Uganda
Reconciling my own feelings about working overseas in development is difficult enough. Is there harm done? To what extent? Is there good? Does it make up for the bad? I don’t believe good intentions are enough, that something is always better than nothing. Sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease. But how do […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 – […]
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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