tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38794385860749865932024-02-18T20:04:23.868-08:00Dear Internet,<br><br>Peace Corps Uganda. August 11, 2010 - October 23, 2012. Words and pictures.<br><br>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-29715841229553917772012-08-29T22:48:00.000-07:002012-08-29T22:48:16.352-07:00#30<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
On the list of Things I'm Going to Miss About Uganda, taken on a recent game drive in Murchison Falls National Park.danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-707656522509189442012-08-29T22:38:00.000-07:002012-08-29T22:40:58.557-07:00On EndingThings are winding down, and quickly.<br />
<br />
I only have twenty-one days until I close my service. I only have seventeen days until I take what I hope will be whittled down to two backpack's worth of stuff and leave Ngora. I'm going to be gone for five days next week to travel to Kampala to take the GRE (and try to make a plan for the rest of my life) and attended our All-Vol conference in Masaka, where I'll see most everyone here for the last time, so when you take those days out of the equation, I only have twelve days left in Ngora.<br />
<br />
I was wondering, ever since early July when I got my official COS date, when it was going to hit me that 1: I've been here for two years, a long time, it seems, and 2: I'm leaving the place I've lived and the people I've gotten to know for the last two years, possibly forever, and 3: I'm going to have to grow up now, be a real adult, pay bills (a couple weeks ago I had to pay a credit card bill for the first time in two years, a good reminder that I'm leaving Africa), buy furniture, rent an apartment (or secure a couch to sleep on for a while), and get a job (or go back to school and put everything off for another two years, until I'm --yikes-- <i>thirty</i>).<br />
<br />
I don't know if it has fully hit me yet, but the hitting has certainly started. If it's possible to feel nostalgic for something that hasn't faded into the past yet, then I'm becoming nostalgic for my Peace Corps experience, Ngora, and Uganda. I'll be doing something in town or traveling with friends or whatever, and I'll realize that I won't be able to do any of those things in a few weeks, and it's kind of sad, certainly bittersweet. But then, one or more of the same old annoying and frustrating things that have been around for the last two years will happen again, or I'll be sitting at my organization with no work to do, having wound down basically all of my projects, and just be crushingly bored (I can only study for the GRE for so many hours in a day, and I think I've realized my limit is five), and I find that I can't wait to get out of this country. Even with those annoying and frustrating things still happening on as regular a basis as they ever have, though, everything's started to have that hazy glow that good memories always seem to be tinged with, all soft lighting and a gauzy white border around it all, like a flashback in a made-for-TV movie. I am going to miss this. At the same time, I think it's a good time for me to end my service and leave Uganda. A surprising number of PCVs grow increasingly cynical and jaded over the course of two years in a developing country (assuming this happens to volunteers in countries other than just Uganda, and sometimes it doesn't even take two years). I understand that: I have my moments of cynicism and frustration that borders on bitterness. The inefficiencies of daily life here --the transportation difficulties, the potholes, the empty hours spent waiting for things to happen-- combine with the often-unmet enthusiasm for doing work, the desire to make a difference, and the desire to have a good experience, and the frustration of all of those quotidian difficulties and often-outlet-less enthusiasm is compounded by the constant, unsolicited attention --the stares, the "Muzungu!"s, the requests for money or plane tickets to America or whatever else-- and it gets to you. It gets to some people more than others, but it gets to everyone at least a little bit. I haven't yet reached that stage of jadedness where I hate Uganda, hate living here, and --like some people-- hate Ugandans. That's why it's probably a good time for me to go. I can leave having done some good work, having made some amazing friends, and still liking the fact that I live in a tiny town barely on the map of Uganda. I can leave and have good memories already shrouded in the warm glow of nostalgia that far outweigh any negative experiences I have had, and that will grow to further outweigh the negative experiences as time passes and I get further and further away (temporally) from Uganda. I'm happy to be leaving while I'm still happy to be here. If that makes sense.<br />
<br />
Thing I'm Going to Miss About Uganda #43:<br />
I was in a private hire taxi with a couple friends last weekend when we stopped in a small freeway town between Jinja and Iganga. We were dropping someone off so she could go back to her site, and our driver was buying some <i>gonja</i> (roasted bananas, not to be confused with ganja). There were food and drink vendors clustered around the car -- kids selling bottles of soda and water from cardboard boxes, women selling plastic bags of g-nuts. A few younger men were selling roasted chicken, wings and breasts skewered on eighteen-inch-long sticks. I had a weird thought, and laughed to myself, and then asked everyone what I'd just started wondering: "Do you think one of these guys would sell me some chicken if I told him that he had to hold the stick while I ate it, hands-free?" We laughed: "Probably." I realized, then, that I'm going to miss this about Uganda: Possibilities are sort of endless. The possibility that something will go wrong, like when traveling for example, breakdowns or delays or whatever; and the flip-side, the possibility of weirdly hilarious things happening. Both of these possibilities are infinitely higher here than they are in the States, but it's the latter that I think I'm going to miss. I'm going to miss being able to make those weird jokes and have them actually be funny because they're actually possible. I'm about 70% sure that I could have bought chicken and eaten it while the guy held the stick. If I tried that in the States, like, say I was at a Mariners' game and wanted some Shish-ka-berries --the insanely priced chocolate-covered strawberries on a stick-- but asked the vendor to hold the stick while I ate them, no one would laugh, and the vendor would probably just say, #$%^& you, freak, and walk away. Maybe my sense of humor has just adapted to Uganda, but I'm kind of worried that things will be a little less funny, little more boring, in the States, simply because those bizarre and potentially (awkwardly) hilarious things just aren't nearly as possible there. (Then again, maybe I've just gotten so weird after two years in the bush that I, and my friends who've also spent two years in the bush, don't know what's funny to normal people anymore. That's also a possibility.)<br />
<br />
Thing I'm Going to Miss About Uganda #12:<br />
Riding my bike and having to swerve and weave my way through herds of cattle, seven or eight up to forty or forty-five strong, humps on their backs like fatty shark fins, horns just a foot or two away from gouging my thigh or getting stuck in the spokes of my bike. This will not happen in the States.<br />
<br />
Thing I'm Going to Miss About Uganda #183:<br />
The bus I was on today was delayed by fifteen minutes, at least, so that a group of seven grown men could chase down a fleeing chicken that wanting nothing less than to be caught, leading them on a wild chicken chase around in circles until they finally corralled it, tied its legs together, and tossed it in the storage area underneath the bus. This will also not happen in the States.<br />
<br />
That's all for now. Just trying to reflect on ending and leaving. If I come up with anything more profound, I'll be sure to try to articulate it. But I might not. Actually leaving and going back and being in the States for some time will surely affect how I feel about this whole experience, so who knows?danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-10196553671308700072012-08-01T03:03:00.000-07:002012-08-01T03:03:40.315-07:00Just Another Day at the Saloon<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was in Jinja the other day to meet
some friends and important people in their lives that I'd not met
yet. I wanted to look my best, naturally. Since I'd been out of water
for several days and had literally no clean clothes, I decided the
only way to look somewhat presentable was with a haircut and, since
my beard trimmer broke several months ago and my beard was reaching
near-Amish lengths, a shave.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I got the 4:30am bus that comes through
town, hoping that the work that had been done on the Mbale-Soroti
highway over the past few weeks – filling in potholes, flattening,
paving: it's now more or less filled in and flattened all the way up
to Kumi and paved about halfway up, which made the worst highway in
Uganda, by far, slightly less worst – would make for a smoother
ride and more sleep. It didn't. But at least they weren't blasting
traditional Ugandan music, like last time I'd taken the early bus. I
was able to catch a few minutes of sleep once we got out of Mbale and
hit solid tarmac, and the bus got me to Jinja around 8:45, plenty of
day left to clean myself up. So I checked into a hotel – The
Crystal Palace, which sounds like it's named after a David Bowie
movie, and is not as fancy as it sounds – and headed out to find a
barber.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I walked past a few signs for, as they
call them here, saloons, but they all pointed down alleys off the
street, and I thought I could do better. After about ten minutes of
walking, I realized that no, I probably couldn't. I passed another
sign pointing down another alleyway and decided that was the one: A
large mural of a barber giving a haircut was on the outside wall;
they'd at least put that much effort into their shop, so they must be
at least that much committed to their craft.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
They didn't seem surprised to see a
muzungu walk into their shop at nine in the morning, which I took to
be a good sign, and both barbers were hard at work on haircuts
already, which I took to be another good sign. The fact that they
were both hard at work on Ugandan guys was beside the point.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When one of the barbers finished and
his barbee – what's the word for the one getting a haircut? –
paid, he went to slap me on the knee, sort of missed and slapped my
inner thigh instead, was unfazed by the contact his hand had just
made with my inner leg – “Yes, big man! How are you?” – gave
me an enthusiastic high-five/handshake and told me I was next.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I sat down in the chair and explained
what I wanted him to do – don't cut the top at all, just buzz the
back and the sides – feeling confident because how hard could that
be?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Very hard, apparently, and what
followed was the strangest haircut experience I've ever had.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
(Despite the fact that I once got an
accidental and terrible buzzcut at a random barber shop, they usually
do a pretty good job, and so I keep going back, rather than waiting
til I'm in Kampala and paying 10x the price for someone who I know
knows how to cut my hair.)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He began with fire. That's not a
metaphor for his enthusiasm. He actually lit a small fire on the wood
counter. “Some people don't do this,” he told me, as he held the
clippers over the fire to sanitize them. “You don't say,” I said,
my confidence going up in flames. After that, it quickly became
obvious I was his first muzungu haircut.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
He started to go at my head with the
newly sanitized clippers, and with difficulty. He was going down,
with the direction of my hair, and the effect was not what he seemed
to hope it would be: In that direction, he literally wasn't cutting
any of my hair. Discouraged, he grabbed a pair of scissors instead.
My confidence came back a little bit: Usually these places don't even
<i>have</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> scissors, let alone know
how to use them.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">He
sized up the back of my head for a minute and then went at it with
the scissors. However, instead of, as barbers do when they know how
to cut white hair, holding a bit of hair between his fingers on one
hand to measure it out while cutting with the scissors in the other
hand, he just went for it – free-style, free-hand.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">After
two sizable cuts, I decided that was not going to end well – a
couple weeks ago, we had given Nick a haircut and had quickly found
out how hard it is to give good haircuts with scissors – and told
him so before he could do any serious damage. “I think maybe the
clippers will be better,” I said. He didn't miss a beat – how
many chunks had he already taken out of my head? – before readily
agreeing, “Yes, I think so,” and putting the scissors away.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">The
next thirty minutes: he figured out that going up with the clippers
was better than going down; he still went down with them the majority
of the time; he marveled at the fact – “So you will see a white
man cutting hair??” – that we had barbers in America; he told me
that, since I was from the United States, I was a son of Obama, and
that since I was living in Uganda, I was also a son of Museveni; he
marveled at the texture of my hair – “Eh! Your hair is
smoooooth!” – and I decided not to tell him that it was because
I'd been out of water for a few days and it was just greasy; at one
point, he spent a good thirty seconds going over my face with the
clippers, underneath my eyes, where there isn't any hair; a large
Muslim man walked into the shop, removed his shirt, and left again
(Ramadan fasting going to his head, possibly); and it became rather
clear that, in his admirable attempt not to do a really terrible job
on my hair, he just wasn't going to cut very much off so I told him
that it looked fine and we gave up and moved on to the beard; this
presented him with an even greater level of difficulty; there was a
lot of baby powder involved; I spent a good two minutes trying to
convince him to literally just shave it all off; then I just took the
clippers and did it myself; finished, there were then four different
types of lotion rubbed all over my face, and a good five minutes of
face-massaging; then he asked me if I knew Nick, and I briefly
wondered if this whole thing wasn't some kind of payback for the
hack-job we'd done on his hair the week before, impressed with his
planning and how he knew that I'd go into that particular shop at
that time (giving him more credit than he was due: You just can't
plan these sorts of experiences; he had no idea who I was talking
about... allegedly).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Finally,
I was able to extricate myself from the chair and his lotion-covered
hands, paid and thanked him for his time, realized that we'd had an
audience of four women and two men for the entire experience, waved
at them, and left, my hair looking almost exactly the same as it had
when I'd walked in an hour earlier. At least I got my beard trimmed.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">All of
that brings me to this: We had our Close of Service Conference a few
weeks ago, and I officially end my Peace Corps service on September
20. Two years has flown by – “Someone was playing with the
clocks, and not only with the electric clocks, but with the wind-up
kind, too. The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year
would pass, and then it would twitch again.” Kurt Vonnegut,
</span><i>Slaughterhouse-Five</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> –
and now with only seven weeks left, I've started to realize some of
the random little things that I'll miss about living in Uganda.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Thing
I'll Miss About Living In Uganda #134: The kinds of experiences you
only get when you get your hair cut in a random back-alley saloon.</span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-86576629830526319422012-07-22T08:48:00.000-07:002012-07-22T08:48:08.585-07:00Overdue Thoughts on Rwanda<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We crossed the border into Rwanda and
Milton – our driver who made the trip from Kabale, just over the
Ugandan side of the border, to Kigali a few times a week to deliver
stacks of Uganda's <i>New Vision</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
and </span><i>Daily Monitor</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
newspapers – swung the car from the left to the right lane, from
British to Belgian. On a giant billboard, the words 'Welcome to My
Country' soared over a bottle of Primus beer. The tarmac was smooth
and flat and noticeably free of Ugandan-style potholes; it wound
around the bases of green hills, between them, over them: the land of
</span><i>mille collines, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">truth
in nicknaming.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The three of us sat
in the back seat of the blue Toyota Corolla. In front with Milton was
[I forgot his name], who was traveling to Kigali for the presentation
of his football team's Rwandan league championship. He split most of
the trip between his touchscreen smartphone and his
only-slightly-larger tablet computer. We dozed and stared out the
windows and checked for service on our blocky, black-and-gray Nokias.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">It was
less than an hour before we saw Kigali: a cluster of hills in the
distance came into focus through the overcast midday sky, buildings
tumbling up and down between the greenness, stretching skyward, too.
The road widened: a median soon split the two sides, manicured grass
and squat palm trees planted at equal intervals; white painted lines
halved the road on both sides of the median and – gasp! – cars
stayed in their lanes: traffic moved like it did in – I swear! –
America. The boda-bodas – motos, as they're called in Rwanda –
all carried only one passenger behind the driver, instead of the two
or three plus matooke or luggage in Uganda; the driver had his
license number stenciled on the back of his helmet and his
teal-colored vest; even the passengers were given helmets. There were
no holes in the roads, no massive open sewage pits in the sidewalks,
there wasn't even any garbage. Plastic bags were outlawed in Rwanda a
year or two ago, and the last Saturday of every month is </span><i>Umuganda</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
– Community Day – where shops and businesses close and moto
drivers switch off their engines and everyone stays home and cleans
their yard or neighborhood or whatever until at least noon (and
police roadblocks make sure you're not out before that). Kigali was
beautiful, clean, orderly. It was, in short, not Kampala.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We laughed about
the juxtaposition between Kigali and Kampala and, on the larger scale
as we left the city, between Rwanda and Uganda; we marveled at it,
basked in it. But at the same time, there was some niggling sense of
unease that went along with it. It's just not possible (nor should it
be, really) to spend time in Rwanda and not wonder: How much of this
was here <i>before</i>? What was it like <i>before</i>? How much of
everything – the cleanliness, the order, the semi-forced community
days – is a result, directly intentional or not, of what happened
here?</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It was only
eighteen years ago, after all, 1994, when the country exploded into
genocide.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Walking down the
street, handing a few francs to the woman at the supermarket after
she packed our bread and cheese (yes, cheese: on more than one
occasion we wished, as awful as it is to be wishful towards any
aspect of colonialism, that Uganda had been a French or Belgian
colony, for the breads and cheeses, instead of a British one, for the
… fish and chips, I guess) in a brown paper sack, butchering our
(very) limited French or speaking in a ridiculously affected French
accent when trying to get directions from someone we passed on the
street, drinking a draft beer (yes, a <i>draft</i> beer: one more
point for Rwanda) on a sunlit restaurant patio – doing anything,
really, it was impossible to keep out of my mind for any extended
period of time thoughts about the genocide and how everyone over the
age of twenty saw and experienced and remembers. But you don't talk
about the genocide. That's what we were told before we went: No one
talks about the genocide. So we'd drop it from conversations, like a
curse word, just to be safe, or polite: “I read that during the
[dropping voice to a whisper] <i>genocide</i>...” But I couldn't
help but want to ask about it, to hear stories and learn things and
be brought into it and by being brought into it be relieved of that
still-niggling unease that I felt and forgot and felt and forgot the
entire time, the unease that comes with tourism in former war-zones.
(The feeling went from niggling to full-blown when we sat by the pool
at the Hotel Milles Collines, the “Hotel Rwanda” from the movie,
and drank a beer and there was nothing there, no reminders or
memorials, just a classy, upscale hotel.) It was hard, almost, not to
have conversations with everyone in my head.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
You, moto driver,
you saw a thousand million horrific things.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I did. Sometimes I
still do.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And you, woman
packing our breads and cheeses, you ran for your life or hid quietly,
holding your breath and your children.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I did. I ran. I
dragged my children with me. I bruised their wrists because I
wouldn't let go, and I didn't let go, not once. And then we hid. I
covered their mouths and held my breath. We lived.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And your husband?</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
He is dead.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'm sorry.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That doesn't
matter.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I know.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Maybe you saved
people, man pouring my beer, maybe you allowed Tutsis to hide in your
home even though you are Hutu.
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I didn't. No. There
are times when I wish I had, but I didn't. They would have found them
anyway, they would have killed me then, and my family, so I didn't.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I understand.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I had to protect my
family first, and I do not regret this, though sometimes I do.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I understand.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And you, smiling on
homemade crutches, is that why you're missing your leg from the knee
down?</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yes. But my arms
are strong now.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
You look happy.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am, again.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
You lost a husband,
you lost a wife, you lost sons and daughters.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We did.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And you, did you
kill someone?</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
No.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Do you know someone
who did?</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yes.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Did you forgive
them, any of you, they who killed your friends and family and who
would've killed you?</div>
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I did.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I did not.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I cannot.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I won't.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I will. But not
yet.</div>
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Do you forget
sometimes?
</div>
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Sometimes we forget
how they died, our loved ones. Many times we try to forget how they
died. But we will never forget them. And we will never really forget
how they died.</div>
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There were all of
these questions that I wanted to ask, but couldn't and certainly
wouldn't. If I had experienced what everyone over twenty years old in
Rwanda experienced, it's unlikely that I would want to talk about it
either. Instead, we spent most of our first afternoon there at the
Kigali Genocide Memorial. It's very well done and very powerful. It
takes you through a history of the buildup to the genocide, the
events during it, and the aftermath. There were video testimonies
from people who'd hidden others in their homes or gardens –
including one old woman who was able to hide a number of people
because everyone in her village thought she was a witchdoctor so even
the <i>genocidaires</i> avoided her home – and news footage of
everything; glass cases filled with machetes and clubs that had been
used; a children's wing where photographs of children who were killed
(sometimes the only remaining photograph the family had) were hung on
the walls above plaques that gave their names and ages (a few months
old or five or twelve) and a few facts, their favorite foods (matooke
or beans and rice or passionfruit juice) or favorite toys (a football
or a bicycle or a doll), and how they were killed (hacked with a
machete or stabbed in the face and eyes or smashed against a wall);
outside, a series of eleven concrete slabs mark mass graves, concrete
crypts stacked with coffins that, in some cases, contain fifty bodies
in a single one as it was sometimes impossible to extricate one body
from the rest, and that, in an area less than half the size of a
football field, holds the remains of 250,000 people. We walked past
these graves, sporadic bouquets of flowers on top, and were knocked
down into silence just by the size of them, the area that they
covered. Then we walked up a small flight of stairs and saw the sign
that said just how many bodies were there and my skin crawled and my
throat grew tight and it all just became very, very real. If it had
been this unspoken, historical event, ghost-like, if you'll allow
that word-choice, existing just on the edge of everything, like a
speck in our peripheral vision, it wasn't anymore. If people don't
want to talk about the genocide, and understandably so, then it's a
very, very good thing that the Memorial exists. Things like that
shouldn't be allowed to be forgotten, even if so many people wish
that it would be, and the Memorial ensures that people will remember.
</div>
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<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We digested it all
over dinner later, brouchettes and chips and 750mL bottles of Primus.
Or tried to anyway. It, the genocide, was horrific, disgusting,
tragic – the adjectives go on and are all, each one of them,
insufficient. We wondered, like everyone else, how it could happen.
How people could do such things, how they could be convinced to do
such things by propaganda and radio broadcasts and identity cards,
how so <i>many</i> people could be convinced to do such things –
all of the questions that are always asked about genocide, all of
them unanswerable by anyone who wasn't there. That's my conclusion. I
can judge the actions, the acts of violence and brutality and hatred
and evil. It is easy and just and fair to judge those things. But I
can't judge the people who carried out those acts because I wasn't
there so what do I know? I did not grow up in a poor, third-world
country. I was not oppressed, nor were my friends and family, by a
government and a political system – colonial and post-colonial –
set up for oppression. I did not come of age in a generation that was
hungry and impoverished and jobless and, because they were all of
these things and saw the future continuing on the same path,
frustrated and angry. I was not uneducated, nor was I educated in a
school system that – and I admit I'm making the assumption that the
Rwandan school system is similar to the Ugandan one – does not
teach or encourage creative or critical thought, that emphasizes
listening to the authority figures and repeating and obeying the
things that the authority figures say, a school system that, in
short, sets people up to buy into propaganda, no matter how evil it
may be. So I can't judge the people. I can, and probably will, sit
here and say that I would never do those things, even if I had grown
up in those conditions. But that's meaningless and empty because I
didn't grow up in those conditions. The argument can be made – and
rightfully so – that no matter the conditions in which someone
grows up or lives, evil is evil, especially when it's so blatantly,
deplorably evil. And it is. But people are also people. Another
argument can be made then that some people are, simply, evil. Whether
or not you or I agree or disagree with that statement is irrelevant
because it should be obvious that Rwanda was not filled with
thousands or tens of thousands of inherently evil people. It was
filled with regular, average people who were poor and hungry and
oppressed and uneducated or poorly educated and taken advantage of
and who fell victim to the machinations of a handful of manipulative
and hateful authority figures. Is that wrong, to say that most of the
people who were committing the genocide were also victims (though
certainly in a different way than those they victimized)? I don't
know. Now I'm running out of coherent argument and into inchoate
philosophical ramblings. I judge the actions, and I feel that I'm
right in doing so. I don't judge the people because I have never been
in their situation and I feel right in that, too.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Anyway.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
If that sounds like
the most depressing vacation of all time, it wasn't all like that.
Because we put all of that aside when it was time (because you get
really good at compartmentalizing when you live in Africa or you
leave) and we had fun. We had a good time out on the town (though
Kampala has Kigali beat in its nightlife scene, at least as far as we
could find, which leaves the score at Rwanda: 129, Uganda: eh, let's
say 4) with some PC Rwanda volunteers, and we left Kigali after two
days to head up to Gisenyi, a sleepy little beach town on the shores
of Lake Kivu and just a couple short kilometers from the border with
the DRC. We hung out at the lake, went on a long, meandering, rainy
pseudo-hike up to the top of a hill, ate good steak and good cheese,
though not together. Rwanda is just pretty incredibly beautiful, if
you're into the whole hills thing. And after the sun had set over the
lake on our last night there, we turned and walked back into town,
the sky turning black except in the near distance, just above town,
where the lava of the active Nyiragongo volcano – just across the
border in the DRC – glowed orange, like a little sliver of sunset
that refused to go away or the fires of Mount Doom.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When we got to the
border crossing the next morning, we were met by a lack of forms and
some head-scratching bureaucracy and then, just as we stepped across
back into Uganda, by a somewhat disheveled man with a cardboard box
full of sachets (little plastic bags) of waragi (Uganda's local gin)
that seemed to be for sale (as he asked us if we wanted to buy some)
and also for his own personal consumption (as he was sucking the last
drops from one while he talked), a fleet of ragtag boda-boda drivers
yelling at us to hop on (we didn't), and discarded plastic bags and
garbage along the roadside.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Home sweet home.</div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-76646324049938367792012-05-29T05:56:00.000-07:002012-05-29T05:56:10.063-07:00Turkey Time, Part OneIn the last post, which, I know, was a long time ago, I mentioned a turkey project. It was an idea and plan that came from Okwakol John Michael, one of the volunteers I trained as a home-based HIV/AIDS counselor last year. He gathered a group of ten individuals from his village, Odwarat, some ten or fifteen kilometres from town, all of them living with HIV or AIDS, that would raise turkeys, keeping and feeding and breeding them to expand their flock, as an IGA, a way to make money to pay for antiretroviral treatment, or school fees for their children, or food, or whatever, along with more turkeys. A month or two after he first came to me with the idea, and after a lot of support from some wonderful people (you know who you are; embrace that warm-and-fuzziness that you're more than welcome to feel), we bought the first group of turkeys, seven females, and made plans to buy three males when I got back from a trip to Rwanda I had planned (which means we should be able to buy them this week, and stories from Rwanda will come shortly). We went together to Odwarat, north out of town and then east well off the main road down a narrow rutted dirt track, flooded over with massive puddles where it wasn't covered with five or six inches of loose sandy dirt, to where there was nothing to be seen but the occasional handful of huts interspersed between fields of sorghum and millet and cassava, to the home of the woman whose name I forgot who had turkeys for sale, stopping on the way to meet one of the group members and its treasurer. She showed us into the small hut, barely seven feet across, where she kept seven turkeys. They negotiated over the price, agreed on four of them, then we went back outside where they herded together three more from between the legs of a handful of cows and the trunks of orange trees. The sale complete, Okwakol took me down another narrower dirt path to his home, a couple huts of and a small, not-yet-finished square brick house and a mango tree in the middle of the compound under which his white-haired and smiling mother sat on a mat shelling a pile of groundnuts, to show me the turkey house the group had constructed, another small hut, the door latched and bolted with a shiny new gold padlock. He smiled and laughed and talked to me in way more Ateso than I could understand, but it was obvious --as it already was in the fact that he was wearing his best, shirt buttoned up to the collar, trousers pressed, grey blazer clean and smart-- that he was happy and grateful and hopeful and proud and the feeling was mutual.<br />
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Okwakol, checking out the turkeys. <br />
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Four of the birds he decided on. <br />
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Price negotiations. <br />
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Rounding up the other three turkeys. <br />
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Our turkey lady. (She was smiling and gregarious the whole time, Ugandans just don't smile for pictures.) <br />
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Okwakol, outside of the newly constructed turkey house, at his home. (He wasn't ready for the picture, so I was able to catch a smile.)<br />
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Okwakol and his mother, because she asked.<br />
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So, there it is, part one. It made for a pretty great morning, and hopefully it'll make for a pretty great, and long-lasting, source of income for the group, thanks again to some awesome people. Another update, more pictures, when we get the last three turkeys, hopefully in the next few days.danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-15644744681911783082012-03-24T04:06:00.000-07:002012-03-24T04:06:00.014-07:00Less Serious, Probably More Boring<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The last two posts were serious, and had little to do with what I've actually been up to, so here are a few random, short, potentially funny stories and updates.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1: I recently survived a crocodile attack. True story. More or less. True, it was only a baby crocodile, only about ten inches long, and it 'attacked' me only when I picked it up: it twisted its head back around, hissing, to bite me on the back of the hand between my thumb and index finger, and held on for a good ninety seconds before finally giving up its grip. And true, it didn't actually really break the skin much, but there were definitely teeth marks, and it <i>was</i> bruised for a few days. And that's how I survived a crocodile attack. It's actually not quite as cool as another time when we went to see the baby crocodile (it's in this little concrete pit enclosure down the hill from a place we stay in Jinja; I don't know why, but it is) and a friend of mine picked it up, it bit him on the finger, and his first instinct was to get it out of his hand. By throwing it. Right into someone's chest. So he actually wins, I think, as the only person (probably) ever to throw a crocodile at someone else. (I also got a pretty gnarly spider bite recently, which was much worse than the crocodile bite, and is probably actually going to be a nice scar. Uganda is apparently trying to eat me.)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2: Here's a list of some of the things that <i>I've</i> eaten recently, between various things trying to eat me– </div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Cow shin: I've had this several times now, though it made me a little bit nauseous the first time. I ate it first when I went to my counterpart's home and she assured me that 'the part that presses the ground is the sweetest part.' It's not. I ate it for a second time when I was at the <i>ajon</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> circle (the local-beer-drinking place)</span> and they had started serving food now, and I was told I had the choice between goat and cow, and I chose cow, for some reason, as if either would actually be a decent cut of meat, and it turned out to be the 'part that presses the ground' again. I'm pretty used to it now, though, and actually just order it willingly – when the choices are limited, that is.</div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Goat pancreas: I've had this a few times, too. And it's actually good. They serve it dried, so it's kind of like if you were to make jerky out of liver and salt it. That sounds like something you'd want to eat, right?</div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Goat tongue: The last time I was at the <i>ajon</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> circle and ordered the cow shin, I ate all of the meat –read: skin and gristle and fat– off the bone. I thought. Because there's not much there, so it's hard not to eat it all. I thought. The next time, though, we ordered food and my friend Martin turned back from the lady who makes the food to me, and said 'She is wanting to know if you would like the tongue of the goat.' I wanted to make sure I had heard correctly, and pointed inside my mouth: 'The tongue?' The laughter died down, and Martin said, 'Yes.' And I said, '...Sure.' She went off to serve up the food –the meat, or 'meat', comes with <i>katogo</i>, which is bananas boiled in a savory broth, and is one of my favorite foods here– and Martin leaned it and said, 'She is fearing that you don't like the </span><i>molokon</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> [cow shin] because you did not eat all of it last time.' Apparently, cleaning a quarter-inch of skin and gristle and fat off the six-inch-long, inch-and-a-half-diameter bone is not enough. I must have left an eighth of an inch of fat on there. Silly me. So I ate the goat tongue instead. Which was fine – I've eaten the entire face of a goat before anyway, in South Africa. No big deal.</span></div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">3: There are a handful of work things that could keep me relatively busy for the last six months of my service, which makes me happy– </span> </div><ul><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The HIV counselor project is continuing and we've had good success with that; I'm going to try to go out with some of the counselors and collect first-hand (well, translated-first-hand) some of the success stories, which I think will be cool to see and meet these people and hear and record their stories directly. </span> </div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">One of the counselors has created a group of people living with HIV/AIDS in his community who want to start a turkey-keeping project as an IGA (Income-Generating Activity). This comes after the handful of turkeys he already owned were stolen in the middle of the night, and the seedlings for the citrus-growing project that was supposed to start in their community were also stolen. But they put together an outline with a significant community-contribution and sustainability plan, which is always a good sign that it's going to be taken seriously, and so I'm going to be working with them to try to make that happen.</span></div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Another counselor has people in his community saving money or pooling money together to buy seeds for keyhole gardens. I had told all of the counselors to encourage keyhole gardens (the mound-of-dirt style garden I planted –there are pictures on the blog, somewhere– which is good for people with HIV/AIDS as it allows you to grow the same amount of produce without having to move up and down rows in the garden), and they did, which was great – except that they all came back and said people needed seeds. I told them that people could mobilize –a favorite word in development-project-speak– for seeds, and I would love to help construct and plant the gardens. This was six months ago. I'd heard nothing back, other than that people wanted keyhole gardens and needed seeds, until a week or two ago. Finally.</span></div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I'm going to get the life-skills club up and going again at the secondary school.</span></div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I'm also going to try and start a football –soccer– league for kids who aren't in school, with a life-skills component, and I'm looking forward to that, if we can make it happen.</span></div></li>
</ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">4: I killed my first chicken a couple weekends ago, a milestone moment in any white-guy-in-Africa story, and the only time I've ever killed anything but insects and spiders. I had gone to church with Mr Olinga, the security guard from my organization, because they were doing a fundraising auction to raise money for an event celebrating the 100-year</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Diocese. People brought in g-nuts, cassava, chickens, goats, flour, among other things, and everything was auctioned off. I bought about seven pounds of g-nuts, which is awesome, and should last me probably until the end of my service. I was also given a chicken to auction. I awkwardly stammered through my Ateso numbers and the word chicken and the phrases 'Who wants?' and 'Any more?' until finally the bidding ended. I went to give the winner their brownish-red new chicken, its feet tied together with string, when they told me they had actually bought it for me. Someone I'd never met, and actually didn't end up meeting at all, spent 10,000 shillings on a chicken for me. Really nice of them, and it led to, later, after the auction was finished and we were clearing out, a sentence I'd never thought I'd hear in church: 'Daniel,' someone called out. 'Where is your cock?' I assured them I knew exactly where it was. When we left the church, we stopped first for lunch at the primary school across from the church, and then Mr Olinga and I went on to his place, walking between and over giant boulders, thin threads of pathways through tall grass, hot and bright sun, through homesteads of huts built up against the walls of rock, nothing else in sight but more rocks and grass and brush, me with a chicken in one hand –holding it by its feet, it hung upside down with splayed wings and flitting eyes– and a black plastic bag full of g-nuts in the other, and Mr Olinga with three more chickens and his wooden folding chair that he'd brought with him to church, and it was possibly one of the most visually 'African' experiences I've had, and then we were at his place, four or five huts and a mango tree for shade, the last homestead before the swamp. He showed me how to kill the chicken, then, after sharpening the knife on a rock. I yanked out a handful of feathers from the throat and, standing on the feet, took the head in my left hand and drew the knife across and back and across, and I must have done something not quite right, because blood sprayed out and speckled my pants and feet, hands and arms, but I finished and ten or fifteen seconds later, the chicken was finished writhing around, too. We put it in a pot of hot water, which makes it easier to pull the feathers out, and easier to strip the skin off the legs and feet. Mr Olinga's son and granddaughter finished cleaning and gutting it, and I walked home through the village with a whole raw chicken in a black plastic sack, salmonella probably festering in the 95 degree heat. I boiled the entire thing with I got home, for about an hour, and was proud while I ate an animal that had been alive an hour earlier and that I'd killed with my own hands (and a knife).</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">5: We're supposed to be at the tail-end of dry season right now, but it feels like we're still just right in the middle of it. It's been unbearably hot the last week or two, mid-nineties during the day, and not a whole lot cooler at night. My tap ran dry a few weeks ago, and stayed dry for about a week. I'd recently gotten an accidental buzzcut, though, and it proved to be the best accidental haircut I've ever gotten. It's much harder to tell that I haven't bathed in six days when my hair is only half-an-inch long. The smell is probably still there, but, hey, you get used to that. They've also started load-shedding again, which means they shut off power for any seemingly-random number of hours. This means that, without the fan on at night, I've taken to sleeping on my concrete floor. It's the only way that I can get moderately cool enough to actually get some sleep. We've been teased with rain over and over again, but I don't think it's rained for more than three hours total so far this year. I can't wait, though. It's like this, actually:</span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>Sweet summer night and I'm stripped to my sheets, my forehead is leaking, the [fan] squeaks. A voice from the clock says 'You're not gonna get tired,' my bed is a pool, and the wall's on fire. Soak my head in the [basin] for a while, chills on my neck and it makes me smile, but my bones have to move and my skin's gotta breathe. Slide down the stairs to the heated street and the sun has left us with slippery feet. Rip off your sleeves, and I'll ditch my socks. We'll dance to the songs from the cars as they pass, weave through the cardboard, smell that trash. Walking around in our summertime clothes, nowhere to go while our bodies glow. And we'll greet the dawn in its morning blues, with purple yawn we'll be sleeping soon. When the sun goes down, we'll go out again. When the sun goes down, we'll go out again … Let's leave the sound of the heat for the sound of the rain. It's easy to sleep when it wets my brain. It covers my rest with a saccharine sheen, kissing the wind through my window screen.</b></span></div></blockquote><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">6: I also recently saw a baby monkey drink beer out of a guy's mouth. Africa!</span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-2901743243277859952012-03-22T21:00:00.000-07:002012-03-22T21:00:12.009-07:00The Debate, OngoingThe debate surrounding the issues raised by 'Kony 2012' --the issues raised both intentionally and unintentionally-- continues, and it has evolved into a debate not just about the video/campaign itself, but about activism as a whole, foreign aid, and race. I think, then, that the campaign has been a good thing.<br />
<br />
So, I wanted to share two other articles from two opposing African viewpoints, both of which have good things to say: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/?single_page=true">this piece from Nigerian novelist Teju Cole</a>, and <a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/21/guest_post_ive_met_joseph_kony_and_kony_2012_isnt_that_bad">this one from former Ugandan presidential candidate Norbert Mao</a>.<br />
<br />
Things to think about, whichever side of whichever part of the debate you find yourself on.danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-3985595515551534582012-03-10T10:47:00.002-08:002012-03-11T11:13:54.094-07:00Post-Script<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">If my last post was too critical of the desire that Kony be stopped... well... I wrote this several months ago, after working at Peace Camp with kids or teenagers --soldiers, brides, orphans, whatever-- who'd been affected by the war with the LRA. So let this stand, then, next to the last post as a post-script, as a companion to the criticism of the video, as an example of all of the reasons why Kony should be 'stopped', whatever we've decided that means, however we've agreed that should happen.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;">There is, I promise, truth in this. At least, it's true as far as I experienced it.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I met this girl, August of last year, when I was up in Gulu for Peace Camp -- met, or ran into, or heard her story. We'll go ahead and call her Mary, for privacy's sake.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;">It was strange, the first time I noticed it. But if you weren't paying attention, close attention, you'd miss it. I realize this is absurd, probably a trick that my eyes were playing on me, or something, anything else, but this is how I saw it, and I believe it. But you could see through her, completely through her, if you were paying close enough attention. And it wasn't just me.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Everyone in the village knew her, knew her story – at least that's what she said. The only difference was whether or not people chose to believe it: did she –</span><i>It can't be! It is!</i><span style="font-style: normal;">– really make herself nearly invisible because she was so terrified –she was only four years old when it happened– when the rebels came that night; when the pale, pearly, full-moon light was overpowered by the angry orange light of the flames that consumed the huts and fields; when blood turned dirt into mud, when blood dripped off the blade of the </span><i>panga </i><span style="font-style: normal;">that the man used to hack her father apart, to nearly hack off both of his arms, before he brought the blade down in one more swift blow on her father's head, splitting it open like a jackfruit, splitting it open from the crown of his head to the bridge of his nose; when they stole her four strong healthy handsome older brothers, the ones who always made her laugh with their jokes and the way they'd pretend to run into the mango tree behind their home just because it made her fall down with laughter, the ones who loved her and whom she loved like nothing else in the world; when she watched all of this from behind the latrine, crouching, huddling, making herself smaller smaller smaller, making herself invisible, making sure the rebels couldn't see her, wouldn't take her, but no, they wouldn't take her anyway, she was too young to be a wife, she was too young for them –even for them– to rape, they would have made one of her brothers kill her, they would have forced him to kill her, would have wrapped his fingers around the handle of the </span><i>panga </i><span style="font-style: normal;">until he gripped it himself, and she could never put her brothers through that; did she really make her self nearly invisible –translucent; you can see right through her, if only you're paying close enough attention– that night, through force of will, through force of terror? Or was it witchcraft, a spell cast on her because of something else she'd done, something her mother had done? </span></span> </div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Some people believe her, some don't.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">It was never clear why some people didn't; she'd never done anything that would warrant the hiring of a witchdoctor, the casting of a spell, and who'd have requested, and paid for, such a spell to be cast on a child? But some people simply choose to believe some things and they don't ever explain their choice because they don't know why they made it in the first place but now that they have, they can't change their mind, they can't choose again, and they steel their will against those who made the right choice in the first place, they become more and more adamant in their belief and more and more defensive when an explanation is asked of them, and, in the end, they go through the rest of their lives believing in something that they don't want to believe in anymore.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Still worse than those who were intent to believe, and even defend, something they didn't want to believe in, were the people who didn't care about her story at all. For them –and, sadly, this group had many members, though they wouldn't call themselves that, nor would they (and in this way they were the same as the people who believed what they didn't want to believe anymore) explain why they felt the way they did– it didn't matter if she turned herself nearly-invisible on purpose, if she did it because she was a terrified child in a terrifying situation –a situation they were all witness to, in one form or another, and so were able to understand the terror and the desire to be unseen– or if it was the work of an odd spell purchased from an odd witchdoctor. What mattered to them was that she was no longer like them. They would never explain why this mattered –fear (of becoming like her, or, simply, </span><i>of</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> her), disgust (it is not natural, they might think, to be able to see through someone), pity (it is too sad what has happened to that girl, they might think, and I can't look at her without feeling terrible).</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But the reason was less important than the result: she knew that people avoided her, she knew that people talked about her and about her story, she knew that she had few friends and would live with her mother for the rest of her life.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I couldn't help but believe her, though, believe what I saw. At that point, I'd been living in Uganda and working with some of its children long enough to know what violence and horror could do. If a man could be compelled to make a mother put her infant child inside a mortar used for grinding millet, if he could then hand her the pestle and watch her weep and pound and pound and pound until there was less of child, less of flesh and life in the mortar and more of a thick soup of blood and gristle, why couldn't a girl make herself nearly invisible? Each seems equally impossible, each seems to smack of the inhuman, but we knew that mothers had been forced to put their babies in mortars and were handed the pestle, there was no question of that, so how could you question Mary? I'd heard or read enough stories about the attacks by the rebels, that it was almost like I remembered them herself. I feel guilty when I say that because I feel like I'm belittling those impossibly real memories of the people here, because </span>there was no way –it was impossible; I'd lost no brothers, hadn't watched a father be turned into a bleeding armless torso topped by a bloody, split-open jackfruit of a head– that that night was seared, carved as if by <i>panga</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, into my mind's eye as it was into Mary's. And yet. I saw it, too. Just in brief tableaux, like photographs, the flashbulb popping in the dark; I could see it: a burning hut; silhouettes –rebels? neighbours?– running past Mary's homestead, backlit by flames, lit from above by moonlight; and, because I could see it, I believed her.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I knew the facts, too, of course, had read about the rebels before I came to Uganda, and had heard the stories. Still, at that moment, I felt like I knew nothing. Mary probably knew as many –or as few– of the hard facts as I did, and ... no, I can't say that, of course she knew more, she knew everything, there was nothing she didn't know: about the rebels, about life, about God and death and anger and hatred and fear and love; she knew as much as anyone else on this earth; nothing was unknown to her.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In truth, though, no one ever seemed to know much about the rebel army beyond the fact that nights like that night were commonplace; that what happened to her brothers, what was done to her father, the things that made her try to make herself invisible, things that would be unimaginable to most people, those things happened, and not only in their village, not only to them. No one, not the villagers, not the government nor the army, seemed to know </span><i>why </i><span style="font-style: normal;">nights like that were commonplace, why the rebels did things that would make a child try to make herself invisible. There had been vague, cryptic talk of overthrowing the government, of running the country based on the Ten Commandments, of fighting the Lord's war. But it was never clear what the abduction of children, the murder of fathers, and the rape of mothers had to do with the Ten Commandments or why the Lord would fight a war like that. And most people stopped asking why. It didn't matter, knowing why. How could </span><i>why</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> possibly matter? </span><i> </i></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>What</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the rebels were was understood, though, all too well. It was understood that they were the burning of homes, the razing of crop fields. They were the raping of mothers and of daughters. They were the bodies of fathers left armless and split open from the crowns of their heads to the bridges of their noses. The rebels were the blood that flowed onto the dirt until it was saturated, and then they were the blood that pooled in the mud and blackly reflected the dancing flames. They were fear, unadulterated, distilled into a form pure enough to turn someone invisible. They were the sorrow, too, that greeted the sunrise on the morning after, and the anger. They were the stores of food, the cows and goats that would be missing, that after everything else. They were the night, the darkness, the time when no one was allowed outside the home, except the children close enough to the bigger towns –three, four hours away by foot, if they could make it before dark, and they </span><i>had</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to make it before dark; there was, in fact, no </span><i>if</i><span style="font-style: normal;">– who made the daily journey late each afternoon, slept on the tarmac streets, slept under awnings and in alleyways, under security lights, the dull yellow bulbs the only relief from the darkness, and then woke with the sun to do it all over again in the morning. The rebels were the grass, some tawny-coloured, some a crisp green, all of it tall enough to hide a man, tall enough to hide something that was less than a man, yet looked so similar, something that was more pure evil than human but took a human form, because the rebels were that, too. And yet. They weren't less than human: how could they be? How could they –Mary's four strong healthy handsome older brothers who were taken away from her sobbing mother at gunpoint and who were never seen again after disappearing into the tall grass and the darkness– be anything less than human? </span><i>What</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the rebels were was understood, was feared, despised, hated. </span><i>Who</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the rebels were was understood too, but was loved unconditionally, grieved over daily, longed for relentlessly.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Because the rebels –the darkness, the burning, the blood, the fear– were also her brothers –strong, handsome, able to make her fall onto the ground in laughter, all four of them, each as perfect and loving and loved as the next– and how could they be anything less than human? And they weren't just </span><i>her</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> brothers, either. They were the brothers of thousands of girls just like her. They were the brothers of girls just like her who weren't alive now, who hadn't been able to make themselves invisible, who couldn't save their brothers from the horror of being forced to kill their sisters. And those brothers were sons, too. Those brothers had strong, handsome fathers with heads split open like jackfruit, they had weeping, grieving mothers who loved them, rebels now, unconditionally. And they weren't just brothers, either. They were sisters, too, and daughters. They were girls just like her who had only had the unfortunate luck of being born seven, ten, twelve years before her. And now, after years in the bush, after years of brainwashing, of beatings, after years of rape and rape and rape and finally, broken down into fragments of themselves, broken down into –yes, it's true, though not in the same way as the commanders of the rebel army, the ones who were not like her brothers, the ones who were not, couldn't possibly be, men– something less than human, consensual sex, many of these girls who had been just like her but with unfortunate luck –no, something so much worse than that– they were sisters and daughters and, now, mothers. And if the rebels were her brothers and thousands of versions of her brothers, and if the rebels had fathers and mothers like hers and thousands of versions of fathers and mothers like hers, and if the rebels were thousands of versions of her with unfortunate luck, and the rebels were now thousands of babies born to thousands of versions of her with unfortunate luck – if the rebels were infants, her brothers their uncles, how could they be less than human, how could they be evil, how could she –how could anyone– </span><i>hate</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> them?</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">And, in truth, few people did. Few people hated them, few people thought of them as evil, because there were, simply, few people left who didn't have sons or daughters or brothers or sisters or nieces or nephews or cousins or granddaughters who were, now, both sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and cousins and granddaughters and </span><i>rebels</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. It was simply not possible to hate them. It was not possible for mothers and fathers and nearly-invisible sisters to hate their sons and their strong, healthy, handsome brothers for killing the fathers and mothers and sons and daughters of other families, for burning the homes of other families, for stealing the cows and goats that belonged to other families. Because how can you hate your son or your brother for doing something that they are forced to do? If you want your son, taken away at gunpoint while you weep, while the last blood leaks out of your husband's body, </span><i>not</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to do the things that he is being forced to do, then you want your son to </span><i>die</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. The truth is brutal and ugly and simple. You want your son to continue to be a rebel because at least that means your son is alive. And no mother would want her son to die rather than to do unspeakable things against his will, not here, in this country and this war, and not when there is a chance that her son will come back, not when there's a chance that one day her son will come back and he will no longer be a rebel, he will only, once again, be her son; he, they, will only, once again, be her brothers. Because that is the only way to think about it; that is the only rational thought process that any mother or father or nearly-invisible sister can take when they know their sons and brothers are in the bush, swinging </span><i>pangas</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and firing rifles and killing and burning. The night the rebels came, up until the very second they disappeared back into the tall grass and the darkness taking her brothers with them, those four strong, healthy, handsome boys were her brothers and her mothers' sons. The moment they disappeared into the tall grass and the darkness, they became rebels, and the moment they became rebels, she and her mother both prayed, daily, hourly, for the health and safety of the rebels – the darkness, the burning, the blood, the fear: they prayed for the health and safety of the young men who were these things. How could they not? Because the chance remained –the chance would always remain; once those four boys disappeared into the tall grass and the darkness, news of their death would never come, and so the chance would always remain– that one day, when the sun is lowering itself in the late afternoon, when the light is warm and amber-coloured, when the sky is brushed with cloudless strokes of gold all the way across the western horizon and deep purple thunderheads in the east, when fat drops of rain fall from the cloudless sky, drops of liquid sunlight, when your nearly-invisible daughter –beautiful, strong, resilient– comes back down the path toward your home, gracefully balancing a bruised and dented yellow jerrycan full of water on her head and a white-teeth smile on her face, one day, just like that one, four strong, healthy, handsome young men will walk out of the grass. You won't see them coming because the grass is tall enough to hide a man, but you'll feel them coming with your heart – no grass is tall enough to hide four sons from their mother. They'll walk out of the grass and they'll be taller than when they left, they'll have aged, and not only physically, but you know your sons, you always will, because you never stopped picturing them, you never stopped praying for them daily, hourly, even when they disappeared into the grass –just boys, all of them– and became rebels, because they were still your sons. But they </span><i>were</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> rebels, soldiers, too, and they did unspeakable things. They –each of them– killed a father or a brother or a son. Three of them shot people, killed them. One, your oldest, your first child, was forced to chop off the head of a boy his own age, and the boy wouldn't stop crying, wouldn't stop asking your son not to do it, not to kill him, please don't, please don't kill me, please, please, please. But he did. He had to. He had to, he had to. They all had to kill someone else's father or brother or son because, if they didn't, they would have had to kill one of their own brothers, and they wouldn't do that, they couldn't. Was it the right choice, to kill someone else's father or brother or son to spare their own brother, your own son? You don't know. You don't care. You'll never ask them, though they asked themselves constantly, every day they spent in the bush, and still ask themselves now. They ask themselves that question and others –unanswerable, all of them– and you asked yourself questions, too. You always wondered, </span><i>If they come back </i><span style="font-style: normal;">–</span><i>when they come back</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, you always corrected yourself– </span><i>will they be the same? Will they still smile like they used to?</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> And all they've done since the night they disappeared into the tall grass and the darkness is ask themselves these questions and think of you and their sister, and even in the bush, the thought of you and their sister made them –each of them– smile. They'd never been able to see through her, but as they walk out of the grass, they'll recognize her, of course they will, instantly, and they will understand why they can see through her and they will love her for it and they will want to thank her for it, again and again and again, but they will know they don't have to, they will know she would never ask that of them. And everything is happening so slowly, you're not even moving towards them yet, you can't move yet, the only movement you can feel are the tears that start to run slowly down your cheeks. The raindrops are suspended mid-fall and they dance and shimmer in shafts of golden sunlight, everything is perfect and warm, the earth has stopped turning. Nothing in the universe is moving, nothing else is happening, nothing else even </span><i>exists</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> except this moment, except these four young men and your beautiful daughter, these four young men who walked into that grass and became rebels and are walking out of that grass and becoming your sons. You are there in this instant of time that might never move, and you never want it to move. You want the rain to stay in the air, the light to stay golden, the earth never to move again, because in this instant in time you are with your sons and the daughter who saved them –and by saving them, saved </span><i>you</i><span style="font-style: normal;">– by nearly making herself invisible, and suddenly you skip forward one infinitely small increment of time –the raindrops haven't moved, the earth hasn't begun to rotate again– and your sons are smiling now, your daughter smiles, and the grass smiles behind her, and you know that they will be the same, eventually, their hearts are the same –heavier than before, yes, but still pure– and you know that they're still your sons and that your daughter saved them, and you are smiling, too.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Some of these thoughts flickered across my mind, some registered, some didn't, and in the passing of another brief, interminable, and unfamiliar period of time, I came to know her story, to see her future and her brothers walk back out of the grass, and a strong wind whipped down the path we stood on, tilting the grass sideways, and the wind filled my ears and carried on it words or thoughts, the wind passed them between us and our mouths never opened.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">She didn't know how to explain that she was also ten-thousand years old, that she felt like she'd lived longer than anyone in the village, like she'd seen everything terrible that could possibly be seen. How is a fourteen year-old supposed to express these things: that she knows more about life and death than all of the elders in the village; that she knows more about man and the world than all of the teachers in the schools; that she curses more people than all of the witchdoctors in the district; that she wishes death on the men who killed her father and took away her brothers; that, sometimes, when she thinks of her brothers, she pictures them killing their commanders; she pictures rebels with their heads split open from the crown to the nose, soldiers lying face-down in pools of their own blood, the faces of her brothers –their faces victorious and speckled with the blood of her enemies– reflected in the blood of the men who took them away that night? She doesn't want to imagine these things, but they come to her without her permission. She pictures her brothers killing their commanders because she imagines that's how they'd escape, she imagines that's how they'd make their way home. She knows she shouldn't hope for those men to die; she doesn't think her brothers would want that, either. But when she pictures her brothers standing over the bodies of the rebel commanders, she doesn't care how much blood there is, she doesn't care that her brothers -} 3ef their commanderO d'vY. 9T6y ng else; thinking about dead rebels and living brothers makes her happy. And she doesn't know how to feel about that, and she doesn't know how to explain it. She didn't have the words to say these things; she wouldn't want to use them even if she did.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">She looked me in the eyes again. I looked away; I couldn't help it.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">How does a fourteen year-old tell about anguish, about death, faith, hate? How does she explain that every day when she wakes up, she asks God to keep her brothers safe when she isn't sure if she thinks that there is a God? Fourteen-year-olds shouldn't have to wonder if there's a God while they pray for the safety of their brothers. They shouldn't have to ask God not to make their brothers have to kill too many people – and <i>every day</i>. She has to ask God not to make her brothers have to kill too many people every <i>fucking</i> day. All of this since she was four years old. She didn't know anything else anymore. She could remember other things, but she didn't <i>know</i> them; she only knew, really <i>knew</i>, that night and after, the thoughts and pictures that have plagued her since then, like flies on a corpse – a droning pestilence that, when it comes, drowns out everything else. (And yet. Like flies will eventually leave a corpse, somehow she knew these thoughts would eventually leave her too, and this –along with the thought that she saved her brothers– would make her smile, occasionally and briefly.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">She shook her head. Her thoughts had been racing –spattered blood on the faces of her victorious brothers; a God who may not even exist; a total dearth of words to explain herself; the thought of the flies eventually leaving the corpse– and she shook her head, once, as if to bring herself back down, to dismiss the topic.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">And she smiled to herself. She didn't need to believe in God; she didn't need God. She never truly believed she was cursed; she never truly wanted to curse anyone else. She believed in her brothers and in their hearts –heavier now than they were before they left, but pure– and she didn't need anything else. The boys that disappeared into the grass that night were rebels; her brothers were still with her, they would never disappear into the grass, she didn't care where the rebels went because her brothers were still at home, in her heart.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">I wanted to believe, for her sake and mine, and I wanted to see this: the sun lowering itself in the late afternoon, the light warm and amber-coloured, the sky brushed with cloudless strokes of gold all the way across the western horizon, deep purple thunderheads piled up in the east, fat drops of rain beginning to fall from the cloudless sky; she looks up into the golden expanse and laughs out loud, she sticks her tongue out to catch drops of liquid sunlight, she rounds the last bend and walks into the homestead, the jerrycan still balanced gracefully on her head, a white-teeth smile balanced on her face, her mother comes out of the kitchen hut and –stifling a brief, shocked, almost silent, <i>Oh!</i>– covers her mouth with both hands, as four young men walk out of the tall grass and time and the earth stop, and time moves forward only enough for smiling.</span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-74823862772743555542012-03-10T03:26:00.004-08:002012-03-10T10:55:13.711-08:00On Kony 2012, Because You Asked<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A lot of people –by which I mean, like, four– have asked what my thoughts are on the Kony 2012 campaign, created by Invisible Children, that has taken over many a Facebook news feed recently. I guess because I live in Uganda. Unfortunately –and remember this: it's important to everything that follows– rather than making me any sort of expert on, well, anything, all that means is that I don't have access to internet fast enough to stream video, and so I haven't actually seen 'Kony 2012'. I've been reading a lot about it this morning, from various sources, and most of it seems to confirm my initial thoughts on the video and campaign.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">First, it is a wonderful little world we all live in, or a wonderful technological era anyway, to be more specific. The fact that the Kony 2012 campaign has exploded as it has –quickly and impressively so– is something noteworthy in and of itself. It makes me, for one, exceedingly happy that the world can be so interconnected, that there exists the possibility for 50 or 100 million (or however many YouTube and Vimeo views 'Kony 2012' has now) people to go online because they want to learn about a crisis taking place half a world away. It makes me happy because I want to believe that people –let's be honest, I'm talking about Americans– <i>do</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> care about the rest of the world, </span><i>are</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> interested in educating themselves about foreign affairs in far-flung areas, that they want to do </span><i>something</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to help (even if they're misguided in their choice of </span><i>something</i><span style="font-style: normal;">).</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It seems to me that this provides a least some measure of an answer to the critique that 'Kony 2012' should have been 'Kony 1990' or 'Kony 2000'. The campaign should have been started then –it was much, much more necessary ten or twelve years ago– but it would not have garnered the kind of support then –How could it have? By going viral on Dogpile.com?– that 'Kony 2012' has in the last few days. This does not lessen the criticism that the video is out-dated (though, remember: I'm just saying things, because I haven't seen it); I simply find the possibilities that exist now, especially through social media, for similar educational or activist campaigns as proof of a hopeful future, interconnected in the most positive ways.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The awareness raised by 'Kony 2012' cannot be as wholly negative as a lot of people seem to think it is. There's a correlation here with the attitudes a lot of Peace Corps volunteers have towards short-term volunteers. There's a tendency for a lot of us (PCVs) to mock short-termers –it's a good-natured mocking, but there is certainly an underlying seriousness to the criticisms and teasing– for coming here in their shorts and tank-tops and holding orphanage babies for a week and then going home; for those people who stay at home and buy a pair of Toms shoes or, in this case, a Kony 2012 bracelet (for $30 –yes, thirty American dollars), there's reserved the term 'slacktivist'. I'll admit that I do it, too, on occasion: get on my twenty-seven-month-commitment high horse and use my cultural-integration gavel to pass judgment on well-meaning but naïve short-termers and slacktivists. We generally just laugh it off; I don't know many PCVs who legitimately get upset about the work that short-term volunteers do in country. But it happens.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I usually try to look at it this way, though: Everyone's got to start somewhere. Individual involvement in issues in Africa, or anywhere else, might begin with the most misguided week-long 'voluntourism' trip in the world, but that start might lead to deeper research into the issues, a more critical and informed understanding of development and global affairs, and a more effective and intelligent approach to development work. The same thing goes for 'Kony 2012'. Hopefully. Hopefully people will use this as a jumping-off point, one that piques their interest in international affairs, and one from which they expand their knowledge of the various perspectives and issues and learn more about better ways to help or get involved.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I realize this is a naïve and idealistic hope, though. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Because, obviously, the ease with which little Tina Tweenager in Cornfield, Indiana, can access information about Jacob –the Acholi teenager featured in 'Kony 2012'– brings with it its own set of issues. The ease of access to information does not mean that the information accessed is correct, nor does it mean that follow-up information, just as easily accessed and oftentimes more important, is ever looked into. Something as –presumably; the original Invisible Children film was really well-done– slick and well-produced, and widely shared over social media, as 'Kony 2012' is going to grab Tina's attention ten times out of ten over a critique of the video in Foreign Affairs or a fact-checking radio program on NPR. The vast, vast majority of people aren't going to look any further than 'Kony 2012'; the vast, vast majority of people will forget about it, guilt assuaged, after watching the video and buying the bracelet. It takes more effort –though the access, like I said, is just as simple– to dig deeper into the issues, and so it happens less, and the Tinas of the world accept 'Kony 2012' at face value.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Which is a problem.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But let's get this out there first: That little white kid, the one who is apparently in the video for some reason, was right –Kony should be 'stopped'– though he was also a bit understated –Kony is not a 'bad guy' but rather something more akin to a horrific incarnation of everything wrong with mankind. We all agree on that, the harshest critics of 'Kony 2012' included.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So, why all the criticism of a video that seems to be arguing a point that no one would argue with?</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>First</i></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;">Northern Uganda is no longer a war-zone; the LRA hasn't been in Northern Uganda since 2006. The video makes only a passing reference to this. The LRA has moved into the DRC and the CAR, mostly – and that's what the map graphic on the video shows. But moving into other countries is too easily confused with expanding into other countries. Similarly, t<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">he LRA isn't the 30,000-child-strong army with which people are apparently mistaking it</span>. It's true that 30,000 children were abducted over the course of 25 years, but showing 30,000 faces is seen as misleading even if its intent was only to dramatize and express just how terrible was the LRA's two and a half decade campaign in Uganda. Today, t<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">he LRA's numbers total in the hundreds, at most, and they're spread across several large countries. [1; 2]</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Second</span></i></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">(And I think this is a very important point): “</span><span style="background: transparent;">When a bad guy like Kony is running riot for years on end, raping and slashing and seizing and shooting, then there is most likely another host of bad guys out there letting him get on with it</span>.” [3] Placing the blame solely on Kony lets President Museveni, who came into power in 1986, essentially the same time as Kony was beginning with the LRA, off of all the hooks upon which he, too, along with his government, should be placed. </div><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"></span> </div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">When Museveni came to power, he “sought to impose his authority on the Acholi population in northern Uganda, which had been closely associated with [Museveni's predecessor, Tito] Okello,” leading to uprisings from “a diverse range of resistance groups” of which the LRA is the sole remaining active group. Uganda's government has also never truly been held accountable for its dreadful counter-LRA strategies, such as when they “forced the region's population to relocate into what were effectively concentration camps” where the Acholi were “poorly protected from attacks, and faced dreadful living conditions” leading to “1000 excess deaths per week in the Acholi region” in 2005. This is not to mention the fact that many in the camps lived in fear of rape and violence from the very government soldiers who were assigned to provide protection from the rebels. [4]</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">It's irresponsible to place all of the blame for 25 years of atrocities in Northern Uganda solely on the shoulders of Joseph Kony. There is plenty of responsibility to go around.</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Third</span></i></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">One of the main criticisms seems to be that there is no mention of how Kony is supposed to be stopped.</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">I can't understand how putting more (and active combat) American military personnel on the ground in Uganda, the DRC, and the CAR is a realistic approach. The LRA is a small force somewhere in a massive jungle in a massive country (or countries) largely devoid of infrastructure and consumed with other conflicts and bouts of violence and human rights abuses. And if Kony is captured or killed in the DRC, theoretically with the help of American combat troops, do we then pull our troops out, leaving the country to its other horrific instances of rape and violence that were never related to the LRA at all? It just strikes me as rather similar (and equally complex) as going into Iraq to take out Sadaam Hussein: We go in, take out the guy we want, and then find we're stuck in a quagmire of escalating violence, ethnic tensions, and poor governance, and are unable to extricate ourselves, our troops, for eight or ten years.</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">And if, let's say, we agree on sending more American troops in an advisory role, rather than a combat role, there remain the facts that many of Uganda's troops are tied up in the ANISOM mission in Somalia (a dangerous mission and one for which the US sending troops to help with the LRA is often seen as payback), and that “of the more than 4,000 Ugandan troops that were originally sent to LRA-affected areas, less than 2,000 remain … operating in three different countries, leaving very limited capacity on the ground.” [4] (And when you start talking about the fact that oil is on its way, soon, from Lake Albert on the border between Uganda and the DRC, the role of the US government becomes even more complicated.)</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">The United States government has had troops in Uganda supporting the Ugandan military for years, though without much press attention, especially not regarding Operation Lightning Thunder, which was carried out in 2008. The mission, an attempt to attack Kony at his base in the DRC, was a failure for a number of reasons, quite possibly the worst of which –apart from failing to capture or kill Kony– being the fact that the LRA retaliated brutally beginning on Christmas Day, 2008, and continuing into early 2009, abducting 700 people and killing over 1,000 over the course of two months; this, on top of the continuing breakdowns, exacerbated by the failed mission, of already tenuous peace talks. [4; 5]</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">It seems that 'Kony 2012' makes it seem like the US government is on the verge of pulling its troops out of East/Central Africa; the campaign is to raise awareness to make sure that those troops stay there and continue to assist in the hunt for Kony. However, as the State Department has since clarified, there are no plans to pull the troops out, nor have there been any discussions about doing so. [6]</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, people in Northern Uganda don't want the LRA to be wiped out, because the LRA is their children – so what happens when Kony's soldiers, these Acholi sons and daughters, return fire? [7]</span></div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Fourth</span></i></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">My main concern with the campaign and the focus it places on Kony is that if or when he's captured or killed –when he's 'stopped' in accordance with the little white kid's wishes– people will call it good: the crisis over, the world safer. Some people –unfortunately, probably a lot of people– will already start forgetting about the campaign by the end of the month, if not by the end of the weekend. But for the people who stick with it, and for IC and the guys who created the video, it concerns me that there doesn't seem to be any mention of how to help the people who are living in a now-peaceful Northern Uganda, albeit one still plagued by the after-effects of twenty-five years of the LRA. Among numerous other issues, Gulu has the highest number of child prostitutes in Uganda, and one of the highest incidences of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. There are 4,000 children suffering from Nodding Disease, “</span></span>a neurological disease that has baffled world scientists and attacks mainly children from the most war affected districts of Kitgum, Pader and Gulu.” [8]</div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">That is, to me, where the focus should lie. No doubt, Kony should be stopped. Absolutely. (Although, I think the campaign should be that Kony should be stopped, now, not for the safety of the people of Northern Uganda, but for the safety of the people of the DRC and the CAR who have to fear the reprisals of the LRA each time another Operation Lightning Thunder-type mission fails.) </span> </div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">But when we put all of the focus on Kony, we forget everyone else, all the victims, the people with whom our focus and concern and hearts should rest. Or rather, our hearts shouldn't rest; they should be restive with the focus on the continuing lives of victims of the LRA and Kony's campaigns. The problems won't end with Kony's end; the victims, many of them, will still have to live with the memories of their personal atrocities for years after Kony is stopped. Let us focus on them. They victims will have to carry on, dragging those memories along behind them as they struggle through the post-conflict issues that have arisen out of the last twenty-five years and the same day-to-day issues that are faced by Ugandans across the country: poor governance, a lack of health care, poor nutrition, poor education or a lack thereof, gender inequality, and (the issue which I honestly believe is going to determine the course of the future of Uganda, and probably the rest of Africa; the issue which makes me most frightened </span></span><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">for</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> the future of Uganda) the rapidly growing population which is cramming into this little country with its limited space and limited natural resources and even more limited financial resources. In fifty years, when Uganda is projected to have over 100 million people within its Oregon-sized borders, we'll look back and wish that more had been made of this issue, these issues, and that there was a campaign for this like there was for 'Kony 2012'.</span></span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">So, yeah...</span></i></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Overall, I think that the attention is generally good. I think that the hearts of everyone involved are in the right place. I have high hopes or expectations for the work that Invisible Children does, not least because I have passionate, intelligent family members who work or have worked with IC. But also because they, IC, are clearly very, very good at raising awareness of some very, very important issues. They have a massive platform from which they've done a lot of good work, and hopefully will continue to do good work while also adapting, learning, and continuing to improve as an organization. I think –though this is only an assumption– that the video was intentionally simplified, and the facts presented as they were or weren't, because it was meant to go viral, because a dramatic, thirty minute video will go viral much more quickly and consume much more press, snowball-like, than a two hour film that does its best to explore all of the intricacies of the issue. It seems that was their goal: this massive, nearly-instantaneous outcry. The intentions were good; hopefully the results will be, too. Hopefully I'm not overly naïve in thinking that people will look deeper into the issue, will examine everything more critically, will find positive, sustainable ways to help with this and other, more wide-reaching issues. Hopefully the criticism and the support can somehow coalesce into something good and powerful and right. And hopefully I'm not offending anyone, or being on too high of a horse – that wasn't my intention at all. I'm more than aware that there are many short-term volunteers or State-side activists who are much more involved and engaged than I am, sitting here in Ngora. A lot of them, you, whoever, do great work. I'd just been asked what I thought, I found it interesting what I read, and I'm a nerd who likes writing about things.</span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Here are the links to the articles I referenced or quoted:</div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">[1]: <a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things">Foreign Policy: Joseph Kony Is Not In Uganda and Other Complicated Things</a></span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">[2]: <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/03/08/148235383/fact-checking-the-kony-2012-viral-video">NPR: Fact-Checking the Kony 2012 Viral Video</a></span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">[3]: <a href="http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/03/07/stop-kony-yes-but-dont-stop-asking-questions/">The Independent: Stop Kony, Yes, But Don't Stop Asking Questions</a></span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">[4]: <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136673/mareike-schomerus-tim-allen-and-koen-vlassenroot/obama-takes-on-the-lra?page=2">Foreign Affairs: Obama Takes On the LRA</a></span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">[5]: <a href="http://www.enoughproject.org/publications/finishing-fight-against-lra-strategy-paper">The Enough Project: Finishing the Fight Against the LRA</a></span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">[6]: <a href="http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/08/10613108-us-on-kony-2012-no-plans-to-remove-advisers">MSNBC: US On Kony 2012</a></span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">[7]: <a href="http://justiceinconflict.org/2012/03/07/taking-kony-2012-down-a-notch/">Justice In Conflict: Taking Kony 2012 Down a Notch</a></span></div><div style="background: transparent; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">[8]: <a href="http://thisisafrica.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/acholi-street-stop-kony2012-invisible-childrens-campaign-of-infamy/">This Is Africa: Invisible Children's Campaign of Infamy</a></span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-17112281337792750312012-02-18T19:55:00.000-08:002012-02-18T19:55:03.169-08:00BaytCaitlin and Shane got engaged a couple weeks ago now. I am happy, happy, happy for them. I've also been, since then, unbelievably excited to go home. Not to get out of Uganda, but just to go home and have the wedding to look forward to, seeing everyone and celebrating and being back. I'm also anticipating the itch that I know will come as soon as the wedding ends and the celebrations start to die down: the itch to leave home again. This, from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/house-of-stone.html?_r=1&ref=global-home">a great article in today's New York Times</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div itemprop="articleBody"><b>“Your first discovery when you travel,” wrote Elizabeth Hardwick, “is that you do not exist.” In other words, it is not just the others who have been left behind; it is all of you that is known. Gone is the power or punishment of your family name, the hard-earned reputations of forebears, no longer familiar to anyone in this new place. <br />
In Arabic, the word “bayt” translates literally as house, but its connotations resonate beyond rooms and walls, summoning longings gathered about family and home. In the Middle East, bayt is sacred. Empires fall. Nations topple. Borders may shift. Old loyalties may dissolve or, without warning, be altered. Home, whether it be structure or familiar ground, is finally the identity that does not fade.</b> </div></blockquote>Loved that, and wanted to share, and I guess that's all. Just excited to go home, happy to be here and have home, as it resonates beyond rooms and walls, to go back to.danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-80137129790103930132012-02-13T19:48:00.000-08:002012-02-14T21:08:01.991-08:00I Guess I'd Need a Flight Suit, TooThe other day, not long after my What Am I Doing Here moment, one of my HIV counsellors came into my office to drop off her notebook -- the ones that I gave everyone during the training, in which they're recording their visits to the various 'clients' (as we call them; Ugandans loving formalities as they do) in their communities. Her name is Atai Deborah. She's in her sixties; her CD4 count (the measure of the number of white blood cells in a person's body and a measure of how severely they've been affected by HIV, basically, as it attacks white blood cells) was once below 100 --a healthy, HIV-negative adult usually has a CD4 count of at least 800-- but now she's sturdy and strong; she's the chairperson of a committee that advocates for people with HIV/AIDS throughout the district; soft-spoken and intelligent and dedicated, and, well, the words that are coming to mind are <i>wry</i> and <i>wizened</i>, both of which, I think, work.<br />
<br />
She sat down across from me. We went through the formalities of greeting. Then she told me a few stories from her recent client visits: someone had died; someone had gone for treatment and was getting healthier; someone else was sick; everyone was poor; there was one husband who works in Kampala, his wife lives here, she was pregnant and found out she was HIV+ when she went in for antenatal care but was afraid to tell her husband, afraid he'd beat her or leave her or beat her and then leave her, but then he came back from Kampala and tearfully admitted to her that he had recently found out that he was HIV+, at which point she disclosed her status to him, and they agreed to stay together, to stay healthy together; their baby was born, tested after three months, and was negative. Good things, bad things, the sorts of things that are all so unfortunately typical and expected that they just leave you feeling ... kind of ... neutral. Things are getting better for some people, things are getting worse for some people, and you just get used to it. Such as it is.<br />
<br />
Amidst all of that, though, she tossed in one story. Not even a story, really: it was just a couple sentences, flowing out from a single line, that she tossed out there like <i>no big deal</i>. But it made me feel all sorts of good. Or, well, at least it tipped the meter slightly in the <i>feeling good</i> direction, at least for a while.<br />
<br />
She said: <b>And one man thanked me for saving his life.</b><br />
<br />
It's not a quantifiable success. I didn't alleviate poverty, or help this man start a successful Income Generating Activity, or put his kids through school. (I mean, shoot: I didn't actually do <i>anything</i>. Though that's probably the best part. Theoretically. She had counselled him on the importance of Antiretroviral Therapy, etc. etc., and he had taken her up on her advice, decided to turn his life around, stop drinking alcohol and start living positively, as they say.) There aren't any numbers or data to prove anything really happened, apart from this throwaway line she dropped into the middle of series of stories. It's not a concrete success, really, that I can point to and say, <i>This is what I did/built/achieved during my Peace Corps service: see how successful I was?</i>, and it's only one man, and who knows what's going to happen in a week or year or the rest of his life. But. Even so, even though it's not something that I can touch and take pictures of and prove to everyone, and even if there's nothing else, nothing <i>real</i>, no <i>sustainable</i> or <i>empowering</i> or <i>whatever</i> success, nothing before that and nothing from here on out --though, ok, I know there were a few things before that, and I remain confident that there will be a few more things from here on out-- at least there's that, and I'll take it, and keep it and be proud of it.<br />
<br />
My next project, I guess, building off of that, is to convince President Museveni that he needs (for the MiG fighter jets he spent 1,700,000,000,000 shillings on) an aircraft carrier in Lake Victoria. <b> </b><br />
<br />
Because where else am I going to hang my giant Mission Accomplished banner?danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-42392683507482807822012-01-25T01:43:00.000-08:002012-01-25T01:43:33.813-08:00The Reasons We Came Here<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I've been back in Ngora for three weeks or so now, and one thing that hasn't changed at all is the lack of real work (hence the two blog posts in one day). Part of me blames myself for not having had much consistent work –I haven't been proactive enough, or creative enough in what I want to do, or whatever– but part of me wants to blame my organization too –for not needing me or my skills or whatever, for applying to get a Peace Corps volunteer to write grant proposals for them instead of doing real work. But it's not really about the blame, and I'm not the only volunteer who still hasn't had consistent, meaningful work.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">So I was sitting at my desk at my organization a few days ago, the only member of the health team there that day, with nothing to do, and after an hour or so, I just put my face down on my desk and said: Ughhhhh.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I think that this translated, generally, to: What am I </span><i>doing</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> here?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Even when there's been no work at all, I've never regretted or thought twice to my decision to join the Peace Corps. I've never been unhappy about living in Uganda or hanging out in the village. I get to do and see things that I've never done or seen before and that I would never have gotten to do or see without joining the Peace Corps. I love living here. It's ridiculous and frustrating and hilarious and fun. This place is a mess, and I like it. </span> </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">But still, I can't help wondering from time to time what I am doing here.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">So, with my hours of free time and the mostly-blank notebook I use for project ideas and my boredom, I though maybe I could write down the reasons I came here. I wasn't really thinking about what I would write – and for some reason it came out all in the first-person plural we, though I'm pretty sure I'm speaking only for myself– but an hour or two later, this is what I had:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">None of us chose to come to Uganda. Not specifically. We chose only to go </span><i>somewhere.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> We could have ended up anywhere, really: in Mexico, South America, or the Caribbean; in Asia, Eastern Europe, or various miniscule islands in the Pacific. When we applied, we were choosing simply to go.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We shared a need to do more than travel, to be able to load heavy backpacks and army-green duffel bags with the things we thought we would need and hoist them onto our backs or sling them over our shoulders and carry them through cloud banks and night skies, to cross borders and chase sunlight, scaling mountains and wading through swamps and staggering across deserts and hacking our way through jungles with machetes, and then, having arrived </span><i>somewhere</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, to set our things down and live.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We needed to see the world: to have its problems shoved in our faces; to have its stench in our nostrils and its coppery blood on our tongues; to have its fires singe the hair on our arms and its revolutions shake the ground beneath our feet. We wanted the world's people to embrace us, to reach into our chests and cradle our hearts in hands strong and calloused with lifetimes of hard work on unforgiving lands. We would give them our hearts and let the people fill them with anything and everything they could. We would give them our hands and let our palms and fingers become blistered and hard, our knuckles gnarled and stiff. We would be like them, then, we would be citizens of the world, champions of the broken, destitute, beaten-down. And they </span><i>would</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> embrace us, we knew they would, because our hearts were pure and our hands were willing and our minds were sharp.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> We stuck out our chests and held our chins high and stared down the sun because we were already proud of what we knew we would do, because we knew that we would set our possessions down, the few things we carried, and would stand shoulder to shoulder with the world's vast majority, the sick, the poor, and the hopeless, and we would lead their march toward health and prosperity and political freedom, our millions and hundreds of millions of shoeless feet would pound the ground as we marched, would be like thunder cracking the sky open and rumbling tectonic plates shifting the axis of the earth, and we would chant and raise our fists in solidarity, we would not back down, we would rise up, and when people grew tired we would carry them, we would throw them over our shoulders, every one of them, and press onward, we would show them what billions of people could do when they were united, when they marched in unison, when their voices combined into one, booming out like the voice of God, to shout down inequality and injustice, to demand education for their daughters and healthcare for their mothers and jobs for their sisters, and anyone who saw us coming, a billion dark faces and raised fists, would know that this was right, that the time had come for the world to change, and if they didn't, God help them, if they stood in our way, we would crush them, would cast them aside, because this is our time now, we are the majority and our voice will be heard, my God, we're unstoppable, we are righteous and pure, we are infallible and perfect, and you will listen to us, you will listen to every word that rises up from our midst, we will not let you ignore us, we will destroy your plasma televisions if you turn up the volume to drown us out, we will kick down your doors if you slam them in our faces, you will listen, because we are here, we are here, and we are not the ninety-nine percent, we are not the Berkeley-educated kids sitting and waiting to be pepper-sprayed and inexplicably comparing themselves to the black Americans who were sprayed with firehoses and strung up from trees and shot in the back, we are the ninety-nine-point-nine percent, we are the children who are tear-gassed at school, the pregnant mothers shot in the belly with rubber bullets for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and finally this is the right place and the right time, finally this is our time, we are here, we are worthy, you will listen, oh my God, you will listen, you will listen.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We were naïve.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">But we chose to go somewhere –and we ended up coming here– </span><i>because</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> we were naïve. We could deny it over and over –and we did, we still do– and we could say that we hoped to improve only a few lives, at the very least. If we could help even one family learn better farming techniques so they could grow more food year-round on the same small plot of land; if we could teach even one classroom-full of secondary school students how to prevent the spread of HIV and how to put on a condom; if we could help start even one savings and loans group to help women earn more money and wield more power in the home; if we could make just one old woman smiled wide with her missing teeth and her gums, make just one infant laugh like a flock of tiny birds taking flight – any of these things, and we would be happy.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> We were earnest and truthful in these small dreams. We talked about throwing just one small pebble into still water and watching the ripples spread all the way across the lake. We had our development buzzwords down: we would </span><i>empower</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> women; we would </span><i>sensitize</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> communities; everything would be </span><i>sustainable</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>community-based</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and we would sit back and watch lives improve.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> But in the most honest corners of our hearts, we knew we wanted to lead the revolution, to pound our feet and raise our fists and shout.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">You can understand that, can't you?</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We had grown up with cable TV, the 24-hour news channels, the world's famines and floods and uprisings constantly on display – and we had absorbed this. We had read Twitter feeds from Iran, following government crackdowns in real time, in short bursts of text sent out by kids our own age, people with whom –in another, better world– we would have gone to college, who would have held our legs while we did keg stands, their fiery speeches in our international affairs classes would have given us goosebumps and earned our respect. We had Facebook friends in Brazil and South Africa and China. We worked for the Obama campaign and hosted parties on election night and popped champagne and cried when he won, had bolted from our apartments and sprinted past riot police through the downtown streets of our cities, our coastal, liberal cities, and danced to the impromptu marching bands playing in the middle of intersections, full of hope and change and pride and victory, because our generation had a new defining moment, because we knew people were celebrating in London, Nairobi, Berlin, because we had a joyous unity that we had been searching for since the World Trade Center fell, since the ash settled like snow on New York City, and we had wept then, too, because the world had become terrifying and uncertain and divided, you were either with us or against us, and all we had ever wanted was for there just to be </span><i>us</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, just all of </span><i>us</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">And we had seen the world first-hand, too, if only all too briefly. We had studied abroad, and, after graduation, had taken meaningless temp jobs and saved and borrowed money to buy plane tickets to places our parents had never been.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> We had walked the racial divide in South Africa, had lain on the beaches of Cape Town and navigated the narrow alleyways between the tin shacks of Khayelitsha, ashamed of ourselves and brokenhearted. We had been in mosques in Cairo, had basked in the relative silence as one of the world's loudest cities all but shut down on a Friday, and had been woken up by the earliest calls to prayer. We had held sugar cubes between our teeth as we sipped mint tea from tiny porcelain cups, had gotten high on hashish laced in hookahs almost as tall as we were, had ridden camels across endless deserts under an infinite sun. We had stood in the shadows of the Great Pyramids and marveled at all the garbage, had made fleeting eye contact with women covered head-to-toe in black burqas, their eyes the only part of them available to the world. We had felt invincible when we read about bombings in markets we had wandered through just days before; then we had felt ashamed. We had gotten violently ill in Mumbai and had relied on the kindness of strangers to take us to the hospital and still never fully recovered. We had removed our shoes at temples and made offerings to Mahalakshmi; had run our fingertips across the cool white marble of the Taj Mahal; had been extras in Bollywood films that we had never seen. We had been rocked to sleep by the swaying of overnight trains lumbering across Rajasthani desert; had escaped Delhi for Dharamsala where we filled our lungs with cool air flowing down from the Himalayas and sat on rock outcroppings with saffron-robed monks, listening to their murmured incantations and quietly clacking prayer beads. We spun Buddhist prayer wheels and watched sun-faded prayer flags carry whispered words into the sky. We had shuffled past Mao Zedong, lying in state, and been yelled at by armed guards for stopping too close to his portrait outside the Forbidden City. We had walked the Great Wall and counted terracotta soldiers and bathed in Shanghai's neon nights.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> We had ridden trains and buses and taxis; motorcycles and tuk-tuks and rickshaws; camels and horses and elephants. We had waded through the milieus of Christianity and Islam and through the sacred places of Buddhism and Hinduism. We had been scammed and cheated and robbed by monkeys. We had thrown up in trash cans and pit latrines, had gone days without bathing in anything but our own sweat. We had cried and yelled and laughed and cajoled our way across continents and borders and timezones. We had learned to say thank you in Xhosa and Swahili and Arabic and Mandarin. We had worn out the soles of our shoes. We had loved all of it but it had only ever been for a few weeks or months at a time and it had never been enough.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We came here because we needed more. We had seen some of the world, more of it than many people we knew, but the world was fantastically and thrillingly huge. Our eyes were starving, ravenous. But we needed to be more than just eyes: we needed to be hearts and hands. We had homes and families and friends, but we needed new places to call home, needed more friends and more people we could call family. We needed more time, more experiences and stories. We needed to be a part of something that seemed bigger than ourselves. We needed more direction and meaning in our lives. We needed to find our place in that wonderfully large world. We needed to grow up and learn about ourselves, learn about our capabilities and our limits. We needed to be frustrated and put in our place. We needed to do something that would make us feel needed or successful or good. We needed to know what it would be like to be more than just eyes, we needed to know if we could do it, needed to feel purposeful, needed to matter. We came here because we were greedy.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We also came here because we were lucky. We were lucky to be born into an interconnected world where we could make a full circle around the globe by the time we were twenty-five. We were lucky to have graduated college before the world's economies collapsed, when a twenty-two year old could still get a job and quit six months later to travel, just to travel, without having to worry about never being able to find a job when he came back. We were lucky to be born into upper-middle class American families, to parents who encouraged and enable our need to leave, and who would let us sleep on the couch for a month or two when we came back, rent-free. But we felt like we needed more than American middle class-ness –we were greedy in this way, too– and we felt like our middle class futures were already assured –like I said: we were naïve. We were lucky to have hard-working parents: we came here because we were carefree children.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">We came here because we were entitled. Some members of our parents' or grandparents' generations call us entitled, anyway. They say that we were told too often that we were special. We watched too much Mr Rogers, were hugged too often, had too many green-sky and purple-grass finger paintings hung with magnets on the refrigerators of our suburban homes. Everyone got trophies; even the losers won. They may be right. We may think too highly of ourselves. We may think we know more than they do. We may be self-centered and overly self-confident, with short attention spans and no moral fiber.</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> There's a flip side to this, too, though. Because now we've grown up and the world's started to fall apart and we've realized we can't all be president or quarterback or CEO. Some of us have realized we can't even be baristas. I'm not entirely sure what an IRA is, because even if I had one, I don't have any money to put in it. We've been driven and enthusiastic and proud of ourselves for our entire lives. And now we're moving back into our parents' basements in droves. We might not become homeowners until we're fifty (because we'll refuse to move out of the city) but that's not so bad because we won't be able to retire until we're eighty-five. We're fighting, now, against apathy, against becoming depressed because we're capable and desirous of everything and there's nothing. We've all that drive and enthusiasm and specialness with nothing to use it on.</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> (Of course, those same tired critics would say that we're not looking hard enough, or that we don't have jobs because we're only willing to take our dream jobs because we're too full of our specialness to settle for anything less, or that we're only depressed because no one else is appreciating how special and talented we are. Again: they may be right.)</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> This is the truth, for those of us in our twenties or early thirties who've grown up believing in the world, in ourselves and each other and our collective capability to <i>do</i> <i>big things</i>:<i> w</i>ith nothing to use our talents on, or with bosses who don't hang our metaphorical finger paintings on the metaphorical refrigerators, we've become cynical. It's true. We couldn't help it. But this is the beauty of our generation: we haven't become bitter. There's still that hopefulness and optimism that undercuts the cynicism. The cynicism is like a joke: gallows humor. It covers everything up.</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> We're so screwed– we say.</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> And we laugh about it.</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> They've <i>totally</i> already got nuclear technology: <i>obviously</i>– we say.</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> And we laugh about it.</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Because we can't help it. We're optimistic and hopeful and certain of the fact that our future is assured, in some way. We can't help believing that we <i>are</i> talented and capable. Some of us can't help believing that we can do anything we want. The rest of us believe we can at least do <i>something</i>. And then there are even those of us who think we <i>have to</i> do something. Something big and important and revolutionary and world-changing. We believe we can lead the march. We believe in the people who are marching. We believe that things will change for the better, we want them to change for the better, the world <i>deserves</i> to change for the better, and we know that if nothing changes, we'll figure something else out. Some of us are misguided: look no further than those Berkeley-educated kids who compare their Occupy “protests” to the civil rights movement –I <i>hate</i> their self-righteousness and their lack of a real plan, but even I think that if their hearts aren't in the right place, they're at least in the general vicinity. Because it's our time. We are entitled to this. We are entitled to go out into the world and try to change it and maybe we'll fail but when we do, we'll laugh and learn from it and be better next time. We came here knowing that failure was either a strong possibility or an almost certainty. But we came here because we're ok with that, because even if we fail, we'll figure something else out; because even if we fail, at least we have the stories, at least we can laugh about it, at least we can say that we came here.</div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> I don't know how the critics would respond to that, but I don't think we care.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> We came here because we're screwed, and we're happy.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We came here to find out about the world and ourselves. We came here because we knew the world in a few ways and needed to know more. We came here because we were naïve and greedy; because we were earnest and hopeful; because we thought we could lead the march, or at least be witness to it, or at least throw one small pebble into still water and watch the ripples. We came here because we knew that even if none of that happened, we would still have more stories and another pair of shoes with worn-out soles. We came here because we knew we could always go back. We came here because we were young and free of debt and mortgages and children –and we wouldn't be, didn't want to be, free of those things forever– and our futures were long and wide-open, and we knew that we needed to take advantage of the opportunity, just in case they weren't. We came here because we wanted to be a part of Kerouac's rucksack revolution or because we had no idea what we wanted to do with our lives other than be a part of the world or because we had never been able to stay in one place for very long.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We came here because our eyes were wide and minds were curious; because our backs were strong and our legs could carry us; because we needed our hearts to be filled and hoped to have our hands put to work.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">We came here because we had to; and because we could.</span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-75386725023922228282012-01-25T00:05:00.000-08:002012-01-25T00:05:04.375-08:00I Am America, and So Can You!<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I know I've been worse at updating this blog than Chuck Knoblog was at throwing to first base. (Yes, that <i>was</i> a long stretch for a bad joke.) So, it's going to be a double-blog-post day, since I've had this one sitting on my computer for a couple weeks now.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But I'm back in Ngora after a full month away, and I'm happy to report that America is still awesome and Uganda is still Uganda. Without going into too much detail about the two and a half weeks I spent in Seattle and Sunriver, eating and drinking and not moving too much, here are a few things people said to me– </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When I got back to the States:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Welcome back!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“You're so tan!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“I missed your big Irish head!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“You're not as skinny as I thought you would be!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“It's 68 degrees in this house: take off that down jacket!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Seriously: you've been wearing that down jacket for twelve days straight!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Did you just refer to Uganda as 'home?'”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When I got back to Uganda:</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Welcome back!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“You're so white now!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“So America was good? Because it looks like it was about fifteen pounds good!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“You're fat!”</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So that pretty much sums it up: I wasn't that skinny when I got to the States, and I was super fat when I got back to Uganda (which is entirely ok, since the PCVs who commented on my probably-unhealthy weight gain were just jealous, and the Ugandans who commented on it meant it as a compliment). It wasn't really that cold, technically –the coldest it got was one morning when it was 15 degrees out when I woke up; most of the rest of the days were sunny and in the 40s; and London was much colder than either Seattle or Sunriver– and there was no snow, but I opened presents on Christmas morning while wearing my puffy down jacket. I lost whatever tan I had, at least according to my Ugandan friends, the ones who told me I was “a real white man, now.” Without thinking about it, I did call Uganda home, but when I'm here, I call America home, too. So it was nice to get to go home twice.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Before I left to go back to the States, I had been thinking that it wouldn't be weird at all, going back. I'd left and come back and left before, so I didn't think it would be a big deal. Then I started thinking that maybe it would be <i>really</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> weird, since I wasn't expecting it to be weird at all. Then I got back, and I had been right the first time. It wasn't weird. I even asked my good friend Whit: “Is it weird for you that I'm back and I've been gone for a year and a half?” She said, “When you first showed up, I was like, 'Whoa!' But now that you've been here for, like, an hour, I'm just like, 'Cool.'” So I think everyone agreed: like I'd never left. There were no mental breakdowns over all the choices in the cereal aisles of the grocery stores (or even Costco), like the Peace Corps had warned us about during some silly Pre-Service Training session on culture shock. There was no righteous indignation at the excesses and ridiculousness of Americans. No mind-blowing new technology (though FaceTime on the new iPhone is pretty awesome, and new to me). I didn't even have any trouble staying on the right side of the road while I was driving.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Then I realized the reason why it wasn't weird at all: I've lived in Uganda for a year and a half, true, but I've also lived in the United States for about twenty-five years before that. So no, it wasn't weird.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">One funny thing I did notice myself doing, while I was in America, was when I would get in line behind someone, like at the movie theatre or the checkout at the grocery store or wherever, I would stand really, </span><i>really</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> close to them. Because in Uganda –and Asia and India– if you're not basically standing with your head on the shoulder of the person standing in front of you, you're either not in line, or you're going to get jumped. So I've gotten used to that; it's completely ceased to be awkward. Unless I do it in America. Because I could just feel the awkwardness radiating from the stranger in front of me as I ruffled the back of their hair with my breath. Fortunately, I would realize what I was doing after a few seconds, laugh, and step back. It amused me every time though.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">But so it was really awesome to see all of my friends, and my family, and Dublin; to get to drink real, delicious beer and eat so much food that I kind of felt ill the entire time (but in a good way); to be cold; to watch football, even if the Broncos got destroyed in both games I watched; the bed was ridiculously comfortable; there were snacks in the pantry for when I woke up in the middle of the night from jetlag; I got to “meet” the guy who's going to marry my sister; it was sunny and gorgeous every day in Seattle; I got to do (almost) all of the things that I loved doing before I left (and one of my favorites was sitting at Starbucks with Sarah, with coffee and breakfast sandwiches, reading the New York Times –because, yes, we </span><i>are</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the “Did You Read That?” sketch from </span><i>Portlandia, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">it's true– and laughing because we're just so damn funny); and it was just … </span><i>good.</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I was asked a few times, when it got to be a few days before I was heading back here, “So, are you excited to go back to Uganda?” And I said, “Well … no. Not really.” I had to qualify it then, because that made it sound like I just hated it here: “It's like, if I lived in Seattle, and went on vacation to Uganda, I wouldn't be excited to go back to Seattle.” I think that's how you know a place has really become your home: when you leave, and even though you love living there, you're not entirely excited to go back.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">There was one other thing from home that made me laugh. I've been lucky so far that I haven't missed any major life events while I've been gone. No new babies or weddings or dog-funerals. Everything's been pretty steady, and this makes me happy. But I was sitting around with the fam, on Christmas Eve, maybe, and Mom said, looking and Ryan and Emily and Caitlin and me, excited like only Mom gets, “I can't believe you're all here!”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-style: normal;">Yeah,” Ryan said. “And the next time we're all here, we might have a kid.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-style: normal;">And,” Caitlin said, “you guys might have a new son-in-law.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I paused, and thought for a second.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-style: normal;">Yeah...” I said. “And, I mean … you know … </span><i>I'll </i><span style="font-style: normal;">be here.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-style: normal;">But you'll be coming back again,” Dad said, “from somewhere else in Africa. Or Asia. Or wherever.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I think he was just trying to make me feel better, but he's probably right: this is my life, and it's pretty awesome.</span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-28256239991853161382011-11-15T22:06:00.000-08:002011-11-15T22:06:03.323-08:00A StoryI met him yesterday, this <i>mzee</i>.<br />
<br />
His face was etched and ripped with wrinkles, like a mask carved from wood, or a piece of charcoal.<br />
<br />
He greeted me with a handshake, his --spider-webbed with age, strong with years of hard work-- swallowing mine completely, and with a booming voice that made the leaves on the branches above him sway like in a warm breeze, and with a wide smile full of perfect white teeth that reflected the golden light, the late afternoon sun.<br />
<br />
The day-old stubble on his chin sparkled silver.<br />
<br />
If I had to guess, I'd say he was at least 65 years old.<br />
<br />
I sat down with the other men there, four or five of them, wooden folding chairs in a loose, three-quarters circle around a clay pot of <i>ajon</i>.<br />
<br />
He sat just off to the side, his own chair backed up right next to the trunk of a mango tree, his own long straw dipped into his own grapefruit-sized pot of the warm millet beer.<br />
<br />
The swept dirt of the compound was dappled with pools of sunlight, circles and ovals of warmth that swayed with the leaves in the warm breeze.<br />
<br />
He was stabbed in the throat with a spear.<br />
<br />
Rebel soldiers came and stabbed him in the throat with a spear.<br />
They left him for dead.<br />
<br />
He lay on the ground at St Aloysius, the Catholic Parish, not three kilometres from mango tree under which he now sat.<br />
<br />
Rebel soldiers came and stabbed him in the throat with a spear and left him for dead, lying on the ground at the Parish, the blood pouring from his throat, bright red, and mixing with the dirt, rust red, and making mud, dark brown.<br />
<br />
The blood poured from his throat and between his fingers as he tried to hold it in and it turned the dirt into mud, bright red and rust red into dark brown.<br />
<br />
Or maybe it was in the grass.<br />
Maybe he lay in the grass and droplets of blood hung from the tips of the blades of grass like dew, reflecting the golden light, the late afternoon sun shining through them, turning blood into rubies.<br />
<br />
This was in 1987.<br />
<br />
The rebels were part of Alice Lakwena's army. Ostensibly, they were fighting to overthrow Museveni's government. In reality, they were just killing. Killing, and also raiding homes, stealing livestock, torching huts, stabbing with spears the throats of innocent men who just happened to be in the way.<br />
<br />
He lay on the ground, in mud or jeweled grass, and they left him for dead, or to die.<br />
<br />
Then they were gone.<br />
They were gone and the Parish priest was there, picking him up and taking him to the hospital.<br />
<br />
This was in 1987.<br />
<br />
The loose three-quarters circle of men, the ones I was sharing the pot of <i>ajon</i> with, told me this in between sips from the long straws in the pot, after the <i>mzee</i> had left.<br />
<br />
They debated, then, briefly, when it was that peace had returned.<br />
One said it was five years later, in 1992. One said no, it was in 1990. One said no, people were still in the IDP camps in 1990.<br />
<br />
So they settled on 1993.<br />
<br />
And then, eighteen years after that, I met the <i>mzee</i> and we sat in mango tree shade and he greeted me with strong hands and a booming voice and a wide smile full of white teeth and golden light, as if the world had never been more complicated or brutal or tragic than warm sunlight seeping between mango tree leaves to pool in swaying circles and ovals on the rust red dirt around our feet, as if there was nothing more to worry about than slow conversation and your own pot of <i>ajon</i> and the setting sun.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(Two notes -- 1: <i>Mzee</i> is a respectful term of address for old men. 2: Alice Lakwena was an aunt of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. Her army was, essentially, the precursor to the LRA. She had begun her insurgency with aims of overthrowing the government, like I said, and she would often bless her soldiers with 'holy water' and tell them they were impervious to bullets. They would then walk upright into oncoming fire and were, obviously, wiped out rather quickly.)danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-18529205846264098532011-11-12T03:45:00.000-08:002011-11-12T03:45:06.081-08:00One Year Wonder<title></title><style type="text/css">
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</style> <div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have been at site for over a year now.</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Wait. No. That's not quite right.</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><u><b>I have been at site for over a year now!!!</b></u></i></div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">That's better. </span></span></span> </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Seriously though. I can't quite believe it. I'm not sure where the last year (or 15 months, really, since we got here in August) has gone. Sometimes I feel like I haven't done anything important, haven't made a significant impact for the last 15 months, but sometimes I think I'm just too harsh on myself: living in rural Africa for a year by myself is kind of an accomplishment of its own, I guess, and if I'm honest, I know I've done some good work, even if it's still a little fewer and farther between that I want. But I'm working on that. At the very, very least, I've done a few things – </span></span></span> </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">1: Made some of the best friends I've ever had, people that I'll know for the rest of my life. </span></span></span> </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">2: Done and seen things that will make great stories to impress </span></span></span><strike><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">girls</span></span></span></strike><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> everyone with when I come home.</span></span></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">3: Not died. </span></span></span> </div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">– <span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">so really, all in all, even at the very, very least: success.</span></span></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Here are some other things from a year in Ngora.</span></span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Favourite Thing I've Done in Ngora (Work Category)</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: This is obviously the training of the HIV/AIDS counsellors. It was the first, so far only, really big project that I've pulled off on my own, and at least the training part went as well as I could've hoped. They're starting now to bring in their notebooks they've been documenting client visits in so that we can review them, and I'll write more about that later, but some of them really seem to be making an impact and that is awesome. I'm proud of this one, proud of the volunteers and the community for coming together on it. The runner-up is my life-skills club, which is also obvious.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Favourite Thing I've Done / Do in Ngora (Non-Work Category)</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: Narrowing it down to a short list– Climbing rocks outside of town with monkeys and finding a place to sit by myself and watch the town for a while. Being made Chairman of a set of Peace Talks, a code name for getting together to eat delicious and illegal roast pork. Playing football with neighbour kids. Sunset bike rides. </span></span> </div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">The Most Frustrating Thing (Work Category)</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: Still struggling with my organisation to figure out why they wanted me and what work they think I should be doing vis-a-vis the work they have for me or don't have for me; the fact that they simply seem to want me to be a secretary and type things because I'm a faster typer than anyone else.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">The Most Frustrating Thing (Non-Work Category)</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: My housing situation still is a bit of a source of frustration. The house itself is great, you've seen pictures. The issue is that, well, I don't have anywhere to be at home where I can just sit and relax by myself and not be surrounded by people other than inside. If I had a place to sit outside, a bit of a view maybe, and just relax, it would do wonders for my general contentment at site. Instead, I have neighbours immediately connected to my place who are always outside –I know I can't begrudge them that– and even if I were able to just sit out there, the view is of an empty lot across the street and a drinking circle a few hundred feet away. A small issue in the whole scheme of things, but still, I would die for just like a semi-secluded patio with just a view of a grass and trees.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">The Funniest Thing That's Happened to Me</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: I can think of three– The cow that was eating my laundry. The small boy who attacked me with nun-chucks. Busting the crotch of my pants open at the market.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Weirdest Things I've Eaten</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: Termites. White ants. Offals.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Haircuts I've Had</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 3– count 'em, including the one I just got right before mid-service, the first one I'd had since early May; I could put my hair in a ponytail and that's a sign.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Books I've Read</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 68– count 'em (that's 1.2 books/week, just, ya know, FYI). </span></span> </div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Parasites I've Had in my Body</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 2– I think malaria is technically a parasite, and schistosomiasis, aka bilharzia.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Times I've Had Diarrhoea</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 0– my immune system is awesome (and even the Peace Corps nurse during my mid-service medical exam was impressed).</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Times I've Been Called 'Amusugut'</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: What's a number bigger than a bajillion but slightly smaller than infinity?</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Dead Mice I've Had in my House</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 3– two dead in traps, one of mysterious circumstances.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Goals I've Scored in Football Games</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 3– two headers off of corner-kicks, one beaut that I arced perfectly over the head of the goalkeeper and just under the crossbar and I'm still proud of it.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Tomatoes I've Eaten</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 963, approximately– I eat a </span></span><i><span lang="en-GB">lot </span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">of tomatoes: on average, five every two days x 55 weeks = 963 tomatoes.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Number of Packages I've Gotten</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 14– and thank you, everyone!</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Best Item in a Package</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: Velveeta cheese. New music. Trader Joe's trail mix with Craisins and wasabi peas, mmmmmm. A </span></span><i><span lang="en-GB">38 ounce</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;"> bag of peanut butter M&Ms. Starbucks Via Instant Iced Coffee, which is delicious even when you can't get cold water, let alone ice. Books.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Most-Played Songs on my iTunes</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: Top five, not including the new Fleet Foxes album, which I listened to pretty much non-stop for a month or two and now takes up six of the top ten spots– 1: 'Summertime Clothes' by Animal Collective. 2: 'Knotty Pine' by Dirty Projectors & David Byrne. 3: 'This Must Be the Place [Naïve Melody]' by Talking Heads. 4: 'Daisy' by Fang Island. 5: 'Cold War (Nice Clean Fight)' by the Morning Benders.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Most Embarrassing Song on the Most Played List on my iTunes</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: 'Bad Romance' by Lady Gaga.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">The Best Thing I've Done Outside of Ngora</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: Sipi Falls on Christmas Day. Rafting the Nile. Hiking in the Impenetrable Forest. Horseback riding in Lake Mburo National Park. </span></span> </div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Longest I've Been in Ngora Without Leaving</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: Seven weeks– that's basically 49 days by myself within a few kilometre radius in rural Africa. I feel pretty good about that one. (And it's a funny thing, what that does to you, the way you completely forget –most of the time, until you're reminded by an </span></span><i><span lang="en-GB">amusugut</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">-screaming child– that you don't resemble anyone else here.)</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Longest I've Gone Without Speaking to Another White Person (except text messages)</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: Eleven days– which is either pretty cool or means I have no friends, depending on how you look at it.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Favourite Thing About Site</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: It's my home. When I'm away for a while, it's always nice to be back in my own town and my own place.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span lang="en-GB">Ugandan Quirks I've Picked Up in the Last Year</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">: The quick raise-and-lower of both eyebrows to signal </span></span><i><span lang="en-GB">yes</span></i><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal;">, and also instead of saying 'yes,' saying 'ehh' (like a long 'a'). Instead of saying 'uh-huh' like to show you're listening when someone's talking to you, saying 'mmm.' The two-handed wave in greeting – both hands held in front of you, chest level, like you're holding a grapefruit, kind of. Crossing my legs like a girl and/or British man, because the other way is kind of rude, I guess.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Things I'd Never Done Before This Last Year (since that last six-months update)</i><span style="font-style: normal;">: Had a cow try to eat –or at least suck on– my laundry. Bought avocados / made guacamole. Torn up newspaper to use when I've run out of TP, routinely. Dislocated my shoulder playing cricket (cricket!). Commandeered two different boats, one on Lake Victoria, one on the Nile. Been to a burial ceremony. Debated the fact that Obama is not Muslim and was not born in Kenya. Chased rats around my house with a machete and a can of insecticide. Had to clean up a decomposing animal inside my house. Crossed the equator overland. Been a part of (or at least witness to) a cattle-sale. Been running on horseback alongside darting tophi ten metres off to the right and twenty galloping zebra ten metres off to the left. Gotten malaria. Spent a full year out of the States. Spent a full year in Africa and still had another year here.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"></span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-48695781190574020152011-10-19T01:10:00.000-07:002011-10-19T01:10:54.397-07:00Two Stories<title></title><style type="text/css">
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<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1: Malaria.</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Last Wednesday afternoon, I was feeling a little weird in the general body area and tired and blah and kind of out of it. I chalked it up to some recent frustrations with my organisation and left the office at around three, went home and had some me-time by being lazy on the couch. I woke up early on Thursday, feeling normal, started to do yoga, and realised I was feeling really weak –though this could still be considered normal, really. But I quit the yoga halfway through when I started feeling weird again. I took my temperature, a little high, maybe 99.5, but no big deal. And I went in to work around 8:30. I explained that I had a bit of fever earlier and wasn't sure how long I'd stick around. My counterpart asked do you want to go get tested for malaria? I said no, I'm probably fine, I'll wait it out, see if I don't get better, and then think about that. I left work around 11:30. Totally exhausted, not nauseous but just <i>weird</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> feeling, I went home and lay down and then everything went in the direction of terrible.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I spent the rest of Thursday on the couch, alternating between being on a burning funeral pyre and being buried under the polar ice caps. I was sweating and shirtless in front of the fan. Then I was in long pants, sweatshirt with the hood up, socks, wrapped in a blanket –and shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering. And then repeat. All the while my entire body felt as if I'd just rolled down the faces of two very steep, very rocky, very tall mountains. And then been run over by a truck once I rolled to a stop. I took my temperature a few times: a little over 100 when I got home, and then a few hours later, I was convinced that my thermometer was broken when it read 38.9 Celsius –or 102, in American.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The rest of Thursday and Thursday night went on like that, in and out of flames and icebergs, in and out of sleep and truly bizarre fever dreams –at one point, in the middle of the night, I was in a semi-awake state, conducting, out loud, a radio interview (I'd be listening to some of NPR's This American Life shows earlier) with a man whose name I remember forgetting and then making up on the spot, calling him Alfred Schneffleschott; at one point, I dreamed we were all beetle-men, our front halves human, our backs covered in giant shiny beetle shells– and moving back and forth from my bed, where the blanket was, to the couch, where the fan was pointed. I woke up in the morning to find my sheets were soaked through with sweat; I could've wrung them out by hand, instead I just went back to sleep. When I woke up an hour or two later, I was feeling somehow better.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I mentally agreed that it was probably a good idea to get tested for malaria, washed several inches of dried sweat off of my body, and laid down on the couch to wait for my counterpart to come check on me, like I knew she would –really a sweet lady, as much as I complain about my organisation– when I didn't come in to the office. So around 10:30, she showed up with one of our drivers, asked how I was feeling, and suggested we go to the hospital to get tested and I said that was probably a good idea. (Before you gasp </span><i>hospital!?</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, we went to the hospital because it's the best place to be tested, not because I was really lying as close to death's doorstep as I felt like I was.)</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">And so we went. By the time we arrived there, I was sweating again. I checked in with the nursing students, got my weight –70 whole kilos; I'll make you convert that yourself because it's a bit embarrassing– and saw the doctor for a second, then went to the lab. (This is actually the second time I've been tested for malaria in a foreign country. The first was in India after I vomited on a restaurant floor, almost passed out, then staggered back to the hostel to continue getting everything inside my body out of it. Both experiences were basically the same: since Dad is a famous international man of business, a guy he knew in India came and picked me up at the hostel, took me to the hospital, did all of the forms, skipped me through all of the lines, and generally helped me avoid all of the usual hospital bureaucracy that exists even in developing countries; here that was thanks to my counterpart –and my whiteness, of course.) I tried to look as apologetic and sickly as I could as we skipped the line for the lab –everyone else there to get the malaria test, too, I'm almost positive– and I got the finger prick, they did the blood slide, we waited for fifteen minutes or so, I watched rain clouds gather outside the screen-less, pane-less window, watched long banana fronds slap together in the wind, everything outside the window either green or dark grey until a nurse in neon pink passed across the grass field, and then the results came back. I frowned at them for a second before I was able to decipher the abbreviations and hospital-grade handwriting: </span><i>p. falciparum (+++) seen</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Plasmodium falciparum is the strain of malaria we have here, and positive tests for malaria are graded on a seriousness-scale of + to +++ with the three-plus being the worst. They told me to go back to the doctor for treatment.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">After talking to the PC medical staff –the nurse I talked to on the phone, who is awesome and really, really nice, asked what she could do for me when I called. 'I'm at the hospital here and just tested positive for malaria with three pluses,' I said. My voice must've gone a little scratchy or something because, in total sincerity, she said, 'Are you going to cry? Are you crying?' Which caught me totally off guard and I laughed out loud and said that I was not actually crying at the hospital. She told me that it was ok if I cried though because I was very ill. It was really sweet and hilarious– I went home and started on the treatment, Coartem, which the PC gives us all a cycle of before we head off to site, and, long story short, I defeated malaria.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">It took a few days, I think I'm finally feeling pretty much 90% of the way back today, and it was easily the worst sickness that I've ever had –take your worst flu and multiply by between a hundred and a million, depending on how bad your worst flu was, I guess– and I don't want to ever do it again –I'll be back faithfully taking my daily anti-malarial (which I'd been forgetting to do for the past month or so) and sleeping under my mosquito net every night (which I was already doing every night)– but I guess it wasn't all bad because 1: now I can say that I've had malaria, which is pretty cool, and 2: now I can have a lot more empathy or a weird form of respect for the people here who get it multiple times a year. I know they've built up some sort of immunity to it and so it's not always quite so intense, but even if it's a fraction of what I had last week, man, that </span><i>sucks</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">2: How I Got My Fingers Super-Glued to the Crotch of My Pants.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Just so you're not totally gushing with sympathy for my malarial plight and respect for my immunological fortitude, here's a quick story that will allow you just to laugh at me instead. This happened a few weeks ago. I rode my bike up to the market one evening, around dusk, just to pick up a couple extra things for dinner. After buying my tomatoes and peppers or whatever, I walked back to where I'd parked my bike on the edge of the market, and swung my leg over my bike and </span><i>–POP!</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> It was loud and where it came from was pretty unmistakable. I had busted open the crotch of my pants. At the market, the biggest single gathering place of people on a daily basis. Naturally, I think played it cool: I pretended like I hadn't heard anything, cleared my throat, and rode home. What probably really happened was something like this: I paused leg in the air like a dog at a fire hydrant, eyes wide in panic as everyone looks over and there's one single big intake of breath before everyone bursts into hysterics as I ride home, my shame relieved only by this new cool breeze floating into the crotch of my pants. When I got home, I realised that every single other pair of pants that I own was soaking in a basin to be washed in the morning. And after washing those pants and hanging them up for their six-to-eight-hour drying cycle, I had to go to work in the morning. But sewing the seam of my pants back up? That sounded </span><i>boring</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Fortunately, I'm a quick-thinking sartorial MacGuyver. And so I busted out the cheap Chinese super-glue I'd bought a while ago for some reason. Sure it hadn't stuck anything together that first time, but hey, beats sewing. Several minutes later, my fingers were super-glued to the crotch of my pants. (Ok, no, I was not wearing them at the time, but it's funnier if I don't point that out, right?) I am awesome. Anyway. I was able to detach my fingers from my pants-crotch. Unfortunately, the ability of the super-glue to stick my fingers to my pants did not translate into an ability to stick the seam of my pants back together, like, at all and I had to get out the sewing kit anyway, the task of sewing now made doubly arduous now that I had to push the needle through a thick crust of dried super-glue about a thousand times. And in the end, my sewing job was not pretty, but it held. Even when I got back on my bike in the morning.</span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-53555719954103472242011-10-11T12:43:00.000-07:002011-10-11T22:08:27.690-07:00Let's Do the Time Warp, Again<title></title><style type="text/css">
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<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Have I talked about Africa Time yet? If I haven't: </div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Time moves in a different way here, it's thought of in a different way here, in the local languages it's even told in a different way (somehow, like, seven am on your watch is one o'clock in the local languages, the first hour of the day; I could be remembering that wrong, but either way I remember it being really confusing during our language training). <span style="font-style: normal;">I forget who told me this, maybe because they were quoting someone who was quoting someone who was quoting someone else, but they said that in Africa –maybe just for PCVs or Americans or Westerners in Africa? I can't remember; it's beside the point– the days are interminably long, the weeks unbelievably short. I think this is two-thirds true: There are definitely days that last for weeks, but –conversely and just as often– there are hours that last for seconds; I don't think I've ever had a week that's lasted for more than a couple days (and at the first of each month, I find myself saying, I can't believe it's [insert name of month] already, even though I know I said the same thing last month and the month before and every month before that one and I'm even consciously aware, as I'm saying about this month, that I say it at the beginning of every month, and, yes, I said it this month, too).</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Having been here for fourteen months now, having been in Ngora for a year as of later this month, I've gotten used to it, more or less, but it's still … weird, I guess. It's a time warp. There've been a lot of days when, for one reason or another or no reason at all, I've been out in the village or somewhere and we're not really doing anything or we're waiting for something to happen or something that was supposed to happen has happened and now we're waiting for the next thing and we're just sitting around, usually in the shade of a mango tree, talking when there's talking to be talked, not talking when there's not, and it seems like I can actually see Time passing, walking west down the road, following the sun, kicking up rusty dust with each footstep, and without my noticing, three hours have passed. Or, just as often, the opposite happens, when Time comes lazily walking out of the tall grass, half-hidden in the shimmer of heat waves until he comes closer, until he gets to where we're sitting and then he just sits down next to us in mango-tree-shade, maybe letting out a little sigh as he lowers himself to the ground, he's tired, he's been walking all day and it's so hot out, Time just needs to rest for a bit and this looks like as good a place as any, and then I'll look at my watch thinking that three hours escaped without any realisation on my part and I'll find that it's only been ten minutes. (This happens during rainy season, too, naturally, but I can only picture Time's languid, lethargic walk happening when it's really hot out; if it were raining, he'd be running towards the nearest covered place like everyone else here does –<i>sit under cover when it's sunny, sit under cover when it's raining</i> being the general wisdom around here; when I sit out in the sun when it's not too warm, like these days, 75 in the afternoon sometimes when it's not a raging monsoon, everyone tells me to sit in the shade, aren't you hot, isn't that sun too much, and they laugh when I say that it feels good to sit in the sun sometimes, especially for a Seattlite, and then they say you'll be our colour soon if you sit out there [out there being in the sun, as opposed to in there, which is, of course, in the shade, a foot or two from where I am, out there], which <i>is</i> possible, my freckles being more than capable of merging together like the pieces of the T-1000 in <i>Terminator 2</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> [though they are less capable of becoming a killer humanoid robot … probably]; though I do take full advantage of the </span><i>sit under cover when it's raining</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> philosophy, because sometimes it just really works out in your favour, Example A [for </span><i>Awesome</i><span style="font-style: normal;">] being the day after St Patrick's Day when I still had a half-litre bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout left over and it was about ten in the morning and I was putting off going into work when, praise the God of the Irish, I heard that unmistakable </span><i>pop! pop-pop! pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! </i><span style="font-style: normal;">of rain on the tin roofs and I couldn't go to work then, couldn't go out in that, so I sat and popped open my half-litre of ten am Guinness and watched the rain … abruptly stop after about two sips; but then I couldn't go into work then either, because I was drinking, and you </span><strike><span style="font-style: normal;">can't</span></strike><span style="font-style: normal;"> aren't supposed to go to work when you're drinking, even if you're drinking Guinness the morning after St Patrick's Day, so it still worked out in my favour– so maybe the metaphor should be that three hours pass without my noticing when Time's running to get to the nearest corrugated tin sheet of an awning while ten minutes feels like three hours when Time's sitting in mango-tree-shade, but I don't know, and you're probably just skimming ahead, looking for the closed-parenthesis that's the end of this little digression. It's right here.)</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">To put it a little less (pretentiously and annoyingly) wordy, or to let a real writer (Roberto Bola</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">ñ</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">o in </span><i>The Savage Detectives</i><span style="font-style: normal;">) put it differently: </span><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>Lately I've been noticing that time can expand or contract at will,</b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> and also: </span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>it's as if time had fractured and were running in several directions at once. </b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Exactly. That's exactly how time –or Time, since he's apparently working of his own volition– works here.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">As for how time is thought of here:</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The best –or at least my personal favourite– example of how time is thought of here is in the different ways that you can say you're doing something <i><span style="font-weight: normal;">now</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> (and this is definitely not unique to Uganda, these phrases, I mean; I first heard them / was really confused by them in South Africa; it is Africa Time, after all):</span></span></div><ul><li><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><b>Now:</b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> This literally just means </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">in the future</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">. Seriously. Like, </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">I'm coming there now</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> really means </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">I'm coming. At some point. Probably today. No guarantees though.</span></i></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div></li>
<li><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-style: normal;">Just Now: </span></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This means </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">in an hour or two, or maybe four.</span></i></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div></li>
<li><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-style: normal;">Right Now:</span></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> If something's going to happen </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">right now</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> then it's going to happen </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">in, like, twenty or thirty minutes, or so.</span></i></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></div></li>
<li><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-style: normal;">Now-Now: </span></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">If you're doing something </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">now-now </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">then you're doing it, well, </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">right now</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">(I mean, the American version of right now).</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span> </div></li>
</ul><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Going back to the Bola</span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">ñ</span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">o-well: </span></span><b><span style="font-style: normal;">their perception of time had suddenly diverged from ours.</span></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Right.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">So, things'll happen when they happen, they just might not be happening yet, even if they're happening </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">right</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">now</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">. And when </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">now</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> means </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">later</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">, people show up to things, more often than not, </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">later</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">. And the funny thing is that everyone knows that people don't come to things on time –don't </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">keep time</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> in Ugandan English– that things take way longer to get done than they could, that things don't happen when they should; everyone knows that Africa Time is a real thing and, yep, they even call it Africa Time. And if that sort of thing frustrates you, well, don't live in Africa. (I, despite or due to being somehow simultaneously Type A and Type B when it comes to keeping time –if I'm ready to go or want to go or</span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> if this [gosh-darn] taxi would actually just keep moving, even at two kph, instead of stopping every thirty metres </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[which is the bane of my travelling existence], whatever, I don't want to wait, at all, and I hate being late, at least in places where it matters, ie: not here; at the same time, if there's not really anywhere to go, or not any particular time to be anywhere, or nothing really happening, I can happily kill time for hours, like it's my job; which I guess means that I want to either be </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">going</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> or </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">staying</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">, just don't want to be </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">waiting</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">– simultaneously love and hate Africa Time, the love being when I can say I'm coming into work </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">just now</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> and go in two hours later, the hate being when, well, really only when the taxi keeps stopping every thirty metres or sits in the Kampala traffic for days and days, though I guess that really has nothing to do with Africa Time, just me being impatient, and so I guess, on the whole, I'm pretty alright with Africa Time, there are certainly times when I end up getting stuck some place where I'm just waiting for hours for something to happen and I don't have a book with me and I would rather be somewhere or anywhere else, but chances are pretty good that no matter where I am, about half the time I'm probably spacing out and thinking about things that are absolutely in no way related to whatever's going on around me, and so when I end up getting stuck some place where I'm just waiting for hours for something to happen and I don't have a book with me, I just crank the spacing out up to eleven.)</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(</span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Way to Kill Time #73: Writing Super Long and Pointless Blog Posts</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">. But hey, #74 is </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Reading Super Long and Pointless Blog Posts</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">, so there ya go, you're catching on.)</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">So, the reason I bring up Africa Time now-now:</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">A few weeks ago, on a Friday, my friend Emma –Emma being a man's name here, short for Emmanuel– asked me to come to church –or to 'go for prayers' as they say here– on Sunday. Sure, I said, and he said it starts at seven and I said that's fine, because I usually get up around five am so that I can go to bed around nine or nine-thirty since there's nothing to do after it gets dark, and he said I'll call you when I'm coming to pick you, and I said ok. Sunday morning: my phone rang at six-fifteen and Emma said I'm coming to pick you and I said ok and I got up at got ready, and then my phone rang again two hours later, eight-fifteen, and Emma said ok I'm on my way and I said ok and got up off of the couch where I'd laid down, semi-napping, after seven o'clock had rolled around and he still wasn't here, and then my phone rang an hour later, nine-fifteen, and Emma said I'm here, let's go, and I said ok and went outside and said good morning, Emma, and he said good morning and we started to go for prayers and I asked when do prayers start, Emma? and he said at nine, so we were already fifteen minutes late, which was better than the two hours and fifteen minutes late that I thought we were and I said ok and Emma said we'll go to my place first and I laughed and said ok and we went to his place and sat for a bit and then went to church at ten-fifteen, or </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">four hours</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> after Emma had first called me and said he was coming to pick me, and we were right on time, we showed up just as church was starting. (And then we left church three hours later – and it wasn't even quite over yet. What if we had been 'on time'?)</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And that's the best summary of Africa Time yet.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Church was … well, it's kind of hard to say. The sparse brick building, tin roof and wooden rafters and packed dirt floor, was filled with probably a hundred people –not jammed full, taxi-style, but it was full, the women and children sitting on scarves and mats on the floor to the left as you entered, the minister (priest?) at the front, the men sitting at wooden desks and benches on to the right (and the middle being a bit of a mixture, a no-man's land, partially of overflow from either side, partially taken over by Sunday School kids in matching tunic/shorts outfits of tan patterned cloth with explosions of neon-pink fist-sized roses; a very good look overall); it wasn't quite as strict a division as that, though kind of it was: there were a few women in the seats and benches on the right side, a few men (like Emma) holding their kids, but, of course, no men sitting on the left side, on the dirt floor, natch. Anyway. It opened, church-slash-prayers, with, well, prayers, then a few songs and poems from the Sunday Schoolers in their matching neon-pink-rose-explosion outfits, then the guests or newcomers or whatever –ie: me, among a few others– introduced ourselves to the congregation (and obviously I got the biggest round of applause for my Ateso introduction), and then a skit from the rose-explosion kids, prayers again, then the sermon from a pastor –I guess, I'm assuming anyway, that in the Pentecostal, um, sect (?) there's the minster/priest who's the big man, in black robes and a white scarf, old and tall and distinguished-looking, who ran the whole deal, led the prayers, baptised the babies, etc, like an MC, and then there was the pastor or preacher or whatever, a guest speaker from Nyero (a town between here and Kumi), though I'm not sure if it's a different preacher every week, but so he gave the sermon while the minister/priest sat and, I swear, fell asleep at one point (because don't act like your eyes were closed because you were praying or concentrating so hard on the sermon, Father; I know that trick and I'm onto you)– and then more prayers, I think it was at this point that every man on the right side bowed his head though remained seated while every single woman on the left side was up on her knees, not resting back on her heels, but up with ninety-degree legs and hands clasped at her chest and heads bowed and eyes closed and the minister/priest led a prayer for fifteen or twenty seconds, everyone reciting aloud along with him and then the communal prayer ended and everyone just took up their own, still going on out loud –not a whispered, murmured prayer either, but a full-voiced one– praying for different things at different speeds but all quickly until it became just a buzz, a thousand of the giant thumb-sized bees that live here droning on at once, a hundred people calmly speaking in tongues at once (though I'm ninety-nine percent sure it wasn't tongues, just Ateso), the dissociation of the communally-recited minster/priest-led prayer into the buzz and hum of a thousand insects was like listening to the linguistic explosion at the Tower of Babel and it went on for what felt like a long time, babbling buzzing praying repenting confessing beseeching speaking in tongues whatever, the sound rising up to the rafters and the corrugated metal and bouncing back down as it broke apart, spilling out open windows and doorways into painfully bright sunlight, for two or three minutes, long enough anyway for me to think about how long it was going on for and then it kept going for another minute after that until it petered out, most people offering up their final syllables at the same time –was it planned, then? a recitation?– but maybe ten people still going, a hundred bees still droning on, having more to pray for or maybe just wanting to be holier-than-thou –no, that's cynical and unnecessary and probably untrue– and then it was seven people then three then one person left –'Just one more thing, Lord,' I imagined them saying– and then silence, just the hollow echo of prayers and insects off the metal roof, and then people brought gifts up to the front, like tithing, I guess –and the next time I go to church in the States, I'm totally dropping a whole pumpkin in the offering basket– and then another neon-pink-rose song, and then baptising babies and then more prayers and then Emma said if you're tired, we can go, and I said amen, brother, I was barely keeping my eyes open at that point, which is especially bad when you have at least two or three people staring at you at any given moment (and which made me happy that there were so many lengthy prayers / power-naps), and so that was my first Ugandan church experience and I'm kind of ok with the fact that it took a year before I went to church here.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">After church was over, or after we left anyway, we went back to Emma's place. It's just off one of the main roads that leads from Ngora to the highway that runs from Kumi to Soroti, just turn off at the primary school there, the church is just past the school, all of this on the right as you're going from Ngora to Kapir, to the highway, north. Three huts in a surprisingly concealed little clearing –surprising because it's not as though it's surrounded by trees or anything, one mango tree, maybe, but mostly just tall grass, fields of millet, sorghum, cowpeas; you can't see the road, really, though it's only maybe a few hundred feet away; there are a couple banana trees, too, some eggplant, um, plants; and it was quiet too, a few kids one woman walked by to or from the borehole between Emma's and the school, but other than that the only sounds were the staticky radio, the heavy droning of one of the massive bees that was in the process of burrowing into one of the tree branches that held up the thatch roof of the awning we sat under in the shade, sipping sodas and eating biscuits as a post-prayers pre-lunch snack, and it was a beautiful beautiful day, sunny and bright and warm and breezy, and Emma's two-year-old daughter, Miriam, was an adorable adorable child, bright-eyed and brighter-smiled and dressed in her Sunday Best, a little red dress, white trim, something not unlike what Mom might've dressed Caitlin in as a two-year-old on Easter, and she talked non-stop, happily babbling mostly nonsense, and she called me </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">mamai</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> –uncle– sitting on my lap, falling asleep and making me want to fall asleep, too –and making me, sappily, look forward to having a two-year-old of my own someday to nap with– and playing with my hands my armhair my beard, talking the whole time, while Emma and I chatted slowly about whatever, and then we moved inside for lunch, chicken rice posho atap, and Miriam followed us in before Emma sent her back out, causing her to do the classic, universal sad-little-kid walk: drag your feet as slowly as possible, shoulders slumped forward and arms dangling –maybe swing them side-to-side a bit, loosely, for effect– like all of the bones in your upper body have suddenly ceased to exist, loll your head back and then drop your chin to your chest, preferably whining, 'But I don't waaaanna go...' as you shuffle away, and so we ate lunch, joined halfway through by Emma's brother-in-law and then, full, went back out, took the chairs back under the awning and sat in the shade, picking our teeth with toothpicks and then, when the wood became soft and the tips dull, with our fingernails, and we were actually joining, in the shade, Emma's mother and an older man and his son, and we sat there for a while, me stifling yawns, hoping they'd go unnoticed, Miriam drinking the rest of her uncle's purple soda from a blue plastic mug, calling it </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">ecai</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> –tea– the whole time, saying how hot it was, her eyes and smile widened when her grandmother took the mug and held it to Miriam's ear and she could hear the bubbles, the next best thing to listening to the ocean in a seashell as you'll find in landlocked rural Africa, and then Emma came back from wherever he'd said let me come back from and said Danieli, let's go, and I said ok though I didn't know where we were going but we walked up the path past the borehole to the grass field at the primary school where ten or twelve cows were grazing, tended by Okello, Emma's youngest brother (maybe ten or twelve years old, maybe twelve or fourteen years Emma's junior), and the transaction went down right there on the field: two bulls, massive, healthy-looking animals, one an ashy grey colour mottled with light brown marks and spots, the other solid coloured, that same light brown, both with nine-or-twelve-inch horns, the humps at the bases of their necks like fattened, rounded shark fins, the brown one stood next to me, its ribcage three or more times as wide as mine, its breath snuffling out of a wide wet brown nose as it tore up the already-short grass, and Emma would raise his hand to smack it, would should 'Eh!' and step towards it whenever he thought it was getting too close to me, he obviously wasn't reading my thoughts, didn't know that all I really wanted was for it to nuzzle its wide wet brown nose into my chest while I petted its head, rubbing the fur between its horns, and they negotiated the price –Emma and the older man, mostly, but also the son, and random passers-by who stopped to check on the sale, to see what was up– and a wad of bills was handed over, then, after more negotiating, a few more red 20,000 shilling notes, then more negotiation, we sat down on the grass, stood up again, Okello brought over a young black-white-brown calf, added to the sale and then the older man said to me, his one eyelid shut permanently, the eye missing or blind, making him look like he was winking at you, constantly trying to bring you in on a joke or a bit of hilarious mischief that was about to happen, he said to me you are also a member of this, and he laughed lightly, and said so what are your thoughts? and I said me? laughing, making sure he actually thought I knew anything about bulls or cows or selling or buying them, and he said yes, though I'm sure he knew I knew nothing about bulls or cows or selling or buying them, and I wanted to tell him you should pay a lot, these bulls have testicles as big as my forearm, they'll breed for ages, but instead I just laughed and confirmed my ignorance, and then, after a few more bills were handed over, the stack of shillings, the shilling stack, was counted and recounted and confirmed by one of the passers-by and confirmed –1.8 million for the two bulls and the calf– and hands were shook and then the older man went winking down the road, herding his new cows in front of him, bringing everyone in on the joke as he passed, and Emma pocketed the cash –I asked him later how often he makes a sale like that, thinking that 1.8mil is a cool load of money, he must be doing pretty well if he makes a sale like that every other month or so, but he said just once a year and I said ok and I thought but still, not bad– and we walked back to his place, Miriam running across the compound when we got there, barely slowing down as she planted her face in my thigh and threw her arms around my leg and I picked her up and we sat back down under the awning for a while longer, passing daylight, buzzing bees, stifling yawns, and then an hour or two later Emma said let's go and we got up to go and Miriam's face dropped, eyes wide, mouth open in shock, and and and, oh you could see it coming, she started bawling, couldn't believe I was leaving already and her sobbing made everyone else laugh and made me smile and then Emma took me home and I thanked him for the day, a really nice day, and I laid back down on the couch and took a two hour nap, and I woke up, it was night.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And back to Africa Time:</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(Because do you see what happened there? We started off in one direction –Africa Time– and then we got a little distracted –right around St Paddy's Day– then got back on track, back off track, and now, several hours or days later, back on track. </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Just like being in Africa.</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">)</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Spending days like that –long warm afternoons spent sitting in the shade; long lazy conversations that meander with no real direction, that fall acceptably silent, that fall just into long pauses, really, before picking up where they'd left off ten quiet, peaceful minutes earlier, or before taking off in an entirely new direction apropos of nothing but the fact that it's a long lazy conversation on a long warm afternoon and it's understood that the directions the conversation takes don't </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">have</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> to be apropos of anything– makes me think of old men, the ones sitting in rocking chairs on front porches or folding chairs on sidewalks in front of bodegas or on the stairs of stoops of apartment buildings in the city, in summertime heat, early fall warmth, watching time and people pass, they wipe a palm on the thigh of their pants, their hand wet from the sweat of a bottle of beer or a lemonade, they talk when there's something to be said and don't talk where there are just things to think about silently, because sometimes there's just time for that, when you're that age, when you've done enough things and been enough places that now it's time to rest for a bit, to sit and watch other people doing and going while you just talk about it or don't.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Spending days like that makes me feel like I'm in old-man-training.</span></span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And, like seventy percent of the time, I'm totally ok with that. Because I don't think I'd really ever do that at home or if I were just travelling or whatever –just sit on the porch or wherever for literally seven hours, just sitting and watching and talking and thinking and passing time or being passed by it. Maybe we do that, but it's different, I think –there's always tv or sports or we get bored and go out to eat or whatever; we wouldn't just sit and do nothing, at least not without feeling a little guilty about it, like we're wasting the day. But that's what it is, isn't it? And is that inherently bad? Maybe it's an American or Western (maybe?) cultural thing: wasting time and its negative connotations. Sometimes when I spend an afternoon, a whole beautiful day, in old-man-training, I do feel guilty, frustrated: </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">let's </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">do</span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> something!</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> But usually I'm ok with it. I'm outside. With people. No pressure. Watch. Watch everything, watch the grass, the trees, the clouds, the people, watch the cows go out to graze and watch the boys bring them back in, watch clothes being washed and watch them flap in the breeze on the line, watch people fetch water, pump the handle at the borehole, balance jerrycans on their heads, watch chickens and goats, the grandmother shelling g-nuts, smoke from cooking fires and charcoal stoves, watch football played with a ball made of plastic bags, watch kids knocking mangoes down from trees, watch bicycles and boda bodas, watch the sun move, cross the sky, dip, go down, watch the sky change colours, the clouds gather and threaten rain and blow away before it comes, watch the moon come up, the stars come out, because when am I going to watch these things again? how much longer do I have? because even when time expands and contracts and runs in different divergent directions, even when days last for weeks and hours for days, there's still only so much time, and then what? </span></span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-90480704659494887482011-09-26T00:18:00.000-07:002011-09-26T00:26:09.762-07:00Motherless BrooklynThanks to packages of books from the delightful and talented Sarah Tompkins, Jonathan Lethem is one of my new favorite authors -- <i>Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn, As She Climbed Across the Table</i>: all definitely recommended.<br />
<br />
So this quote made me smile: I think it sums up my wandering childhood -- read: childhood epitomised by the time I peaced out of the backyard in San Diego unnoticed, diaper-clad and cookie in hand, and meandered down to the busy four-way intersection at the corner where I was happily picked up by a random stranger who brought me home; <i>thanks for giving me space to explore my freedom (to have potentially been the next Lindbergh baby), Mom and Dad; love you!</i> -- which helps explain my subsequent life (or how I ended up here) in Uganda: my wandering adult(or at least fully grown man-child)hood.<br />
<blockquote><b>Danny might have coolly walked out on his parents one day when he was seven or eight and joined a pickup game that lasted until he was fourteen.</b></blockquote>And that's why Mom had a leash for me as a child. (If I ever come across a quote to sum up the time, not long after my diaper-clad expedition, when Dad caught me sitting on the kitchen counter using a butcher knife to scoop and eat sugar out of the jar, I'll be sure to post it. Anyway, point being: <i>how am I still alive?</i>)danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-19136714061245025202011-09-16T08:59:00.000-07:002011-09-16T08:59:44.705-07:00Work<title></title><style type="text/css">
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</style>So they usually say that after a year at site, you finally start to get busy. I haven't been at site for quite a full year yet – though I have been, and it's hard to believe, in Uganda for thirteen months now – and I'm still not quite as consistently busy as I want to be, but it feels good to have had some real work recently. <div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So, I mentioned before about training forty people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) to act as home-based counsellors for others with HIV/AIDS. After the whole fiasco with my organisation and the other local organisation that originally wanted me to do this project with them, after writing a lengthy grant proposal, after meeting with the HIV counsellors at the Counselling and Testing Centre at Freda Carr (the local hospital) and other community members and the LC5 Chairman (the highest government official in the district), after leaving site for ten days, and after scheduling and then having to reschedule the training – after all that, it finally happened.</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Here's a little bit more of a background (from the Statement of Need in my grant proposal):</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ngora District was formed in early 2010 when it was separated from Kumi District. When the two districts split, Ngora was left with an estimated population of roughly 142,000. With this separation and the changes in leadership and government funding and programmes, the home-based HIV/AIDS counsellor project which had been well received in Kumi District was not brought over to Ngora. This left all counselling, testing, and antiretroviral therapy services to the CTS Centre at Freda Carr Hospital, near the district headquarters. There was no longer a system in place to get services and support to people in the outer reaches of the district. </div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now, with only a few volunteer counsellors on staff at the CTS Centre, not only do many people have to travel ten or more kilometres for services, but they then have to wait a couple hours or more before they are able to spend a few brief moments with one of the counsellors. It should be noted that this should not reflect negatively on the staff at the CTS Centre who are committed and hard-working but, simply, a bit overwhelmed by the nearly 100 people who come for services each day the Centre is open. There are 2,504 HIV-positive individuals registered with the CTS Centre, 691 of who are on Antiretroviral Therapy (ART). However, there are many other individuals who have been tested through mobile outreaches or community testing days but are not registered with the CTS Centre. Using a lower estimate that has 6% of the total population living with HIV/AIDS, there are an estimated total of over 8,520 HIV-positive individuals in the district. There are, then, more than 6,000 PLWHA who are not accessing any services or counselling, not receiving any sort of adequate support, have not been well-educated on HIV/AIDS, and a number of them likely need to be started on ART. So the effects of all of these issues are felt by many individuals and families across the district. There is, then, an obvious need to increase the accessibility of services for PLWHA and a large, pre-existing client base. While it may not be within our power to expand testing sites and ART distribution points, one area we can build the capacity of the district is in the support of PLWHA, specifically with home-based counselling.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> So, that's why we – the community, me – felt like this project would be a good idea, and why we felt like it could be a success. And here are the cool things about the rest how the training came to be and then how it went:</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> 1: I had started trying to get my volunteer counsellors by going to Freda Carr on Mondays and Fridays, the days that people come to pick up their ARVs and get counselling, and giving a short little spiel about the project, then leaving a sign-up sheet for whoever was interested, planning on then, after a month (so that I'd hopefully give the spiel to everyone who comes for ARVs), doing a little interview or whatever to pick who I thought was really committed and would be good counsellors. When I went to do that for, maybe, the third time, I found out that the community members had already figured out who they wanted to be counsellors. They wanted this, they had people who they knew would be committed and would make good counsellors, and that made me happy. (And that after the whole original idea came from the community in the first place.)</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> 2: I knew these people would know more about, or at least be way more – for obvious reasons – experienced with HIV/AIDS than I would, and so I went into the training planning on basically just running a discussion, bringing all of their knowledge and experiences together so that we could be standardized, so that they could all be using the same information when they were counselling people. And it worked perfectly. We covered about fifteen or so topics surrounding HIV/AIDS and counselling. They were more than happy to discuss, more than happy to share experiences and testimonies – to the point where I had to cut some discussions short in the interest of getting to all of the topics we wanted to get to – and they were all just as knowledgeable, maybe even more so, than I'd expected them to be.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> 3: At the beginning of the training, we went over the goals and objectives of the project: to increase availability and accessibility of quality counselling services, and so on. One of the objectives, the main one, actually, was that each of them would provide counselling to at least forty individuals within the first quarter of the project, or by the end of October. I had wavered on this number before the training, not wanting to ask too much of them, to tax their health and energy, especially since they were doing this voluntarily, and so when we were going over the objectives, I asked them, 'Does forty sound like a reasonable number? Or is that too many?' The question was translated for those who couldn't understand me – most of them can understand at least some English, but I always find myself speaking too fast, in too American of an accent, when I'm talking in front of a bunch of people, so some of them found it hard to understand me, or, as they say, they weren't 'picking' me – and immediately everyone started talking – sounding, to me, like, 'Rabble rabble rabble!' – and so I was worried that I'd set the bar too high. Martin translated their consensus back to me: of course we can reach forty people by the end of October, and not only that but we could even do more, why, just last week I talked to ten different people about their HIV tests, forty is no problem at all. I couldn't help breaking out in a big stupid grin.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> 4: People here – and I honestly don't think this is a reflection of people's attitudes or anything, but is a reflection of the foreign-aid-and-NGO-ification of <i>everything</i> in Africa – generally expect to receive some form of compensation for, well, <i>a lot</i>. Like coming to one of the sensitisations that my org puts on in the villages to teach people about family planning and reproductive health. People come – usually within their own village, not far – knowing that, at the very least, they'll get a soda. And it inexplicably extends to, like, conferences for NGO staff: a per diem allowance is expected; as in, I'm coming to learn new things that can either A: help people in my area, or B: help my organisation perform better, and, yes, I expect to be compensated for learning these things. Without going off on too much of a tangent... that's how it is, and there's really no getting around it. So I made it clear – in the few spiels I gave at the hospital, in the letter I wrote to the volunteers thanking them for being a part of the project before the training – that, while I would provide tea, lunch, and soda during the training, along with a small transportation refund – and I feel like this is understandable; I'm expecting them to come to me and to be there all day, so, ok, I'll pay for that – I would not be paying them any sort of monthly stipend for their work, I would not be buying them a soda each day they went to do counselling with people, I would not be buying them bicycles or t-shirts or messenger bags. It was a concern: I was worried people wouldn't want to do it for free – and maybe that makes me cynical, but I can at least say that it doesn't make me cynical about Ugandans or Africans or whatever, it just makes me cynical about, like I said, the foreign-aid-and-NGO-ification of <i>everything</i> in Africa – and I was told by the counsellor at Freda Carr that when they had a similar program, the one from when Ngora was a part of Kumi, the 'volunteer' counsellors were paid 50,000UGX per month (a number I laughed out loud at when he asked if I'd be paying my volunteers – no quotes – something like that). So, at the beginning of the training, right after going over the objectives, we went over their questions and concerns about the training and, natch, the issue of <i>idiboro</i> – literally <i>a little something</i> in Ateso – came up. And so I made it clear again: I really, really wish that I could pay you for this work, I wish that I could buy you bicycles to help you reach more people, all because I believe in you all and in the work you'll be doing, but, simply, the money isn't there, not only am I on a shoe-string budget here, but I'm actually <i>over </i>budget, and, I don't want to get too serious, but if you're here to get a monthly stipend or a bicycle or whatever then, well, you probably shouldn't be here. I said that last part haltingly, wanting to get the point across without myself coming across as a jerk. But, once it was translated, I was met by nods of agreement, or, if not agreement, then at least understanding, from all across the room. I was also met by, the rest of that day and the next two days of the training, engaged and active and – yes, it's true! – <i>on time</i> volunteers, all of them. This put another big stupid grin on my face.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> And so, overall, success.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> At the end, I told them how much I appreciated them agreeing to work with me, told them that the success of the whole thing was up to them, told them how much I believed in them, and how big of an impact they could make in the lives of the friends and neighbours. And then I blasted 'Eye of the Tiger' from a boombox and made them run up a huge flight of stairs, pumping their fists in the air.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Ok, just kidding. But only because we don't <i>have</i> any stairs here.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> A few weeks ago, I was in Gulu, in the North, for Peace Camp. Peace Camp was a week-long pseudo-summer-camp started by a few PCVs from the north for teenagers, fifteen to nineteen years old (and one thirteen year old girl who lied her way into the camp, which is kind of awesome), who were affected by the war with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). It was a great thing to get to be a part of.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> The LRA is the rebel group who terrorised northern and eastern Uganda for over twenty years (though now they've been pushed into the DRC). They abducted children and forced them to be soldiers or wives for the commanders, they forced them to kill their families, they raped them, they forced them to carry massively heavy supplies for days on end with no rest and no food. Those are the basics. The actual stories are worse.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> I got to spend the week with eighty kids who were just awesome people, happy, assertive, intelligent, resilient. I helped to run the Life-Skills sessions of the camp, doing stuff on resisting peer pressure, but when I wasn't doing that, I got to hang out with the kids, play football, have a dance party, watch them perform skits and traditional folk songs and dances from their tribes, go to a ropes course where they all did a zip-line and were <i>stoked</i> about 'flying,' listen to them, watch them grow and develop – and I really believe a lot of them did – and impress me – like I knew they would – and just generally be a part of something that was, can continue to be, really good for the kids who were there and for their communities when they bring back everything they learned and accomplished.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Another reason I was looking forward to the camp was because kids from Teso were there, too. Along with all of the youth from the North, these kids were equally affected by the war, but haven't gotten the assistance and recognition that the Acholi, Lango, and other Northern tribes – though, really, mainly the Acholi – have.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> We met with one of the local counterparts from Amuria at the weekend training we had a couple weeks before the actual camp, and he talked about how the fighting in the East has just literally never been documented. <span style="font-weight: normal;">I read a book recently about the kids who were affected by the war. Near the beginning of the book, the author said, 'The South and West of Uganda are the tourist destinations; the North is a warzone.' There was no mention of the East, not only as being affected by the war, but as, like, existing.</span> Butt kids there were forced to kill their families and become soldiers, they were raped and forced to become wives, they were orphaned and traumatised, just like the kids in the North. I almost feel like this sounds like I'm belittling the horrible experiences of the kids from the North. I'm not, obviously. It's just that there was never an <i>Invisible Children</i> for the kids from Teso; it's just that there aren't dozens of NGOs in Teso dedicated – regardless of their success or the way they go about fulfilling their missions – to helping these kids; it's just that, yeah, when people think of Uganda, they think of the gorillas and the amazing national parks in the South and West, and they think of the war in the North, and they don't think of the East. But, about five years ago, the LRA made it as far down as Soroti. There were tanks in the streets of the town 50km to the north of me. My counterpart has talked about driving around doing work in the villages and being constantly on the lookout for rebels. At one of the sub-county headquarters in my district, the walls of one of the buildings are covered in charcoal graffiti about the Arrow Boys, the – basically – civilian militia from Teso that fought against and, eventually, drove back the LRA. So, I'm really glad that kids from Teso got to participate in the camp. </div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Our man from Amuria also talked about how people in Teso often think that the LRA is the Acholi and the Acholi are the LRA, and having those kids come to the camp will help to break that misunderstanding. Some people were worried about the kids coming up to Gulu because of this belief, and hopefully, after the camp, some of that will change. One night at the camp, there was a forgiveness and reconciliation ceremony. The kids wrote down forgiveness messages – to the rebels, the government soldiers, whoever they felt like they needed to forgive – and burned them, symbolically releasing those things they've been carrying with them. After that, they had the kids from each of the four tribes – Acholi, Lango, Iteso, and Alur – forgive each other. There were a lot of tears and – seemingly – flashbacks, one girl fainted, it was all very intense for all of them, but we hope it was worth it.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> We hope they'll bring that back to their communities, to the other youth affected by the war, to their families and neighbours and friends, and foster forgiveness and reconciliation in their towns and villages. And though we recognize that maybe that's a lot to ask of 15-19 year-olds, we hope that it really did mean something, something other than simply scratching at wounds that time had allowed to become scabs or scars until they bled again and then leaving them with no bandages to help the wounds re-heal after they left the camp. But I think these kids are resilient and brave enough to make it, regardless; I think they've proven that already. And a lot of them were already excited to go home, back to school or back to the village, wherever, and share with everyone there, start Peace Clubs with other youth, become leaders among their peers and communities. Awesome.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> A couple other quick highlights from the camp:</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Monica's goal: one of the days, we had some free time, and I was playing football with a group of the boys. Mostly boys, I should say. There were one or two girls on each team, and after twenty minutes or so, the game was mostly bogged down in the midfield, no goals yet, not really any real chances. Then one girl, Monica – a tall, confident, sassy (in a good, hilarious way) girl from my friend Sandi's school in Pader, east of Gulu – jogged onto the field, picked a team, and, about ten seconds later, ripped a shot from thirty yards out, a serious rocket, a low line-drive that the keeper had no chance of stopping, didn't even try to stop, a goal that – and this was the best part, really – none of the boys could be able to top, before or after, all week. (And, for the record, it was the best goal I can remember seeing in a game that I've actually been a part of. Seriously awesome.) We'll call that 'Breaking Gender Stereotypes,' or, maybe more accurately, 'Showing the Boys What's Up.'</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> The traditional dances: all of the tribes were great, it was great to see how excited they got about getting to perform their songs and dances in front of everyone, they were proud and enthusiastic and talented. But, at least for me, the Langi were especially impressive. Thirty kids (I think), spears, feathered headdresses, the girls in matching skirts, the boys with ash rubbed on their faces, two of them wailed away on drums while the others were chanting, jumping, moving both aggressively and gracefully, circling the drummers. Hard to describe, very cool to watch, very cool, also, just to see how <i>pumped</i> they were to be up there, doing their thing, representing their tribe, especially in front of one of their tribal leaders (because we had a leader from each of the tribes come and address the kids).</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> The, let's call it, solidarity: we had several deaf campers in two of the camper groups, with a couple of the local counterparts translating everything from English to sign and back. It was, first of all, cool to see them interacting with all of the other kids. There weren't any cliques that developed – which was actually true for everyone, and was really nice – and none of the separation between hearing and hearing-impaired that you might expect. The highlight, though, was during one of the group reflection sessions. A Ugandan woman from an NGO in Gulu was leading the session, and, at one point, she asked for a boy and a girl to come up and do a short skit. Two of the deaf kids immediately raised their hands, stood up to go up to the front, when the woman running the session stopped them, saying, 'No, no, we need someone who can <i>talk</i>.' (To be fair to her, I certainly don't think this was malicious or intentional. I think it just came out without her thinking about it.) We PCVs, sitting in the back of the room, immediately looked at each other, shaking our heads, disbelieving, but almost before it even registered, the kids started murmuring, shaking their heads, then calling out, 'No! They can talk! Let them do it!' The facilitator, embarrassed and realizing what she'd said, let them do it, while giant smiles broke out across all of our faces in the back of the room, goosebumps spreading across our arms. Just eighty really, really good kids in that room.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> So that was Peace Camp. An awesome week, a great job by everyone who put it all together, a great job by everyone who was there. And, most of all, the kids who came – and those who couldn't come, but are no less amazing than the ones who could; one of the other PCVs who was there said that some kids in her town couldn't come, knew they couldn't, and were still almost unable to control their excitement for the ones who could – and were, <i>are,</i> just generally pretty amazing human beings: what is there to say?</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> (Oh, one last thing: the movie <i>War Dance</i>. You should all go rent it, Netflix it, do whatever crazy new technology there is now that I don't know about. It's about a group of primary school students from Pader, all, like our campers, affected by the war in one way or another or many, and they tell their stories while it also follows them practising and performing in a music and dance competition in Kampala. It's beautifully shot and, well, just watch it. You'll cry. And, though Pader isn't what I would call exactly close to Ngora – maybe 200-ish km away – it looks pretty similar, so you can, sort of, see what it looks like where I live.)</div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-83310201794677652692011-09-13T02:48:00.000-07:002011-09-13T22:38:11.337-07:00The Burial<title></title><style type="text/css">
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<div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Last month, before I left for Peace Camp (I'll write about that and other work soon), Moses' – a friend from my organisation – father died. I went to the burial; I was glad to be able to go, out of support for a friend, out of interest in the cultural experience, because I'd never been to a burial, a funeral, before, ever, anywhere.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Moses' father was 80-something years old, he'd been sick for a few months by then, but it's still always sad for someone to lose a parent, and I felt a little guilty about wanting to go partially just out of curiosity about the ceremony itself. But, well. (Well? I don't know. It seems fair to me; maybe I'm just insensitive though.)</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">The burial was in Amuria, a district bordering the north of Soroti (which, <i>remember?</i> [just kidding, I don't really expect you to remember], is the district that borders Ngora to the north and is the district in which the Iteso kids who came to Peace Camp live, another reason I was glad to be able to go), and we piled into my organisation's Toyota Hi-Lux pickup – I always kind of enjoy pointing out that it's a Hi-Lux because all I knew of Hi-Lux-es before coming here was that the Taliban and the, um, rebels (is that what we call them? are they still rebels if they basically run the country?) in Somalia mount machine guns in the beds of theirs, a feature that, I've since learned, does not come standard – and I was sitting in the bed of the truck with, from my organisation, Martin – my 'twin,' <i>remember? again?</i>, the Opio to my Odongo, because we're the same age – Peter, Cuthbert, Vincent, Scovia, Mr Oloit – whose other name I somehow still don't know, though, at least, now I know the one name: after he'd been with my org for several months, my supervisor, randomly, asked me, one day while we were eating lunch under the mango tree and Oloit came and sat down, 'Danieli, you know his name?' and I said, 'Yeah... <i>totally</i>... he's been here for a long time now... <i>ha...ha</i>...' and then she asked what it was, she told me that was what people said when they don't really know, and she was totally right: embarrassing – and, not from my organisation, two old ladies who I'd never met before, and so, needless to say, it was crowded, nine adults (and a full-sized spare tire) in the bed of a pickup. We headed out, bouncing down the dirt road, I covered my head with a pair of someone's waterproof pants during a brief, pelting rain, we bounced along up to the main highway, everyone laughed at the wind wildly whipping my hair, we flew down the tarmac to Soroti Town, through town, then maybe twenty kilometres north of town, we turned right off the tarmac onto another rutted dirt road, this one at times angled at a nearly-forty-five degree angle, and Amuria looks not unlike Ngora though it's less flat, less totally planar, there are long rolling hills, there aren't any of my favourite massive rock formations, there's more space, more empty – read: not cultivated for farming – land, vast expanses of grass, and the grass is tall, taller than in Ngora, tall like in the North, able to hide rebel soldiers, as tall as me, and we hopped out of the back of the truck while Emma – our driver, or, as they say here (and as I love that they say here), our pilot – navigated a metre-deep trench, broken concrete pipe, current of dirty water that cut a swath across the road, everyone disparaging the construction team who'd put in the concrete pipe, 'Eh! These Ugandan engineers... Tsk!' – the disparagement of their fellow Ugandans, and their fellow Africans as a whole, is an entirely different subject that I could go off on but won't here; I feel like it happens <i>a lot</i>, and it bothers me, makes me uncomfortable; it feels like racism that was so engrained during colonialism that they now just take it for fact; I never know what to say when, for example, they say Africans aren't as good at science as Westerners, usually I just end up stammering, 'That's not... It's... No.' But, anyway – then we hopped back in, clambering, and soon after, after two and a half hours total, we were there, Moses' family's homestead, a collection of mud-and-thatch huts.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">The ceremony had just begun when we got there. We got in the back of an orderly – more orderly than any I've ever been in in any non-Western country – single-file line, we moved past the coffin, a wooden box, nailed shut, covered in a royal-hued (standard though, not actually for royalty) purple cloth, a large floral arrangement sitting on top, it would've been sitting on his stomach were the coffin open, and though the coffin was closed, nailed shut, there was a small window over his face, his eyes were closed, his expression peaceful, his skin wrinkled and aged but somehow relaxed, you could see the gauzy material the rest of his body was wrapped in, and all I could think about was Mao Tse-tung, lying embalmed in Beijing forever, for (I think?) like forty years by the time we – Sarah and I; hi, Sarah! – saw him, by the time we made a similar silent, single-file procession past his coffin – his not nailed shut, not wooden, simply a large glass box mechanically raised up from the floor each day for the, um, viewings – all I could think about was Mao because he, <i>that</i>, was the only dead person, <i>body</i>, I'd seen before – in that state anyway; I'm not including those lovely folks at the University of Washington cadaver lab, as I mostly saw their guts and, most memorably, their feet, which still had all of the skin and nails and everything – and so I looked at his face, peaceful, wrinkled, and thought of Mao, all while constantly moving slowly by, then, hurriedly, as I moved away from the coffin toward our seats, I remembered to think of a few words of consolation for Moses, his family, his late father, I didn't want to <i>only</i> think of Mao, and then we sat down and the ceremony continued.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">The crowd that had gathered, maybe a hundred-strong, was, if not sombre, then certainly subdued, respectful, and I'm lacking another good word for it, but this subdued atmosphere was really only noticeable to me when I thought of it in relation to every other gathering I've been to here, celebratory, educational, whatever, and not when I thought of it in relation to the typical – stereotypical? – Western funeral, or Middle Eastern funeral, or Indian funeral – all of which, of course, I've only read about, seen in movies – because there was no one clad in mournful black, no black-mesh-veiled widow weeping, no stoic son's arm being clutched by a despondent wife and mother, there was no fittingly atmospheric overcast sky, no cold drizzle or autumn leaves that, in a reflection of the occasion, would lose their last grip on the branch and float slowly down in a peaceful death to land on wet cemetery grass, and there was no gnashing of teeth, no rending of garments, no funeral pyre, no screaming out to God in anger and grief, and I realize that this may be a factor not of the cultural – though, I don't know, maybe it is; but I think back to the wails of grief I heard that one night, the night my former neighbour Peter told me that the other neighbours had lost an infant to malaria, and I think not – aspect, but of the fact that it was the burial of a man in the eighth decade of his life, who'd been ill for several months, who'd been a good, successful, respected man – I think he was a deacon in the local church – and I only saw one woman – wife? widow? – let out a single cry of sadness, one that racked her whole body and almost brought her to her knees as she passed by the nailed-shut, purple-clothed, windowed coffin shortly after we'd taken our seats, but even she, like many of the other women there, was dressed in the garish, synthetic colours of a gomes – pronounced <i>gomez;</i> the traditional fancy dress, conical shoulders and a wide sash-like belt tied with a square knot in the front around the waist – a few men were in suits, but even Moses, though his face was uncharacteristically long, wore just a grey polo shirt and khakis, everyone else dressed in whatever they'd wear to go about their normal day after the ceremony, they've done this all before, more than a couple times, I'm sure, and even the weather, blue sky, the sun warm and bright, was less than sombre, subdued only by a handful of heavy black rainclouds gathering in the distance. So: subdued. I mean that the dancing, the music blasted from speakers at an ear-splitting volume, the happy songs and ululations, the loud chatter and louder laughter, those things that typify every other gathering I've ever been to here were absent, but the two short speeches that made up the bulk of the ceremony were more lighthearted than not, seemingly anyway, judging by the speakers' tones of voice and the – albeit, again, subdued – laughter elicited by, presumably, charming anecdotes about Moses' father, and there were these two short speeches, neither longer than five or six minutes, they were followed by the reading of a few verses from the Bible, a hymn sung by the gathered crowd, and even this wasn't mournful-sounding, just respectful, subdued, and then the coffin was lifted, carried to the grave-site, we all followed behind, walked half a kilometre through tall grass under warm sunshine, and we, everyone, gathered around the grave, the coffin had already been lowered in when I walked up, there was another speech, shorter even than the first two, another hymn sung, and handfuls of rocky red dirt were scooped up, tossed down onto the coffin – nailed-shut, purple-clothed, windowed – the dirt and rocks clattered on the wooden box, sounding like the first drops of a heavy rain on a tin roof, and, maybe five minutes after walking up to the graveside, we turned around and walked back through tall grass under warm sunshine to the homestead, the ceremony was over, I asked Martin just to be sure – Is that <i>really</i> it? – and it was, they served lunch, we said goodbye to Moses, hugged, and we'd only been there for barely an hour, even the length of the ceremony, relative to typically hours-long gatherings, was subdued, and we left.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">It was interesting. I was glad that I got to go.</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">And we went back down the angled, rutted dirt road, hopped back out with Emma navigated trench, broken concrete pipe, current of dirty water, and, this time, I was sitting on the edge of the truck-bed wall, the only place to hold onto was the wall, a hand gripping the metal immediately on either side of my butt, not much – barely any – leverage, we bounced along and I tried to keep my balance, my white-knuckle grip, tried to keep the legitimate concern off my face, they'd never let me ride in the back again if I fell out, mostly because I'd probably be dead, then we flew down the tarmac of the highway again, one of my hands fell asleep and I couldn't tell if I was still holding on or not, the rain clouds were gathering again though the sun was still shining brightly as it dipped westward, a couple kilometres off the highway, I could see a column of rain, grey, silvery shafts of water coming down, clearly delineated from where it wasn't raining, maybe one square kilometre getting poured on while the rest of, well, everywhere was still dry, and we picked up two more people, and their two kids, in Soroti Town, now thirteen people in the bed of the truck, and the woman sat down in the bed, her back pushing against my legs and sliding me back so that I was hanging at least eight inches out over the tarmac, at least I'd gotten a better hand-hold on the rail running along the back of the roof, but still, lorries flew by, a metre away from tearing me in half, Emma drove the same way he'd've driven without anyone in the bed, the tarmac whizzed by beneath me, I silently cursed the woman pushing on my legs, my knuckles were white, I pretended just to be hanging off the truck like Kevin Costner in <i>Waterworld</i>, the sun was dipping towards the horizon, the light was golden and warm, we bounced off the highway and down the dirt road toward Ngora, we made it back, I could finally let go, my hands hurt, but I'd never felt so personally responsible to – still – be alive as I did at that moment, and I was happy, maybe inappropriately so, but the feeling was amplified by the fact that I'd been to a funeral for the first time, by the fact that I'd just looked a corpse in the face, that I'd been a tenuous grip on the truck away from the pavement and the speeding lorries, that I'm twenty-six, that I'm healthy, that my family's healthy, that I'd looked a dead person in the face and thought only of Mao because that was all that I had to go on.</div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-7603645831637280042011-07-27T00:34:00.000-07:002011-07-27T00:34:34.590-07:00Speaking of....ghosts, monsters, Africa, and <i>30 Rock</i>: this quote from <i>30 Rock</i> made me laugh and describes occasionally-eerie rural Uganda pretty accurately.<br />
<blockquote><b>Africa's great. We have juju monsters, gum gum trees, and horsicorns, which is a unicorn with a horse's head.</b> </blockquote>All true. It's a magical, mystical place, this Africa.danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-80621868384356894022011-07-26T08:39:00.000-07:002011-07-26T08:39:02.620-07:00GhostsI was lying around my house for a few days this past weekend, sick and not feeling all that awesome. I can only watch so many episodes of <i>30 Rock</i> -- so many being, approximately, twenty -- in a row, and so this is what came after that.<br />
<br />
(Please ignore all the silly British spellings in this blog post. I was finally able to download a Microsoft Word substitute after my copy expired since I lost or never had the code to enter, and, being where I am, the spellcheck is set to British English, I can't figure out how to change the default settings, and so, typing blog posts on that, we end up with everything being auto-corrected to include a <i>u</i> after every other <i>o</i> and spell maneuver <i>manoeuvre</i>. Oh well. Maybe it will add a certain refinement to my normal inanities. Anyway.)<br />
<br />
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always;">People here are, well, a lot of – let's not generalise; I <i>am </i><span style="font-style: normal;">in the PC, after all – people here are fairly superstitious. There are witches and wizards (no joke, they call them wizards, which is awesome), witchdoctors – though I think we're calling them 'traditional healers' these days – who, for an often-extortionate price will 'cause' a woman's female rival to have a miscarriage or – all </span><i>Haha, how quaint!</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> thoughts aside – still have been known to sacrifice – no, let's say 'murder' instead; spade a spade and all that – children for who knows what reasons. But people, and I think it'd be fair to say the majority of people, at least to some extent, still – and I say 'still' as in 'it's a belief system as old as, maybe older than, depending on who you ask, Christianity that, despite the fact that the population in the area of the belief system was always relatively small, has still persisted, in some form, to 2011 (also, still, despite missionary work by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims that sought to rid people of such 'savage' ideas; though some of those missionaries were, undoubtedly, Irish, coming from a country where some people still believe in faeries and, more commonly, banshees)', not 'still' as in 'I can't believe they, those people, them, not us, </span><i>still</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> believe such things despite </span><i>science!</i><span style="font-style: normal;">' while using an index finger on the bridge of my glasses to slide them back up my nose (because what do I know? I'm not a potion scientist. And, while I do feel confident enough in my in-born Western scepticism that I feel like getting cursed by a witchdoctor would just be a cool story, I'm still probably not going to try my luck.) – believe in the abilities of witches and wizards, fear the curses of witchdoctors, and would be terrified to find human faeces on their doorstep or a beheaded and defeathered hen outside their hut one morning (but who wouldn't be a little freaked out by that?), and believe in the effects of potions like dokiyo, which will make you fall so in love with the person who gave it to you that you weep uncontrollably until you agree to be with them.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Phew. Now that I've claused any sense out of those three sentences and got my don't-offend-anyone, don't-generalise-everyone bases covered (right? we're good? we're PC enough?), there is a point to all of this.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The point being: </span><i>I believe.</i></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">If Fox Mulder had a picture of a witchdoctor instead of a UFO on that poster of his, I would be him.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Ok, I'm mostly kidding. The part of me that says </span><i>I believe</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> facetiously is walking around town, going to the market, pretending like Goal 2 – of the three main goals of the Peace Corps: number one being doing actual work, numbers two and three being about cultural exchange – is actually work, all in the bright hot crystalline equatorial daylight. The part of me that is not kidding is running a couple miles from town – fine, let's be honest: more like a kilometre and a half; I can't run </span><i>that</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> far, I'm not one of </span><i>those</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> volunteers – deep into the village at 5:30 on a cool misty pitch-black starless moonless morning with nothing but the three-foot-wide halo of light from my phone-torch between me and the witches and wizards and beheaded, defeathered hens and ancestral ghosts swirling in and out of the mist and the darkness. Aw, yeah: this is a ghost story. It is also completely true, and all happened in the span of, like, forty minutes, because, like I said, I can't run </span><i>that</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> far.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">(Note: this story may make it seem like I'm afraid of the dark. That may or may not be entirely true. If it is true, though – which it might </span><i>not</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> be, remember? – then I blame Mom – hi, Mom! – for letting us watch </span><i>Arachnophobia</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> when I was, like, seven. I also blame the cable channel TBS for letting me watch </span><i>The Exorcist </i><span style="font-style: normal;">when I was, like, twelve. No, TBS, I don't </span><i>care</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> if it was edited for television. Also, </span><i>Paranormal Activity</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Enough said. I'm not afraid of the dark anyway. Don't judge me.)</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I got up at 5:04 the other morning – due to my affinity for never setting my alarm for </span><i>x</i><span style="font-style: normal;">:15 or </span><i>y</i><span style="font-style: normal;">:30 or some time like that – to go on a run. Since I've somehow developed the World's Smallest Bladder since being in country, I had to pee like a [cliché]. I pulled on shorts and a t-shirt and, tapping the up-arrow key on my phone to switch on the torch, headed out to the latrine, stepping outside into total darkness, clouds like a black velvet blanket – is that a thing? a velvet blanket? – blocking all of the stars and the sliver of a waxing moon, tendrils of swirling mist wrapping around through into above under the stunted beam of the torch, a fine Seattle-esque mist that floated down onto exposed skin to prick up goosebumps wherever it landed, and I shivered, like someone had just walked on my grave – or like I really had to go.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Cold water from the rainstorm during the night sprayed my feet and ankles as I hurried across the grass to the long, narrow latrine structure I share with the neighbours and a breeze slowly swung one of the doors shut with a groan like an old man who's tired of waiting to die and then with a creak like a Halloween CD of haunted house noises and then, the breeze gusting just a little harder, swirling the mist just a little more, with a final emphatic slam. I rounded the outer wall of the latrine area to go down to mine, Door No. 3, and half-leapt, half-stumbled backwards – </span><i>or was I pushed?</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> – in the World's Worst Defensive Manoeuvre as a calamitous death-rattle shattered the morning's quiet from behind Door No. 4, bony fists pounding the corrugated metal begging trying to force their way out to disappear into the mist and darkness, and just as suddenly as they started, the bony fists stopped, leaving a hole in the silence, until the silence returned, somehow thicker than it had been before, echoing with the cacophony though the sound had been sucked away by a cold wind.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I didn't move. I didn't move, I just stared at Door No. 4 and shivered again. Then Door No. 1, at my back, the door to my bathing area, the one that had just groaned creaked slammed shut, groaned back open </span><i>against the breeze</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the breeze was blowing the other way the breeze should've pushed the door </span><i>shut</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> except that the door had already been closed what the </span><i>what</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> – and I thought all of these things, a hurried stream that ran across the front of my brain in half a second until I was launched out of my paralysis by a thunderous bony-fisted punch to the metal of Door No. 4 – </span><i>did that..? I swear that dent in the metal wasn't there just a second ago</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> – and leapt to the door of my latrine as the death-rattle pounded and I deftly unlocked the padlock and swung the door open swung myself inside swung the door shut in one quick motion and the heavy silence made heavier by the absence of sound returned.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I held the torch in my mouth as I – </span><i>oh, thank God</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> – 'watered' the seething mass of cockroaches I was sure was making the ground shimmer and slither twenty-five feet below me (like, have you seen the caves episode of </span><i>Planet Earth</i><span style="font-style: normal;">?, with that one cave where there's a hundred-foot mountain of bat guano only you can't see it because it is literally covered in cockroaches?, like that), and the silence was broken again by the insistent buzzing of a fat bluebottle fly that made strafing flights across my face, attracted to the light in my mouth – easily, easily, easily the most disgusting thing that happens to me on a fairly regular basis – and I clamped down on the phone with my teeth and shook my head to get the fly away from my mouth and then caught the fly in the torchlight again as it buzzed lazily towards the corner then buzzed insistently as it found itself stuck in a spider web and then the buzzing reached panicked levels, echoing off the metal door, off the metal roof, echoing down into the brick-walled pit under my feet, as a spider the size of a small goat – exaggeration? Maybe. But, also... </span><i>maybe not!</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> – lowered itself down from the shadows of the roof, its long, hairy legs pin-wheeling in eager anticipation, and I watched as the spider reached its breakfast and twirled the fly in circles in a macabre ballroom dance and then, satisfied that its prey wouldn't escape, it ascended, slowly, silently, back up into the shadows – stopping only so that I could give it a high-five and remind it that that's why I allow it to live.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">With the reverberations of the fly's last words slowly dying down and with my bladder emptied – which, being a Guinness World Record holder like it is, only takes about five seconds, fortunate on mornings like this – I slowly pushed open the latrine door with both hands, torch still getting slobbery in my mouth, just in case I had to shove someone something away and make my escape. But it was quiet. I could see that Doors No. 1 and 2 were shut. There was only the breeze and the mist that wrapped itself around me, somehow comforting despite its chill, as I stepped outside and pushed the door shut and put the padlock back into place and began to think, again, about how cold I'm going to be in the Great PNW in December and I felt my shoulders slump a bit and relax, there were no ghosts here, no angry spirits who died in the pit latrine and now want to get out, and I squeezed the little padlock closed, not realising that the small metallic click somehow both dampened by the mist and amplified into a gunshot by the cool wind was a cue, and I leapt sprinted stumbled almost swallowed or spit out my phone as, barely missing a heartbeat – or desperately, desperately missing the feeling of a heartbeat – after the click of the lock, bony fists beat a tympanic solo on Door No. 4, thunderous and metallic and angry and desperate and beseeching, and the wind found some small aperture to whistle and howl over, and I kicked cold water off blades of grass and swung my front door open swung myself inside swung the door shut in one quick motion and was back inside, less than three minutes after getting out of bed.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I took a moment, reminded – or tried to convince – myself that I am a man, and then pulled on socks and my running shoes and stepped back outside, the swirling mist curling around the beam of the torch like fingers beckoning me to come with them somewhere I knew I didn't want to go as I closed the lock on my door with a heavy click. I walked out onto the road leading away from town. Silence whirled as thickly as the mist. The only lights I could see were the four globe fixtures at the corners of the brick wall surrounding the other white family's compound, the yellowish light reflecting, refracting, bouncing off the mist until the globes were as large as full moons. I walked for a minute to warm my legs up, away from the full moon security lights, away from the sleeping town, and as the glow of the lights surrendered to blackness, I switched on the torch and started to run, unable to see anything but the three-foot circle of road lit up at my feet and the dim silhouettes of trees where that blackness gave way to the sky's blackness, unable to hear anything but my feet pounding the packed dirt, a quick scuff as I scraped over a bump that hadn't been lit well enough by the torch, the sound of my own too-heavy breathing and too-rapid heartbeat and, in the silence all around me, these quiet sounds gathered together like a wave, a white-noise crescendo, a Sonic Youth song, or a heavy rain on a tin roof and they filled my ears and made my eyes glaze over in daydreams and suddenly I wanted to run without the torch, I wanted to see or not see how dark it really was, and, feet pounding, heart thumping, I switched off the torch and there was nothing, it was black, totally, there was nothing except me, I was running on nothing, I was running past nothing, I was running nowhere, there was absolutely nothing but the faint uneven line across the division of land and sky, the division of darkness filled with all the things you can't see and darkness filled with nothing but the absence of light, and a gust of wind swept down the road towards me and turned the beads of sweat running down my temples and soaking into the chest of my shirt into droplets of ice water and teasing out goosebumps on my arms.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I switched the torch back on with an involuntary shudder, and my heart double beat its already-quick pace, I gasped in an extra breath – two figures were lit up right in front of me on the side of the road, two figures I hadn't seen, hadn't heard, hadn't sensed, two black shapes, barely more than ripples in the darkness, and I suddenly knew that if ghosts existed this is what they would look like – shapes that move the air without moving through it, shapes that you can stare at when you see them, stare at until you can't see them anymore, until you can see them again because they never left, did they? – they had no faces but I knew they had arms and they were close enough to reach out and grab me by the arm, close enough to rake claw-like fingernails down my back, they had no faces but I knew they had arms but they didn't move as I ran past, pretending not to have noticed them, they had no faces but I felt their eyes grab onto my shoulders as I ran past, yank at my arms, pull me by the wrist into the darkness filled with all of the things you can't see, I ran past, I heard the shuffle of feet behind me as I ran past, they were gone or I was, their eyes released their hold on me, they were gone or I couldn't see them anymore, I was alone again, I told myself that I was alone again.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I told myself that I was alone again. I kept running. I sped up. I left or tried to leave the two figures, the ghosts, behind me. The pounding of my feet grew louder. My breathing grew heavier. The faint jagged line of the division of trees and sky rose up ahead of me, grew higher until I had to look up to see it. I was running through the forest. I knew it from the daylight: the forest before the flat, empty, swampy plains that continued on for another ten or twelve kilometres to the lake. I kept running. I sped up. I was running through the forest and the pounding of my feet grew louder, it echoed off the tree trunks, sent out from where my feet hit the packed dirt into the wood and back, amplified once and again and a hundred times more off of a hundred tree trunks until it wasn't the pounding of my feet, not anymore, it was a tribal drum, a hundred tribal drums, carved out of the tree trunks, thundering the start of war, thundering to call down rain or fire. I kept running. I sped up. My breathing grew heavier and the breaths escaping my lungs twisted through the branches, wound back to my ears on the mist, swirled and crescendoed and echoed until they weren't breaths, they were whispers, they were words, I couldn't understand them but I knew what they were, the murmurs of a witchdoctor in the forest, off somewhere reciting incantations, </span><i>sim sala bim</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> on his tongue – and that's not my line, I know, but I like it – sending curses on the cool breeze, bringing my goosebumps back, whispering words that I couldn't understand, words that became louder than the drums, and war and rain and fire and curses and incantations swallowed everything else and then, one more step forward, went silent. I was out of the forest. I kept running.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The drums stopped crying for war and the curses evaporated into the mist and it was suddenly flat and empty. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was completely empty. I knew I could run for miles in any direction without hitting a hill, without hitting anything – unless I kept running straight, in which case I'd end up in a lake, but still.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The silence after the drums and the whispers was the same silence that had settled in after bony fists had stopped pounding on the latrine door. It was heavy. It swallowed up the pounding of my feet and the breaths that left my lungs. There was nothing anymore except the halo of light in front of me and I ran towards the halo of light and sped up but never reached it, but I'm easily amused so it was fun to play that game for a second and my mind went off somewhere or nowhere and there was nothing except running to catch the halo of light. At this point, on this morning, in this darkness and mist and chill, I should have known that nothing would become something and suddenly. My mind was brought back from nowhere in an instant, the feet-pounding breath-escaping sounds that had been dampened came roaring back on the mournful scream of a child, the mournful screams of children, at least a dozen of them, a dozen howls, lonely and sad and just feet away from me on either side of the road, they wailed, banshees, their cries so loud and long and mournful that I could see them, I convinced myself I could see them, their mouths open, sucking in the blackness and wailing it back out, mouths open so wide their jaws unhinged as they howled as they stood half hidden in the stalks of maize and millet and watched me and reached out to me and wailed at me, to me, crying to me, long skinny bodies between tall stalks, mouths open, eyes clear and full of confusion and sadness and an anger that they felt but couldn't identify because they could only cry out, long piercing notes, howling, wailing, drowning out the sounds of my running, clear eyes and unhinged jaws, I saw all of these things like in broad daylight or at least like in the trailer for </span><i>Children of the Corn</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, the children were wailing, my feet were pounding, the children were bleating their cries into the darkness, they were bleating, bleating – </span><i>wait.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> Bleating? </span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">They weren't children. </span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">They were goats. </span> </div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I stopped running. It was time to turn around.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I started running back towards town. I ran back past the mournful wails of the children of the corn. I ran past the thundering war drums and the whispered incantations. I ran past where the two figures had been standing at the side of the road, the ripples in the darkness, the faceless shapes with clawing eyes. I ran and formulated this blog post in my head, telling myself ghost stories until I believed them. I kept running. I sped up. I heard footsteps. I kept running. I looked behind me and there was a flash of light. Someone had switched on a torch, just like mine, then switched it off, like they'd seen me see them. But I'd seen them. I knew. They were going to follow me, they'd be faster than me, they'd run me down, I sped up, I looked over my shoulder, the torch flicked on and then off again, closer. I kept running. The torch flicked on, off, right behind me. I kept running. I looked over my shoulder. Nothing. I ran. I looked over my shoulder. Nothing. They'd given up – </span><i>because I am the fastest man alive!</i></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I kept running. My feet were still pounding on the road. I kept running, pounding, and then the earth shook, it rumbled and swallowed my pounding feet and then I was bathed in two beams of yellow light, they swallowed my torch, I was bathed in yellow light and blinded by it and I kept running, blindly. Earlier, I'd switched off the torch and ran blindly in the dark, now I was running blindly in the light. A lorry engine roared to life with the lights just behind me to my left – </span><i>why was there a lorry in the middle of nowhere? in the middle of the village? just sitting in the dark?</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> – and I knew. They were coming for me. They knew they couldn't run me down, I was too fast, faster than them, but they were coming for me, they weren't giving up yet, they had a lorry now. It swung out into the road behind me, I was running just beyond the furthest reach of the headlights, but it still made the ground rumble, the engine roared, they'd be on top of me, over top of me, in seconds, I sped up, my feet pounded the ground, the lights brushed my back, I sped up, I was sprinting now, and my foot scuffed over a rock and I pitched forward, stumbling, I stayed on my feet but I was out of control, I wouldn't stay up for long, I was bent forward and my arms windmilled at my sides, the torchlight shining erratically on the ground then the trees then the sky then the ditch then the trees then the sky and the lorry pulled closer, I found my balance and kept running, I stayed at the furthest edge of the headlights, I could feel the yellow light grabbing at my heels and my back, it was trying to swallow me, it wanted to blind me, they wanted to crush me in the rumbling earth, I ran, I could see the faint line of the horizon, the faint line separating this darkness full of everything from that darkness full of nothing, and the line took the shape of buildings, squat squared angles, and I knew I was almost there, I knew the turn for my house was coming up and I pounded the road, I ran, I sped up, the lorry sped up, the earth rumbled, the headlights burned my back, the yellow light swallowed my torch, the rumbling of the earth swallowed my footsteps, the squared angles of town grew closer, my turn was closer now, I ran, I sped up, I outran the yellow light, the heat, I outran the rumbling earth, I cut to the right and leapt over the ditch and was on my own road, and the lorry roared by, the yellow light didn't swallow my torch, they couldn't run me down, I was too fast, I was faster than them on foot, I was faster than them in a lorry, but my back was still hot from the headlights, my feet were still swallowed in the rumbling earth so I kept running, I wasn't home yet, but I knew they wouldn't catch me now, they never could, they knew it, they kept driving, farther, the rumbling died off, the yellow light of the headlights was replaced by yellow full moon security lights and fingers of mist beckoned me and this time I followed, I kicked cold water off of blades of grass and I swung my front door open swung myself inside swung the door shut in one quick motion and I was back inside, I was breathing heavily, my feet were still pounding even though I wasn't moving, I was back home, I'd outrun them all, they knew they would never be able to catch me, I was home, and I believed.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">So, yeah. No beheaded, defeathered hens, and I've still never met a witch or a wizard or a witchdoctor, but I (mostly-facetiously) believe.</span></div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">(The morals of the story – 1: Being chased by ghosts and children of the corn and demon lorries makes running way more fun. 2: I still have no idea what was pounding on the latrine door or who was running behind me with the torch. 3: Ok, fine, I do. It was a couple of those giant beetles battering themselves against the door, and the torch was a few fireflies that happened to light up in order so they kept getting closer. Don't you wish you didn't know, though?)</span></div>danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-10990870927293426872011-06-18T04:43:00.000-07:002011-06-18T04:43:06.335-07:00Home and Garden Dan-nelSee what I did there?<br />
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Now see what I'm doing here.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjluoqrwf8EpXttd7PKRCbqyKET3_RQ9hMag4bleRN3ot-r0c1R10UEi07gFiDRBQI448Sm0C_FOWV0mirq0qGokEOoc91QMaZnzrHvts5FqjV4Iju_qznvnjWWV_wrLYn21jxgwbHhSxYr/s1600/IMG_1734.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjluoqrwf8EpXttd7PKRCbqyKET3_RQ9hMag4bleRN3ot-r0c1R10UEi07gFiDRBQI448Sm0C_FOWV0mirq0qGokEOoc91QMaZnzrHvts5FqjV4Iju_qznvnjWWV_wrLYn21jxgwbHhSxYr/s640/IMG_1734.JPG" width="425" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvJTYtqihAG4jKZVgeIw01UQ2gbXqpmqf42SL0LVji1SZVPN_aAjwWxYnXAAgkhcdmczOMp-FnP4cWAX55DUGZ_JeFTS3z_A8h8kA0Q4xXSsyBppmia7flM0P-t_wfIw7Dtg8vvlSlRKkZ/s1600/IMG_1732.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvJTYtqihAG4jKZVgeIw01UQ2gbXqpmqf42SL0LVji1SZVPN_aAjwWxYnXAAgkhcdmczOMp-FnP4cWAX55DUGZ_JeFTS3z_A8h8kA0Q4xXSsyBppmia7flM0P-t_wfIw7Dtg8vvlSlRKkZ/s640/IMG_1732.JPG" width="425" /></a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo-BHfP80HcmzjIXtTmcCxdCsckMlhTKU-CP76wQETvCPXMDN29CXr3roxshtaVuTGK3gurMy3_x_N0kX2CKbz3r6rg3D79fvN_dkGyrCOvFNS4g_wVmWackHQH0yQpZ-XGECdN16XZshm/s1600/IMG_1719.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo-BHfP80HcmzjIXtTmcCxdCsckMlhTKU-CP76wQETvCPXMDN29CXr3roxshtaVuTGK3gurMy3_x_N0kX2CKbz3r6rg3D79fvN_dkGyrCOvFNS4g_wVmWackHQH0yQpZ-XGECdN16XZshm/s640/IMG_1719.JPG" width="426" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRmhCxdAyHKUfi6SwYE9rFC05g8WfvlTkIcNsszw6P3vv0t4JdxJorE4C4HTquk2jFsP4DnET6oP582fNsfxcJZ78KVzyWQuKxriBt2IFMwvWrVaeBHOMCPXpzmNQKDjfZi5HdpsdVdkVo/s1600/IMG_1727.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRmhCxdAyHKUfi6SwYE9rFC05g8WfvlTkIcNsszw6P3vv0t4JdxJorE4C4HTquk2jFsP4DnET6oP582fNsfxcJZ78KVzyWQuKxriBt2IFMwvWrVaeBHOMCPXpzmNQKDjfZi5HdpsdVdkVo/s640/IMG_1727.JPG" width="422" /></a> <br />
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This is my house, freshly painted, by me, a couple weeks ago. The first two are my living room / kitchen. The papyrus mat on the left wall is covering up a big metal door that went into the other half of the building which is either someone else' house or an office of a primary school -- I've heard both and don't know which one is true. But the metal doors were ugly to look at and a little too prison-y feeling, so the papyrus looks a little nicer. The map of Africa is from a 1950 National Geographic which is awesome but also makes me a little sad that I won't be able to go to places like Upper Volta and Bechuanaland. Then the third picture is my bedroom, again covering up a prison-style metal door. Please ignore all the unfolded laundry. Some of it is clean, some isn't, but either way I usually give it a smell-test before determining if something's ok to wear for a third time between washings. Then there's my bike and the blue color that I painted the window-walls in both of the rooms. And then there's the pictures of some of those pretty faces I left in the States. It's nice to have everything finally done, especially since it took six months to get all of this finished.<br />
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And this is my garden. It's a little bit hard to tell the mound of dirt from the rest of the dirt, but it's there. If you look at it from the top down, the whole in the middle -- there's no dirt in the middle of those sticks; that's where the compost goes -- and the little walkway in front make a keyhole shape, hence the name. Next time, I'll do a little better on the construction of the compost pit in the middle. The sticks are longer than they need to be and come together too much at the top, but, other than that, it's looking pretty good. I just planted a week ago, last Saturday, so not a whole lot is coming up yet, but the second picture is the two little cucumber plants that have sprouted nicely. There are also about six or seven beanstalks coming up so far, but for the lettuce and carrots that I planted, I'm having a hard time telling, right now, what are vegetables and what are weeds, so we'll see. The thorns that I put around it, I didn't get those out there until four days after I'd planted the seeds, and so I'm hoping the chickens didn't come and nom on all of my seeds. I also tried to follow the planting instructions on the seed packets, but I didn't know what things like 'sow thinly' meant, so I ended up going with the 'put a bunch of seeds everywhere and hope things grow' approach. Our rain has been less than consistent lately, too, so there are days where the entire garden is drenched and days where, at least on the surface, the soil is totally dry and cracked and rock-hard. So, green thumbs crossed. The last picture is part of the rest of The Nursery, what my org calls the field. All of that used to be long, pretty grass to lie in, and now, unfortunately, it's a buncha dirt. But I'm hoping that I can help plant there next planting season and we can try to do some biointensive techniques that I've been reading about in a manual I got from the Peace Corps office. But, in the distance there, is the big rock that marks the beginning of town, the one that I was on top of the last time I posted the pictures of town. So that's all that.<br />
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I've gotten some pretty good reactions towards my garden from people in town, too, which has been fun. A couple secondary school boys who'd come to help me cut the branches for the middle came back a few days later. I was just finishing up and getting ready to plant the next day, and they came up and said, Daniel! What is this you have made? I told them it was a garden. Sure?, one of them said, in the traditional high-pitched Ugandan-English exclamation of disbelief. Pretty sure, yeah, I said, and explained how it was supposed to work. Eh, one of them said, shaking his head in wonder, I have never seen such technology before in my life! Technology isn't quite the word I'd use to describe a pile of dirt and some sticks, but I laughed. It made me feel like I was building an alien spacecraft out in the field.<br />
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When I went into work a couple days after finishing, my supervisor said, Danieli, what is that you have made in the nursery? I told her that it was my garden. Ah, she said. We thought it was a trap. I laughed, again. Not quite.<br />
<br />
And, last time I wrote about the garden, I mentioned the boy who lives next door to The Nursery, who comes over and chats with me whenever I'm out there, and when I say chats with me, I mean that he speaks in really fast Ateso, 99% of which I can't understand, and so I just talk to him in English about whatever. Every once in a while, I'll be able to pick one or two words and get the gist of what he's saying and formulate some sort of coherent answer. So, he came over when I was getting ready to plant. I greeted him, <i>Yoga noi!</i>, literally saying hello very much and asked how he was doing, <i>Biaibo ijo?</i> He said he was fine. <i>Biabibo esomero?</i>, I asked. He said school was fine. And then he said, <i>Ateso ateso! Ateso ateso ateso ateso. Ateso? Ateso ateso.</i> And I said, Oh, I know, right? I can't believe it, either. He laughed, like he always does when I talk to him in English, and said, <i>Ateso, ateso ateso. Ateso ateso ateso </i>etogo<i> ateso?</i>, and he made a motion to go down the walkway of the garden and crouch through, into the middle part. He was asking if it was a house. I laughed, again. <i>Ejai etogo kon?</i>, I said, asking him if it was his house. He said it wasn't. <i>Ikoto ijo etogo?</i>, I said, asking if he wanted it to be his house. He said he didn't. <i>Aso...</i> I said, disappointed -- Well... And then I explained that there were going to be carrots, cabbage -- because I don't know if there's a word for lettuce -- and beans and cucumbers. He seemed disappointed. Maybe I should've just told him that it <i>was</i> a house.<br />
<br />
(And, speaking of cobbling together sentences in Ateso, one short, last sidestory: There's a restaurant in town that I've been going to fairly often in the last couple months. All they serve is posho -- a cakey sort of thing made of maize flour and water -- and beans, but it's a ridiculous amount of food for 1000/=, and, since that's all they ever serve, I can go in there and just say, <i>Eong da inyamat</i>. This always makes me happy because that literally translates as <i>Me also food</i>. It seems like the most appropriate way to ask for a two pound bowl of food.)danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-49416095455284891102011-06-14T08:54:00.000-07:002011-06-14T08:54:19.671-07:00Sunset Bike RidesSometimes I really love it when there're only four colors here that are visible as far off into the distance as I can see and they're each clearly demarcated from the others, they each have their place, their thing they're made of, and they don't mix. Red dirt road, pile of red bricks; green grass, green bushes, green trees; blue sky, painfully blue; white clouds, puffy and scattered and then gathering. But then something else will come along and it won't care about the four colors and the demarcation and the not mixing. Sometimes it's yellow jerrycans balanced on someone's head, sometimes it's a couple kids in fluorescent pink school uniforms, and sometimes it's even better than that and it's a woman in a wrap skirt that's such a garish neon orange that it's refusing the onset of night and competing not with the four colors of the daytime but with the thousand shades of a fading sunset that seems to be sucking the color from everywhere else and combining or rearranging or remixing it all back together and then flinging it across the western sky so that there's no color anywhere except where the sun wants there to be, because it's egotistical and jealous and it wants you not just to look, but to stare, it's telling you, Look at <i>me</i>, I'm<i> </i>a <i>sunset</i>, and everything else is soaked in gathering darkness, a dull purple-gray, and there's only her in her wrap skirt, one woman who's refusing to be covered by darkness and refusing to let the sun have all the color.<br />
<br />
I saw her a few nights ago when I was riding my bike while the sun went down. This has become one of my favorite things to do since I got a bike a few months ago. It's cool out and beautiful and sometimes it's fun to race the rain home and all the bugs I ingest when they fly into my mouth or get stuck under my eyelids -- I always try to remember to take out my contacts and wear my glasses instead but I always forget -- or burrow into my ears are really good sources of protein and picking them out of my hair keeps me occupied for a good thirty minutes after I get home.<br />
<br />
Everything else had given its color to the sun, which spread orange and purple and pink and soft golden yellow across dark black rainclouds with absolutely no regard to the daytime splits between red, green, blue, and white. So the sunset was colorful to an obscene degree, the sun was angry, out to prove a point, and everything else was simply darkening, shaded over, dusk. And then she was there and it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was, this glowing bit of orange in the middle of a field, anything but shaded over, lighting the area around her rather than simply growing dark, she was bent over, hinged at the waist, digging -- gardening -- in the small field near her huts and that skirt, that neon orange, was her challenge to the setting sun because she still had work to do and as I pedaled past it seemed like she could have kept digging all night if she wanted to, lighting her fields with that bit of sunset wrapped around her waist.<br />
<br />
So the sun eventually gave up, having proved its point for the day or having realized it would never get the color from that woman's skirt, and all that was left were broad swathes of gold and silver across black clouds, all off to my right as I rode south back towards town. But once the sun is down, here, it is dark almost immediately and when there's no moon I have to get off my bike and walk because I can't see the ruts and potholes and puddles in the road anymore and, with no shocks and a hard plastic seat, hitting any of those things at any speed is less than fun. Darkening, shaded over, turned to dark, pitch, and cloud cover blocked the unbelievable number of stars you can see here and the shimmering line of the Milky Way, and, as I walked, I was left with three sources of light.<br />
<br />
The flat, solid layer of clouds overhead was pulled and bunched and piled up in the distance, south and west, and there was the lightning, you knew it was coming, just bursts of illumination inside the clouds. And then there were fireflies, more than I think I've ever seen, flickering on and off, no fewer than a hundred lit up in front of me at any one time and they'd strobe their way over the fields and they'd blink their way across the road and, once, and then two, three times, one flew right past the side of my face, leaving a comet trail of yellow light lingering in my peripheral vision. And then there was another light ahead of me, small and round and indistinguishable, at first, from the snowflakes-under-a-streetlamp-at-night of the fireflies, until I realized it was constant and growing, quickly, the headlight of an oncoming boda, and it got larger and brighter and closer until it swallowed everything else, the lightning and the fireflies and the darkness and me, until the whole world as I could see it was dusty yellow light, just for a second, and then the boda was past and everything was darker than before and shapeless until the light from the fireflies poked through and I could make out shapes again, or maybe not shapes but just variations of dark, and could be sure I was still on the road, not walking through a field, like the time I didn't realize I was in someone's cemetery until I tripped on a headstone, and when I got back home and the power was out, three or four fireflies came inside with me, the only time I've ever liked having bugs in the house, and so, for a little while, I left the candles unlit.danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879438586074986593.post-40495361687241671172011-06-14T07:25:00.000-07:002011-06-14T07:25:45.944-07:00Chronic City ReduxOne more from that book that, I think, gets at the heart of this here web-log.<br />
<blockquote><b>These guessing words I find junked in my brain in deranged juxtaposition, like files randomly stuffed into cabinets by a dispirited secretary with no notion of what, if anything, might ever be usefully retrieved. Often all language seems this way: a monstrous compendium of embedded histories I'm helpless to understand. I employ it the way a dog drives a car, without grasping how the car came to exist or what makes a combustion engine possible. That is, of course, if dogs drove cars. They don't. Yet I go around forming sentences.</b></blockquote>I think that about sums what I do on here.danieljamesflynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04393943742456366094noreply@blogger.com0