly braced with abdominal muscles engaged. Not to mention crossing the Kenyan-Ugandan border alone, on foot at 3:30 in the morning is probably not so advisable. But, eenyhoo…here I am. Alive, well; once again being overfed and under lockdown… back ‘home’ from my vacation from a vacation.

“I need you to disorganize your bones from this place!”

-Prefect at Lubani SS to disobedient hordes of students


‘The time has come,’ the walrus said.
‘To speak of many things.
Of children dressed in threadbare robes, of chai and tribal kings.
Of Nile ebbs and borehole flows, of cassava and maize.
Of Muslim women’s shrouded souls, of thick twelve hour days.’

Those who know my father know him as a character of many colors. An Irish-(ex)Catholic anchor dressed in tie-dye, ever accompanied by Conyers, Labradors, children and the like. He wears flowers, sausage-finger-stuffed between his Giants cap and his slowly salting bear-hair. A ball player to the death, he gardens obsessively, curses like a sailor and has a metal knee. Woven within the snags and stitches of his being is a turbulent heart, unconditional, uncontainable and unavoidable; his love is like an electric storm. That heart sent two boxes and forty pounds of fun to Uganda…I got to be the messenger.

Don’t think small-scale here. My dad doesn’t send things like pocket encyclopedias or scrabble. A P.E. teacher, it appears he broke into his own office and robbed himself. Soccer, football, baseball (balls, mitt and bat): check. Frisbee, tennis, volleyball: check. Squishies, bouncies, twirlies, stickies, floaties, squares and circles, pinks and blues, the classic and the inconceivable. In addition, he took the liberty of funding a small Bay Area school construction project by single-handedly buying out an elementary school’s “Cheap Foam Shit Craft Fair”; I also received the orange and beaded fruits of that labor.

The last two evenings at sowa ikumi (4 o’clock), tuzana mu (we played at) Kyabirwa Primary School. With a turn out of about one hundred beaming pre-teens (and shady older thuggish characters) each round, I can safely say…well, it’s been quite a trip. Beautiful and carefree, violent and indulgent, chaotic and peaceful, tears, laughter, nausea and vomiting…we accommodate the whole gamut of the human sensory experience over here. As the only playthings (well, playthings designed expressly for the purpose of play) for miles, the distribution of these priceless goods has been a harrowing trial, a testament to the patience and durability I’ve acquired these last few months.


Teaching how to pump the balls.

I spent last night wrapping the craft fair goods, a few finger boards, hackey sacs, bracelets, purses and one plastic giraffe, pony, lion, dinosaur (an animal family not taught in Ugandan schools, they think it’s a chameleon), tiger and elephant. I secured the gifts between pages of the outdated Daily Monitor and New Vision news bulletins and tied them off with green clothesline. Scrolled across the front were the names of the kids in my compound, the creatures who have taken me in regardless of how my skin sits and whose hearts I’ve taken to like sunsets on the African horizon. Becca, Laticia, Joel, Paulo, Emma, Sharif, Magda, Ronald, Nomatovu, Julie, Hanifah, Ashrof, Zaki, Milly, Aliza and of course, my one and only, my Jamali.

I tiptoed out through the front door around dawn, carefully dislodging the nails that keep the door closed. Unloading my backpack stuffed with newsprint colored treasures, I arranged them at the base of a jackfruit tree, Christmas tree…jackfruit tree…whatever. It made me feel like how my dad must feel every time he and my mom did stuff like this for Tyler and I. Ceaselessly surprising us, a bicycle hanging precariously half-way out our chimney (Santa couldn’t fit it down), a geodesic explosion ball secured secretly above our sleeping heads, scavenger hunts, rhymes, half eaten Christmas cookies at the fireplace…them always playing dumb till the end. It feels great.



Word spreads fast in the village, by mid-morning the crowd around the gifts was in full force, curiously observing, sounding out names, holding the gifts to the sun and trying to get a closer look at their innards. I told them, ‘No, I don’t know where they came from, but we can open them at sowa musanvu…one o’clock.’ I spent the morning packing, consolidating, trashing, donating. A few curious kids peered through my window, the same way they had the day I’d arrived. Unpacking and packing both lend themselves nicely to kids looking to look at my things. A gave one boy some post-its, a handful of zip ties to Casseva, a neighbor girl.

Meanwhile, outside, tension was mounting. This one doesn’t have a package with his name, Becca has two gifts, where was the football, why Zaki and not me? It was disappointing, a little heart wrenching, but most of the whiners I’d never seen before so the guilt factor was kept to a minimum. At one I headed outside. I asked Becca to play Santa and distribute the gifts. I knew something was off-kilter the second I started walking towards our make-shift Christmas tree… I just bit my lips, pressed my palms together, “I’m not crying in front of them, I wont.” Half the gifts were gone, stolen; whisked away in broad daylight and stifling heat. Most of the girls received their purses and pencils, but the boys’ pot had been raided. Jamali started to cry and took off towards the plantains. I walked inside slowly, couldn’t bring myself to take any photographs of this, couldn’t bring myself to struggle through my peanut-brittle Lusoga and attempt to communicate the injustice that had been done. Fingers were pointed, names were insinuated; I pulled down my curtain and cried. I should add also that this follows a series of dishonest events surrounding these packages. The day they arrived, my host family stole some of the balls from my room while I was out, I caught my host mother attempting to smuggle the purses away in her pockets, kids were putting the tennis balls in their trousers, rolling balls into bushes to come claim later…As everyone at home continuously reminds me, ‘You can’t blame them.” I guess not.

I caught up with Jamali later. He was wiping snot on his shirtsleeve and b-lining it to Casseva’s place, he knew it was her. We reached her compound. She was frying potatoes in a mud hut and her two younger siblings were peeling cassava inwards, knife blades facing towards their toddler soft bellies. I lost a little a bit, ‘Was it you? Did you steal them? Where are they?’ She almost cried, looked down, ‘Ah-ah, no.’ She looked towards Jamali like he could help her, he just stared towards her with his dark charcoal eyes. She ruffled through the cooking things in the corner of the hut and guiltily removed something. She held out her small coffee colored hand and revealed the six yellow zip ties I’d handed her earlier. ‘Bambi,’ she said, ‘Sorry.’ My very rare motherly instinct lurched, what am I?
I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to go, so I got gone. And now I’m here. Sitting by the Nile. Thinking cloudy thoughts of a flight in 16 hours.

Being here, you’re constantly faced with the dichotomy of the third world. Her endless generosity and overwhelming expectations for heightened reciprocation. Her poverty and riches. Her dismissal of the haves and her distaste towards being a have-not. The innocence of Uganda’s children will always be shrouded by their upheaval into adulthood; its babies raising babies around here and it makes me weary. At times it’s battered me down into apathy, at times it’s lifted my soul to a state of unconditional compassion and nurturing; both are feelings that circulate in me now.
I don’t feel capable of sizing up this experience. Of tacking it with numbers and calculated conclusions. Uganda is messy beautiful, a bit like me sometimes. There is a purity here, a silent undercurrent of love and resilience that penetrates the dishonest business, the corrupt authorities and the poor education, that drills through the rubbish lined avenues and reverberates in the bellies and mouths of these children.
All I have right now is that I am unspeakably grateful for this experience. I am unspeakably hopeful about Uganda’s future.

Thanks and love to those who have given me so much support; those who have kept away tears and brought on fits of familiar laughter, I am forever indebted.

Gettin' Gone

The green expanse back dropped by the cement-feathered sky made me cry today. Or at least I think it did. It could have been the wind, the dust maybe, or perhaps it’s that I’m leaving soon. The latter is a thought I’ve failed to give much attention. Being here has demanded so much of me I haven’t had a lot of time to dwell on not being here. But ‘not being here’ it comes.
It’s coming like winter in California. A sneaky sort of occasion marked by slowly bared sycamores and the end of pomegranates. By a homogenization of domes dinners (you begin to notice when every night is ‘butternut squash and potato soup night’) and by the charcoaling of the western sky from the four pm flight of the crows. It’s slow and quiet, terribly tragic and hopelessly romantic all at once. I guess leaving Uganda feels something like this, if it has to feel like something, this’ll do.

My story has laid itself out in a way that makes me feel simultaneously like I’ve been here for bloodlines and like I’ve just arrived. One of the clichéd ironies of moving to a new place is that just as one’s getting settled, just as I’m feeling home and comfortable and ready to throw my cares to the wind and explore…its time to go. Time to board a plane and eat mini pretzels and force myself not to think of what I’ve left. The landscape that could stop hearts, my village made of sticks, bricks and mud and containing nothing but molten gold open arms and smiles beaming equatorial sunshine, and the kids…these damn kids. When I leave, who’s gonna take on the role of 100 children screaming, “Shanoni! Shanoni! How are yoo? I em fyne. Byee! Byee!” everyday on my walk to and from the clinic…who?


I’m not gonna worry myself over it too bad yet. After all I still have 17 days and 3 hours left on the continent. That’s a fair piece of time to enjoy, to listen, to learn, to love. And …I can always comfort myself in knowing I only have 30 more months of university before I can come back.

Green Gentleness

It was the air that got me first, like a cool Californian inhale. The stuff you breathe near Half Moon Bay or Sebastapool, at San Gregorio and Pescadero; something earthy and damp, crisp and healthy. Within minutes of waking, of bringing forth the energy of the surroundings into my eyes, ears, nose, mouth and lungs, I was out of bed. Moving silently on foot over the mossy trails that edge themselves round the circumference of the island. The edge of my jeans were dewdrop drenched by the time I made it to the top of the nearest hill. I attempted to shade the early morning sun from both above and below as it plummeted from the clouds and at the same time reflected off the still water; I finally surrendered to just throwing my head back, eyes closed and letting my face enjoy the warmth. I stood silent and flat footed in a field of knee-high pink and yellow grasses, young corn stalks, and pockets of vibrant wildflowers that looked as though they’d slipped carelessly from an artist’s easel. This was Lake Bunyoni, this was a place that nursed my bones back white and my blood blood-red.


I had a lot of time for prayer over the last few days. Not a kneeling, penitent sort of affair; but focused moments for healing and gratitude. I found myself crosslegged on the dock, or standing at the waters edge or crouching atop the highest peak; thinking words of praise and thanks for my surroundings, for this place, her people, for my home, the people I love, the people they love. Wishing for a world brimming with peace and healthy people and compassion; then, realizing this isn’t the reality, settling for a world brimming with conscientious people and the ability to heal and forgive and create peace wherever it can be created. It felt good, who knows, maybe you felt it too.

I have been faced with an internal struggle recently, questioning my role here, or any good-willed foreigner’s role here. There are so many grey areas in aid work, so many ambiguous goals and objectives, so much dust swept under rugs, its suffocating. As someone who has had, BE SUSTAINABLE, engraved in her heart and probably on the back of her head for all she knows, its really difficult to look around everyday and see so much money being dumped into…exactly, who knows?
I try to tackle it slowly. ‘If there was an answer Shannon, do you think it would look like this? Do you think it would smell and taste and feel like this? No, there is not an answer, and this? This is most certainly not the answer.”
Its incredibly overwhelming, all the doubts, all the questions, all the frustration, even the rage… its boiled over into something cloudily condensing in my brain; I’m hoping having time in New Zealand will allow me to process, to sort, spring clean.


This is why being in Lake Bunyoni felt so good. My head felt clear, my skin was clean, I ate banana pancakes. I was and am so grateful for every opportunity I have to see clearly, to gain perspective, to reflect, to be humbled. I wish I could explain the quieting beauty of the place, but I can’t, and of course photographs can’t do it justice. I can be content living in the body it left me with, something strong, stable, free and ready to begin thinking of answers.

LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! FREE! FREE! FREE!

There seemed to be a management problem with keeping cues, perhaps it was just a particularly rowdy day, but I had a certain hunch that the blaspheming prefects threatening to cane the children wasn’t an everyday event. It was the kind of chaos one sees upon the release of a new Harry Potter, or if Brad Pitt was to stroll into a local restaurant… the sticky kind of fist flailing frenzy reserved for once-in-a-lifetime affairs. At first I was impressed, thinking this wide-eyed madness was a testament to my success, but as the novelty wore off, my vocal chords chafed against one another and I found myself threatening violence towards the hordes of teenagers I realized that perhaps I had bit off more than I could chew. It’s a dangerous game offering free services to those who have so little… but I forgave myself. How could I have possible anticipated free HIV testing would result in mass hysteria?
I sit basking in the somewhat lackluster glory of my S.H.A.R.E. program; the project that I’ve spent the last ten weeks developing and executing. It is over, the last child has been pricked, bled and counseled, the last corrupt CDC sponsored lab technician has been paid off…I now have time to be in Uganda, not just to stay here, but to be here.
The teacher training session went off beautifully in an off-green colored room on the second floor of the Cool Breeze Hotel. Questions were asked, interests were sparked, beers were served…Hooray Hoorah!
The next chapter consisted of executing the school sessions. The logistical swamp bucket that presents itself when trying to coordinate three autonomous bodies is thick and it is fierce. After much pleading, rationalizing and exhausted compromises each school finally confirmed a date that worked for both Soft Power Health (i.e. me…that wasn’t too difficult) and AIDS Information Centre Jinja.

tests waiting to be tested.

East Secondary School- November 5th at 10:30 am
The AIC staff arrived one hour late to our meeting place, thus we arrived nearly 2 hours late to our appointment. It didn’t seem to be any skin off the Headmaster’s back as he was lounging under a mango tree eating jackfruit when I arrived in my long-skirted American “I heart efficiency” guise. We lumbered into a concrete classroom with dirt floors and twiddled fingers as the students scuffled in. The presentation went nicely, my favorite moment was when a cocky 18 year old raised his hand to say, “You said that condoms they should be thrown in the pit latrine. But me, I fuck in the bush, so what then?” The AIC HIV counselor was kind enough to take that question for me; I cowered backwards and resisted the urge to kick him in the mouth. We tested 70 students.

Lubani Secondary School- November 8th at 1pm
The AIC staff arrived one hour late to our meeting place, thus we arrived nearly 2 hours late to our appointment. It didn’t seem to be any skin off the teacher’s backs as they were lounging under a grove of pine trees, “We have just released the students for lunch. You wait for some 40 minutes.” So we began the presentation at around 4 pm, at which time I was introduced by one of the younger teachers as his wife. This set the students into such a fit it took canes and cursing of all sorts to quell them. This particular teacher, my husband, has taken to text messaging me late at night to tell me he misses me, that he needs my personality or to ask me “ware you b?” I gave the presentation to just under one thousand students. Outside. Without a microphone. These are times when I thank my theatre career… projection, annunciation…pause, punch and attitude…you got it! We tested 97 students before we ran out of vacutainer needles and the sun went down. This was the most chaotic group of all the students, I sustained several minor injuries that evening as well as coming to the conclusion that I don’t ever, ever want to be a schoolteacher. The electricity at the campus was shifty at best and we realized about thirty minutes before dark that the special hire car we were riding in had no headlights. Henry, the driver, and I had a friendly little chat where all I could think about was that he had a huge problem of misusing the word “generally”, ‘Well, generally, I have no lights. Oh, yes, generally I will go get another car.” This was not the end of the “Henry screwing me up” saga.

Trinity College- November 12th 1pm
By this point I’d like to think I’d worked out most of the hitches. I told the AIC people to arrive four hours before the program began and this time we were only about 20 minutes late. I educated the students in a really beautiful shaded arbor; pine trees, eucalyptus and palm all collected in a strange kind of partnership to provide a cool and calm space in which to talk about viral infections and condoms. We were able to test 100 children and make it home before dark. I felt good, I felt really proud driving home around dusk, the pink sky burning into the sugar cane plantations, the amueze rising as a fingernail in the sky.


St. Stephen’s Secondary School- November 14th 10:30 am
I almost don’t want to talk about it. But this, as much any of the pitfalls and obstacles, was part of my experience, part of the reality of getting things done or not so done here. I received a text message from the HM from St. Stephens at about 10 am the day of the program, something along the lines of, “Please cancel your visit. We are too busy. Thankyou.” Keeping in mind please, that this is after two months of planning, of confirming and reconfirming of sticking to a date and time that he suggested. And so I kindly asked him to reconsider based on the fact that the program had already been paid for, the counselors had been hired etc etc. His response was, “Our position is final and unchangeable. Your program is not as important as our students learning. Thankyou.” The story concludes with me rolling up to the school in a heated fury and laying in on the administrative staff, using my big English words and all.
Over, done with, unfortunate. Thus the lackluster aspect of this whole sha-bang.

But now I have about a month to learn this place. Learn the ebbs and flows of her land and people, the things I’ve been biking past too fast to notice. The weather has been peach, plum, pear perfect lately; cloudy sunshine days, breezy, beautiful. The living here is easy and I’m gonna take an HIV load off and enjoy it while I can. Christmas is coming in fast this year.

"Don’t you see? ...Our city, it is shining.”

It does shine in places too. Samwiel wants me to observe how it shines in the buildings blessed with electricity. The Indian supermarkets, petrol stations, in the Christmas lights strung across the outside of the Mayfair Hotel & Conference Space. But I watch it shine elsewhere. Shone in the worn faces of the shop vendors and tailors, fragmented in caverras of vanilla flavored water, absorbed in the women’s cotton clothes and in the boda boy’s motorbikes, it reflects. The current that propels through this place is one that doesn’t rely upon wiring and circuits; it is passed by word of mouth, through Ugandan handshakes and customary greetings, in local eateries and convenient shops that all sell the same products for the same prices. It smells of the cast iron used by entire bloodlines, deep fried cassava and mandaze, poor sewage systems, people’s sweat. It is complacent and overused, tired and unfair, it is ancient and it is unchangeable. But there are other elements too, sensory components less perceptible to the untrained pallet. Sounds and tastes that cause a double take. What I perceive, the poverty, the impossibility of it all, contrasts starkly with the reality. The perpetually playing children, the mothers gossiping beneath doorjambs and jack fruit trees, the consistently fertile land and gentle weather.

Annie says we can’t ever get it. We aren’t capable of understanding the resilience because it will never be our reality. She likened it to leaving the Rwandan Genocide Memorial, the church where over 20,000 people were massacred. Where babies were killed by being thrust into concrete walls. Where men and women Tutsis kneeled frantically praying against plywood pews and violently digging plastic rosaries between thumb and forefinger until the last moment, the final blow. She said when she left, despite the disbelief and the horror, she still felt a blatant disconnect, a barren void that could never be breached because she wasn’t one of them. These weren’t her people. For her, September 11th drew more remorse, anger, sadness. Because we are tribal, communal animals, I wonder how significant it is to our conscious to be a member of the global community. Are we wired to be dedicated to our people, our countrymen, our tribe. Does this prevent us from ever really adapting to another culture? Will I ever be able to challenge these foreign demons as my own battle? Simanyi. I don’t know.


My village is poor, undeniably poor. Children are withdrawn from school because of shortage of funds (the fees are roughly $8 per term), my host sister has two hand-me-down dresses and a math compass to her name, we don’t buy toilet paper here. And yet we are fine, a self sustaining agrarian community, we fear no famine, no flood. Wednesday November 8th I witnessed a new face of Uganda. Soft Power was commissioned to do a special malaria outreach program. We drove the two hours to Kampala to facilitate it. Because of the distance, it was one of the first times SPH had allowed the local social workers to mobilize the community. When we arrived we knew immediately that this had not been done successfully. As we waited for the frantic last minute shepherding of local men and women we observed our scenery.


Nomolago rests awkwardly in the shallow valley between two upper class Kampala suburbs. Its knock-kneed shacks and sun bleached tenement structures rub eachother raw in the twenty kilometer rift that was originally allocated for catching runoff and waste water and providing a barrier between the two high caste communities. The body-stocking tributaries of the community run lengthwise through the valley, obviously over worked and poorly cared for. There is no electricity, no farming, no clean water source and no bathrooms. Immediately upon arrival you are kicked in the face with open sewage, the smell that can only come from a place where the nearest latrines are miles away, cost money to use and close at sundown. Sickly looking ‘Land Ducks’ tread heavily about the place scavenging for food, searching for water, picking at pieces of discarded plastic and old bicycle tires, not unlike the local children. Every child I say had Tinnia Capitus, a fungal infection of the scalp that causes small pocked white scabs to form on top of the head, later leading to open sores and further infections. Ultimately about twenty battered and jaded women showed to our session, they had been told we were giving the mosquito nets for free, when they realized this wasn’t they case they became restless, distressed, pushy and irrational. Me and the other three mzungus were shuffled hastily back into the van and promptly removed from the situation. An Israeli doctor who is volunteering there said that about 15,000 people lived in the slum. All illegally. All without healthcare. All without public schools. These weren’t refugees, they were just the ‘children of poor people’, I can only imagine what that implies about these people’s children.
On the drive back I half-listened to Dane Cook on my ipod. Distressed and unsettled. Dane Cook told jokes about people shitting in closets and ‘Karen the bag of douche’; I thought about the ugly differences between urban and rural poverty and how part of me hated myself for being relieved that I wasn’t the one that worked there, that it wasn’t my mess to manage. But for now, I am okay with that. I am easing in, mpola mpola, into this endeavor. When stakes are so high, I feel content with entering toe first… plunging carries with it too many unknowns and potential emotional breakdowns. Needless to say, I was relieved as we arrived back in Jinja.
‘Don’t you see?’, I asked myself, ‘This city, it is shining.’