Iganga Town, Uganda August 31, 2010 There are some americanism, my inner mzungo so to speak, that I would presume are rigid and inflexible. I’d be wrong but I sometimes argue with myself that it is true. Personal space is one of those things. From my history I know that I can work through the […]
It has been raining for hours, a symphony on a tin roof lulling to the patter of flowing tears. I should be sleeping. This is my favorite lullaby. The night wrapping me in a moist embrace and singing sweetly to me. But I find myself stingy with this unquiet. The electricity flashed away by a […]
August 24, 2010 Iganga Town, Uganda If I were to map my town, take stock of people and places…really look and not simply let it pass me as I stroll, it would be full of sounds and color and scents. Even on a two dimensional piece of paper it would spring to life because life […]
August 21, 2010 Iganga Town, Uganda I haven’t mastered this pseudo post-colonial era in africa. In truth, this is my first true interaction with the way things probably were. I have a high fence with broken bottles glittering in the sunlight to deter unwanted visitors. And if that fence fails I have an armed guard […]
It was the sound of distress. High pitched, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was or where it was coming from. Two young men looked back to where they’d just passed and, seeing nothing, continued. I stopped and peered in the pile of refuse perpetually piled on the side of that busy dirt road […]
August 15, 2010 Mabira, Uganda Tired from the cold night huddled in a bed with three of my colleagues, a disconcerting dream lingering like the early morning dampness under forest cover, we trudged up the muddy incline leading to the road out of Mabira forest. A truck full of UVP interns and staff slowed to […]
August 14, 2010 Mabira forest, Uganda The plastic smoldered, drew itself up from clear blue womanly shapes and bright yellow shopping bags to black jewels glistening on ashen logs. The Ugandan interns burned the plastic we’d all collected – the rubbish that has been strewn haphazardly around the party site. We mzungos* intended to throw […]
August 6, 2010 We angled the car into a space under the dappled shade of a tree. The dust settling along the dirt road we’d traveled. A cluster of women rose to their feet and began ululating and dancing – voices and hips raising and lowering in circuits of joy. We had arrived. The village […]
The air is thick and chewy like old gum. Trucks belch black smoke and trash burns in invisible fires in the distance. Bodas (motorcycles), immune to laws of traffic and good sense, weave between cars and -when time and lack of space dictates- speed along sidewalks narrowly missing pedestrians. Kampala isn’t quiet. Colorful buildings in […]
best of intentions
August 29, 2010 Iganga Town, Uganda Finding the balance is treacherous. Somewhere between apathy-inducing sympathy and hypocritical heartlessness I have to believe lays the way to help people help themselves. I have no delusions of grandeur. No belief that I have solutions to old and complex problems that a whole country and generations of people […]
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