Yesterday I went shoe shopping for the perfect heels to wear to parties and last night my friend J and I fought it out about whether to go to THIS party on the lake front or THAT party on the lake front and then I went to a party and I danced on the lake front.
Today my lovely friend A came to my house and she cut my hair for me, it really needed it, and I sat on a table on our terrace while she snip-snipped split ends and I soaked up vitamin-D and I watched the sky over Lake Kivu and how it changes colors constantly almost like what I imagine Aurora Borealis must be like only all pinks and yellows and in daylight with the lake all green and blue and brown beneath it.
Then we lay in lounge chairs weaved together from natural fibers from across the border in Rwanda and we read magazines, I read about Oprah and A read about Health Ledger, and for a second I had to remind myself that I wasn’t on holiday somewhere – that this is my home and my daily life. And that outside my gates there is a war, a war, a war.
And what does my existence here mean to that war?
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Shoe Mart
C & I went to the used-shoes market this morning.
It’s like any other market. Rough black lava floors, wooden skeleton, tarp and thatched roof. But then, it’s also not like any other market because it only sells shoes. Oh the shoes! So many many shoes. Tennis shoes, sandals, cowboy boots.
We went because C wanted black ballet flats to go with the green-and-black panya she is having made into a tunic.
We found (oh, the amazing things we found!) bright shiny blue heels for me and (oh my god, and!) green converse sneaker-stiletto hybrid high heels for C. Which she bought.
Why did she buy them?
Partially because of peer pressure (I told her she HAD to) and partially because they are so ugly it’s incredible.
But mainly because they are spectacular.
It’s like any other market. Rough black lava floors, wooden skeleton, tarp and thatched roof. But then, it’s also not like any other market because it only sells shoes. Oh the shoes! So many many shoes. Tennis shoes, sandals, cowboy boots.
We went because C wanted black ballet flats to go with the green-and-black panya she is having made into a tunic.
We found (oh, the amazing things we found!) bright shiny blue heels for me and (oh my god, and!) green converse sneaker-stiletto hybrid high heels for C. Which she bought.
Why did she buy them?
Partially because of peer pressure (I told her she HAD to) and partially because they are so ugly it’s incredible.
But mainly because they are spectacular.
Friday, February 26, 2010
The Day Before Tomorrow
Things are looking up! At the 11th hour two of my dear good colleagues whose company I enjoy were snatched from the yawning jaw of unemployment and now get to stay here. Here with me. With me! So I am happy. I even got to tell one of them and when the other told me I screamed a bit and hugged her.
We had a fun staff dinner last night. We laughed & ate tasty food & drank red red wine on the stone terrace beneath the thatched roof overlooking the waves crashing into the lava rock, and sometimes we could feel the spray.
The chopped-up-poisoned-fish are still there still on the floor in front of my office door but I have a promise that after this weekend we can revisit the mice-disposal strategy that involves putting chopped-up-poisoned-fish in front of my office door. This is not the forward movement towards not having chopped-up-poisoned-fish in front of my office door that I may desire, but it is a guarantee of future dialogue, so, for now, I can accept that. Plus I made a big red sign warning the mice to stay away. And they seem to have. No dead mice and no little teeth marks in the poisoned fish.
My room, which yesterday morning had three inches of mud as a squishy ugly rug, after The Flood, is now sparkling clean. God bless our miracle-working colleagues who clean my room and make my bed and fix the pipes. My mosquito net is the only thing still damaged but I'll live.
Tomorrow is the weekend and I have gotten so much of my work done and the strangers living in my house are no longer so unknown and my friend J is in Kin for work flying to Goma on Monday and and and! It's a great little world we live in.
We had a fun staff dinner last night. We laughed & ate tasty food & drank red red wine on the stone terrace beneath the thatched roof overlooking the waves crashing into the lava rock, and sometimes we could feel the spray.
The chopped-up-poisoned-fish are still there still on the floor in front of my office door but I have a promise that after this weekend we can revisit the mice-disposal strategy that involves putting chopped-up-poisoned-fish in front of my office door. This is not the forward movement towards not having chopped-up-poisoned-fish in front of my office door that I may desire, but it is a guarantee of future dialogue, so, for now, I can accept that. Plus I made a big red sign warning the mice to stay away. And they seem to have. No dead mice and no little teeth marks in the poisoned fish.
My room, which yesterday morning had three inches of mud as a squishy ugly rug, after The Flood, is now sparkling clean. God bless our miracle-working colleagues who clean my room and make my bed and fix the pipes. My mosquito net is the only thing still damaged but I'll live.
Tomorrow is the weekend and I have gotten so much of my work done and the strangers living in my house are no longer so unknown and my friend J is in Kin for work flying to Goma on Monday and and and! It's a great little world we live in.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
This week:
My room flooded i had a problem with a jerk colleague three of my dear friends are leaving town i have so much confusing work due all at once my lovely boss is on vacation there are strangers living in my house we've had tons of security meetings people are trying to kill mice by putting dead fish sprinkled with poison in front of my door and and and and!
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Flood
When I lived in The Gambia it rained really hard one night and our compound floodedfloodedflooded and I had to throw all my belongings atop my cot at 1 am and dashdash dash outside. In Kitgum there was no running water. Here in Goma, there is running water with such great pressure that a pipe burst and my room has flooded again. And the world spins.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Cute KIDS by the Side of the Road!
Sometimes kids here are dressed in the most random tee shirts and ripped pants, and then they remind me of my four baby boy cousins.
My baby boy cousins are growing up on a farm in rural France. They have chores like feeding the chicks and chasing down cows. Kids here have chores like that, too.
At 6, my baby boy cousins learn to drive the smaller of the tractors. Kids here don’t get to, because they don’t have many tractors. But kids here get crazy responsibilities, like caring for their younger siblings and walking long distances alone and working for money and and and
My baby boy cousins are dressed in hand-me-downs most of the time because really? Why not? When N was just over four years old, he grinned at me and said he was going to grab a sweater before teaching me how to feed the chicks-to-be-slaughtered. His little footsteps echoed on the floorboards overhead – he came back, gripped my hand, pulled me to the door. And he was wearing this bright purple sweatshirt thing that had “I’m a Sweet Irish Girl” stamped across it.
“E,” I said to his mother afterwards, “do you realize you are cross-dressing my cousins?”
E rolled her eyes at me and gave me a look. “It’s warm. It’s functional. It was free. He’s going to destroy it soon enough with the dirt of the farm anyway. Why not?”
Yeah, okay. Lesson learnt.
For the children here, partially it’s poverty, the way they dress. My cousins have clean suits to wear to church. Not all these children do.
But partially it’s not. And all those stupid sensationalistic news articles describing kids here and they clothes they wear, in an attempt to evoke pity in the minds of their mindless readers, are so often missing the point.
My baby boy cousins are growing up on a farm in rural France. They have chores like feeding the chicks and chasing down cows. Kids here have chores like that, too.
At 6, my baby boy cousins learn to drive the smaller of the tractors. Kids here don’t get to, because they don’t have many tractors. But kids here get crazy responsibilities, like caring for their younger siblings and walking long distances alone and working for money and and and
My baby boy cousins are dressed in hand-me-downs most of the time because really? Why not? When N was just over four years old, he grinned at me and said he was going to grab a sweater before teaching me how to feed the chicks-to-be-slaughtered. His little footsteps echoed on the floorboards overhead – he came back, gripped my hand, pulled me to the door. And he was wearing this bright purple sweatshirt thing that had “I’m a Sweet Irish Girl” stamped across it.
“E,” I said to his mother afterwards, “do you realize you are cross-dressing my cousins?”
E rolled her eyes at me and gave me a look. “It’s warm. It’s functional. It was free. He’s going to destroy it soon enough with the dirt of the farm anyway. Why not?”
Yeah, okay. Lesson learnt.
For the children here, partially it’s poverty, the way they dress. My cousins have clean suits to wear to church. Not all these children do.
But partially it’s not. And all those stupid sensationalistic news articles describing kids here and they clothes they wear, in an attempt to evoke pity in the minds of their mindless readers, are so often missing the point.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Goma is:
Morning. Billowy white clouds and a smell of rain. D and C and I fabric-shop in the hectic market. We run our fingers over flows of fabrics feeling the cotton, dazzled by the bright reds yellows greens brilliant blues of hibiscuses, roses, birds.
Afternoon. I teach at the one-roomed school. The children raise their small hands and ask questions in little voices. I teach them the PAST TENSE of IRREGULAR VERBS like drink/drank, eat/ate. I tell them a joke. Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 ate 9. No one understands. And no one understands. And then suddenly there is a gasp and the surprised crystal laugh of a girl in the back and soon everyone understands, and everyone laughs, and I laugh, and we laugh together Ha! Ha! Ha!
Tomorrow. Sunday. To the beach! Sand between my toes. Friends and freshly-squeezed strawberry juice! Sunshine-kissed skin.
And Goma is:
Today, noon. D and I are outside of the grocery store. D is crowded by the street boys who know her by name and who tease her and she teases back. One boy: Last month D saw him get beat by a security guard and she saw his head sliced and his blood flowing but now here he is, grinning at her, and she is so relieved. The scar on his head is rough, but small and healed. She hands him a packet of Hit cookies and directs him to share and he and the other boys run off to a corner of the lot and divvy the cookies up, seriously, fairly. A young woman wrapped in dirty fabric with red-and-blue lillies on it wanders over to them and she holds out her hand, she asks for a piece. And they find one-and-a-half cookies for her, too, these sweet boys. The young woman turns around, cookies in hand. We can see her face. On it is a smile. Big eyes. Thick lashes. But no nose. Instead of a nose there is a gaping hole through which you can see bone and you can see pink.
Afternoon. I teach at the one-roomed school. The children raise their small hands and ask questions in little voices. I teach them the PAST TENSE of IRREGULAR VERBS like drink/drank, eat/ate. I tell them a joke. Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 ate 9. No one understands. And no one understands. And then suddenly there is a gasp and the surprised crystal laugh of a girl in the back and soon everyone understands, and everyone laughs, and I laugh, and we laugh together Ha! Ha! Ha!
Tomorrow. Sunday. To the beach! Sand between my toes. Friends and freshly-squeezed strawberry juice! Sunshine-kissed skin.
And Goma is:
Today, noon. D and I are outside of the grocery store. D is crowded by the street boys who know her by name and who tease her and she teases back. One boy: Last month D saw him get beat by a security guard and she saw his head sliced and his blood flowing but now here he is, grinning at her, and she is so relieved. The scar on his head is rough, but small and healed. She hands him a packet of Hit cookies and directs him to share and he and the other boys run off to a corner of the lot and divvy the cookies up, seriously, fairly. A young woman wrapped in dirty fabric with red-and-blue lillies on it wanders over to them and she holds out her hand, she asks for a piece. And they find one-and-a-half cookies for her, too, these sweet boys. The young woman turns around, cookies in hand. We can see her face. On it is a smile. Big eyes. Thick lashes. But no nose. Instead of a nose there is a gaping hole through which you can see bone and you can see pink.
Friday, February 19, 2010
R&R Number the First (Part Three)
[continued…]
11 February 2010, Gulu 3:56 PM
Pulling into the Gulu buspark and there! out the window! is a Land Cruiser belonging to the NGO my friend K is employed by.
Shove aside and climb over the people who seem to be just lounging in the aisle, oh my gosh, won't you move!?
And suddenly I am outside in the sandy dry heat of the North. I run up to the window of the LC and tap-tap-tap and it is rolled down. The apologetic driver explains to me that K is out of the country. I give a message to be delivered to her, turn around, scan for C, breath in the North, and think how lovely it is to be in a region where I know people, which is so different from the bright (MONUC) lights big city black lava of Goma.
Gulu buspark. Oh I do think it looks different, it seems more normal. Yes, on the drive up the country you can still see the gradual fade out of government support from “a lot” in Kampala to “just about none” in the North. But. Different from fourteen months ago, it seems – oh, I don’t know. Happier?
But maybe that is just me, happy to be back.
Restaurant, 4:18 PM
C and I, brown with dust mixed with sweat smearing our skins along with bus grime, are digging into our sugar crepes when in he walks. P. And – what is that in his arms? – it is my lovely beautiful baby-nephew-baby J.
J, fourteen months later.
Babies grow.
When I left he was learning to stand. Today, he is running running running circles around the restaurant, up to other tables, grinning, giggling, charming everybody.
The Road, 4:39 PM
We settle the tab and together, along with P’s sister-in-law and cousin, climb onto motorcycle taxis and ride them twenty-five minutes outside of town to P’s grandfather’s farm. I spread my arms like poor oppressed Kate Winslet in Titanic feeling freeeeeeeeee as we are flyyyyyyying past huts and homes and trees and people and. Red dust devils are surging beside us. I pull my arms back in and grip the shoulders of my boda-boda driver, feeling his taunt muscles flex beneath my fingers.
Grandfather's Farm, 5:19 PM
P recently lost his job (he was a protection officer with an international NGO but the North is no longer a war zone so donors are slashing funds and NGOs are pulling back, away). While he searches for new employment, he is raising bees, vines, trees, for honey, oranges, even grapes (grapes!).
Even the trees which do not bear fruit are important to cultivate, he tells us, because of land tenure rights, sure, but mainly because of climate change - and so because of J and all the children like J.
12 February 2010, Gulu 8:12 AM
Intercultural communication is, as always, a tripper-upper in interpersonal comprehension. Last night we took P out to dinner because that is what you do, as an American guest – you repay hospitality, you get people food. It was a lovely dinner, so fun, but P was resistant to our treating him. We were insistent, and stubborn, my cousin and me.
We stayed in a hotel because there is no room at P’s house. What does P do? At night, he sneaks into our hotel lobby and pays our bill for us.
I feel like I am a misunderstanding, yet actual-real-accepted, part of his community, and I love.
[On to Kitgum... to be continuuuued...]
11 February 2010, Gulu 3:56 PM
Pulling into the Gulu buspark and there! out the window! is a Land Cruiser belonging to the NGO my friend K is employed by.
Shove aside and climb over the people who seem to be just lounging in the aisle, oh my gosh, won't you move!?
And suddenly I am outside in the sandy dry heat of the North. I run up to the window of the LC and tap-tap-tap and it is rolled down. The apologetic driver explains to me that K is out of the country. I give a message to be delivered to her, turn around, scan for C, breath in the North, and think how lovely it is to be in a region where I know people, which is so different from the bright (MONUC) lights big city black lava of Goma.
Gulu buspark. Oh I do think it looks different, it seems more normal. Yes, on the drive up the country you can still see the gradual fade out of government support from “a lot” in Kampala to “just about none” in the North. But. Different from fourteen months ago, it seems – oh, I don’t know. Happier?
But maybe that is just me, happy to be back.
Restaurant, 4:18 PM
C and I, brown with dust mixed with sweat smearing our skins along with bus grime, are digging into our sugar crepes when in he walks. P. And – what is that in his arms? – it is my lovely beautiful baby-nephew-baby J.
J, fourteen months later.
Babies grow.
When I left he was learning to stand. Today, he is running running running circles around the restaurant, up to other tables, grinning, giggling, charming everybody.
The Road, 4:39 PM
We settle the tab and together, along with P’s sister-in-law and cousin, climb onto motorcycle taxis and ride them twenty-five minutes outside of town to P’s grandfather’s farm. I spread my arms like poor oppressed Kate Winslet in Titanic feeling freeeeeeeeee as we are flyyyyyyying past huts and homes and trees and people and. Red dust devils are surging beside us. I pull my arms back in and grip the shoulders of my boda-boda driver, feeling his taunt muscles flex beneath my fingers.
Grandfather's Farm, 5:19 PM
P recently lost his job (he was a protection officer with an international NGO but the North is no longer a war zone so donors are slashing funds and NGOs are pulling back, away). While he searches for new employment, he is raising bees, vines, trees, for honey, oranges, even grapes (grapes!).
Even the trees which do not bear fruit are important to cultivate, he tells us, because of land tenure rights, sure, but mainly because of climate change - and so because of J and all the children like J.
12 February 2010, Gulu 8:12 AM
Intercultural communication is, as always, a tripper-upper in interpersonal comprehension. Last night we took P out to dinner because that is what you do, as an American guest – you repay hospitality, you get people food. It was a lovely dinner, so fun, but P was resistant to our treating him. We were insistent, and stubborn, my cousin and me.
We stayed in a hotel because there is no room at P’s house. What does P do? At night, he sneaks into our hotel lobby and pays our bill for us.
I feel like I am a misunderstanding, yet actual-real-accepted, part of his community, and I love.
[On to Kitgum... to be continuuuued...]
Thursday, February 18, 2010
R&R Number the First (Parts One & Two)
On the Road 6-Feb-2010, 12:48 PM
Driving Goma-Kigali (I mean, obviously, being driven). This is my fourth time on this route. It is impossible to describe the beauty. Imagine Heidi in the Swiss Alps. Replace the Alps with fluid waves of green hills. There you go: That’s Rwanda. The first time & second & third time that I made this trip, my eye was glued to the viewfinder of my camera. My camera was glued to the window.
This time I recognized a lot of the road. It is probably one of the most beautiful drives in the world. I am familiar with it – the greenery, the thick brown rivers, the thin cascading falls. I didn’t feel the need to document every square centimeter of it. It is nice to feel that it is no longer a brand new sight that could POOF up and disappear at any second. I didn’t feel the necessity of recording it in electronic pixels. I sat back, relaxed, and let the beauty wash over me. I drank it in.
Kigali 2:24 PM
Sitting in the Kigali airport, waiting for my (35 minute) flight to Entebbe. My body is, I mean. I would like my mind to catch up to it. My mind is engrossed in imaginary discussions with colleagues and donors. Physically I have left the office. Mentally? No.
Omg omg I just went over our itinerary. It is so packed. Ten days, six cities/towns. Omg. I will need a vacation from this vacation.
The stress of this takes away the stress of the office, like when you stub your toe hard and it hurts so much that you forget you had a headache. But this isn’t PAIN. This is VACATION. Or, to be specific, R&R. REST and RELAXATION.
But FLYING, which I will soon be doing. It is a shedding of skin, a detachment of your self from your earthly life. Goodbye cell phone goodbye internet goodbye everything. Worldly worries stay behind on the ground while you climb miles up into the atmosphere. You heft them back up when you land, of course, but maybe not all of them, and they seem somehow lighter, anyway, because the muscles of your soul have had a chance to rest.
Entebbe 8:15 PM
Entebbe Airport. For my first two-some hours here I thought that I didn’t recognize it. I was picturing myself last December in this airport waiting to fly away. But when I remembered that I am in the ARRIVAL wing and not the DEPARTURE wing and when I pictured myself ARRIVING in East Africa for the first time ever, then. Yes. I remember it distinctly. Here is where I was stumbling with my duffle bag, bleary-eyed. Here is where the driver was standing with the sign. There is where I hugged my old classmate/colleague J, back when we were on speaking terms, and he made the hour-and-a-half trip to greet me, before some shit hit a couple of fans.
And now here I am. I am so mystified sometimes by the passage of time. Here I stand waiting to meet my cousin, C, in this same spot. I will go hug her as she drags her bags. Did the woman whom I just bought my new Ugandan SIM card from work here last year? What about the guy at the bar with the big sign that says MILKSHAKES but that doesn’t actually sell milkshakes? If I had been awake enough to look around me a year and a half ago, would I recognize them now today? Have they been coming to work constantly day-in day-out in, between my Entebbe Airport bookends? What is it like to be them and to be familiar with this waiting lounge like the back of their hands and to not be bewildered by finding themselves back here? Life is weird.
Life is weird. When was the last time I saw C? Six years ago in the mad bustle of her big brother’s wedding? I am writing this in my journal while watching people walk past drag themselves past scan the crowd for friends scan the crowd for signs that say their names. These are people from C’s airplane. Their faces are presumably somewhat familiar to her as she has just spent 10 hours trapped in a speeding metal canister with them nine miles above our world. Possibly in the future one of these people who is passing me by now will be a friend of mine or a colleague or an acquaintance. After all, one of my friends here in Goma was living in Eritrea half a decade ago when I visited it as a tourist. He could have shuffled past me on the street one day. And! My mom and dad grew up several blocks from one another and didn’t meet for three decades. They probably passed each other once in the airport, once in the street, once at a school dance, and had no idea. In the future one of these people may be someone I know/work with/like/dislike and his face will be so familiar to me and so obvious. Like today it is obvious that the word Haiti means Earthquake and the date 9/11 means fear and it is unimaginable that one month and one decade ago no one knew that. And several years/centuries from now no one will even remember that. I wonder what it means to “keep a grasp on reality” or “you’ve lost all grip on reality” because reality is fluid. You can’t grasp a river.
10:29 PM
Good GOD I just reread what I just wrote. Thank GOD I am in the process of going on vacation.
10:45 PM
C, where aaaaaaareeeee yoooouuuu?
Kampala 7-Feb-2010, 5:34 PM
C landed & we made friends with a taxi driver & he took us (listening to our family gossip gossip gossip) to pretty Red Chilli Hideaway and lovely Kampala. Kampala has seven hills like ancient Rome and the hills are covered in red terracotta roofs like ancient Rome and there is laser bowling in Garden City mall. Oh. I do like Kampala. The pool advertised on the Red Chilli website turns out to be about 6 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet and we laugh and laugh at that, because we are on vacation and nothing can bother us.
Best thing ever: Everything is in English. And I can even rationalize that this is good for my French, this break. To learn math and history in high school you have to get enough sleep and dream dreams so your brain can process the information. This rest for the language-learning center of my brain will be healthy for it and I will return to Goma speaking French like a true Froggie, or at least not like a 16-month-old child.
I am glad to be going back to Kitgum. To have truly lived someplace you have to leave it and then go back for a visit. Seeing it afterwards cements your memories, your relationship to the place, your friends.
Murchison Falls 8-Feb-2010, 2:49 PM
Baboons!
2:54 PM
Warthogs!
Omg so cool. This is my first time in a National Park. National Parks hold rebels. This one doesn’t anymore, although the founding owner of Red Chilli was killed here in 2005. (Everyone says he was a very nice man.)
When I lived in The Gambia, I used to suddenly remember that I was in AFRICA and feel dizzy as if I were on the wrong side of the world and might suddenly fall up and off. That doesn’t happen anymore. But the tourists on this Red Chilli tour with C and me, who are wearing their shorts, showing off their pale-almost-bluish-white legs, keep mentioning something like that. Can you believe we are in AFRICA? Wow, so this is AFRICA.
But Uganda is so different from Rwanda, from eastern DRC. Long stretches of deep flat plains, dry savannas. Such a different beauty.
4:04 PM
Looking out over the flat dry land I can pretend I am on Nantucket the summer I turned 21 driving in a car with Caroline and Mattie.
When I used to drive in the car on Nantucket that summer with Caroline and Mattie, specifically the stretch between Town and Siasconset, I would look out over the moors and pretend I was in AFRICA. That was before I had ever been to AFRICA and when I was head-over-heels in love with the western-created idea of AFRICA.
4:29 PM
Three of the eight people on our tour have US southern accents and are working in a “baby orphanage” in Jinja. The skinny Caucasian woman with the dark braided extensions in her hair is “running” the “baby orphanage”. She came here for the first time last summer for six weeks. This time she is here for three weeks. She is spending three days on “safari” with us. When she is in the States and not here (which is 82% of this year by my quick calculations), a Uganda “girl” runs the “baby orphanage” “for her”.
Rachel, be nice. Be nice, Rachel, and understanding, and generous. Remember the intercultural mistakes that you make all the time and have sympathy. And don’t think too much about those 16 babies taken from their communities and what will happen to them when this skinny woman gets bored and moves onto her next “project”.
And tell your friends in Jinja to look in on this place.
I don’t need to hang out with the “baby-orphanage” workers. Give me the silly innocent self-consciously touristy tourists for my company this week, please. We shall wear fanny packs and sandals with socks and we shall take thousands of photographs and giggle to each other at our luck seeing ELEPHANTS! and LIONS! and GIRAFFES! and be happy.
5:01 PM
Murchison Falls waterfall is spectacular power power beauty and THE NILE.
We are breathing in the spray of the Nile – every sense experiences it. Our skin eyes the roaring in our ears our mouths our lungs.
5:10 PM
Deer!
5:16 PM
Antelope!
5:21 PM
WATER BUFFALO!
10:34 PM
My cousin and I sat ourselves by the Nile tonight and caught up on the last 18 years of each other’s lives. She is a professional skydiver who is in law school at Yale. I live in Congo.
Life is weird.
Our fathers are brothers. Her family lives in California and my family lives in Pennsylvania. Through total bizarre chance, at the same moment that C and I are watching the sunset, our parents are having brunch together in San Francisco.
C and I agree that we would love to be a fly on the wall of that brunch and we wonder what our moms and dads think/say about us.
Murchison Falls 9-Feb-2010, 6:18 AM
We are on a ferry on the Nile crossing to the north bank where the animals are and we are all of us taking photographs of the sunrise like it is the first day of creation and we are the first people to see the round red ball shoot up to illuminate our newborn world.
And look. There right in the line of red reflected on the water of the deep river. Hippo ears, hippo nostrils, hippo eyes. Peaking up.
***
Ziwa 10-Feb-2010, 3:56 PM
Yesterday was lions elephants giraffes oh my. Today is rhinos.
Yesterday we saw two lions sitting by the side of the road, close to us, as if daring us to come closer, basking in the sun with big bellies. The sun also shone down on a ripped open deer a few feet away. Blood & gore & brown velvet skin.
We saw an elephant banging his trunk again and again and again against a tree, trying to force these funny orange-colored coconut-shaped seeds to drop. We saw a baby elephant from so far away which was omg so cute and omg we just loved it and oh wait no that’s a rock.
Crocodiles lazed off of beaches and swam near our boat in the Nile. When hippos saw our boat approaching, they almost always swam TOWARDS it, not away, which provided us with a small and pleasant kick of adrenalin as fight-or-flight instincts shook themselves awake and stretched.
Today we are at Ziwa rhino sanctuary, a protected ground for eight adult white rhinos and three newly born rhinos. During the chaos of the post-Amin era in Uganda white rhinos went local extinct. These here were tranqued in Kenya and in DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM in Florida and shipped here in big crates, the remnants of which lie beside the guesthouse like humongous discarded boxes on the day after Christmas.
A small family of South Africans, speaking Afrikaans to each other, runs the sanctuary. The youngest befriends C and me and keeps us entertained, taking us back in the bush to see the rhinos a second time, showing us discarded python skin beneath a thorny tree, taking us to the edge of the sanctuary to climb a small steep hill to watch the sun set over the stretches of papyrus and grass. When he talks about animals he says the phrase had the privilege of a lot which is lovely. He had the privilege of seeing a weaver bird build its nest and he had the privilege of seeing a newborn lion cub. When he talks about poachers he tells us his detailed torture-fantasies which is less lovely but there you go. He doesn’t want to kill them he wants to keep them alive in cages for a few years just so he can do to them what they do to animals. He says that some poachers like shooting chimpanzees in their stomachs because the apes will scream and thrust their little fingers into the gaping wounds to try to dig out the bullets before they die in pain. He says that white rhinos are calm but black rhinos kill people every year and so are “good for poachers” meaning they thin the poacher herd.
On the Road 11-Feb-2010, 6:16 PM
The South Africans are kindly driving us down to Kampala so that we can catch a bus up north to Gulu. This is a ridiculous round-about way to go but oh well. We climb out of the car in the chilly air of the Ugandan morning so the South Africans can smoke and we talk about how safe Uganda is, that we can do this, no problem. Even though we are still a few hundred kilometers north of the Equator, because it is morning, there is the Southern Cross in the sky, and we point to it and watch it shine.
The South Africans are playing mixed CDs with Afrikaans music, the Grateful Dead, South African singers, and – I swear to God, just at the point that the sun is rising – Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World.
Kampala Bus Park 12:34 PM
The larger Kampala bus park is the eighth wonder of the world. We are at one of the smaller parks. It’s lively, too. Our bus coughs black billows and bounce bounce bounce rumbles out and up to the North where I have friends who are waiting for me.
[More tomorrow...]
Driving Goma-Kigali (I mean, obviously, being driven). This is my fourth time on this route. It is impossible to describe the beauty. Imagine Heidi in the Swiss Alps. Replace the Alps with fluid waves of green hills. There you go: That’s Rwanda. The first time & second & third time that I made this trip, my eye was glued to the viewfinder of my camera. My camera was glued to the window.
This time I recognized a lot of the road. It is probably one of the most beautiful drives in the world. I am familiar with it – the greenery, the thick brown rivers, the thin cascading falls. I didn’t feel the need to document every square centimeter of it. It is nice to feel that it is no longer a brand new sight that could POOF up and disappear at any second. I didn’t feel the necessity of recording it in electronic pixels. I sat back, relaxed, and let the beauty wash over me. I drank it in.
Kigali 2:24 PM
Sitting in the Kigali airport, waiting for my (35 minute) flight to Entebbe. My body is, I mean. I would like my mind to catch up to it. My mind is engrossed in imaginary discussions with colleagues and donors. Physically I have left the office. Mentally? No.
Omg omg I just went over our itinerary. It is so packed. Ten days, six cities/towns. Omg. I will need a vacation from this vacation.
The stress of this takes away the stress of the office, like when you stub your toe hard and it hurts so much that you forget you had a headache. But this isn’t PAIN. This is VACATION. Or, to be specific, R&R. REST and RELAXATION.
But FLYING, which I will soon be doing. It is a shedding of skin, a detachment of your self from your earthly life. Goodbye cell phone goodbye internet goodbye everything. Worldly worries stay behind on the ground while you climb miles up into the atmosphere. You heft them back up when you land, of course, but maybe not all of them, and they seem somehow lighter, anyway, because the muscles of your soul have had a chance to rest.
Entebbe 8:15 PM
Entebbe Airport. For my first two-some hours here I thought that I didn’t recognize it. I was picturing myself last December in this airport waiting to fly away. But when I remembered that I am in the ARRIVAL wing and not the DEPARTURE wing and when I pictured myself ARRIVING in East Africa for the first time ever, then. Yes. I remember it distinctly. Here is where I was stumbling with my duffle bag, bleary-eyed. Here is where the driver was standing with the sign. There is where I hugged my old classmate/colleague J, back when we were on speaking terms, and he made the hour-and-a-half trip to greet me, before some shit hit a couple of fans.
And now here I am. I am so mystified sometimes by the passage of time. Here I stand waiting to meet my cousin, C, in this same spot. I will go hug her as she drags her bags. Did the woman whom I just bought my new Ugandan SIM card from work here last year? What about the guy at the bar with the big sign that says MILKSHAKES but that doesn’t actually sell milkshakes? If I had been awake enough to look around me a year and a half ago, would I recognize them now today? Have they been coming to work constantly day-in day-out in, between my Entebbe Airport bookends? What is it like to be them and to be familiar with this waiting lounge like the back of their hands and to not be bewildered by finding themselves back here? Life is weird.
Life is weird. When was the last time I saw C? Six years ago in the mad bustle of her big brother’s wedding? I am writing this in my journal while watching people walk past drag themselves past scan the crowd for friends scan the crowd for signs that say their names. These are people from C’s airplane. Their faces are presumably somewhat familiar to her as she has just spent 10 hours trapped in a speeding metal canister with them nine miles above our world. Possibly in the future one of these people who is passing me by now will be a friend of mine or a colleague or an acquaintance. After all, one of my friends here in Goma was living in Eritrea half a decade ago when I visited it as a tourist. He could have shuffled past me on the street one day. And! My mom and dad grew up several blocks from one another and didn’t meet for three decades. They probably passed each other once in the airport, once in the street, once at a school dance, and had no idea. In the future one of these people may be someone I know/work with/like/dislike and his face will be so familiar to me and so obvious. Like today it is obvious that the word Haiti means Earthquake and the date 9/11 means fear and it is unimaginable that one month and one decade ago no one knew that. And several years/centuries from now no one will even remember that. I wonder what it means to “keep a grasp on reality” or “you’ve lost all grip on reality” because reality is fluid. You can’t grasp a river.
10:29 PM
Good GOD I just reread what I just wrote. Thank GOD I am in the process of going on vacation.
10:45 PM
C, where aaaaaaareeeee yoooouuuu?
Kampala 7-Feb-2010, 5:34 PM
C landed & we made friends with a taxi driver & he took us (listening to our family gossip gossip gossip) to pretty Red Chilli Hideaway and lovely Kampala. Kampala has seven hills like ancient Rome and the hills are covered in red terracotta roofs like ancient Rome and there is laser bowling in Garden City mall. Oh. I do like Kampala. The pool advertised on the Red Chilli website turns out to be about 6 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet and we laugh and laugh at that, because we are on vacation and nothing can bother us.
Best thing ever: Everything is in English. And I can even rationalize that this is good for my French, this break. To learn math and history in high school you have to get enough sleep and dream dreams so your brain can process the information. This rest for the language-learning center of my brain will be healthy for it and I will return to Goma speaking French like a true Froggie, or at least not like a 16-month-old child.
I am glad to be going back to Kitgum. To have truly lived someplace you have to leave it and then go back for a visit. Seeing it afterwards cements your memories, your relationship to the place, your friends.
Murchison Falls 8-Feb-2010, 2:49 PM
Baboons!
2:54 PM
Warthogs!
Omg so cool. This is my first time in a National Park. National Parks hold rebels. This one doesn’t anymore, although the founding owner of Red Chilli was killed here in 2005. (Everyone says he was a very nice man.)
When I lived in The Gambia, I used to suddenly remember that I was in AFRICA and feel dizzy as if I were on the wrong side of the world and might suddenly fall up and off. That doesn’t happen anymore. But the tourists on this Red Chilli tour with C and me, who are wearing their shorts, showing off their pale-almost-bluish-white legs, keep mentioning something like that. Can you believe we are in AFRICA? Wow, so this is AFRICA.
But Uganda is so different from Rwanda, from eastern DRC. Long stretches of deep flat plains, dry savannas. Such a different beauty.
4:04 PM
Looking out over the flat dry land I can pretend I am on Nantucket the summer I turned 21 driving in a car with Caroline and Mattie.
When I used to drive in the car on Nantucket that summer with Caroline and Mattie, specifically the stretch between Town and Siasconset, I would look out over the moors and pretend I was in AFRICA. That was before I had ever been to AFRICA and when I was head-over-heels in love with the western-created idea of AFRICA.
4:29 PM
Three of the eight people on our tour have US southern accents and are working in a “baby orphanage” in Jinja. The skinny Caucasian woman with the dark braided extensions in her hair is “running” the “baby orphanage”. She came here for the first time last summer for six weeks. This time she is here for three weeks. She is spending three days on “safari” with us. When she is in the States and not here (which is 82% of this year by my quick calculations), a Uganda “girl” runs the “baby orphanage” “for her”.
Rachel, be nice. Be nice, Rachel, and understanding, and generous. Remember the intercultural mistakes that you make all the time and have sympathy. And don’t think too much about those 16 babies taken from their communities and what will happen to them when this skinny woman gets bored and moves onto her next “project”.
And tell your friends in Jinja to look in on this place.
I don’t need to hang out with the “baby-orphanage” workers. Give me the silly innocent self-consciously touristy tourists for my company this week, please. We shall wear fanny packs and sandals with socks and we shall take thousands of photographs and giggle to each other at our luck seeing ELEPHANTS! and LIONS! and GIRAFFES! and be happy.
5:01 PM
Murchison Falls waterfall is spectacular power power beauty and THE NILE.
We are breathing in the spray of the Nile – every sense experiences it. Our skin eyes the roaring in our ears our mouths our lungs.
5:10 PM
Deer!
5:16 PM
Antelope!
5:21 PM
WATER BUFFALO!
10:34 PM
My cousin and I sat ourselves by the Nile tonight and caught up on the last 18 years of each other’s lives. She is a professional skydiver who is in law school at Yale. I live in Congo.
Life is weird.
Our fathers are brothers. Her family lives in California and my family lives in Pennsylvania. Through total bizarre chance, at the same moment that C and I are watching the sunset, our parents are having brunch together in San Francisco.
C and I agree that we would love to be a fly on the wall of that brunch and we wonder what our moms and dads think/say about us.
Murchison Falls 9-Feb-2010, 6:18 AM
We are on a ferry on the Nile crossing to the north bank where the animals are and we are all of us taking photographs of the sunrise like it is the first day of creation and we are the first people to see the round red ball shoot up to illuminate our newborn world.
And look. There right in the line of red reflected on the water of the deep river. Hippo ears, hippo nostrils, hippo eyes. Peaking up.
***
Ziwa 10-Feb-2010, 3:56 PM
Yesterday was lions elephants giraffes oh my. Today is rhinos.
Yesterday we saw two lions sitting by the side of the road, close to us, as if daring us to come closer, basking in the sun with big bellies. The sun also shone down on a ripped open deer a few feet away. Blood & gore & brown velvet skin.
We saw an elephant banging his trunk again and again and again against a tree, trying to force these funny orange-colored coconut-shaped seeds to drop. We saw a baby elephant from so far away which was omg so cute and omg we just loved it and oh wait no that’s a rock.
Crocodiles lazed off of beaches and swam near our boat in the Nile. When hippos saw our boat approaching, they almost always swam TOWARDS it, not away, which provided us with a small and pleasant kick of adrenalin as fight-or-flight instincts shook themselves awake and stretched.
Today we are at Ziwa rhino sanctuary, a protected ground for eight adult white rhinos and three newly born rhinos. During the chaos of the post-Amin era in Uganda white rhinos went local extinct. These here were tranqued in Kenya and in DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM in Florida and shipped here in big crates, the remnants of which lie beside the guesthouse like humongous discarded boxes on the day after Christmas.
A small family of South Africans, speaking Afrikaans to each other, runs the sanctuary. The youngest befriends C and me and keeps us entertained, taking us back in the bush to see the rhinos a second time, showing us discarded python skin beneath a thorny tree, taking us to the edge of the sanctuary to climb a small steep hill to watch the sun set over the stretches of papyrus and grass. When he talks about animals he says the phrase had the privilege of a lot which is lovely. He had the privilege of seeing a weaver bird build its nest and he had the privilege of seeing a newborn lion cub. When he talks about poachers he tells us his detailed torture-fantasies which is less lovely but there you go. He doesn’t want to kill them he wants to keep them alive in cages for a few years just so he can do to them what they do to animals. He says that some poachers like shooting chimpanzees in their stomachs because the apes will scream and thrust their little fingers into the gaping wounds to try to dig out the bullets before they die in pain. He says that white rhinos are calm but black rhinos kill people every year and so are “good for poachers” meaning they thin the poacher herd.
On the Road 11-Feb-2010, 6:16 PM
The South Africans are kindly driving us down to Kampala so that we can catch a bus up north to Gulu. This is a ridiculous round-about way to go but oh well. We climb out of the car in the chilly air of the Ugandan morning so the South Africans can smoke and we talk about how safe Uganda is, that we can do this, no problem. Even though we are still a few hundred kilometers north of the Equator, because it is morning, there is the Southern Cross in the sky, and we point to it and watch it shine.
The South Africans are playing mixed CDs with Afrikaans music, the Grateful Dead, South African singers, and – I swear to God, just at the point that the sun is rising – Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World.
Kampala Bus Park 12:34 PM
The larger Kampala bus park is the eighth wonder of the world. We are at one of the smaller parks. It’s lively, too. Our bus coughs black billows and bounce bounce bounce rumbles out and up to the North where I have friends who are waiting for me.
[More tomorrow...]
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Hi again.
I'm back.
*
When P left (and it’s a long story why we did this, and it was the result of joking, but anyway, we did it) we made a paper P to tack up behind her chair. A sad replacement for her. This month, D is leaving and then J – and – and! – AND just today I learned that A is leaving. (Not exactly a nice Welcome Home for me.)
We will make a paper D and then we will clip out a paper J and then we will cut up a paper A and. And there will be me, sitting alone in my wooden chair on the topmost floor of our office, hair blowing out in the winds off of the porch, watching the little paper legs of my lost colleagues dance. Some sort of humanitarian Miss Havisham. That is how I picture it.
But that is not how it will be.
New faces will appear, new blood will beat warm, new footfalls will echo in our hallways.
*
I am back from R&R and I had a fantastic time and I am exhausted – EXHAUSTED! – but I really barely thought about the office once. So maybe I didn’t really rest and I certainly didn’t relax, but I did disconnect, and I do think that is mainly what is asked of us to do on R&R.
I have so much to write about it but I also have 300+ e-mails in my inbox to struggle through and friends to see and a trip to the field (Kiwanja, here I come!) tomorrow.
*
When P left (and it’s a long story why we did this, and it was the result of joking, but anyway, we did it) we made a paper P to tack up behind her chair. A sad replacement for her. This month, D is leaving and then J – and – and! – AND just today I learned that A is leaving. (Not exactly a nice Welcome Home for me.)
We will make a paper D and then we will clip out a paper J and then we will cut up a paper A and. And there will be me, sitting alone in my wooden chair on the topmost floor of our office, hair blowing out in the winds off of the porch, watching the little paper legs of my lost colleagues dance. Some sort of humanitarian Miss Havisham. That is how I picture it.
But that is not how it will be.
New faces will appear, new blood will beat warm, new footfalls will echo in our hallways.
*
I am back from R&R and I had a fantastic time and I am exhausted – EXHAUSTED! – but I really barely thought about the office once. So maybe I didn’t really rest and I certainly didn’t relax, but I did disconnect, and I do think that is mainly what is asked of us to do on R&R.
I have so much to write about it but I also have 300+ e-mails in my inbox to struggle through and friends to see and a trip to the field (Kiwanja, here I come!) tomorrow.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Brief Absence
French class: 7:30 am. In between listening to Professeur and filling in an exercise with verbs in the plus-que-parfait tense, I wrote a blog entry on my hand in red pen. It was something about Haiti. Also, about my French teacher. My French teacher was asking me this morning how to apply for 501(c)3 status for his NGO (apparently he has founded an NGO) because he wants to send help to Haiti.
My French teacher is intelligent, and when I don't hate him for forcing me to speak French, I enjoy his ideas. Does Haiti need more NGOs? My sources say No. But the desire to reach out to others - it's universal, and also applies if you are a French teacher born and raised in the war zone of eastern Congo and working odd jobs for $6/hour.
I wrote ideas like that on my hand and drew brilliant conclusions. Then before lunch I washed my hands with soap and water. Everything I had written slid off my skin and swirled down the drain. Whoops.
And so, all this is to say that I leave in 16 hours for Rwanda and then Uganda (my first-ever R&R!) and I will not be able to recreate whatever I wrote or write anything new for about a week. Anyway. I do hope that you will return when I do, dear reader!
My French teacher is intelligent, and when I don't hate him for forcing me to speak French, I enjoy his ideas. Does Haiti need more NGOs? My sources say No. But the desire to reach out to others - it's universal, and also applies if you are a French teacher born and raised in the war zone of eastern Congo and working odd jobs for $6/hour.
I wrote ideas like that on my hand and drew brilliant conclusions. Then before lunch I washed my hands with soap and water. Everything I had written slid off my skin and swirled down the drain. Whoops.
And so, all this is to say that I leave in 16 hours for Rwanda and then Uganda (my first-ever R&R!) and I will not be able to recreate whatever I wrote or write anything new for about a week. Anyway. I do hope that you will return when I do, dear reader!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Funding/Donors
There are circulating whispers that significant portions of the funding that international emergency donors direct towards eastern DRC are about to be pulled, to be retracted, to be regifted to Haiti.
Nothing is certain.
But there is risk and people are worried. Several emergency programs here may shut down or become very limited. Haiti is (a) a natural disaster, not a war (although politics have obviously played a huge role in its vulnerability) and (b) The Cause of the Day. Politically, it’s a good move to donate to Haiti. Constituents will approve of it.
I don’t mean to belittle in the least the crisis and horror there. I truly don’t.
There are also crises here.
I don't know enough about the mechanisms of funding/donors to know how worried to be.
Nothing is certain.
But there is risk and people are worried. Several emergency programs here may shut down or become very limited. Haiti is (a) a natural disaster, not a war (although politics have obviously played a huge role in its vulnerability) and (b) The Cause of the Day. Politically, it’s a good move to donate to Haiti. Constituents will approve of it.
I don’t mean to belittle in the least the crisis and horror there. I truly don’t.
There are also crises here.
I don't know enough about the mechanisms of funding/donors to know how worried to be.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Excitement
Afternoon: Thunder crashes, lightening flashes, raindrops slam down against the metal roof of our office. The noise! Two small brown birds take refuge on the windowsill in our bathroom. They don’t hear me sneak up behind them – I take a photo with A’s camera. I cannot hear V as she attempts to speak to me from two feet away.
Together, we shove shut the glass door to our porch and twist the key in the lock. Hail flies everywhere, even through the crack between the door and the floor.
Rain drips onto my head and arm from the roof. I grab the bucket that we use to flush the toilet and stick it beneath the leak. It’s just a few drops but I snatch my laptop up and flee to A’s desk across our small office.
A new e-mail alert pops up in the lower right hand corner of my computer screen and I double-click the link. An itinerary. The procurement officer in the logs department has just confirmed my airplane booking for R&R. Three days until Uganda!
It’s the dry season there.
Together, we shove shut the glass door to our porch and twist the key in the lock. Hail flies everywhere, even through the crack between the door and the floor.
Rain drips onto my head and arm from the roof. I grab the bucket that we use to flush the toilet and stick it beneath the leak. It’s just a few drops but I snatch my laptop up and flee to A’s desk across our small office.
A new e-mail alert pops up in the lower right hand corner of my computer screen and I double-click the link. An itinerary. The procurement officer in the logs department has just confirmed my airplane booking for R&R. Three days until Uganda!
It’s the dry season there.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Goma on Groundhog Day 2010
The birds are hemming and tweeting and hawing and crowing, crooning and singing and intoning and droning, whistling and humming and purring and just generally vocalizing outside in the palm trees and above the lake. I am waiting for feedback on documents that I have sent via electronic pulse through the air to different corners of the globe. There is discontent down the road from us in Sake, causing a delay in some of our program implementations, and there is a plan for drinks tonight at the famous Goma bar “Doga”, causing a restlessness in my attitude. And that is where things stand today.
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