Uncategorized
The smoke plumes black and acrid, catching in the branches of the banana tree peering leisurely over my glass tipped fence. The plastic and coated paper smolder below, blue and orange flames peak and then disappear into the charred ooze that is this week’s garbage. My compost festers in a hole at the back corner […]
September 4, 2010 Iganga Town (en route to Jinja), Ugnada Mutatus are exercises in patience, tolerance, and humor. Every president, general, and potential saint should have to ride in one for at least a three-hour journey. The mutatu, a minivan divided into four rows of seats that could comfortably (if you ignore your knees) seat […]
Iganga Town, Uganda September 1, 2010 “I’m thinking about Columbia.” My mother’s perfect composure cracked and she whispered fiercely, “why do you always have to go so far away?” I’d just gotten back from South Africa and my mother mistook my interest in Columbia, for graduate school, with an interest in South America. She was […]
September 1, 2010 Iganga Town, Uganda The issue with long distance sick-ing is two-fold. There is the long distance part. The idea that folks who care about you are worried and can’t do anything. They can’t bring you soup or see you to make sure you aren’t worse than you say (which when far away […]
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 […]
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 […]
mad mzungo
September 4, 2010 Iganga Town, Uganda I was fuming. My mind working out possible solutions to a work problem. The sun glaring down on me, perspiration filming salty and shiny on my top lip. The ground, uneven and muddy, passed unnoticed beneath my feet. . “Mzungo goodbye,” somehow penetrated the roar in my head and […]
Continue reading about mad mzungo