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It has been a month since H’s motorcycle-taxi collided head-on with a car speeding in the opposite direction down the same dirt road. Four weeks since the curious crowd surged around him poking at his limp body while TQ and J tried desperately to fend them off, call for help, get him to the hospital. […]
Jeganda isn’t the brightest bird in the nest. When TQ, my roommate, brought her home we blamed it on the traumatic ride. After all, she’d been hung upside-down by her legs on the back of a bicycle. You can imagine she’d be a little off kilter. We tied her to our mango tree in the […]
The air is thick with the ash of trash fires and old engine emissions. It is like breathing gravy and my lungs stretch themselves to capacity to keep me conscious. Walking up the hill to mulago hospital’s other entrance, because the guard wouldn’t let me through the gate, my backpack pulling each step back a […]
It is extortion. Beyond amoral, it is cruel. It is inhuman…not inhumane but actually absent of all humanity. The hospital TeaQueen took our friend to on Monday was holding him hostage with an ever rising ransom disguised as a hospital bill. IHK is known as the best hospital in Uganda. When Shoes and T were […]
Two years living in rural South Africa, where the lucky pulled their water from a bore hole and the unlucky walked miles away to gather theirs from a questionable open source, I began to realize the luxury of potable water. And as my eyes and my habits adjusted to village life, I began to understand […]
I was returned to my college days, my peace corps ones. returned to the joy that a tiny slip of paper in my mailbox can conjure. Yesterday I got a package from my parents. And the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, a day more in need of pepping. I almost didn’t trudge down to […]
in my south african village, so many years ago the fortunate pumped their water from private bore holes (deep wells) – the public one in the center of the village long broken. the less fortunate walked miles to a questionable open source. one ran clear and tasted like no other water i’ve ever had (filtered […]
Places sink into me, routines form around my actions like crust on freshly baking bread. Walking through the moist darkness after an evening deluge, the stars obscured by lingering clouds and the smell of sorghum home-brew floating headily in the air, I adjusted my eyes do the darkness and dodged puddles in the ruts of […]
Iganga Town, Uganda October 27, 2010 Mickey was cute…at first. Funny in his lack of fear and disregard of anyone sitting and watching him meander across the concrete floor, climb the book shelf, and nestle there like we were all pals. He was Ralph S. Mouse minus the motorcycle. Ralph S. Mouse with the added […]
the body of an accident
They were staring. Crowding and staring. When J was finally able to move from where he stood vigil over his cousin’s body, his view obstructed by a set of swinging doors and multiple rows of beds with people languishing in various degrees of care or lack thereof, he was crowded and people stared. Unseeing – […]
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