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Happily ensconced in skype, I didn’t hear anything until my roommate knocked on my closed bedroom door. I looked up, distracted by my friend talking on the other side of the world. “the guard has caught someone and he’s holding him in the yard.” I smiled and nodded at her. I’m unsure why. It wasn’t […]
Kamuli Mission Hospital, Uganda The morning was cool. clouds coated the sky in patches, the sun still shining through as the women emerged a few at a time from inside the health center. Some smiled shyly, extending a hand, sometimes two to clasp mine in greeting. Others extended hands without the smile. Eyes shadowed – […]
Kampala, Uganda October 7, 2010 “I haven’t even been proposed to here, I think I’m insulted.” I was half joking but in retrospect I can hear how it must have sounded. No knowledge of my constant proposals in South Africa, no context for “love at first sight” in Liberia, it must have sounded absurd. James, […]
She lay there. Still. Mechanical breath raising and lowering her chest with a slight pause – a stutter in the system. The monitors flashed green and red, moaned indecipherably, whirs and screeches that – unmet by rushing attendants – were usual sounds. T’s head bandaged tightly at the crown, odd pinkish coloring against her soft […]
The sound, like distant thunder, vibrated in my ears. Constant. Dull. Roaring. The thin brown trail, a muddy groove tread into the lush greenery of the mountain side slipped underfoot, sucked at the bottom of my shoes, and cascaded rocks below. The view varied, sometimes obscured by banana trees and dried corn stalks, others, open […]
Iganga Town, Uganda September 27, 2010 The power flickered. The surge protector, a metal box about three or four times the size of a box of Kleenex clicked off then on then off then on then off. I groaned. The thing is, we’d had a conversation about buying paraffin earlier in the day. Even had […]
Iganga Town, Uganda September 25, 2010 They smiled at me through my open window, me splayed out in the bed watching a movie on my laptop. I’d just pulled my earplugs out because I…I guess I heard them coming. Our guard grinned down at me as I waved them all in the direction of the […]
Iganga Town, Uganda September 24, 2010 I love Zimbabwean noses, think John Amos from good times; Liberian bodies, ebony skin pulled taut and shiny over highlighted muscle. In Uganda it is the lips. Full, soft, dark. They defy comparison, only the reality that they are what lips should be. I file these things away and […]
by 11am i had been taken advantage of…twice…and was starving and tired. the ride into kampala, which in waiting terms began before 8am, was relatively quick. of course it would have helped if i had printed the conference information. instead i managed a tour of parts of the city i’d never seen, walked through makerere […]
September 19, 2010 Iganga Town, Uganda The music meandered from marvin gaye’s sexual healing with a techno beat dropped in, it to shakira’s world cup African anthem. Bubbles O’Leary, one of Kampala’s busiest night spots, was equally diverse. I spent most of the evening trying not to stare as people mingled inexplicably. I say inexplicably […]
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