Go to the People

A Garden Gnome Rides A Roller Coaster

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:04:15 GMT

My group had been planning to go on safari to Murchison Falls National Park the first week of February, and as luck would have it, the Fab Five touched down in the Pearl of Africa (for some unknown reason, this is Uganda’s nickname) just in time to make it. We spent two days on top of Land Rovers, bumping and jumping across the plains. We got close enough to a family of elephants in a stand of trees that I could have spit on them if I was so inclined (something told me that wasn’t a good idea). A herd of giraffes ran across the road in front of our vehicles, and let me tell you, you haven’t really lived until you’ve seen a giraffe run.

We took a cruise up the Nile, which was filled with many a crocodile. We learned hippopotami swish their tails back and forth rapid-fire as they are defecating, resulting in a fine spray of waste fanning out from their backsides. We stood at the brink of the Falls, the force of which is terrifying and intoxicating all in one moment; the Nile forces 300 cubic meters (11,000 ft³/s) of water per second through a gap in the rocks only 7 meters (23 ft) wide, and tumbles 43 meters (141 ft) before continuing its flow westward into Lake Albert. The Falls are the most powerful natural water flow in the world. It was humbling to be so near to danger, to a force that could take your life in the blink of an eye. I thought of Egypt, of the Revolution still raging at the end of this great river. I thought of that boy in Cairo who had said so much when our eyes met, of how invested I now felt in the outcome of the uprising. My heart beat with relief and longing, fear and hope. I sat with my group, my patchwork family, grateful for the comfort of their presence as the sun dipped down and into the water, the spray tinted pink in the last rays of the sun.

I had been struggling with a variety of issues at my site since I had arrived there at the end of April 2010. Some of them, like the housing situation, were rather minor, not deal-breakers in and of themselves. I hated living 20 feet off the highway, with noisy trucks full of rocks from the mountains passing by my house throughout the night, but I could wear earplugs. I hated how religious my organization was, how closed their minds were to any other faith or point of view besides their own, how sometimes, meeting new people, the first question out of their mouths was “When did you get Saved?” instead of “What’s your name?” But I could remain vague about my beliefs in the name of cultural differences, and swallow my protests when another religion was slandered.

However, in the months leading up to the holidays, more serious issues developed, and I didn’t have the strength or the desire to keep fighting against them. The bottom line was my organization did not need me. What’s more, they were unwilling or unable to make use of me. Now, I don’t want to point fingers here. There were many good people at my past site, my past organization. Our worldviews may have been miles apart, but their hearts were in the right place. Like me, what they wanted was to make people’s lives better.

My organization was sponsored, funded, by one of those Christian “save a child” corporations that have commercials featuring kids dressed in rags, making you feel guilty in your first world beds. For such-and-such a price per day, you can change this child’s life! If you call that 1 800 number, you’ll be paired up with a kid somewhere, maybe even in Uganda. The money you send every month doesn’t go to that kid or their family though, not directly. That money goes to the corporation, which allocates money to each country branch, and in turn each district and village branch, based on how many kids they’re working with at each location. Your money funds a set program at each of these branches. The commercial promised you that your money would pay for this that and the other for your child, and in a roundabout way it does. Actually, the corporation funding my organization is apparently one of the better ones out there when it comes to transparency, meaning most of the money you send actually goes into programs benefiting the community.

The corporation my organization was funded through promises your kid will be assisted using a holistic approach to development, meaning they touch on their cognitive, physical, socio-emotional and spiritual development while enrolled in the program. At my organization, they certainly tried to achieve all of this. They paid all the children's school fees (cognitive) and medical bills (physical); during center days, they talked to the kids about friendship and supporting each other (socio-emotional) and children were expected to attend church and bible study and eventually “get saved” (spiritual).

All this boils down to the root of my main issue: my organization did not need me. Despite, in my opinion, certain flaws in the programming (like the fact that children must accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior by a certain point or else be kicked out of the program) they had a good, yes, a holistic program which touched on many important topics and assisted the children financially and materially, and I have no doubt that the children and their families benefited from it (what happens to the children once they graduate secondary school and all of the sudden are on their own, financially responsible for themselves for the first time in their lives, is a whole other topic I won’t even go into.) Because the organization actually does many of the things it sets out to do, because your child is getting many of the services you have been promised, the program is pretty fixed, and there isn’t much room for changes or additions. There’s already a whole program set by the corporation that the organization is trying to implement in a fixed amount of time. Every staff member has a list of things they are in charge of and need to get done. And considering that we’re in Uganda, it’s actually pretty impressive how much of that is actually accomplished. So, well done. Thank you for the work.

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer at this organization, you don’t have a list of things you’re in charge of and need to get done. That’s okay though, you’re used to having to come up with your own activities and projects. The problems arise when you do come up with new activities and projects, and either none of your co-workers are very enthusiastic about them (it’s pointless to do anything on your own; not sustainable) or perhaps even more disheartening, they are enthusiastic, but days and weeks and months go by, and you never get around to actually starting the project because your co-workers are too busy with the items on their lists that they have to get done for the corporation to implement any of your ideas. This leaves the Peace Corps Volunteer sitting dejectedly at her desk, unable to contribute much to the activities required by the corporation, tired of coming up with new activities of her own that never get off the ground, and vulnerable to things that normally wouldn’t cause her emotions to resemble a roller coaster.

I started to understand the feelings so many Volunteers in Togo and Uganda talked about-the wild emotional swings at the drop of a hat; how you could go from okay to definitely-not-okay in a matter of seconds. It made me appreciate Togo all the more-having started with the best possible situation (my family in my village in my Togo) I never could relate to my less fortunate friends who didn't have such ideal arrangements. In Togo, I listened and comforted, but I never really understood what they were feeling; what they were going through and how out of control and sucky it felt. Now, though, I was like them. I didn't like my site. I was sick of trying to make it work. This wasn't what I was expecting. This wasn't what I signed up for!

Since arriving at my first site in Uganda, I'd been conflicted and unhappy with the situation, but I’d tried to make it work for several months, ignoring as best I could the undesirable aspects and trying to focus on the small accomplishments and occasions (e.g. Ray’s birth, a co-worker asking about Moringa). Once I had settled in, though, I felt routinely slapped upside the head with defeat. I had filled the days of the first several months getting to know the community and the organization, but now I was ready to work, and try as I might, nothing ever panned out. I asked why the organization had requested a Volunteer and tried to assist them with those things to no avail. I started to suspect they had requested a Volunteer much as they would have ordered a lawn ornament or shutter kittens via express mail. They wanted something nice to look at, for others to comment on and envy. To them, I was a status symbol, a trophy, not a source of new ideas and a different perspective. But, damn it, I can only be a garden gnome for so long!

On my way home from Thanksgiving 2010 (perhaps the best Thanksgiving of my life), I stopped in at the Peace Corps office in Kampala and asked about a site change. I’d come to Uganda to explore health work, and ended up at a site that didn’t offer that. I’d been flexible, I’d spent seven months trying to make things work, and I was fed up. At the same time, I didn’t want to leave Uganda. I was having a good time despite the troubled home-life. I still wanted to explore health care before jumping back into school and I felt the Peace Corps should be able to provide that; it’s one of the main reasons I extended my service in the first place. I also couldn’t bear the thought of leaving my Peace Corps family. I arrived in country with 28 of the most beautiful, astounding, inspiring individuals you’ll ever meet and I was head over heels for them… how could I leave them? (I’ll leave the mushy emotional stuff for another post, but rest assured, its coming!)

After meeting with the Peace Corps, I returned to site, returned to my desk, and occupied myself with books in between visits from other PCVs interested in seeing the Bagisu circumcision ceremony, a 2-day extravaganza of dancing, drinking, drumming, running, shouting, cheering, spitting, fanning and celebration that culminates in the cutting off of the foreskin of a teenage male. The Bagisu are one of only two ethnic groups in Uganda that traditionally circumcise their male members, and they’re pretty darn serious about it. Take a look at my blog post of 7th September 2010 for a more detailed description.

One night in mid-December, while several of my friends and I slept nearby, someone broke into my neighbors’ house (two rooms right next to mine in the same building, but not connected) and took a bunch of their things. A pair of shoes and a blanket that I had left outside my house were also taken. It was raining, so my neighbors only woke to the noise as the thieves were escaping. The burglary itself was unsettling, but I was more alarmed, now, by something I had discovered a few weeks before.

It is common for a square hole to be left in the drop ceiling of at least one of the rooms in a building here in Uganda, to provide, I’m told, easy access when wiring, inevitably, needs to be repaired. I find the practice ridiculous, as it provides rats easier access to my living quarters. Early on, I had covered the hole in the ceiling of my kitchen/living room with a piece of cardboard to deter rats and dirt and other debris from falling onto my couch. I hadn’t thought much of it, assuming the walls put up in the space between the drop ceiling and the roof blocked my living quarters from the rest of the building. Not so. During the Rat Wars (check out the blog! 22 November 2010) the neighbor’s house boy had climbed up from the fifth and final room in my building, a storage area that was kept unlocked, into the crawl space above my neighbors’ rooms and all the way to the other end of the building and the crawl space above my rooms. As I was sitting reading on the couch, the boy lifted my carefully placed cardboard, waved to me, and told me he was setting a trap for the rats (which, incidentally, were not living in the drop ceiling as they had decided to move downstairs with me). Great: free access to my house, no matter how many locks I placed on the metal door. My house was not zombie-proof, after all. I didn’t think many people knew about the unlocked storage room, so I contacted the Peace Corps about the issue but didn’t worry too much.

Then my neighbor’s house was broken into, and all of the sudden that hole seemed a lot scarier. I still didn’t think many people knew about the unlocked room, but on the off chance someone got the idea to use it as an all access pass, I didn’t want to be around for the encounter. I was lucky to have several of my biggest, burliest brothers sleeping in my living room when the thieves broke in. I imagine they peered in and thought better of it; moved on to the next door. But if they hadn’t been there… I called the Peace Corps again and told them about the break-in and how I didn’t feel safe in my house without the drop-ceiling being fixed. They agreed and gave me license to wander the country until it was finished.

So that’s what I did! It was about a week before Christmas when I left my site. I bounced around the country, happy to have an excuse to be away from my unhappy home and a chance to see more of the Pearl of Africa. We spent Christmas at Ashley’s site and skinny dipped in Lake Bunyonyi in the extreme Southwest of the country at midnight on New Year’s 2011.

Renee had flown back to America for the holidays. Elizabeth and I missed her like crazy, and weren’t sure how she’d readjust to being back in Uganda, so we decided to sneak-attack her at the airport. At two in the morning, we were waiting impatiently outside the glass doors of the airport, straining our necks to catch a glimpse of her as she went through customs and retrieved her bags. Finally… I think that’s her! She has a blue fleece! Oh, but that bag… that’s not her bag… maybe she got a new back in ‘Merica… (we tend to know each other’s possessions very well). Yes, yes, I know that walk, its her for sure!

Elizabeth and I started jumping up and down, waving our arms back and forth as Renee walked through the first set of doors. She looked tired, resigned to her fate: back in the Pearl. She was looking forward at the throng of Ugandan drivers, sent by fancy hotels to pick up high-class clientele. She wasn’t looking through the glass at us, so we jumped higher and waved our arms more frantically. Finally, Renee glanced over and stopped dead in her tracks. Her mouth fell open and she looked like she was going to cry. “Wha…” her lips didn’t complete the question. The seconds ticked by. Renee was still standing there; Elizabeth and I were still jumping up and down. Finally, we stopped jumping and waved her over. She made her way through the people, out the door, and Elizabeth and I pounced on her in a group hug. “What are you guys doing here?!” “Picking you up, of course!”

It was great to have Renee back, and even though the ceiling of my house had by now been fixed, I was still reluctant to return to my site without knowing whether or not I was staying in Uganda (which, in my opinion, required moving sites) or leaving in a few months once I’d finished my one year extension (if I couldn’t move sites). She was kind enough to offer to share her home with me for a few days, so I called the Peace Corps and they gave me permission to keep wandering.

A few days at Renee’s turned into two weeks; I ended up staying there until we left on our Egypt vacation. It was a nice, relaxing time, full of delicious food (its much easier to go all out on a meal if you have someone to enjoy it with), hiking, talking, teaching, painting, gardening and vacation planning. Spending two weeks straight (more like a month, including time spent out of her site) with someone is a good test of friendship, especially when you’re sharing a bed. Luckily, Renee and I passed with flying colors!

Ohh, Shoot! Look What We Started...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:13:30 GMT

We had no idea how narrowly we’d escaped the progression of the revolution until we were back in the UG. I'll leave it to you to decide if The Egyptian Liberation Front’s Fab Five had anything to do with events taking place.

24 January 2011: The Fab Five arrive at Cairo International around 2AM. We sleep for a few hours, then ride camels to the pyramids and tour around the city. The last day before the revolution.

25 January 2011: The Fab Five catch an 11AM bus out of Cairo, bound for the town of St. Catherine, on the Sinai Peninsula. We pass through Suez on our way to Sinai.

The “Day of Revolt.” Today is a national holiday to commemorate the police forces. Nationwide protests against the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak begin. Thousands march in downtown Cairo, heading towards the offices of the ruling National Democratic Party, as well as the foreign ministry and the state television. Similar protests are reported in other towns across the country. After a few hours of relative calm, police and demonstrators clash; police fire tear gas and use water cannons against demonstrators crying out "Down with Mubarak'' in Cairo's main Tahrir Square. Protests break out in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the Nile Delta cities of Mansura and Tanta and in the southern cities of Aswan and Assiut. There are bloody clashes in Suez.

26 January 2011: The Fab Five climb Mt. Sinai in time to watch the sun rise from the summit. In the afternoon, we travel to Dahab, on the Red Sea.

Protests across Egypt gain steam, At least three people are reported dead from violence. Anti-government demonstrators pelt security forces with rocks and firebombs for a second day. Police use tear gas, water cannons and batons to disperse protesters in Cairo. Witnesses say that live ammunition is also fired into the air. In Suez, the scene of bloody clashes the previous day, police and protesters clash again. It is reported that injuries resulting from police violence reach 120 in Suez alone. Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for IS President Barack Obama, tells reporters that the government should "demonstrate its responsiveness to the people of Egypt" by recognising their "universal rights". Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, says he believes "the Arab citizen is angry, is frustrated".

27 January 2011: The Fab Five spend the day snorkeling at The Blue Hole near Dahab, on the Red Sea. We see footage of the protests in Cairo, becoming aware of the unrest for the first time. I e-mail my parents and tell them everything is okay and not to worry.

Mohamed El Baradei, the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog turned democracy advocate, arrives in Egypt to join the protests. El Baradei says he is ready to "lead the transition" in Egypt if asked. Meanwhile, protests continue across several cities. Hundreds have been arrested, but the protesters say they will not give up until their demand is met. Protesters clash with police in Cairo neighborhoods. Violence also erupts in the city of Suez again, while in the northern Sinai area of Sheikh Zuweid, several hundred Bedouins and police exchange live gunfire, killing a 17-year-old man. In Ismailia, hundreds of protesters clash with police. Lawyers stage protests in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta town of Toukh, north of Cairo. At around 7:00 PM local time, Egyptian authorities blocked access to Facebook, although many Egyptians were still able to bypass the block through the use of proxies and third party applications. Twitter and Blackberry Messenger (I don’t know what these are, but if the latter is a way to send blackberries to Peace Corps Volunteers in far off lands like Uganda, I’m hurt that I haven’t received any yet.)

28 January 2011: Unsure of the situation in Cairo, the Fab Five decide to stay another night in Dahab, rather than return to Cairo as planned. We spend the day snorkeling and relaxing on the beach.

Today will be known as the "Friday of Rage." Authorities shut down the country's mobile phone carriers shortly after midnight in an attempt to disrupt the planned protests. The Associated Press news agency says an elite special counter-terrorism force has been deployed at strategic points around Cairo in the hours before the planned protests. Shortly after Friday prayers, hundreds of thousands gather in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. Opposition leader Mohammed El Baradei has traveled to Cairo to participate. Some looting is reported. Police forces withdraw from the streets completely, and the Egyptian government orders the military to assist the police. Egypt remains on edge, as police and protesters clash throughout the country. Eleven civilians are killed in Suez and 170 injured. No deaths are reported in Cairo. At least 1,030 people are injured countrywide. Troops are ordered onto the streets in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria, but do not interfere in the confrontations between police and protesters. The riots continue throughout the night, even as Mubarak announces that he dismisses his government.

29 January 2011: The Fab Five take Said’s advice and bus to Cairo via Sharm El Sheikh. We are stopped in Suez, and our baggage is unloaded and sniffed by dogs. For two hours, our bus tries to find a place to stop, but groups of vigilantes with all sorts of weapons (including a bull whip) are manning roadblocks throughout the city. We eventually stop at, and are locked in to, a bus station. We manage to find a taxi to take us to the airport in time to catch our flight, but it is canceled. We sleep on the freezing cold marble floor of Departure Hall 1.

In a speech delivered shortly after midnight, Mubarak announces that he has sacked the cabinet, but he himself refuses to step down. His whereabouts are unknown. Egyptian soldiers secure Cairo's famed antiquities museum, protecting thousands of priceless artifacts from looters, including the gold mask of King Tutankhamun. The greatest threat to the Egyptian Museum, which draws millions of tourists a year, appears to come from the fire engulfing the ruling party headquarters next door the night before, set ablaze by anti-government protesters.

Suez had had a completely chaotic night, but the streets are quiet as day breaks. Mubarak appoints a vice-president for the first time during his three decades in power. The man now second-in-command is Omar Suleiman, the country's former spy chief, who has been working closely with Mubarak during most of his reign. The military is deployed to the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. In a statement released in Berlin, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany say they are "deeply worried about the events in Egypt". The Gulf Co-operation Council, a loose economic and political bloc of states in the Gulf, says it wants a "stable Egypt". The US embassy in Cairo advises all Americans currently in Egypt to consider leaving as soon as possible, given the unrest.

Thousands of anti-government protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square stand their ground, despite troops firing into the air in a bid to disperse them.The military presence in Cairo increases. A curfew is instituted, but protests continue throughout the night.

30 January 2011: the Fab Five spend the day at Cairo International, searching for food and water and a comfortable place to rest. All flights are canceled or full. It’s difficult to get through to anyone by phone. When we do, the Peace Corps tells us to get out of Egypt any way we can. The British Embassy workers tell us the same. The American Embassy is nowhere to be found, although we’ve been told they’re looking for American citizens and are planning an evacuation the next day, from Hall 4. There is no Hall 4. Food and drinking water have run out at the airport. New shipments fail to arrive due to the curfew. The situation deteriorates rapidly. I don’t sleep.

Thousands of protesters remain in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Egyptian Air Force F-16s overfly Tahrir Square in a show of force. The crowds are cheering when El Baradei addresses protesters in the square, saying "What we started can never be pushed back". Turkey announces that it is sending aircraft to evacuate its citizens.

31 January 2011: the Fab Five find Hajj Hall/Terminal 4. There are other Americans. Eventually, the Embassy shows up too. We are given phones to call our families. We are given food by RPCVs. We are allowed in the diplomat line since we’re Peace Corps Volunteers. We fly out on the fourth plane, to Athens Greece. The hotel is pimp. We sleep.

"The March of the Millions". A protest of over a million people was planned for this day. Estimates range between 250 thousand and 2 million. Mubarak still refuses to step down, amid growing calls for his resignation. Protesters continue to defy the military-imposed curfew. Internet access across Egypt is still down. Egypt's new vice-president promises dialogue with opposition parties in order to push through constitutional reforms. Protesters remain camped out in Tahrir Square from a variety of political and demographic groups. The White House says the Egyptian government must engage with its people to resolve current unrest. Obama's spokesperson, Robert Gibbs, says the crisis in Egypt "is not about appointments, it's about actions ... They have to address freedoms that the people of Egypt seek". The EU calls for free and fair elections in Egypt. Worldwide investors continue withdrawing significant capital from Egypt amid rising unrest. Mubarak names his new cabinet on state television, among them, Mahmoud Wagdi, sworn in as the new interior minister. Egypt releases the six Al Jazeera journalists who were arrested in Cairo. Egyptian film star Omar Sharif, known for his role in Lawrence of Arabia, has added his voice to those calling for Hosni Mubarak to step down, Reuters reports. Former US president Jimmy Carter calls the unrest in Egypt an "earth-shaking event", and says he guesses Hosni Mubarak "will have to leave." Israel urges the world to tone down Mubarak criticism amid Egypt unrest to preserve stability in the region, the Haaretz newspaper reports, citing senior Israeli officials. President Mubarak tells his new prime minister, Ahmad Shafiq, to keep government subsidies and cut prices. Al Jazeera says its broadcast signal across the Arab region is facing interference on a scale it has not experienced before.

1 February 2011: The Fab Five sleep in. We stuff our faces at breakfast. We go into the city, see some historic things, drink wine, ouzo and beer, and stuff our faces with gelato, dolmathes and spanakopita. We swim in an infinity pool. We cocoon in the clouds.

Mubarak makes a televised address once again after unceasing protests, and offered several concessions, although he refuses to step down from office-the central demand of the protesters. He pledges he will not run for another term in elections planned for September, and pledges political reforms. He states he will stay in office to oversee a peaceful transition. Small but violent clashes begin at night between pro-Mubarak and anti-Mubarak groups. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian opposition figure who returned to Cairo to take part in the protests, says Mubarak's pledge not to stand again for the presidency was an act of deception. Abdelhalim Kandil, leader of Egypt's Kifaya (Enough) opposition movement, says Mubarak's offer not to serve a sixth term as Head of State is not enough. US President Barack Obama praises the Egyptian military for their patriotism and for allowing peaceful demonstrations. He says only the Egyptian people can determine their leaders. Shortly after his speech, clashes break out between pro-Mubarak and anti-government protesters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. The number of protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square are revised to more than a million people. Thousands more take to the streets throughout Egypt, including in Alexandria and Suez.

2 February 2011: The Fab Five stuff their faces again, then fly to Istanbul, where they see the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sofia, the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar. They return to the airport and fly to Uganda, "Oh, Uganda!"

"Battle of the Camel". Violence escalates as waves of Mubarak supporters meet anti-government protesters, and some Mubarak supporters ride on camels and horses into Tahrir Square, reportedly wielding swords and sticks. The clashes are believed to have been orchestrated by Habib El Adly, and there were hundreds of casualties. The military tries to limit the violence, repeatedly separating anti-Mubarak and pro-Mubarak groups. President Mubarak reiterates his refusal to step down in interviews with several news agencies. Incidents of violence toward journalists and reporters escalate amid speculation that the violence is being actively aggravated by Mubarak as a way to end the protests. Clashes between anti-government and pro-Mubarak protesters break out in Alexandria.Internet services are at least partially restored in Cairo after a five-day blackout.

3 February 2011: Sustained bursts of automatic weapons fire and powerful single shots begin at around 4am local time and continue for more than an hour in Tahrir (Liberation) Square, leaving at least five people dead and several more wounded..

4 February 2011: Hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters gather in Cairo's Tahrir Square for what they have termed the "Day of Departure". Chants urging Hosni Mubarak to leave reverberate across the square, as the country enters its eleventh day of unrest and mass demonstrations.

5 February 2011: Thousands who remain inside Tahrir Square fear an approaching attempt by the military to evacuate the square. The leadership of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party resigns, including Gamal Mubarak, the son of Hosni Mubarak. The new secretary-general of the party is Hossam Badrawi, seen as a member of the liberal wing of the party.

6 February 2011: Protests continue in Tahrir Square; there are reports of gunshots fired by the army into the air near the cordon set up inside the barricades, near the Egyptian museum. Egyptian Christians held Sunday Mass in Tahrir Square, protected by a ring of Muslims. Negotiations involving Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman and representatives of the opposition commenced amid continuing protests throughout the nation. The Egyptian army assumed greater security responsibilities, maintaining order and guarding Egypt’s museums. Suleiman offered reforms, while others of Mubarak's regime accused foreign nations, including the US, of interfering in Egypt’s affairs. The Muslim Brotherhood says in a statement that it "has decided to participate in a dialogue round in order to understand how serious the officials are in dealing with the demands of the people". Banks officially re-open for 3.5 hours, and traffic police are back on the streets in Cairo, in attempts to get the capital to start returning to normal.

7 February 2011: Thousands are camping out in Tahrir Square, refusing to budge. While banks have reopened, schools and the stock exchange remain closed. A symbolic funeral procession is held for journalist Ahmed Mahmoud, shot as he filmed the clashes between protesters and riot police from his Cairo office. Protesters demand an investigation into the cause of his death. Egypt's government approve a 15 percent raise in salaries and pensions in a bid to appease the angry masses.

8 February 2011: Egyptians stage one of their biggest protests. Vice President Suleiman says Egypt has a timetable for the peaceful transfer of power. He promises no reprisals against the protesters. Suleiman also announces a slew of constitutional and legislative reforms, to be undertaken by yet to be formed committees. Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, says genuine dialogue is needed to end the current crisis, adding that a peaceful transition is crucial.

9 February 2011: Labor unions join protesters in the street, with some of them calling for Mubarak to step down while others simply call for better pay. Massive strikes start rolling throughout the country.

10 February 2011: Amid rumors that he will be stepping down tonight, Mubarak gives a televised speech which he says is "from the heart". He repeats his promise to not run in the next presidential elections and to "continue to shoulder" his responsibilities in the "peaceful transition" that he says will take place in September. Mubarak stats he will delegate some of his powers to Vice President Suleiman, while continuing as Egypt's head of state. Reactions to Mubarak's statement are marked by anger, frustration and disappointment, and throughout various cities there is an escalation of the number and intensity of demonstrations. Protesters in Tahrir Square wave their shoes in the air, and demand the army join them in revolt.

11 February 2011: The "Friday of Departure" Tens of thousands of people take to the streets across Egypt in angry protests, descending on the state television building in Cairo and the presidential palace in Heliopolis, as well as in Tahrir Square.

Hosni Mubarak resigns as president. The announcement is made by Omar Suleiman, the vice-president, just after 6pm local time. The Supreme Council of Egyptian Armed Forces will assume leadership of the country. Revolution, check.

23 February 2011: Athens, Greece sees violent protests and strikes, involving up to 100,000 people.

24 March 2011: Istanbul, Turkey sees protests by the Kurdish minority.

Drinking From The Holy Grail

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:07:53 GMT

The American ambassador to Greece was waiting for us in the chilly night air, a light rain falling on the tarmac of the Athens airport. “Welcome Home!” he declared, and with that, we were in a completely different world. It seemed like the entire embassy had come out to assist us, now that we were safe in a country where we could take care of ourselves. We were never farther than ten feet from an embassy worker as they handed us down the line to our rooms. But I’m getting ahead of myself!

We were engulfed in warmth as we passed from black night into electrified, comfortable Europe. We were greeted enthusiastically by hordes of embassy staffers, who handed out paperwork and directed us toward tables of cheese sandwiches, cookies, and bottled water. “You guys, look!” shouted Elizabeth, who was pointing towards a bright metal contraption attached to the wall next to the bathrooms. Paperwork and food forgotten, we rushed over to marvel at this Holy Grail of the first world: a water fountain. Someone hesitantly pressed the button, and a steady stream of clear liquid sprouted from a hole. We looked at each other… not quite believing that we could drink this water straight.

The necessity of filtering and purifying and boiling all water that goes anywhere near your lips has been drilled into us by the Peace Corps, and while we don’t always heed that advice, it was hard to grasp the concept that all of that had been done for us already, and we could drink straight from the source without worry about Giardia or dysentery or anything more than quenching our thirst.

For the next 20 minutes (if you think that’s an exaggeration, you’re wrong) the five of us took turns drinking from the water fountain and posing for pictures and excitedly talking about the amazing invention. Who knows how much longer we would have been at it if one of the embassy workers hadn’t shaken us from our reverie by coming over to offer the use of her phone! We had made it quite evident that we were Peace Corps Volunteers with that display, and she took pity on us. While we took turns calling home (“Hello, from Athens, Greece…”) the rest of us stuffed ourselves with the free food and attempted to fill out the paperwork, which was intended for real diplomats.

The cell phone woman took pity on us again and arranged for us to be given three of the hotel rooms reserved for real diplomats; the paperwork was forgotten. She gave us small bottles of shampoo and conditioner (perhaps a not-so-subtle hint that we needed to bathe) and handed the five of us, still giddy from our encounter with the water fountain, off to another embassy worker waiting to escort us down the hall to the customs counter. He flashed a badge and the man behind the glass stamped our passports without even glancing at the photographs. There was another staffer waiting to take us the ten feet outside to a waiting shuttle, where yet another embassy worker was waiting to accompany us on the ride and into the lobby of the Athens airport Sofitel Hotel. At €360 a night per double room, it is the nicest hotel any of us will probably stay in. Ever.

Our rooms were exquisite. There were soft white bathrobes and white slippers laid out on the massive king sized bed. We put these things on over the clothes we had been wearing for the past three days and ran from room to room exclaiming at all the luxuries and taking pictures of each other with the furnishings. Eventually, we settled down enough to realize how exhausted and filthy we actually were. I took a long bath, letting the hot water loosen the sweat and dirt and stress from my pores. Then I took a long shower, letting the water cascade down on me from the dinner plate sized shower head. Cleaner than we’ve been in years, we sank into the expanse of white that was our bed, the feather pillows and down comforters, soft as clouds, filled us with more nectar than you’d believe!

Because the windows came equipped with wood panels that slide across to block all light from entering, we cocooned in the clouds near on to 10am, when we were obliged to partake of the (free) breakfast banquet. Fresh baked breads, cakes, muffins, scones, croissants. Thick Greek yogurt, individual pots of flavored yogurt. Cereal, muesli, granola. Sautéed vegetables, hash brown cakes, sausages, bacon, eggs, flaky filo cheese pie, bite size samosas. Kiwi, passion fruit, pineapple, mango, papaya, honeydew melon, two types of lychee, mandarin oranges, apples, grapes. Smoked salmon, crackers, cucumber slices, pickles. Individual serving glass pots of ketchup, chocolate sauce, jam: raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, honey: natural, carob, hazelnut. Real butter. Fresh orange and pineapple juice, mango or strawberry smoothies, coffee made to order.

Sufficiently rested and fed for the first time in days, we now turned our attention to Greece. We were in Athens! Whoa. How did that happen? We had used the embassy worker’s phone the evening before to contact the Peace Corps to let them know which country we’d ended up in, and left the hotel’s phone number and our room numbers for them to contact us, but we hadn't heard from them. We checked our email, and discovered that the Peace Corps had booked us a flight to Entebbe via İstanbul for 7 o’clock that morning. We’d obviously missed that flight! We called Uganda, and they booked us the same flight the next day. That taken care of, we located another Egypt evacuee interested in seeing the city, and the six of us caught taxis into Athens.

The weather was gorgeous, the air was clear, the sky was blue, and the sun was shining. It being February, and us being in Europe, it was a bit brisk, but we were too excited to mind. We didn’t really know where we were going, so we just wandered around the cobblestoned streets, eventually wandering into some ruins that turned out to be the Roman Agora. From there we followed a road winding upwards towards a massive structure that looked historic and important. Nearing the top, we stopped to climb some rocks, where the views of the city were fantastic. Athens spread out before us, a vast, crowded, white city that is reigned in only by the surrounding hills. I was immediately reminded of Kyoto, struck by how similar the views of the two cities were from up high… both are huge metropolises with pretty green hills surrounding them on all sides.

We followed the path further and ended up at the Acropolis (the massive structure that had looked historic and important). It was late in the afternoon by now, and everything was closed, but we walked right up to the gate blocking entrance into the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, a stone theater built in 161 AD. As we wandered down the other side of the hill, a woman drove up and got out of her car with a large bucket. She walked to a stone wall, a dozen cats strung along it like pearls. She scooped out cupfuls of dry cat food; they meowed their thanks as she got back into her car. I love how there are cats everywhere in this part of the world, and how everyone takes care of them, or at least doesn’t treat them poorly. There are healthy, beautiful cats running all over the place in Greece, Turkey and Egypt and its lovely!

We wandered down a cobblestone street, stopping to look at souvenirs and postcards, before coming out onto a main thoroughfare, across which were some ruins-white pillars and crumbled rock surrounded by a gate. The sun was setting, casting an orange and pink glow on everything it touched. Snap, snap, snap: its fun to be a tourist, sometimes! Any warmth the sun had provided quickly disappeared. Although we were in central Athens, the streets were quiet. We stopped in at a small grocery store, the front open to the chill, to buy olive oil and despite our already frozen digits, gelato. It was delicious and rich, worth the brain freeze.

A short ways down the street, we were drawn into a shop whose walls were lined floor to ceiling with a rainbow of bottles lit from behind, resulting in a warm glow. We had stumbled upon Brettos, the oldest distillery and winery in Athens, which produces dozens of liqueur flavors, as well as traditional ouzo, wines, and brandy. Not wanting to waste the opportunity provided us, we decided to sample a string of their finest red wines, and then to buy two bottles of the tastiest for later that night.

Venturing back outside, we set off to find somewhere to eat. The streets were almost deserted, and before long, the cold was actually starting to hurt. An old man standing outside of a warm-looking restaurant called out to us, smiling. “You eat here, I give free alcohol!” Good enough for us! We crowded around a booth in the clean but simple restaurant, the only guests. True to his word, the man brought glasses of a cold, milky, anise flavored liquid. “Ouzo!” Or rather, water and ouzo. When water or ice is added to ouzo, which is clear in color, it turns milky white; this is because anethole, the essential oil of anise, is soluble in alcohol but not in water. Diluting the spirit causes it to separate, creating an emulsion whose fine droplets scatter the light.

Thinking of my Mom’s cooking, I ordered dolmathes (grape leaves, served with tzadziki, a garlic and cucumber yogurt sauce) and spanakopita, both regulars in the dinner repertoire while I was growing up. And a Mythos beer, (not part of supper when I was a child). The old man brought these dishes out, as well as the beet salad, fried calamari, Greek salad, gyros, fried zucchini and lentil soup that my friends had ordered. He was quite friendly, and although the ouzo took some getting used to, I’m glad we ended up there for our one Greek supper. The food was tasty and the elderly man quite charming, as he explained how he had been running the restaurant with his sons for decades. It felt real; a place where the locals went, instead of someplace geared towards tourists.

Back at the Sofitel, we put on our bathing suits and uncorked the two bottles of Brettos Cabernet-Syrah before heading up to the top floor to swim in the infinity pool with views of the airport runway. We’d be taking off from that runway the next morning, less than 48 hours after we’d arrived. Our unexpected Greek vacation had been short, but sweet. We had another night of cocooning in the clouds to look forward to, and another breakfast banquet. I also look forward to returning to Greece, for real. There’s so much more to eat and see and experience, what a tease this lone day had been!

The flight was barely off the ground before landing in İstanbul, that beautiful water-side city I’ve come to know unexpectedly while here in Uganda. I was reminded how close all of these fantastic places are to each other, and how perfect a backpacking trip it would be. But back to İstanbul:we had 8 hours, beautiful weather, and a lot of excitement. We bought Turkish visas and Starbucks coffee and caught a daredevil taxi into town (we think the driver was on drugs) where I was happy to recognize the neighborhood of Sultanahmet and the pleasant bazaar I had walked through less than five months before.

We followed our map to the homonymous Sultan Ahmet Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque for the blue tiles adorning its interior. Built between 1609 and 1616, the Blue Mosque is magnificent, with six minarets and nine domes and much attention to detail. We took off our shoes and entered, in awe. But the clock was ticking, so we had little time to reflect before we were compelled to leave. Vendors were scattered along the walkway between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sofia. We stopped to buy lollipops made by hand in front of our eyes, the vendor dipping into different colors of sugary candy with one hand while deftly twirling a stick to catch the hot, viscous material with the other. Fresh baked pretzels and chestnuts roasting on an open fire enticed us with their aromas, but we had precious little funds left to our names. The line into the Hagia Sofia was long, so we took a quick snap before moving on, down a street at random. Let me say, I love wandering around in these Mediterranean countries, with their winding cobblestone streets and cats, enticing aromas, delicious (inexpensive) food and beautiful architecture. It’s an area of the world I did not appreciate until this past year, with my somewhat accidental introduction to Istanbul on the way to Japan. I’m not quite sure how to describe it yet, but there is something very provocative about this area of the world, and I’m excited to explore it further.

As for the Egyptian Liberation Front’s Fab Five, we moved quickly in the bright sunlight and chilly air, energized by the blue sky and the smell of the sea. Suddenly, we found ourselves in the Grand Bazaar, which I had missed on my first whirlwind trip. As before, the pottery seduced me, the colors enticed me, the smells enveloped me, the cloth begged to be touched, and the men flirted relentlessly. I bought a pair of turquoise and silver earrings that reminded me of Whirling Dervishes. We exited the closed portion of the bazaar and walked down a crowded street. I stopped in at an eatery and got some sort of wrap (the menu was in Turkish so I just pointed to the cheapest item) that was delicious, with finely sliced chicken, vegetables, humus and tzatziki in a fresh pita.

We ducked into the covered area once more, and stopped at a dried fruit shop. There were dried kiwis (darn, I thought my Dad and I invented those!) and the man behind the counter let us sample them, but they didn’t taste at all like kiwi, and were overly sugared. Wolves win after all! At least on taste, if not originality. Suddenly, I got the strangest sense of déjà vu-I’d been here before! Not just a bazaar in İstanbul, but this bazaar, these piles of spices. A few moments later, I came upon a sign, “this shop is recommended by Obama.” Aha! I HAD been here before! We were entering the Egyptian spice bazaar now, where I had come in September. I had had no idea the two were connected. It was a good things I got my bearings, because our time was running out, and we needed to get back to the airport. I led my friends confidently out past the New Mosque onto Kennedy Caddesi (a road that hugs the waterfront) where we caught a taxi back to the airport.

We boarded the flight to Entebbe as the sun set. With presidential elections barely two weeks away, the world was flying in its observers and aides, and for once, the flight was full. Walking down the gangway, the Egyptian Liberation Front’s Fab Five spontaneously broke into the Ugandan National Anthem, "Oh Uganda." Oh, Uganda, we're coming home, finally!

3.30AM found us safe in a Peace Corps Land Rover with Henry at the wheel. 4AM found us safe in bed at a hotel in central Kampala. Finally, I could text my parents, “Back in Uganda, safe and sound.” Finally, we could use all those shillings.

The next morning, Henry again picked us up in a Peace Corps vehicle. This time, he was bringing us to the office, where we received a hero’s welcome. We were celebrities. Staff members greeted us with smiles and hugs, telling us how worried they’d been. One of the associate directors even broke down in tears when she saw us. Ted, the Country Director, cleared his schedule and sat with us for two hours as we recounted our adventure, the good and the bad. He told us how scared they’d all been, when they couldn’t get though to us, and didn’t know where we were. How hard it was to talk with our families and not have answers. We hadn’t known, but he’d been keeping all 150 Volunteers in the loop as well, updating them on our status. Everyone knew us as the Egyptian Liberation Front's Fab Five (an endearing nickname given by one of the guys in our group). Everyone wanted to hear the story.

The Egyptian Liberation Front's Fab Five

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:48:41 GMT

Cairo looked like a ghost town. The roads were empty; the dusty buildings stood tall and silent, guarding the streets lit by the orange glow of electric lamps. The air was thick with the smell of smoke and unease. I was tired and relieved. We had seen so much in such a short time, and I was ready to leave. To check Egypt off my list, and file the memories away. To send my parents a text when we landed in Entebbe, “Back in Uganda, safe and sound.” To not feel the buzz of so much of your worry under my skin.

I looked with sleepy eyes at the great, silent city. Now there were scattered groups of people clustered around bonfires in the street. The bus slowed, then stopped. Through the windows, suddenly wide awake, I saw we had stopped at one of these bonfires. The road was blocked by a group of men, milling about, each with some sort of weapon in hand. Two of them boarded the bus, meticulously checking identification. We dutifully took out our passports, used to this from the long hours we had been traveling from Dahab. The men glanced briefly at us and moved on, our passports unexamined. Confused, we returned them to our bags.

Having checked everyone but us, the men stepped off the bus and waved it through the barricade. We drove on for no more than a minute before we again approached one of the roadblocks with a bonfire and dozens of men holding weapons. The most common were thick pieces of wood, some obviously branches broken off the city’s roadside landscaping. As our bus passed through more and more of these roadblocks, we saw every conceivable weapon imaginable. Kitchen knives, meat cleavers, pitchforks, pieces of rebar, swords, bricks, AK-47s, grenades, lengths of chain, and a bullwhip. In all seriousness.

We passed barricade after barricade, not knowing what was happening. Everyone was speaking quickly, angrily, and in Arabic. We were the only foreigners on the bus, and there was only one other woman, who looked terrified as she clutched her young children close. Our bus was directed up and down the streets by these groups of vigilantes. The bus was sometimes let through, and sometimes turned back around. The men around us, sensing our unease, spoke in broken English, telling us the men and boys outside with the weapons wouldn’t hurt us. “They’re protecting the streets.” Confused and uncomfortable, I pulled the headscarf tighter under my chin.

At one of the roadblocks, I made eye contact with a young boy; he couldn’t have been older than 15. As scared as I was, as much as I didn’t understand what was going on around me, I saw something in his eyes that made my throat catch. There was so much determination, so much solemn strength. I didn’t know why he was out there, with his father, his brothers, his uncles and neighbors and countrymen, why a knife was in his hand, resting against his hip. But I knew that what he was doing, what all these men were doing, was beautiful, and right. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I looked away. Glancing back, I saw he was still watching me. His face was hard, but it also held an innocence, a faith in the world and in Justice. The vigilantes waved our bus through the barricade and I lost sight of him, but the look in his eyes and the beauty of what he was doing has stayed with me.

Finally, after two tense hours, the driver was able to navigate to the bus park, where the gate was chained firmly behind us. As we stepped into the cool night air, one of the men we had befriended on the ride through Cairo directed us to a collection of chairs and tables outside a closed restaurant. He told us we would be safe, here, until morning. Apparently we were all stuck; a curfew had been instated all over Cairo. It was 10pm. Protesting, we told him we had to get to the airport. Our flight was in just over four hours! Soon we had a group of seven or eight Egyptian men of all ages surrounding us, concerned, telling us it was too dangerous, that we couldn’t leave the bus station for our own safety.

The street outside was empty in the orange glow, save for the occasional tank on patrol, its metal wheel crunching loudly against the pavement and its gun firmly pointing ahead. For an hour and a half, these men, who had, of their own volition, taken it upon themselves to take care of us and protect us, first pleaded with us to spend the night in the safety of the locked bus park, and then problem solved for us when they realized we couldn’t be persuaded. After several minutes of language barrier, with the help of a pad of paper and pen, where we wrote “We live in Uganda. We have to call Uganda.” in the hopes that the men’s written English was better than their understanding of our foreign accents, one of the men eagerly handed over his cell phone. We tried, unsuccessfully, to contact Peace Corps Uganda and the Cairo Embassy for advice.

Each of the men had a different idea of how to get us safely to the airport. Some men tried to contact the army to get them to escort us. Others tried, unsuccessfully, to flag down the few taxis passing. Hassan, a round, middle aged man with a brow furrowed with worry for us, somehow called a tour company to send a taxi. When it arrived, the other men were still reluctant for us to leave. We were safe in the bus park with them! They didn’t know the taxi driver. He could be anyone, he could be planning anything! We shared the sentiment: we trusted Hassan and the other men from the bus. They had adopted us and their concern was genuine and palpable. But we had to get to the airport, so we asked that one of them come with us. “We can’t,” they replied, “we’re Egyptians. We’d be killed if we went out there.” Comforting. The tour guide showed us his company ID, and Hassan took his phone number, calling it to make sure it was the real number. Hassan gave us his number and made us promise to call him when we got to the airport. If he hadn’t heard from us in 30 minutes, he threatened the taxi driver, he was going to call the police. The group of men shuffled us into the taxi, assuring us we would be okay out there, since we were Americans. My heart swelled for these men, who were so concerned for five white girls they didn’t know, even as their own country was coming apart at the seams. “Shukran, shukran!” Thank you, thank you!, we repeated as we piled into the taxi and waved goodbye to our guardian angels.

Not five minutes later, as we sped through the streets of Cairo, our taxi driver rattling off something in Arabic about “Americans” and “airport,” at each barricade, the driver’s phone rang and he passed it to us. It was Hassan, his voice full of worry. Had we been kidnapped? Were we safe? Could we get through the groups of vigilantes okay? As we passed roadblock after roadblock, now with our heads uncovered (in this instance, cultural sensitivity didn’t matter, and we passed through quicker if the men with knives saw our fair skin and hair), the mood lightened, and our taxi driver erupted into ever more ecstatic bouts of clapping and cheering after each successful crossing. “You see, I keep you safe!” he declared. As we pulled into sight of the airport, his cell phone rang again. Hassan, again, still worried. We told him we had made it safely, and shukran, shukran, for all his help!

I must say, Egyptian men are awesome. We didn’t have much interaction with Egyptian women; they weren’t around. For all the cultural norms that I probably take issue with, there is something to be said for Egyptian culture. I don’t know why, but throughout our trip, there were always honest, genuine, protective Egyptian men willing to risk themselves to care for complete strangers. For us. There are, of course, sketchy, dirty Egyptian men up to no good, but men like Said and Hassan far outweighed the predatory ones during our time there. So many of them are responsible for our safe passage through Egypt, and so many of them we will never get to properly thank.

We opened the doors of Departure Hall 1 onto hundreds of people sitting and standing and milling about in confusion. Hearing American accents, we approached a group of people, who informed us that their flight had been canceled. We scanned the TV monitors and, not finding our flight, determined we were at the wrong departure hall. Hurrying, because it was now midnight and only two hours before we were scheduled to take off, we found our way to Departure Hall 3, which was just as crowded. When we found our flight on the screen: CANCELED. The airline offices were located upstairs on either side of a long hallway. Ethiopian’s door was firmly shut.

We had been counting on the in-flight meal service for our dinner; I was beyond hungry, having only eaten two of Kareem’s falafel sandwiches all day. We were also short on cash, especially after the exorbitant amount we had paid for our late-night taxi ride through Cairo. Most of us had only a few Egyptian pounds left. I had eight $1 bills and several hundred thousand Ugandan shillings, the shillings being practically useless at the moment. Those with pounds left paid for dinner at a restaurant across the parking lot. Our bellies full, we lay back on the wide couch with plenty of throw pillows, huddling together for warmth. The cold winter wind was blowing through the semi-open restaurant, and the portable heaters the staff had brought could only do so much. I think they let us stay there for an hour or so; we dozed a bit with the big screen TV in front of us replaying the same scenes of the protesters and the newscasters incomprehensible in Arabic.

Eventually, the waiters came with the bill, and a new batch of customers that needed our seats. Tired, but with full bellies, we returned to Departure Hall 3 and staked our claim on a patch of the cold granite floor just across from Kenyan Airways against the railing blocking off the security gates. We dug through our bags for anything that could make the night more comfortable. I had taken a blanket and pillow from Ethiopian Airlines, and I don’t even feel bad about it anymore; that blanket saved my life not only on top of Mount Sinai, but at the airport, and even in America (blog to come soon!)

Somehow I actually slept. I spent the night in and out of consciousness, the sounds of the hundreds of people around us mixing into my dreams. I turned from side to side all night against the cold, unforgiving floor. In the morning, the news was no better. I sat with the bags as the others went in search of information and breakfast.

Ethiopian Airlines was sorry, but the next flight wasn’t until the next day. We didn’t know if we’d even get seats, or if they would take the customers who originally had seats on the flight. We couldn’t get through to Peace Corps. A single vegetable and cheese panini was breakfast, but the girls who had brought the sandwich, in their search for food, had found a Holy Grail: unclaimed couches in the Arrivals Hall. After our meager breakfast, we hightailed it out of Departure Hall 3 in time to claim a couch and a chair. It looked like we’d be spending the night again, but at least we’d be more comfortable! A few hours later, we inexplicably found ourselves with another chair and another couch when the previous residents vacated the premises. For lunch, we each got two packets of wafer cookies and a small bag of chocolate-filled mini croissants, courtesy of Renee. This shocked me into reality. Renee would never, ever buy something so sugary and nutritionally poor-this was BAD. But there wasn’t anything else to buy at the stores. Tens of thousands of people were stuck, just like us. The airport was running out of food and drinking water. New shipments couldn’t get through because Cairo was at a standstill with the protests.

Shocked into reality, and with suitable sleeping arrangements secured, my sole focus turned to sustenance, and as I roamed the buildings in search of something edible, I considered how quickly we seemed to have reverted to survival mode. The five of us were a family, and it was us against the world. We had become intensely protective of what was ours. No crumb was wasted, no sympathy was given to those who had no place to rest their weary heads. We had staked out our territory, and it was rather nice, thank you! After being turned away at four or five restaurants with grim shakes of the head, I returned to Kiro’s Air Café, where we had eaten dinner in the middle of the previous night. The line was long, but the waiter remembered me as one of the beautiful girls he had flirted with from the night before, and without shame, I flirted back as I ordered two pasta dishes (all we could afford), to go. I stood to the side and waited anxiously for my food. The man behind me stepped up to the register, only to be turned away with a furrowed brow. Food was finished. I returned to the rest of the group, pasta in hand, as proud as a mother bird with a worm for her hungry chicks. We would eat tonight!

The word wasn’t good from Departure Hall 3. Ethiopian Airlines had closed up shop. We had managed to beg use of someone’s cell phone and gotten through to Peace Corps Washington, and they had told us about an American Embassy evacuation flight planned for the next morning, out of Hall Four, but there was no Hall Four. They advised us to find one of the American Embassy workers patrolling the halls, trying to find American citizens. The problem was, American Embassy workers were nowhere to be found. British Embassy workers told us they had heard rumors of an American evacuation, but they hadn’t seen our embassy anywhere in the airport. They graciously let us use their cell phones to try and contact someone, but that’s all they could do. We simply weren’t their problem.

The mood was glum at the couches. When we weren’t searching for a flight out of Egypt, we spent our time reading and dozing and feeling sorry for ourselves. We were hungry, but saving the pasta for dinner. The curfew that day had been called for 4pm, so all restaurants were closing by mid-afternoon to allow their chefs time to get home in time. Not that the chefs would have had any ingredients to cook with, even if they had stayed. Ashley, Renee and I went for a walk, and sitting on a table, unprotected, was a slab of cheesecake with only a few bites missing. Renee is crazy, and doesn’t like cheese of any sort, but Ashley and I stopped in our tracks, glancing around to see if anyone was watching… I guess we hadn’t gone completely feral because we couldn’t bring ourselves to actually take it. I would have if I was certain it was abandoned, but in the circumstances, it had to belong to someone, right? Right??

Later, Elizabeth and went to see if anything was left at the convenience store, and I used my $8 US to buy a bag of hard fruit flavored candies which supposedly contained vitamins. We also picked up a bag of peanut M&Ms. We’d had almost nothing but sugar the entire day, and our stomachs were not happy, but we needed to get calories somehow. The hours stretched on and on. The attendants in the bathroom no longer handed out towels in exchange for coins; no one had anything left to give. Asian women crowded the sinks, bathing themselves as best they could.

At dusk, we gathered around the two styrofoam containers of pasta for dinner, politely eating slowly so as not to take more than our share. After eating, Charlene and I decided to see what was going on in the other airport buildings. We boarded the shuttle bus that circles the airport and rode it to the next stop, which turned out to be the departure hall we’d first arrived at the night before. It was still crowded with people. The Burger King was closed. The convenience store didn’t even have candy left on its shelves. There was nothing for us here.

We took the bus back to parking lot, and decided to check out the restaurants around there. A few minutes later, we noticed two men following us. We cut through the line of restaurants in an attempt to lose them, but they were still on us. Walking fast, we made it into the main arrivals building. Still following. We hurried down the escalator, and past the security guards towards the couches. We ran into Ashley, who told us she’d found an Ethiopian flight going out in an hour, but we needed to bring our passports and bags now-now. Elated at the news, we ran the last few yards to the couches, grabbed our things, and rushed next door to Departure Hall 3. Renee was sitting in the office when we arrived, out of breath. The look on her face made my stomach sink. The flight wasn’t going out, after all.

Elizabeth rushed back to reclaim our couches while the rest of us pow-wowed to decide on an action plan. The low-level unease that had been resting just below my solar plexus all day began to stir and grow. The possibility of our getting on another flight was rapidly deteriorating, and we realized the number of white faces in the masses had sharply declined since morning. Exactly where those people had gone, we didn’t know; what mattered was that we were still here. Charlene and I shared the story of the men following us. While the security guards still sat at their stations, the thousands of people coming and going made it impossible for them to adequately screen everyone, and now they had stopped screening people altogether. It was quite possible that groups of men up to no good had come to the airport to prey on vulnerable refugees just like us.

We begged use of a British embassy worker’s international phone and got through to the Peace Corps Duty Officer in Washington, D.C. There were 14 Peace Corps Volunteers in Egypt when the protests began. The five of us were the only ones left. The Duty Officer reiterated the necessity of our getting on the evacuation flight the next day, and took down our names and passport numbers to register us on the flight. “The flight is leaving from Departure Hall 4 at 11am. Get there by 9. Find one of the embassy workers in the airport. They’re looking for American citizens and will take care of you.” We’d heard this before. “The embassy ISN'T here. There IS no Hall 4,” we told him. But there wasn’t anything else he could do for us.

The embassy phone in Cairo remained unanswered, the promised embassy workers purported to be combing the halls of Cairo International remained elusive. As the four of us discussed what we should do next, a blood-curdling scream came from the crowd of people waiting to go through the security screening (that, at least, was still up and running) to the departure gates. Several more screams followed, and I braced for an explosion or the sound of gunfire, but it didn’t come. We glanced at each other before turning and walking back to the Arrivals Hall.

Elizabeth had managed to get half our territory back, but we’d lost one whole couch and chair in the Ethiopian flight fiasco. She’d made a desperate plea to the family that had taken over, and they’d grudgingly moved, taking one of the chairs with them. A lone man remained in one of the couches, feigning slumber. The mood was grim as we prepared ourselves for sleep. We put pillows down on the cold floor as a makeshift bed for Renee. Ashley took the chair. Elizabeth, Charlene and I curled together on the couch. I tossed and turned, and noticed two men sitting at the bar, staring at us. There wasn’t much they could do, with so many people all around, witnesses under the bright fluorescent lights, but it still made my stomach cold.

I didn’t sleep. I went over our options again and again. I thought about my family and friends. I analyzed how, exactly, we had found ourselves in this predicament. I watched the two men watching us and waited for dawn.

As the sky lightened on the 31st of January, I waited for one of my friends to stir. We had to find the embassy’s evacuation flight. There was no other option. Around 7, Elizabeth woke. I asked her to accompany me once more in search of the elusive Departure Hall 4, the supposed location of the American embassy’s evacuation of all foreign nationals, to depart in just under 4 hours. We had been searching in vain for any sign of the embassy or the evacuation flight for over 24 hours now. If 11am came and went without our locating Hall 4... I didn’t let myself think about what would happen to us. Elizabeth and I walked over to Departure Hall 3. The situation there didn’t seem to have changed much from the previous night; it was still crowded with people standing, sitting, and sleeping everywhere. We made our way through the throngs to the same information desk we’d been to several times the day before. We asked if they knew where we could find Departure Hall 4, from where the American Embassy was evacuating its citizens. The man shook his head no. Our search was off to a rough start.

Just as we were about to turn away and look for someone else to ask, the man spoke. “There’s another departure hall a few kilometers from here; it’s called Hajj Hall, because that’s where flights to Mecca take off. That may be what you’re looking for.” My heart skipped a beat… could it be? We followed his directions, turning right through a parking lot and continuing on for several minutes before coming to a police post. “Hajj Hall?” we asked, and they pointed us down the road. We practically skipped down the road with new-found energy. Even if Hajj Hall didn’t end up being what we were looking for, at least we had something to keep us busy!

Fifteen minutes later, a group of security guards and a roadblock came into view. As we approached, one of the guards walked forward to meet us. “Are you American?” he asked. Tears pricked my eyes. “YES!” we almost shouted. “Yes, we’re American!” All of the sudden, a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. Much of the exhaustion, hunger, discomfort, frustration and fear of the last two days dissipated. Finally someone cared that we were citizens of the United States of America; that we needed help getting out of Egypt; that we were hungry and tired and needed a safe place to sleep.

They checked our passports and waved us through. Elizabeth and I walked for another ten minutes before coming to a large building: Hajj Hall, also known as Terminal 4. We walked through the doors and were greeted by several hundred foreigners. This was where all the white faces were hiding! “Are you American?” we asked a middle-aged couple. “Yeah, we’re waiting for the embassy evacuation. They’re coming at 9.” It was 8.30. Elizabeth and I practically ran back to the Arrivals Hall. “We found it! It’s ‘Terminal’ 4, not Hall 4! The embassy is coming in like 15 minutes. We have to hurry!”

Rejuvenated with the promise of salvation, the five of us grabbed our bags and hurried out of the Arrivals Hall without a backward glance. There were more people on the road now, white people. We called out to them, “American? The evacuation is happening just down the road.” Hajj Hall was even more crowded than when we had left. There was no sign of the embassy, but we had found our fellow Americans! We set our bags down near the door and struck up a conversation with a group in their early 30s. As it turned out, they were all RPCVs who had been working with USAID in Egypt. “Do you want to call anyone?” they asked. We used their international phones to call the Country Director in Uganda and our families. I was shaking with emotion as I called my parents to let them know I was okay. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for them, to see news coverage of a country unraveling and know that your daughter was in the thick of it, yet have no news.

About 11, the embassy workers finally pulled in. They announced that there were three planes: one bound for Istanbul, another flying to Athens, and a third headed to Cyprus. We didn’t have a choice in which plane we flew, but everyone would get on one, not to worry. We waited patiently in line as three of the embassy workers began to register us. As we were waiting, buses started pulling up to the curb; hundreds of Americans were arriving, busload after busload. This was going to take forever. We sent an ambassador up to one of the main embassy organizers to ask, pretty please, if we could get assistance as Peace Corps Volunteers. It worked! For today, we were considered diplomats, and as such, got to stand in a much shorter line on the other side of the doors.

We still waited in line most of the afternoon, but the polished diplomat ladies, upon seeing the five of us (obviously) Peace Corps Volunteers, took pity. “Are you hungry?” It started with an apple, passed from hand to hand in a circle. Seeing this grim display, another lady piped up, “I have some crackers… they’re stale, but,” we cut her off. Who cared if they were stale! They were actually quite delicious, whole wheat, and not stale at all. “Would you girls like some granola bars?” said an old woman. Hell, yeah, we would! Another lady piped up, “If anyone is hungry, I have some sandwiches here.” We thanked them profusely, but they waved us off, “You’re sacrificing so much through your service, it’s the least I could do.” “I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, too, once. I know what its like.”

We dozed on the sidewalk in the warm sunshine as thousands of Americans continued to arrive and join the back of the civilian line, which wasn’t moving at all. It took us hours, but finally we were at the head of the diplomat line. They took our passports, registered us, and handed back pieces of paper scrawled with a number 4. After a while, we were ushered into the building, where we spent another hour slowly snaking our way around the walls. Finally, we received exit stamps at the passport check, handed over our “boarding passes” (the slips of paper marked 4) and boarded a bus that took us to a waiting aircraft. The sun was setting a glowing orange as we boarded the plane, which would make countless trips back and forth over the next few days. The embassy had grossly underestimated the number of Americans in the country wishing to be evacuated. They had originally planned for a single flight to each of the three destinations.

But on that first day of evacuation, on the fourth flight out of Cairo International, The Egyptian Liberation Front’s Fab Five finally left Egypt, bound for Athens, Greece.

A Blue Hole In The Red Sea

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:42:48 GMT

The shades of brown that I was starting to think endless abut the blue of the Red Sea. The mountains leave scant room for a coast, coming shockingly close to shore. Hussein delivered us safely to Dahab in under two hours; well worth the cost, especially since he’d agreed to less than the “fair price” that Elizabeth had deduced from her inquiries. In a rush of compassion for this man who had come looking for us in St. Catherine more than once in less than 24 hours, giving us free rides in his van to keep us safe, I put an extra E£ 10 in the pot to push our fare up to the standard amount. The equivalent of $2, it was a small gesture to a genuinely nice old man who works hard to support his family. With a smile that showed all his remaining teeth and smoothed the lines on his cheeks, Hussein bid us farewell on the edge of a tourist’s dream town.

Dahab, at least the part we came to know well over the next three days, is definitely designed for vacation. The south end of town is devoted to shops. Some stocked their shelves solely with teas or spices while others crowded the space with postcards, trinkets and t-shirts. There were bakeries selling baklava and donuts, and supermarkets with more everyday items. We were directed up and over a bridge, following the wide palm-lined boulevard hugging the coast. Here, expensive-looking restaurants lined the water’s edge, with opulent resorts, dive shops, and souvenir stands on the far side.

Our hotel appeared out of our price range, with its pristine white buildings and balconies, but Renee and I had done some research, and they also had a dorm room option which was much cheaper while still occupying prime real-estate a few meters from the water. We approached the desk, our appearance suddenly lackluster compared to our surroundings. Said, the manager, was instantly likable. He greeted us with a smile and a joke, and quickly explained that the dorms were overbooked. Not to worry! Because it was the hotel’s fault (n.b. this would NEVER happen in Uganda), they would put two of us up in a suite and the other three would stay in the dorms as planned.

Renee and I ended up in the suite, as we had done the work to plan our itinerary. I had been staying with Renee in her village for a few weeks while Peace Corps looked for my new site (blog post to come soon). The week before we were set to leave, we realized we still had no idea where we were going, what we were seeing, or where we were staying. We skimmed Lonely Planet and decided on the coolest things to see and do in under a week, found the cheapest accommodation and sent email reservations, and with my Mom’s help, figured out the best means of transport (some buses are better than others).

The suite was well worth the trouble! We had a wide queen bed, our own balcony looking out across the Gulf of Aqaba to Saudi Arabia, a private bathroom, mini fridge, and other luxuries. We set our dusty packs on the clean tile floor and ran back outside to take it all in. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. Waves crashed gently in the background and the air was warm and slightly salty.

Wandering inland, away from the expensive-looking restaurants lining the shore, we stumbled on a falafel house. The room was dark and small, a few tables and a refrigerator crowding out any empty space. Against the back wall was a counter laden with piles of pita bread and bowls of sauces to stuff them with. Taped against the glass protecting the food was a yellowed menu listing things I’d never heard of but wanted desperately. After a few moments of our open-mouthed staring, Kareem pushed a plate of bite-size falafel through the window. This shook us out of our reverie, and we ordered. I asked for two pita, filled with falafel, hummus, tzatziki, and roasted vegetables in a spicy red sauce. We took our food outside and ate at a table shaded by an umbrella, where we could watch Kareem mixing and scooping falafel out of a bowl into a hot fryer.

Our stomachs filled, we made our way back to the hotel to see if we could arrange a snorkeling trip to the Blue Hole, a famous snorkel and dive spot a few kilometers up the coast. Said introduced us to a British woman in her forties that had been living in Dahab for five years, running a snorkeling tour company. We arranged with her to be picked up the next morning and returned to the boardwalk to explore. After a few seconds, we were drawn in by a charming young Arab man promising a happy hour special on drinks. We took a table next to the water where we had a beautiful view up and down the coast, the sun falling towards the mountains and setting the clear water to sparkling. If we looked over the edge of the railing, we could see colorful fish, and Saudi Arabia lay hazy in the distance. We sampled Egyptian beers-Sakara Gold, Luxor Classic-and soaked in the beauty of our surrounds. As darkness descended, the shore was lined with lights: flickering yellow coming from torches and candles and reds and blues and greens from electric bulbs.

We returned to the boardwalk, and were met with more charming young Arab men with outrageously cheap prices for multiple-course meals. We used our bargaining skills from Uganda-going back and forth between the different restaurants, pointing out flaws to lower the price- and ended up with Mohammed (“Mo”) who promised me a delicious meal involving vegetables and cheese to be created special by the chef, and the other girls fresh seafood and lots of it. We sat on plush couches in flickering candlelight, Mo hovering within reach if we needed anything. We were served hot pita bread and fresh hummus with pickled vegetables, followed by a spicy lentil soup, for me, and something with a lot of seafood for the others. When their entrée came a short while later (we’re not in Africa anymore, Toto!), it was an elaborate construction using quite a lot of tinfoil and piled with fish and prawns and other underwater delicacies. My plate was no less magnificent despite the absence of tinfoil. The chef had prepared a delicious dish, with layers of eggplant, potato, carrot, green pepper, broccoli (!) and other vegetables, somehow stuffed with cheese and spiced just right. It was like scalloped potatoes, but with more variety, and instead of a casserole, the vegetables resembled a tower. Dessert was baklava, dripping in honey. We retired, sated, to our clean white beds.

Breakfast was included in the price of our rooms, and it was glorious: tea, coffee, juice, cereal, toast, yogurt, fresh fruit, omelets, bacon and sausage if you were so inclined, and the coup de grâce, crêpes to order (chocolate, please!) The British woman arrived, and led us to a waiting flatbed truck. Elizabeth and I jumped in the back for the twenty minute journey up the coast. The sun was bright in the sky as we snaked through the thin passageway between beach and mountain, blue and brown. Several times young children jumped onto the bumper for a ride, and we passed other vehicles toting similar passengers, so we weren’t too alarmed. One of them was a caramel-skinned Bedouin girl with flyaway hair, dressed in a turquoise velour pants and jacket set. We’d met her the night before when she’d come into Mo’s restaurant, looking for tourists wanting to buy bracelets she’d made from embroidery thread. These pre-pubescent girls selling friendship bracelets were everywhere in Dahab; this girl was hitching a ride back to her home village.

We came to a stop at a group of maybe twenty buildings sprawling along the coast. These were all restaurants/dive bases serving people coming far and wide to explore The Blue Hole, a submarine sinkhole that was likely formed during the ice ages, when sea-level was one or two hundred meters below what it is currently. At this time, these formations were subjected to the same erosion from rain and chemical weathering common in all limestone-rich terrains; this ended once they were submerged at the end of the ice age, leaving a pretty nifty underwater world to be explored.

The British lady led us into one of the buildings, a mostly open-air, two story construction that was separated into sections for different groups. Each section had a low table surrounded by cushions. We set our things down and went to pick out our snorkeling equipment. Cairo had been chilly, St. Catherine had been downright cold, but Dahab was pleasantly warm, possibly even hot during the day. Still, I was worried about becoming cold in the water and having to get out before I was ready, so I opted to rent a wetsuit in addition to fins and snorkeling mask.

We walked a little ways up the beach, past signs memorializing the divers who have lost their lives over the years at this notoriously tricky site. We approached an opening in the reef where you can enter the
water without damaging the surrounding corals, but not before the British woman had chewed out more than a few people for entering the water by walking over the reef and damaging years of delicate coral growth. I was happy we were being led by someone so concerned with the conservation of the environment! Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the local instructors were likewise inclined.

The water was cool but not cold. At first it was strange to breathe through the mask, when your eyes and nose and mouth are all under water, and my breathing was fast and irregular, but as I got used to it, my breathing slowed to normal and became an unconscious action again.

We followed the reef south. At first I stayed with my friends, but soon I was going at my own pace, exploring this new world and all the interesting things in it. I don’t have names for all the creatures I saw there, but I’ve heard that the Red Sea is one of the best places to snorkel and dive in the world, and it was certainly an amazing introduction! I know how cliché this sounds, but it’s true: I was introduced to a whole new world when I put my head down into the water. There was so much going on! Fish of every size and shape, and oh, the colors! Not to mention the more stationary creatures of the reef itself, the corals, anemones and sea urchins. There are over 1200 different species in the Red
Sea, many of them found nowhere else in the world!

I floated in the shallows near the shore, where the reef is close to the surface, careful to keep my fins up to prevent touching the fascinating creatures just below me. I swam out to where the reef dropped off, and the water was a darker shade of blue. From this vantage point you could see the reef descending down into the deep, and I was jealous of the scuba divers and their front row seats. We made our way slowly, over several hours. I had completely forgotten about the snorkel allowing me to breathe, and when a black and white spotted fish stopped just in front of me and-I swear-smiled, I burst out laughing, which, when snorkeling, is hazardous to breathing normally.

Eventually, we got to the Blue Hole itself, which was a circle of more reef with deep blue water in the middle. I slowly circumnavigated the reef, but before getting out, I decided to swim out to the middle and take a look. No one else was around, and when I put my head down, I heard the sand and pebbles shifting on the sea floor, the scuba divers’ bubbles rising to the surface (they tickle your skin when you’re in their path), and other soft sea sounds. All the chatter from the beach was muffled. My entire field of vision was shades of blue, shifting and flickering with the sun. The reef of the Blue Hole was a faint shadow surrounding me, and individual shafts of sunlight pierced the surface, coming together at a single point below me, creating a brilliant sphere of light, occasionally throwing tendrils out from the center as the water shifted. It reminded me of the electricity in a plasma globe, and I imagined the faint clicking and snapping sounds to be coming from the sphere.

We stayed as long as possible in the water, but eventually we got too cold and had to get out. We returned to our second floor sitting area and sat with our legs dangling off the edge and the sun bringing warmth back to our bodies. We had a great view of the Blue Hole from here, the reef a lighter shade of blue surrounding deep blue. There were hundreds of snorkelers and divers in the water and on the thin stretch of beach. Camels decked out in colorful headgear sat in the sand. The mountains provided a beautiful backdrop, close enough to touch, between the sparkling blue water the brilliant blue sky.

After drying off and warming up, we packed our things and bid farewell to the Blue Hole, driving back to Dahab. We had the British lady drop us in the less touristy section, where we saw a beautiful fruit and vegetable stand. They had a wide variety of produce, local and foreign, and we had to be careful not to spend all our money on longed-for treats like grapes and strawberries. I bought four kiwis that were the perfect ripeness, skinned them, and popped them one by one into my mouth, whole. When I closed my eyes I could almost imagine myself at home in Seattle in the early hours of a school day, sitting with my Dad and reading the comics. Uganda is actually developed enough to have begun importing exotic things like kiwis, available at one or two big grocery stores in Kampala, but I’ve never bought one; they’re hard as rocks.

We made our way through the quiet streets, which appeared lived-in and comfortable and a little dog-eared compared to the tourist strip. Dusty compounds lined dusty streets with concrete walls broken now and then with rusted iron doors. Children gazed out curious at the foreign faces passing by. Men walked by carrying stacks of fresh pita for sale. Shabby stalls were erected on the side of the road, the smell of roasting meat wafting on the breeze. It was nice to see the “real” Dahab, away from the whitewash and souvenir shops. I hope I never travel somewhere without exploring at least for a short while the way real people live day to day. It’s not possible to get to know everywhere to the extent I know Togo or Uganda... that takes years, and even though I know these places a thousand times better than a tourist, I know I’ve only scratched the surface. But to say you’ve visited a place when the only local people you’ve seen have been driving your car or performing a “traditional” song and dance for your enjoyment is a blatant lie. You’ve been there physically, sure, but do you really have any right to say you understand the place? To form an opinion or judge it at all?

I swung by Kareem’s shop on the way back. He smiled when he recognized me, and this time the pita was filled to the brim with tasty falafel and sauces. When I returned to the hotel, the TV was tuned to Al Jazeera. The screen was filled with masses of people, the reporters talking urgently in Arabic. Curious, I asked Said what was going on. “Protests,” he replied. I couldn’t read his expression. “Why are they protesting?” I pressed. Said turned away from the TV to look at me, “The government... my brother is in Cairo...” he struggled, “No comment.” It was the 27th of January, and this was the first we’d heard of the protests, but I was certain the rest of the world had heard about it long before. I checked my email, and sure enough, people were eager to know if I was safe. I sent a short email detailing our adventures thus far and assuring people that we were safe here in Dahab, far from Cairo and whatever was going on there. If it came to it, I said, we could fly out of Sharm el Sheik on the southern tip of the peninsula, straight to Cairo International and on to Entebbe.

Ever the model Peace Corps Volunteers, we checked in with the staff in Uganda using Said’s phone. They advised us to contact the embassy in Cairo for advice on what to do, since they didn’t have a good understanding of the situation on the ground. The embassy advised us to stay away from Cairo and keep informed through the internet and Al Jazeera television. We had been planning to return to Cairo by bus the next day, the 28th, to spend our last day in the city, going to the market and museums before our flight out the night of the 29th, but we decided to stay another day in Dahab and see how things developed.

That evening we played Bingo with the other hotel guests after dining at a restaurant we had seen earlier in the more authentic section of town. Meanwhile, the government shut down virtually all cell phone services and internet communications in the country.

We spent the 28th of January on the beach and in the water. We rented snorkeling masks and fins from a shop on the boulevard, but they were old and tended to let water in after a while. Still, with my new found love of this other world, I couldn’t let a snorkeling opportunity pass me by, so I explored the reefs around Dahab until my lips and tongue were pickled in the salt water and my eyes stung too much to see. Every hour or so someone went across the way to our hotel to check what was being broadcast on Al Jazeera. It was all fast Arabic narrating the same scenes of angry mobs, police beating back a surge of people, tear gas canisters flying, several men picking up a metal barrier and throwing it. I asked Said again if he could tell us what was going on. He was a little more collected today (he had heard from his brother) and explained that his English was very good in some areas and very poor in others. He didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about what was going on. The best he could do was “They’re mad at the government.” When I tried to log onto the internet, the page wouldn’t load. I went back to the beach.

Around mid-day, a peddler came by with a cart filled with all the makings of koshary: a large vat of noodles, containers of lentils, chickpeas and rice, heaping piles of fried onions, and pitchers of spicy tomato sauce and lime juice. We watched as he heaped the ingredients in take-out boxes. I devoured my first serving and caught him just in time for a second helping; koshary is delicious. Several times an hour the bracelet girls would come around, showing off the thread bracelets that they themselves made, and beaded bracelets their mothers had made. Some of them were quite beautiful, and most of them featured the Evil Eye which is popular in Greece and Turkey as well. The eye is said to protect you from evil. We finally caved to a pair of the adorable Bedouin girls who giggled as they practiced their English on us. The two-piece velour outfit we’d seen on the girl hitching a ride on the truck the day before seemed almost a uniform for these bracelet girls, but I was happy to see that their parents were using some of the money they earned to at least clothe them well. In Uganda, the kids walking around selling roasted maize or bags of peanuts are just as threadbare and dirty as the ones playing in the rubbish piles at the side of the road.

We enjoyed the extra day in Dahab and the chance to relax in a way we hadn’t yet had in Egypt, but we were confused about what was happening in Cairo, and the uncertainty we felt clouded an otherwise perfect day in paradise. Said graciously let us use his cell phone throughout the day in attempts to contact Uganda or the embassy in Cairo, but with cell phone service down, we couldn’t get through. We were on our own. That evening, I returned once more to Kareem’s shop for supper. The other girls enjoyed another seafood feast at one of the beach-side restaurants, and shortly after I joined them, one of our favorite bracelet girls popped in. We commissioned five matching ankle bracelets as souvenirs of our trip and watched as she deftly twirled and spun the thread into patterns.

It was our last night in Dahab, and we would be sad to go. We were starting to know the people on the boulevard, and they recognized us and knew we weren’t your average tourists, not least because we knew how to bargain. We took a stroll down to the end of the boulevard, across the bridge, back to the area where Hussein had dropped us that first day. We bought a box of baklava for Said, a thanks for all he’d done for us over the last couple of days. The sky was bright and clear with the stars shining down on us. The air was cool but not uncomfortably so. I hadn’t expected it, but I had fallen in love with Egypt. It was such a varied and interesting place, and we had seen so much in only five days.

We hadn’t been able to contact the Peace Corps or the embassy in Cairo since the day before, and we couldn’t understand what was being said on Al Jazeera. We had met a group of Peace Corps Volunteers who had been evacuated from service in Niger and were in Dahab on vacation before returning home. They were planning to stay in town for another few days (we later heard they had evacuated to Jordan shortly after). The only real information we had was from Said, who had managed to contact his brother in Cairo, and he told us we would be fine as long as we went straight to the airport. We weren’t crazy about the idea of busing the whole way to Cairo, but as Said pointed out, it would be quite expensive to fly out of Sharm, and there was no guarantee that there would even be a flight out that day, since we had no way of contacting them. We couldn’t call or buy tickets online, so the only way to explore that option was to go to the airport itself, two hours from Dahab. We decided to trust Said’s brother’s judgment and go straight to the airport in Cairo. It was really the only option open to us. So the next morning, the 29th of January, we took a last stroll down the boulevard, where we met an ancient Bedouin grandmother and granddaughter peddling beautifully embroidered lengths of cloth. I chose a large piece with blue designs and bargained a fair price using a mixture of English, Arabic, and hand gestures. With that, I had enough Egyptian pounds left to pay for the bus and save a few bills and coins for memories. We rushed to Kareem’s shop one last time and said a quick goodbye to Said as he saw us out the door into a taxi bound for the bus station.

The journey was uneventful as we snaked down the coast to Sharm el Sheik and turned north, again following the coastal road up the peninsula. The portion of the Red Sea visible from the bus window (the Gulf of Suez) is traditionally believed to be the portion Moses parted to free the children of Israel. We watched the world turn golden as the sun sank towards the horizon. When we reached Suez, everyone was asked to get off the bus with their bags. We stood in a line, passports out, as police checked our documents and dogs sniffed our luggage. We got back on the bus. I gazed out the window as we passed through the desert, sleepy and happy to know that soon we would be safe on a plane back to Uganda.

Ten Commandments For Climbing Gabal Musa

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:42:13 GMT

1. Thou shalt have no other Mountains before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image of burning bushes.
3. Thou shalt not make The Call in vain.
4. Remember the coming meal, to keep it delicious.
5. Honour thy father and thy mother.
6. Thou shalt not freeze.
7. Thou shalt not cocoon with another man’s wife.
8. Thou shalt not steal unguarded cheesecake.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy reader.
10. Thou shalt not covet other people’s jackets.

***************************************************************************************

We stopped in at a bakery to get snacks for the bus ride. There were cakes and cookies, pastries and chocolates, but I was drawn to the more unusual items: plate-shaped bars of nuts stuck together with honey, packages of dried fruit mixed with coconut, pistachios and honey (we referred to the latter as “Coconut Danger”-it was dangerously good!), a hard, round disk made of gram lentils and a sweet, banana flavored white candy. We went to a fast food falafel house around the corner for a delicious, dirt cheap breakfast- each sandwich cost one Egyptian pound, a little less than twenty cents.

We attempted to hire a single taxi to the bus station, there only being five of us (six, if you count the driver) but the taxi man adamantly refused to believe that we could all fit. “FOUR of you in the back seat? Is that humanly possible?” his face seemed to say, as we balked at his refusal. We weren’t even at standard capacity! There would only be one in the passenger’s seat, and we hadn’t even suggested he share the driver’s seat. But he wouldn’t be worn down, so eventually we hailed another taxi and bounced around the two taxis like tennis balls.

The trouble with traveling with an odd number of people is that it is more difficult to divide, although you’ll always have a majority in a vote. Someone is usually left over when you’re an odd number. Two double rooms and a single, two pairs of seats on the bus and one left over. This time, I was left over. I grew up being last, with a name like Wolfe, and although I was in Egypt with two V’s, close is no cigar. W is still last. The moment I sat down in my seat, I felt intensely uncomfortable. I was in a row behind my friends, seated next to an Egyptian man whose mother obviously hadn’t taught him not to stare. The men in the seats around us laughed and teased him in Arabic, and I must have been visibly uneasy because Elizabeth offered to switch with me. Grateful, I sat down next to Renee, realizing for the first time just how uncommon it was to see women in public in Egypt. Apart from the five of us, there was only one other woman on the bus, an Arab woman who was harassed and ogled the entire ride because she was traveling without a husband or other male relative. In the entire Greyhound-size bus, there were only six people with two X chromosomes.

Unfortunately for Elizabeth, I had felt uncomfortable next to the Egyptian man for a very good reason. For the first several hours of the bus ride the man’s hormones had him wiggling in his seat like a middle school boy with a crush on his teacher and a math book covering his lap. Finally we stopped in a dusty town about an hour past the tunnel where the road plunges beneath the Suez canal, where there was a convenience store and stands selling pretzels and skewers of meat in the parking lot, and a toilet stall where the man could relieve himself of the excitement built up by sitting next to a white woman.

The landscape we passed through was enthralling in its desolation. Once we got out of the greater Cairo area, the gray tarmac road cut a straight line through the sands and the world was simplicity: flat tan desert, pale blue sky with cotton clouds too lazy to bind themselves tightly together; they hung wispy over the dark hills in the distance. We turned south once we were on the peninsula, and the sand turned golden in the afternoon light. Infrequently, we passed small collections of dusty concrete buildings and huts, small outposts that someone calls home. We turned east again, leaving the sand behind as the sun drew near the horizon. This world was brown and we were small, making our way through high mountains of rock, speckled with holes and caves, nooks and crannies that would allow someone to disappear off the face of the earth.

We pulled into St. Catherine after dark, and immediately I began to shiver, unprotected in the cold mountain air. We found a restaurant a short ways away. We sat with warm tea, thankful to be sheltered from the wind, at least, and before long our table was laden with plates of warm pita, sliced vegetables, hummus drizzled with olive oil, fragrant rice, and steaming bowls of spiced lentil soup and one with chicken, which came accompanied by the neighborhood cat twining around our heels and meowing for her share. We may have been tired, we may have been cold, but everything was delicious, and there was a lot of it for not a lot of money.

As we were settling the bill, a tall, thin man in cream pants and knee length shirt with a checked red and white headwrap approached us, speaking a mix of English and Arabic. We recognized the name of our hotel, and after repeating it a few times, we figured out that he was offering us a ride, apparently for free. Hussein had deep lines in his face and kind eyes, and assured us we would be able to climb the mountain for the sunrise, no problems.

We arrived at the hotel to relieved looks from the owner, who had sent Hussein to look for us when we hadn’t shown up immediately after the bus passed through. He showed us to our room, which had three single beds and an attached bathroom with a flush toilet and ice cold running water. No one took a shower. We plugged in the space heater which sent a gradually enlarging circle of warmth out into the room. The hotel owner knocked on our door with a tray of shot glasses and a teapot of Turkish coffee, which we poured into metal water bottles and kept near the heater for “morning”. Shortly after eight o’clock we cocooned together under the rough wool blankets cuddling two to a bed, greedy for whatever warmth we could find.

The alarm shocked us into groggy wakefulness at 1.30 in the morning. We left the comfort of our cocoons and struggled into every item of clothing we had as we burned our tongues on the scalding coffee. The harsh winter air rushed in as we filed out the door into the night. St. Catherine was quiet as we walked down the highway, lit with the orange glow of streetlamps. We turned north, onto a stony track leading away from the lights of town. Before us in the dark we could see the mountains: darker patches in the night that blocked the stars from view.

After a few minutes we came to an open area lit with lamps and hundreds of people milling about. Used to Ugandan lines, we made our way to the building where we registered and paid for the mandatory guide that would lead us up the mountain. Ashraf suggested we start the climb immediately, to avoid the worst of the crowd and to ensure that we got spots at the top for the sunrise. There were thousands of people climbing Mount Sinai that night, and there wasn’t space for everyone at the summit.

Ashraf gave us two options, the Steps of Penitence, a steep path made up of 3750 steps carved out of the rock by monks, or the Camel Path. The Steps take less time but are more challenging. We chose the winding Camel Path which snakes its way up to the summit at a less challenging angle.

There were already long lines of pilgrims making their way carefully over the stony ground, and we passed dozens of camels and guides on the side of the road, offering an easier journey. We walked at a steady pace, fending off the cold with movement. Our feet were accustomed to finding their way in the dark from so many moonless nights in Africa. The path was rough as we made our way around slower travelers and camels burdened with the elderly, the overweight, and the lazy. The sky was scattered with diamonds, but literally. The cold air was clear and the night was vividly black and the stars shone bright, luminous, and I understood how you could think this place holy. The path steepened, and a near-full moon rose to light our way.

We didn’t speak much. We focused our energy on putting one foot in front of the other and balancing the hot and cold. My feet were tingling with cold, my legs cold but bearable. My torso was uncomfortably warm and a few drops of sweat made their way down my spine. My fingers weren’t too bad if I kept them in my pockets. The cold gave me a headache, so I wrapped my head in the Ethiopian Airlines blanket I had taken from the plane, but then I felt beads of sweat forming at my temples.

After a while, we stopped at one of the teahouses that populate the switchbacks on the path. The view was amazing. In the cold clear glow of the moon, I could see the long train of camels and pilgrims falling away from me down the side of the mountain. The stars pricked the sky like tears, and a warm yellow glow came from the teahouse, where Bedouin men served plastic cups of sweet tea for 5 E£ ($1) each, and off-brand Cup Noodles for 20 E£ ($4). We weren’t willing to pay that much yet, so we just sat for a few minutes out of the wind, enjoying the warmth and the soft rhythm of Arabic words.

Back on the path, some of the charm of the journey had worn off. The path was smaller and steeper, so camels that were waiting for someone to tire and hire a ride the rest of the way now blocked part of the path, and patches of camels already saddled with riders moved slowly, taking up the rest of the path. We wanted to move quickly to keep warm, but had to break through these pockets of camels every few minutes. My feet were really starting to hurt with the cold, and I tried to wiggle my toes as I climbed to keep the blood flowing.

We stopped at Elijah’s Hollow, also known as the Seven Elders of Israel, a natural amphitheater where the Camel Path ends and pilgrims have no choice but to climb the last 750 Steps of Penitence. It was still dark, without a hint of dawn on the horizon, so we crowded into another teahouse for a few minutes out of the wind, which was stronger this high up and bit at our skin through our clothing. Disney characters-Tweety Bird, the Tazmanian Devil, Daffy Duck and their many friends-populated the sheet that served as a ceiling in the teahouse. We shared a few cups of overpriced tea, and headed back into the night to repent.

The steps were uneven and slippery; our flashlights revealed frost and ice. Before long, I started to see patches of a powdery white substance on the rocks to the sides of the Steps. I stopped and reached my hand out. Although my fingers were already near-frozen, I registered a biting coldness. Reluctantly, I accepted that this was snow. We were in Egypt, and there was snow on the ground, and that was probably why I could no longer feel my toes. Surely this was a penance.

We reached the last resting place, our faces red and stinging in the cold. It was time to pay outrageously: 40 E£ for two dirty, rough wool blankets that had probably been used by a thousand different pilgrims and never been washed. As we waited for the first hint of grey pre-dawn light, I removed my shoes to massage some warmth back into my toes. My fingers hadn’t fared much better, so Charlene, who hates feet, made a supreme sacrifice and assessed the damage. Luckily, my feet didn't feel as cold to the touch as I’d expected. Take that, frostbite!

After half an hour of huddling together under the blankets, the first hint of dawn could be seen on the horizon, and we prepared ourselves to climb the last 100 Steps to the top of Gabal Musa. There were hundreds of pilgrims climbing slowly up the narrow Steps, and we lost track of each other in the crowd. I made it to the top and claimed a spot on a brown rise of rock next to the chapel. Gradually the grey receded to reveal red and orange tones on the horizon, and layers of mountain cast in shades of brown falling away at my feet. I watched in awe as the sky erupted in ever more beautiful layers of light and color, and revealed the landscape around me, which took my breath in its stark beauty. We were surrounded by layered, hard rock mountains in every direction, the brown tones lightly dusted with pure white snow. The sunrise played over the mountains, leaving some in shadow and others lit by the new day. I was humbled.

A small patch of clouds turned golden among the orange and red and pink and I felt the people around me holding their breath as the sun made its first appearance, rising slowly into the comfort of the golden cloud before breaking free and bathing the whole world in its brilliant light. The land around me turned from a cold brown to a red-orange lit from within as hymns rose into the heavens from the chapel. Each of us was experiencing something very different. I was quiet in my appreciation of the beauty found in this place. Many people prayed to Allah, or God, under their breath; some shouted scripture at this place where Moses, Musa, received the Ten Commandments from God. I took one last look around, the mountains already turned tan in the light of day, and climbed down the first 100 Steps of Penitence to find my friends.

We reconvened at the teahouse, where we gathered as much warmth as we could from the blankets before returning them and starting the climb down. It went much faster in the light and relative warmth, and the promise of something delicious to put in our stomachs urged us on. We lost track of Ashraf as we descended, weaving in and out, passing people from every corner of the world. There were Nigerians in full complet, making me ache for West Africa. There were Japanese tourists in skinny jeans, leather stiletto-heeled boots, and faux-fur lined coats, making me laugh at the absurdity. There were overweight Americans in matching tour-company jackets making the trek up as the masses climbed down, making me wonder why they were so late to the game.

Halfway down the Steps, Renee and I were alone, having lost the others. Suddenly, over the din of dozens of different languages being spoken simultaneously, we heard The Call. The Call originated on Banda Island during the 4th of July 2010 weekend. There was a latrine we dubbed the “Throne Room” as it was as large as an African hut, round, with windows on all sides, and completely empty except for a concrete toilet bowl emptying into a pit below. The irony of a large round building empty except for a toilet seat and a small wicker table holding German fashion magazines was exacerbated by the heavy, dark-wood, ornately carved (with fish!) door that if closed completely caused a slab of wood to fall into place outside, effectively locking the door from the outside leaving the occupant trapped. Over the weekend more than a few of us fell victim to the Throne Room (I’m happy to say I escaped this tragedy) but the girl who shat her pants on the boat was not so lucky. Trapped, she decided to call out to Renee and Elizabeth, who were playing volleyball on the beach and had seen her pass on her way to the Throne Room.

Renee and Elizabeth, meanwhile still playing volleyball on the beach, heard the strange call of a bird in the woods. They kept playing, and the bird kept calling. Elizabeth, laughing, commented how funny it would be if the girl who shat her pants on the boat had gotten herself locked in the Throne Room. After another few bird calls, they realized that it wasn’t a bird at all, but rather calls of “HELP! Renee! Elizabeth! I’m stuck in the Throne Room!”

Since then, we periodically break out The Call. Instantly recognizable and a great tool to find your friends, when I heard this on the slopes of Gabal Musa, I instinctively stopped walking, swung round, and returned with my own Call, scanning the crowd for our friends. Elizabeth, who made the call, was with Ashley, but Charlene was alone between the two groups. A couple directly in front of her also heard The Call and spotted Elizabeth and I communicating across the distance. The woman asked her husband, “why are they wailing?” His response: “maybe they like to wail!” If only they knew.

We descended through a stark terrain unlike any I’d ever seen before, harsh and desolate and beautiful. Brown hues contrasting against each other were set against a blue sky. The effect was the definition of brilliant.

It took us just over an hour to return to St. Catherine’s monastery, where we bid Ashraf farewell and wandered amid the camels and threadbare children hawking geodes and books in unlikely languages (Korean?!), waiting for the monastery to open. We took pictures outside under an olive tree, where Hussein appeared once again to give us a ride. He agreed to wait for us to tour the monastery, and tipped us off as to which door to wait in front of, resulting in us being first in line when they unlocked the wooden door.

We walked quickly through the rooms, taking it in quickly, as our stomachs were aching to be fed. We stopped for a moment at a crowd of people pressed against a fence, pointing their cameras straight into the sun. I snapped a picture of my own, not quite understanding what was so amazing about the stone wall with a bush growing at the top. My picture is mostly blinding white from the sun, but hey… any of you got a picture of the Burning Bush?

You heard correctly. Turns out the Burning Bush is no longer on fire. In fact, its not even in the same place. It was transplanted several yards away to a courtyard of the monastery, and its original spot was covered by a chapel dedicated to the Annunciation, with a silver star marking where the roots of the bush had come out of the ground. This is the location it was in when I snapped my photo, not the actual scene of the blaze.

Hussein was patiently waiting outside the monastery, and insisted on a detour to his favorite restaurant in St. Catherine’s when we mentioned we were famished. Restaurant Shahrazad was crawling with locals, so we knew it was going to be good. Hussein cleared us a table and in the time it took us to sit down, we had plates laden with fresh pita bread, bite-sized falafel and pieces of fried eggplant, hummus drizzled with olive oil, and pickled vegetables.

We returned to the hotel to pack our things and ask about transport to Dahab, our next stop. Hussein had suggested we utilize his services and hire him to take us directly, but we didn’t want to hire an entire van if we could catch public transport for an even cheaper fare. Elizabeth struck out on her own to find out about buses while the rest of us returned to our cocoons. She returned some time later with a travel buddy and the fact that it was almost impossible to get out of St. Catherine’s without hiring a car. We found Hussein (the first time these roles had been switched; he’d always found US) and agreed on a price.

The landscape between St. Catherine and Dahab was mesmerizing in its variation. Each new rise and fall in the landscape was more beautiful than the last. We moved from the craggy brown mountains of central Sinai to yellowed plains with burnt red hills rising from their midst. The plains made way for ochre sands; next came low, tan hills bleeding into ecru sands and an occasional splash of green brush. Grey fields of stone backed by dark hills, pockmarked with erosion holes. Now the sands were fine café au lait dunes, heavy on the cream.

I Kissed The Sphinx And She Liked It

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:36:20 GMT

There was a man with a hand-lettered sign waiting for us after we made it through customs and picked our bags. We exited the Arrivals Hall, not knowing we would be calling the place home in just over a week, and rapidly crossed the parking lot, falling over each other in excitement, to a spacious van, complete with seat belts and a steering wheel on the left side of the vehicle. Hah, they drive on the right side of the road here, that’s hilarious! Oh wait, they do that in America, too, right? I think so…? We weren't entirely sure.

Towards 3am, we arrived at the locked gate of the Australian Hostel on one of Cairo’s dusty streets lined with multi-story buildings, and were led inside to an ancient elevator that we rejected in favor of a well of litter-strewn, worn down stairs. It felt like we were in an apartment building, but instead of apartments, there were businesses and then, finally, the reception of our hostel. Eslam, greeting us, handed over a few bills to the taxi driver (the hostel covered our airport pick-up) and then showed us to our rooms. They were nice, with clean bedding and only moderately uncomfortable mattresses and pillows, and mirrors instead of glass in the doors, providing privacy AND visual proof of how exhausted we really were. It being January, and Egypt being 30̊ N, a good 6̊ past the Tropic of Cancer, we somehow found ourselves in Winter, and it was cold. I ripped the plastic off the Ethiopian Airlines blanket I had slipped in my backpack before landing, and curled up with it against the chill night air. Barely five hours later, we were up and planning our day. Eslam told us about the Cairo tour the Australian Hostel had to offer, and we took him up on it. $8 a piece for a private taxi and tour-guide for the entire day? Yes please! Down on the street, we popped in to a shop for water and flagged down a man carrying a huge pile of pita bread on his head: breakfast.

Our taxi wound through the streets, and soon we left the maze of dirty, tall buildings that seemed to bear down upon you and entered a less congested neighborhood. The sun shone bright, all the more because of the haze of Saharan dust in the air. I was reminded of Togo’s Harmattan, when dry season winds bring sand and dust down from the great desert to clog the troposphere and cast the world in an eerie near-silence, sound waves disrupted with all the particles in the air, the sun’s heat not quite reaching our bodies; all moisture is sucked from the world, leaving our lungs dry and our skin parched and cracking. We sped along one of the freeways I had seen from the air the night before, lit by streetlamps in straight lines across the city. Our driver stopped midway across a bridge so we could stare out at the Nile, barely visible below and before us with the haze. Cars and trucks sped past us at speeds rarely if ever encountered in Uganda. Before long, we turned off onto the congested streets of Giza and wound our way to a street more crowded with horses and camels than motor vehicles. We filed into a small room off the sidewalk where we were offered seats and several tour packages.
This was a no-nonsense trip. We had barely a week, and a lot to fit in. Six hours after landing, we were already bargaining for camels to take us to see the pyramids and Sphinx. The men were quite surprised and caught off guard at our arguing ability, so we managed to get the full tour on three camels and two horses for around $50 per person. (Travel tip: go through your hotel for everything, or you will pay too much. FYI: the pyramids are the most expensive thing you will do in Egypt (provided you are traveling like a PCV). Before getting to the airport, each of us spent around $200 for EVERYTHING: all food, lodging, travel and activities. Pyramids were by far the most expensive thing we did.) Elizabeth and I opted for camels the entire time; the rest of them took turns on the third camel.

We saddled up and started through the streets. For the first few minutes, I was uncomfortable on my camel; I had ridden them before, in West Africa, but always barefoot. I didn’t want to hurt my camel’s neck with my shoes, and the saddle was entirely different than the Tuareg ones I was used to. Tuareg camel saddles are remarkably uncomfortable and left bruises on my inner thighs from the wide, flat board coming up to mid-chest between my legs, and which I was instructed to cross my legs around, resting my bare feet on the camel’s neck. The gait of the camel throws you forwards and backwards in an awkward rhythm, knocking your thighs painfully against the boards. Egyptian camel saddles are much more comfortable; they are mostly piles of blankets, with wooden knobs in front and back for you to hold and which leave your thighs mercifully alone. When I observed the locals comfortably resting their shoe-clad feet on their camels’ necks, I did the same with no bark of complaint from the camel, and relaxed into the stride.

We passed children at play on rickety jungle gym equipment and concrete walls decorated with Arabic graffiti. A man with traditional head wraps rode up to Ashley and Renee, on the horses, and placed the white cloth and padded crown over their heads, smiling and giving the thumbs up. Travel tip: this is quite common in Egypt. Don’t accept anything you haven’t paid for. People will hand you Cokes, bracelets, head wraps et cetera that you haven’t asked for, as nice as can be (Egyptians are quite charming) and then, once you’ve taken a sip or tried the thing on, they will demand you pay for it. They usually offer things in ambiguous situations when you are easily confused. Maybe the Coke is a complimentary part of the tour? Maybe the head wrap is part of the camel ride? It isn’t. Not to be fooled, Ashley and Renee handed the head wraps back, refusing to pay for something they did not ask for.

After a few minutes, I casually glanced to my right, and there just happened to be a pyramid. We were still riding on a city street, with hotels and grocery stores and children at play; I wasn’t expecting it. I guess I had always imagined the pyramids in the middle of the desert, far from anything else, but in reality, they are just outside of town. Indeed, even when you are right up next to them, you can see Giza and Cairo behind you. But at least when you are facing them, you have a picturesque view with nothing but pyramids, sand and blue sky and you can pretend that you are far away from anything else.

We came to a security gate and had to dismount, which is no small feat on a camel. You have to lean back while the camel first folds its front legs under itself, followed several seconds later by its back legs. You are thrown first forwards and then backwards as if at sea during a storm, and all the while the camel is snorting and barking and sometimes farting. Once the camel sits down, it is still so tall that your (well, my) legs don’t reach the ground so you have to sort of slide off to one side, your other leg sticking up in the air on the saddle until you reach the ground with the first foot and can bring the other down. Not something you can do gracefully, and not something you want to do in a skirt.

We passed through metal detectors and pat-downs and mounted our trusty steeds once again, which is just as much of a roller-coaster ride, but in the opposite direction. First your camel gets its back legs under itself, throwing you forward, then backwards as it comes to a full stand with its front legs, all the while snorting and barking and sometimes farting. We rode on, now with sand underfoot and shallow dunes on either side of us. Slowly the streets of Giza were blocked from view as we circled around a set of dunes and came to the “best” view of the pyramids, where you can see all of them at once.

We dismounted and spent quite a while taking photographs against this amazing backdrop, which still felt like a backdrop. Each of us with the camels and the pyramids, with just the pyramids, with our index fingers at the tip of a pyramid, all five of us jumping over the pyramids, and making a pyramid at the pyramids. It was only when we rode towards them that it started to feel real, and I found my jaw dropping in awe at the moment. I was approaching this last remaining Wonder of the Ancient World on the back of a came and Wow! I suddenly understood why it was a wonder of the world. They were just so BIG, and so perfect, sloping gracefully upwards into the vast blue of the sky. How had the ancient Egyptians even conceived of something this grand? Not only had they envisioned these massive monoliths, but they had found a way to actually build them. They worked together day after day, year after year, decade after decade (it is thought that it took 20-30 years on average to build a single pyramid) cutting these large limestone bricks and painstakingly lifting and carefully placing the huge stones. Talk about delayed gratification. They ancient Egyptians wanted to be remembered for all time. Having seen them, I can assure you their work was worthwhile...

No one said much as we rode closer to them; I think we were all contemplating how awesome and amazing the pyramids were. We dismounted, and our guide quickly ushered us under the rope and told us to quickly take photographs before the police came, but be careful not to touch the actual pyramid, because anyone who does is destined to marry three times. We could climb the huge blocks of stone at the pyramid’s base (which didn’t *really* count) and pose for pictures, but not go any farther or touch anything above that. We opted not to pay to see what was inside, so after we were done at the largest pyramid, we mounted our camels to ride over to the Sphinx. We passed several groups of archeologists working in the sand, perhaps about to discover another pyramid buried below our feet. The Sphinx looked smaller than I expected, although it was still quite large and impressive, of course. We passed through into a building with high stone walls, no ceiling, and crawling with tourists. We made our way through to an open area with a perfect view of the stone cat missing a nose, and proceeded to plant kisses on its ancient lips.

Only one person at a time can pose, and it takes a few minutes to get the angle exactly right, so that it looks really convincing. Meanwhile, there were dozens of locals pestering us, telling us we were standing in the wrong spot, come this way, let me show you... A young man with curly brown, orange tinted hair, milk-tea skin and a generous smattering of freckles (Egyptians come in all flavors) offered to take my photograph while I was waiting for my friends to finish up. “No thanks!” I replied. Later, Ashley told me she had overheard him discussing with his friends and pointing at my camera (the nicest in the group). If I hadn’t known better than to trust him, I’m sure I would have lost my camera and all my photographs of the pyramids. Travel tip: don’t hand your camera to anyone you don’t know. You won’t get it back.

Having learned the Sphinx gives dynamite kisses, we mounted our trusty steeds one last time and returned find Ahmad, the taxi driver, waiting for us patiently. We stopped at a fruit stand to buy bananas that weren’t over-ripe, what we thought were pears but turned out to be huge green guavas, and large oranges that were actually orange-quite a novelty in Africa, where even the sweetest oranges are green on the outside. For the rest of the afternoon, our driver took us around to different shops. We opted out of some of them-perfume, carpet-and spent quite a while at others, like the papyrus shop. We sipped complementary hibiscus juice (which is almost, but not quite, Togo’s bissap) as a flirtatious Egyptian man showed us how papyrus paper is made, and how to spot fake papyrus, which is made from banana fiber and not as strong. We then wandered around, looking at all the different paintings available for purchase. Although they were beautiful, I didn’t buy one-I have so many African artifacts already. It took quite a while for the girls to decide which paintings they wanted and to argue prices with the handsome Egyptian men. When they were done, we headed south to Saqqara to see the Step Pyramids-Ancient Egyptians’ first attempts, the oldest pyramids in the world. Instead of sloping upwards, unbroken, they gain height as ever smaller squares stacked on top of each other.

Hungry after a light lunch of fruit, we asked Ahmad to find us Egyptian food, so he took us to his #1 favorite restaurant in Cairo. It only serves one dish, and is located on the 7th and final floor of a building which is exclusively restaurants that serve this one dish: koshary. Koshary is a mix of rice, lentils and macaroni, topped with a handful of fried onions and served with a tomato sauce. You can add spicy chili sauce and lemon juice to taste. I like to add a lot of both. Koshary proved to be both mouth-watering and filling and the food I miss most from Egypt because it is so tasty and to my knowledge not available anywhere else in the world. After stopping by the East Delta bus station to pick up tickets for the next morning, Ahmad dropped us back at the Australian Backpackers.

Following prominent signs, we walked the few blocks to McDonald’s, where we got real American-style french fries and my first (and most likely last) McFlurry. I’m not a fast food expert, but it felt like stepping into America. The tables, the big yellow M, the uniforms all looked the same, although women in burqas stood in African lines (which means everyone is pushing to the front in a big crowd) ordering McArabia burgers.

With sadness, I was reminded that the rest of the world seems to want to be just like America. They think they want hamburgers and soap operas, electricity and high heels… they can’t see that what they have is beautiful. Pâte with ngyato sauce and spring-loaded baby goats, smoky cooking fires and callused heels… but maybe that is only beautiful in my eyes anymore. I can’t tell the rest of the world what they really want, but it kills me when they choose my world over theirs.

We Start Revolutions

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:48:38 GMT

From humble beginnings, the Fab Five joined forces to start a revolution.

Arwen- It’s no surprise that Peace Corps poster girl “Kanga” calls Seattle, Washington home. Having been raised by Wolves, this little blue-eyed blond with a penchant for eating kiwis whole can always be counted on to “bring home the bacon.” Never fear! Kanga has no qualms about taking the last penne in the airport if it means a full belly.

Ashley- You’ll know “Freckles McSickie,” animal riding extraordinaire (horse, ostrich, camel and elephant, thank you kindly) by her French braids and tequila shootin’. This little cowgirl grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where they like two wines and two cakes on all their flights.

Charlene- Y’all are gonna love this cutie sportin’ the faux-hawk; growed up right on the ol’ Appalachian Trail down in Botetourt County, Virginia. Daleville, to be exact. Don’t mess with “Lover” or she’ll go country all over your ass, just like she did to that Turkish gentleman what kissed her hand and complimented her eyes.

Elizabeth- This red-headed wonder-woman known as “Ginger Snap” hails from Santee, California. 92071, fool. It’s almost Mexico, which explains why she’s frequently seen with a Samurai sword, and has been known to head-butt complete strangers on the dance floor.

Renee- Don’t mess with “Roo,” she grew up on the mean streets of Darien, Illinois and just shaved her head-it looks gorgeous! She’s a real card-shark when it comes to that Middle America game Euchre, which only people born in land-locked states know the rules of. Lately, rumors have surfaced that this pretty lady, a lifelong White Sox fan, was heard uttering the words “America SUCKS!” to a British Embassy staffer, 24 hours into the ordeal at Cairo International.

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Big Bom’s in hand, we boarded the Ethiopian Airline’s flight to Addis Ababa and kissed Uganda goodbye. Renee and I, ever paired together, had seats on the opposite side of the plane from the others, but we could still hear them laughing and talking in excited voices. We had been planning this trip for almost six months, and finally we were off. Egypt, here we come! God, we must have been annoying, turning around in our seats to wave at them across the aisles, sucking on strawberry lollipops, exclaiming at the gourmet airline food we were served (much better than anything locally available in Uganda). Ashley, batting her eyes at the stewardess and giving her a winning smile, was handed not one but TWO bottles of wine, much to our chagrin. A narcoleptic man sitting across the aisle from her handed her his unwanted cake, and the deal was sealed: best flight of Ashley’s life!

Giddy with excitement, we entered the terminal at Bole International and I could only think of one thing: injera. Real injera, made with teff. My favorite food in the whole wide world, not available in Uganda. With only this thought on my mind, I forged ahead and approached the first restaurant I came to, ordering a spicy chicken and lentil wat and two extra injeras. That will do nicely! Only then, with my craving safely taken care of, was I prepared to explore the rest of the airport with the others. There are several nice duty free shops, with beautiful textiles, baskets, jewelry and other trinkets, but before long, we had seen all there was to see. We returned to the restaurant to retrieve my meal, and did what any self-respecting Peace Corps Volunteers waiting for a flight would do: we sat on the floor of the airport and ate with our hands.

Ethiopia having been conquered (or at least sternly told it would be returned to in the future, for a longer visit), we boarded the next plane. I spent most of that time looking out onto the dark expanse of Africa spread beneath us. Every so often, we would come upon civilization, a long expanse of flickering lights, obviously settlements around the Nile River. We would lose the river for a while, but always find it again, this long, electrified snake making its way across the land towards the Mediterranean. Finally, we found it again, and did not lose it. Instead, the lights expanded out from the river until the land below us was completely aglow, the Nile still visible as a dark swath winding through the patchwork of lights.

Cairo was twinkling. At first I thought it had to do with how sleepy I was. Then I thought something was obstructing my view, but it wasn’t. Individual lights would blink off and on, but their neighbors, a few hair-widths away, wouldn't be disturbed. Electric current must be unstable, I surmised, but over the next few days, I saw that on the ground, current was fine. That wasn’t it. Cairo simply… glitters.

Temples, Monkeys And Vegan Monks In A Mountain Monastery

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:36:11 GMT

We arrived in Kyoto a few short hours after leaving Tokyo (whose names are the same two characters switched around!), and found our hotel easily, following very specific directions with phrases such as “you will see a large paper lantern hanging approximately two meters above you. Turn left.” We were staying in a spacious, attractive dorm room in a quiet, cheery backpackers in a bustling neighborhood. The glass cover of the reception desk displayed coins from all over the world. Not seeing any from Uganda, I proudly donated a kikumi (pronounced “chi-ku-mi,” 100 shillings) piece.

The next morning, after picking breakfast from a convenie, we walked along the river towards the touristy section of town, overflowing with gardens, temples, shrines, and souvenir shops. We toured the first temple we came to, its tatami rooms lit by the bright sun shining through walls slid open to the well-kept gardens outside. We wandered, undisturbed, around the compound, admiring the Japanese maples, koi pond, and bamboo forest outside and the ornately carved and painted panels and shrines inside.

Moving on, we found ourselves on the grounds of a large temple, made up of dozens of buildings. The scent of incense and the sound of chanting led us up to the largest building. Taking off our shoes, Rebecca and I climbed the stairs to find hundreds of people kneeling in prayer, led by a monk in bright robes. We stood for a few minutes observing. Although we couldn’t understand the words, the chanting and ringing of gongs was calming. From there, we moved on to the temple gardens and then out into the winding streets, getting closer to the epicenter of tourist town all the time.

We meandered along the streets, which sloped gently upwards with turns every few dozen meters. Every once in a while we stopped to look at an interesting shop or building. Once, we spotted a vendor offering tofu flavored ice cream, of all things. I ate my cone under a weeping willow next to a pond, watching the pigeons and ducks at play. Tofu ice cream tastes pretty much how you’d expect. For lunch, we chose someplace at random which had bento-style meals. I had miso soup laced with a handful of chopped green onions, which you dipped noodles and seaweed strips into, a rice bowl: rice, fish, seaweed strips and a raw egg mixed together, various pickled vegetables, tofu with sliced okra, and green tea, of course.

The street became steep now, leading up to a large temple: a beautiful tourist trap. We walked slowly through the clogged corridors, not able to really enjoy it with the crowd. The temple itself was massive, and there were paths through the trees along the hillside and then turning down, below the temple, to a fountain with three spurts of water coming steadily down. A long line of people was waiting their turn to drink from the streams. Unfortunately, not until later did I remember that a friend had told me about the fountain at a temple in Kyoto: each stream of water represents something different, and you can only drink from one. You chose between success in school, material wealth, or love, I believe. For the record, I would have drunk from the fountain of love. Money and success are great, but to love is the meaning of life.

We were tired, by now, and made our way back to the hostel. We had covered a large area that day, on foot. For dinner, we went to two restaurants: one had meat on sticks and other tasty tidbits, and one had gyoza. Kyoto’s gyoza are small, about the size of a marshmallow, and almost as tasty as the ones we'd had in Sendai.

After a quiet night at the hostel, we set out for Arashiyama Monkey Park, recommended by Rebecca’s father. After a short hike we arrived at the top of the mountain, where there was a visitor’s center and a crowd of shrieking, giggling American teenage girls inside, feeding the monkeys through the wire mesh. You could purchase peanuts or apples to feed the monkeys. Thankfully, after a few minutes the annoying tourist group left and it was just us and the monkeys. It was a lot of fun to hold out your hand with a piece of fruit in your palm and have the monkeys reach through the mesh to take it from you. We mostly tried to feed the little, cute ones, but sometimes that backfired, when the larger ones caught wind of the operation and came swinging over with teeth and claws bared, the babies squealing and running for their lives.

Outside the visitor’s center, monkeys were lazing about in the yard. From up so high, we had perfect views of Kyoto, a vast, crowded city that is reigned in only by the surrounding hills. When we were in Athens (blog to come soon, hopefully!), I was actually struck by how similar the views of the two cities were from up high… both are huge metropolises with pretty green hills surrounding them on all sides. Before heading back to central Kyoto, we stopped at the post office to get money (travel tip: in Japan, you can always get money from foreign ATM cards at the post) and an elderly gentleman waiting outside recommended a restaurant for lunch, where I got Japanese fried chicken (not from KFC, although it is an option in Japan) with pickled vegetables, rice, salad with a spicy sesame dressing, miso, a sweet potato bean dessert and green tea, of course!

We spent the rest of the day in search of a textile factory that Sayre wanted to go to so he could buy a yukata, but when we finally got there, he changed his mind and didn’t buy a thing. The day wasn’t completely wasted, however, because on our way there, we stopped at a beautiful golden temple surrounded by water on all sides except for a thin neck of land connecting it to shore. The crowds here were large, too, but not as oppressive as the day before, and we could walk the grounds in relative peace, gazing at the golden temple, standing regal and proud, reflected in the still water of a lake. More beautiful Japanese gardens filled the rest of the compound, and several small shrines where you could toss coins into bowls centered in half moons of Buddha statues, the surrounding grass carpeted in thick layers of bronze and silver. After the bungled textile factory, we hiked across town in search of a tea ceremony, but somehow we got off track and ended up in an entirely different neighborhood.

Tired from another long day of pounding the pavement, we returned to our hostel, tea ceremony unseen, and to our two dinner selections of the night before-the gyoza shop and the meat on sticks restaurant, where I sampled one of the best beers I’ve had in my life: Yebisu. Yebisu is a “black” beer, thick and oh so tasty with a fat, smiling sumo wrestler on the label. Later, Sayre went back to the hostel and Rebecca and I went in search of an onsen. The one we found was different than the ones we’d been to before. It wasn’t as luxurious, it reminded me more of a gym, but it did have four separate pools of water, and a sauna. There was a cold bath, which was exhilarating in a sadistic kind of way, one warm pool, and two hot pools, one fragrant and green with herbs.

The next day, we journeyed several hours into the mountains to Kōyasan: Mount Koya. My Uncle Ralph had suggested we spend a night there with the monks at the monastery, and it was certainly a unique experience. I was expecting a lone monastery high up in the mountains by itself, and to be some of the only visitors, but there was a sizable town down the road, and several dozen other tourists, including a group of French painters, also staying with the monks.
We had a few hours to relax before evening meditation, which was compulsory. We explored the small garden and the halls of the monastery. When the gong sounded, we went down to the meditation room, where one of the monks explained that we would be sitting, for approximately 40 minutes, and should try to focus simply on our breath, going in and out of our bodies, and try to empty our minds of all other thoughts. I tried to focus, and tried to sit still, but I couldn’t help it, towards the end I had to shift my weight a bit. It must take a lot of training to be able to sit still for so long.

When we were done, dinner was ready. We sat on cushions in a tatami room in front of three beautifully arranged trays, staggered in height, perhaps to guide us in what to eat first. I didn’t have my camera to document the delicious array, so I cannot tell you everything we ate that night, but I do know there was no meat; the monks follow a strict vegan diet. There was rice and tempura vegetables, several types of tofu (some tastier than others), and green tea, of course.

After dinner, Rebecca and I found the monastery's female onsen and bathed. Although there were dozens of other white ladies staying at the monastery that evening, we were the only non-Japanese in the baths. We washed ourselves and stepped carefully into the single, large pool of steaming water. There were several elderly women already soaking themselves, and just from their tone of voice, we could tell they were exclaiming about the two of us. Their smiles made it evident that they were friendly exclamations, not “Oh Dear Buddha, look at how ignorant those two pale foreigners are, spoiling our onsen like that.”

The oldest one, fat and wrinkled, reached over and touched my cheek. Her eyes almost disappearing when she smiled, she rattled off several paragraphs in Japanese and then, taking a breath for courage, said, in English: beautiful! Even though I’m used to people of different cultures finding my white skin and blond hair beautiful, and not necessarily seeing beyond that to who I actually am, the compliment filled me with pride. This elegant, grey-haired Japanese grandmother, naked in an onsen high in the mountains in southern Japan, found me beautiful! We stumbled through a few minutes of conversation: America, Obama, Ahhhhhh! I didn’t even attempt to explain I was living in Uganda.

Our futon beds had been prepared for us during dinner. “When you feel cold,” advised a notice, “move Futon into KOTATSU, which is a table heater.” Our Kotatsu was a small coffee table with a skirt-like blanket attached, so you could sit with your legs under the table, the heat trapped in to warm them, or, as the notice suggested, you could crawl your whole body under the table and sleep toasty warm that way.

Early the next morning, we woke and returned to the meditation room for morning prayers. Half a dozen monks sat in front of us, arrayed on either side of the altar glinting with gold leaf and bright colors. Wisps of fragrant smoke wafted across the scene from sticks of incense sitting in front of each monk. Candle flames flickered throughout the room. The monks began to chant, their voices clear and deep and certain of the words from years of practice. For maybe an hour we watched and listened as they completed their morning devotions, familiar to me after so many years of exposure to Tibetan Buddhism, but also strange and foreign. It gave me chills, to be a part of this ritual: the chanting, almost a song; the gongs and bells chiming; the spans of silence between; the candle flames and deep concentration of the bald-headed men.

When morning prayers were done, one of the monks gave a brief explanation, and asked us to continue meditation, if we liked. He reminded us that there was no purpose, no goal, but that if we took time out of each day to just sit, observe our breath and empty our minds of thoughts, that we would start to notice a change in ourselves. We would be happier and health problems would disappear. There was no pressure, just an invitation.

Breakfast was simple. Rice, pickled vegetables, seaweed strips. Miso soup, more unique things done with tofu, and green tea, of course. The day was overcast and gray, with light rainfall. Instead of traveling hours out of our way to Nara, the ancient capital of Japan, famous for its bowing deer, we decided to spend the morning in Koya town. The night before, we had been told that the largest cemetery in the world was located just a few stops away on the bus, so away we went to Okunoin Cemetery. We had been told that every day, followers of the Shingon sect of Buddhism came from all over the world to this cemetery, to leave hair and nail clippings to ensure their souls would return here to rest for all eternity. Those who could not afford the journey sent parts of themselves with friends. Just in case, as we entered, I made sure to cover my hair so that no strands would slip out and after death I’d find myself stuck high up in the mountains of Japan. Japan is fine, but its not where I want to spend the afterlife!

The cemetery was huge. We spent at least two hours walking around and I don’t think we even scratched the surface. Some tombstones were massive structures the size of cars, or even larger, but most were modest, crowded almost on top of each other. Many graves had large statues of Buddha and/or obelisks with characters engraved in the sides and gold plated, and one even had a metal rocket-ship installed at the head of the granite slab, ensuring the deceased traveled to the afterlife in style! Smaller graves tended to have statues of Buddha, more often than not dressed in knit hats and lace-trimmed bibs. Soon we found ourselves in an older section of the cemetery; the gravestones here were crumbling and covered with lichen and moss. Through the trees, which dripped rainwater lazily down on us, we heard chanting. Following the sound along the slippery path, passing thousands of graves, we came to a bridge and a sign in several languages informing us we were entering the inner sanctum of the cemetery and asking that we refrain from talking loudly and taking pictures. Across the bridge we found a temple, home to dozens of monks who were in the middle of prayers. Slightly out of place, in my opinion, we also found a kiosk selling snacks, souvenirs and lucky charms. Memorabilia of a cemetery?!

After stopping in at a shop to buy rice crackers the size of my Dad’s palm, we took the bus to the cable car (the only way in or out of Kōyasan) and arrived at the train minutes after it had departed, so we were forced to wait on our empty train for over an hour until it was time to depart. In Japan, you can be sure that transport will leave at the scheduled time, for better or for worse. Amazingly, this means you can schedule a trip, even one across the country, with only minutes to transfer from one train to the next, and not have to worry about your train arriving late and causing you to miss your connection. Your train won’t arrive late, and your connection won’t leave early. Wow.

We traveled back down through the misty mountains, losing elevation like it was our job. We stopped for lunch in Osaka, and Rebecca and I finally tried a dessert unique to that part of the country that was everywhere when we weren’t looking to try it and then suddenly nowhere to be found when we decided we wanted to. I wish it were easier to upload photographs to my blog; this dessert looks quite strange. It comes in a large glass ice cream dish: mostly a large mountain of bright green, with a glob of something brown on the side and a maraschino cherry on top. We discovered that the green was green tea (of course) flavored snow-cone, and the brown was bean paste. It was quite tasty, to tell the truth!

We bullet trained it back to Tokyo that night, getting off at the wrong stop and detouring through a couple crowded, electrified streets before making it back to Asakusa Smile. After taking the more expensive train to make sure we weren’t late to the airport, my flight was delayed. Oops! The Turkish Airlines agent who checked me in was overly confused by my peculiar status, and it took her half an hour to get me sorted out. She couldn’t grasp that I was an American, in Japan, going to Uganda via Turkey. I suppose I may have made history as the only person ever to be in that particular predicament.

To start, she was utterly perplexed as to what Uganda actually was. When I informed her it was a country in Africa, she switched Uganda to Africa, as in “do you have a visa to Africa?” Unsatisfied with my work permit to “Africa” she almost didn’t give me my tickets, worried that I wouldn’t be allowed in the country. I assured her that if my work permit was rejected, I could still purchase a visa upon arrival. With a worried look, she moved on to the next hurdle: Turkey. Convinced that I needed a visa for my 3 hour layover in Turkey (I think she thought I was leaving the airport-understandable as I arrived on one date and departed on the next). But as luck would have it, I did have a Turkish visa, purchased two weeks before. If I hadn’t had that visa, I’m pretty sure I would have been stuck in Japan forever. I could almost hear her saying “No visa for three hours spent in the airport in Istanbul, and a dubious work permit to a magical land called ‘Uganda’? I don’t think so! You can’t fool me, you silly American!” Never having sent anyone to “Africa” before, she had to print my boarding passes three times. The confusion over, or at least dealt with, she smiled and apologized for the flight delay, giving me a ¥10 voucher valid at most restaurants in the airport for the inconvenience of the delayed flight. Hah! That covered lunch for Sayre and I, which was great, because I was out of money and my bagel and cream cheese was delicious! We wandered the terminals for a while, touring the origami museum, and spotting a display of interestingly flavored Kit Kats: orange, strawberry, blueberry cheesecake, apple, cola, chili pepper, green tea (of course), wasabi, soy sauce.

Rebecca and Sayre stayed with me until my flight boarded, and as we hugged goodbye, I couldn’t help but wonder where in the world I would meet Rebecca next. Most likely Seattle, but who really knows! Anything is possible with friends like mine! Maybe… Petra?!

Shortly after takeoff, as we were climbing higher into the atmosphere, I spotted Fuji-San sloping regally up through the cloud cover, and I smiled. Although we hadn’t made it out to Fuji, although I hadn’t seen the great mountain from the ground, we had packed so much experience into such a short trip that it didn’t really matter anymore. I took one last look at the famous volcano and then our plane turned north, traveling up the length of Japan and into Russian airspace, where we chased the sunset for several hours, the brilliant light reflecting off the large rivers dissecting the land below, but finally the sun slipped over the curve of the earth, faster than us, and the orange sky finally faded into deep blues and then black.

I was exhausted by the time we arrived in Istanbul, and glad that we had been delayed a few hours, giving me enough time to transfer but not too long to wait but, rats!, my flight to Entebbe had also been delayed, so I curled up on a couple of metal chairs and let my dreams mix with the chatter of the people around me. Finally, we boarded, and I kept my eyes open long enough to see the lights of Istanbul fade into the black of the Marmara Sea and then I curled in my seat and actually slept, which I never do on planes. I woke to bright sun outside and the green of Northern Uganda out the window. We landed, and suddenly I was back in the Third World, with its dust and humidity and bargaining for a taxi, the drivers assuming I was just another gullible tourist that was above walking on foot out of the airport to get the correct price back to Kampala.

Ramen, Sake and Bullet Trains

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:22:35 GMT

We caught a ride with Abigail’s neighbor out of Tomioka, winding East through the mountains to Koriyama, where Abigail attended a work meeting and the rest of us wandered around the mall for several hours, eventually camping out at Starbucks and playing hana awase, a Japanese game with small cardboard squares for cards, each decorated with one of 12 flowers representing the months of the year. Each flower is a separate suit, and some cards have additional decoration: birds, animals, and the coveted full moon, sake cup, sakura banner, et cetera. When Abigail was done, we met at the train station and continued east to Kitakata, a small town off the tourist circuit that is known for sake and ramen.

We arrived in Kitakata late, and Abigail attempted to lead us to our ryokan. As much as I love Abigail, it is never a good idea to have her in charge of directions, and this night was no exception. We were wandering the quiet, well lit streets, taking wrong turns for some time when we saw a group of stumbling-drunk, singing Japanese men coming towards us. Abigail approached them, smiling, and asked directions. The group broke into slurred, insistent Japanese and struck off down an alleyway. Abigail and Sayre hurried after them. Rebecca and I clutched each other and followed warily. This could not be a good idea.

The men led us left and right, up and down side streets while loudly singing Japanese pop songs and laughing. Rebecca and I didn't know what was going on but followed the other two who had translated nothing for us. After about ten minutes, the ridiculousness of the situation got to be too much: four Americans, late at night, following a group of short, middle-aged, raucous, slap-happy drunk Japanese men who thought they knew where our hotel was, in a little town surrounded by mountains, known for its rice wine and its noodle soup. Certainly there was a better way to go about finding our lodging! Like calling the ryokan, maybe? I finally demanded an explanation from Abby and Sayre, who told me the jovial drunk men knew where our hotel was. Ridiculous! “They say its just up there.” Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Everything is “just there” in Uganda and it hardly ever is! But you know what? Not 30 seconds later, we were standing outside our hotel. Touché. The drunk men waved goodbye to us, calling out “Sayonara!” and disappeared down the street, sloppily holding each other upright and tripping over their shoes.

A small woman greeted us at the door and showed us to our tatami room, where four yukata, traditional bathrobes, were waiting for us. We were interested in trying some sake ourselves, but it seemed Kitakata wasn’t a late night kind of town. Everything was closed, she told us, but she could bring a bottle to the room. We donned our robes and went for a bath in the onsen, only to find the door locked. Stupid foreigners! We couldn’t find the proprietor to politely tell whoever was in there that onsen weren’t private, so we had to wait. When the door finally opened, behold, a 30-ish Japanese woman who should have known better. To be fair, the onsen was very small; the three of us just fit, with water spilling over the sides. Shrugging, we entered and bathed ourselves before soaking in the hot water. Nothing like “nude friendship time”!

Returning to our tatami room, we found not one, but two bottles of sake waiting for us, as well as a bowl of edamame, steamed soybeans. But first, photo shoot! Sayre was patient as the three of us posed in our yukata, attempting to be as proper and modest as Japanese ladies. Then we drank our first sake in Japan, played a little more hana awase, and rolled the futons out onto the floor, covering ourselves in garish, highlighter orange, flowered blankets, and slept.

The next morning, our mission was ramen. We had seen a variety of ramen shops on our roundabout tour the night before, but which one was the best? As we were dressing after our morning onsen, the small woman brought us a plate of sliced, chilled Japanese apple-pears that made me yearn for my parents’ garden. When we asked her to suggest a ramen shop, she proposed instead a tour of Kitakata, and insisted we allow ourselves to be chauffeured around in her small green car. She took us to a sake factory, where we learned about the history of sake, how it was made, and were able to sample a few varieties in a spacious storage room with curiously empty bottles lined up along the walls in wooden crates. Next stop, a sake shop, owned by one of her friends, where I purchased a bottle of sweet and a bottle of dry sake for the sushi party I plan to have with my PCV friends here in Uganda. I brought back several packages of nori (the seaweed wrappers used to make sushi rolls,) wasabi, pickled ginger, a small bamboo mat used to roll the sushi up in preparation for cutting into individual pieces, and a pair of chopsticks each for all 28 of the other people in my training group. Hopefully, when we’re all together for our Mid-Service conference in May, we’ll finally put everything to use!

Our friend dropped us around the corner from the ryokan at a ramen shop she recommended. We entered, took off our shoes, put on the ubiquitous slippers, and sat at a low table on cushions on the floor. There was only one thing on the menu: pork ramen. Our bowls came out steaming, the broth rich and brown, the noodles home-made at the restaurant, the green onions chopped and generously piled on top with the pork. We ate with chopsticks and what I think of as Chinese soup-spoons: the big lipped ceramic ones with short handles. I, of course, was the only one to finish because the rest of the three eaI eat a lot. We paid, and were taking a picture outside the ramen shop when our waitress came running, breathing hard, out the door, wanting to know which of us had finished our soup. Me, why? It seemed I had WON! See, just there, it says you’ve won! Apparently, some bowls at the noodle shop were like lottery tickets… if you got the right one, you won a take away box with two packages of raw, uncooked noodles and two packages of sauce that become broth when added to hot water.

When we got back to the ryokan, the woman introduced us to her English teacher, who offered to take us around Kitakata before we caught our train that afternoon. He took us to his workplace, a calligraphy shop run by an old man who offered to write our names in 5000 year old Katakana and could make stamps by engraving impossibly tiny pieces of stone. We visited a potter with beautiful, breakable work, and a shop that dyed indigo silk and other cloth and wove placemats and tablecloths in the attic. We returned to the ryokan to pick up our luggage and settle the bill. The small woman refused to charge us for the sake and other snacks she had provided, but did request a photograph with us in front of the ryokan, which we happily obliged, telling her we would certainly recommend Kitakata and her ryokan to any friends we knew of traveling in the area. Everyone had been so kind to us in Kitakata: the group of drunk men who had helped us find our ryokan, the woman running the ryokan, her English teacher… seriously, if you are ever in Japan, go to Kitakata. It is a charming little town, and the people are awesome. Rebecca can give you the contact information. Tell the small woman we made good on our promise and sent you!

We caught the train back to Koriyama, where we bid a sad farewell to Abigail, who had to return to Tomioka and her students. Rebecca, Sayre and myself were on our own now, headed to Kyoto on a bullet train! Now, I knew these things went fast, super fast, but I was not prepared. As we were waiting on the platform for our train to arrive, something tore through the station, a blur gone before I could really register what it was: a bullet train that wasn’t stopping in Koriyama. Shaking, a little incredulous, I asked Rebecca, “We’re going on one of THOSE? Seriously?” That can NOT be safe. I was scared, I’ll admit. Really scared, and there was no time to calm down, because trains leave on schedule in Japan and our bullet train had arrived, with its aerodynamic nose pointed like an airplane and its sleek sides trying to look innocent. Inside, things looked normal, and as we started to move and gain speed, things felt normal, even as the scenery outside started to blur. If I hadn’t seen the bullet train go full speed through the station minutes before our own departure, I wouldn’t have appreciated how fast we were actually going, because just like on an airplane, thankfully, you can’t feel the speed. In no time, just as Rebecca and I were finishing the last of a bottle of sake, we arrived in Tokyo and transferred to the bullet train that would spirit us away to beautiful Kyoto.

By The Numbers

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:04:06 GMT

I copied and pasted this directly off of Renee's blog... I'm still a little too tired to think of writing a blog myself, especially since I'm still trying to finish writing about Japan! The important thing is that we are safe and back in Uganda. So without further ado, I give you "By The Numbers" by Renee Vuillaume:

A more thought-out synopsis to come, but my reasoning for this schizophrenic, chronologically-reversed format becomes apparent... right... now...

4 - the number of hours I slept last night.
3:30 am - the time myself, Charlene, Arwen, Elizabeth and Ashley got into Uganda on a flight from Istanbul, Turkey today Feb 3rd.
5 - the number of planes I've been on in the past 10 days.
5 - the number of currencies I've used in the past 10 days (Turkish Lira, Euros, Dollars, Egyptian Pounds and Ugandan Shillings).
4 - the number of Visas I've used in the past 4 days (Uganda, Turkey, Greece, Egypt).
1609 - the year construction began on the Sultanahmet Mosque in Istanbul. Friggin beautiful.
1000 - the number of shops selling Turkish Delight at the Grand Bazaar; or so it seemed.
178 euros - the amount it cost me to book a last minute ticket from Athens to Istanbul because Peace Corps glitched and forgot to book it for me.
2 - the nights spent at the stupendous Sofitel hotel in Athens, after getting randomly evacuated there by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
10 - the pounds of food we must have eaten at the free breakfast each morning. Think Greek yogurt, lychees (finally Jacob), strawberries, pears, figs, dates, plums, granola, lox, pastries, rice pudding, mimosas, fresh bread, hazelnut and carob honey, smoothies, scrambled eggs, sauteed vegetables, and green tea.
40 - degrees it must have been in Athens as we wandered around the Temple of Zeus, the Acropolis, the Ampitheatre, and the baclava shops (equally as important, obviously) all in Saharan Desert-weather clothing.
3 - the bottles of Greek wine we drank while lying by the rooftop pool that night in Athens.
1,800 - the cost of our hotel rooms, in dollars, for 2 nights, totally covered by the U.S. government. Thanks tax payers!
11:00 pm - the time on Tuesday 02/01 that we finally arrived in Greece from Egypt, to be greeted with open arms by the U.S. Embassy in Greece (as opposed to the non-present U.S. Embassy in Egypt), with fresh sandwiches, water, shampoo, toothpaste and free phone calls.
9 – the hours we spent waiting with 5,000 other Americans to get out of Cairo, as per the U.S. Embassy’s evacuation procedure and exempting the 10s of 1000s of other world citizens awaiting similar bout of luck.
3rd – the flight we got out on, thanks to being considered a diplomat because of our Peace Corps status. Innumerable flights after that, I can imagine…
3 – the number of places the U.S. was evacuating to: Athens, Cyprus and Istanbul. Not too shabby.
10 – British Embassy workers we saw pre-Tuesday, helping Brits evacuate.
0 – U.S. Embassy workers we saw pre-Tuesday, helping Americans evacuate.
50 – the communication attempts, I’d say, with families, Peace Corps Uganda, Peace Corps Washington, the U.S. Embassy, the State Department, Ethiopian Air, Egypt Air, Kenya Air, whoever, that failed during those 3 days. Maybe 5 went through.
45 - the hours we spent stuck at the Cairo airport, hoping desperately for an escape.
517 – pages I read during those hours, when all else there was to do was sleep on the cold floor or avoid random anxious outbursts from 5,000 other stranded travelers.
15 – the number of M & Ms I ate for dinner Monday night, after the airport ran out of all things edible and drinkable. We hope the tap water was safe, it did smell faintly of chlorine…
12:00 am – the time Sunday night (okay Monday morning) we first realized our original flight out of Cairo was cancelled. It was a 2:35 am flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
5/14 - the number of Peace Corps Volunteers remaining in Egypt after Sunday, Jan 31st (That would be the 5 of us from Uganda, or as we’ve been dubbed by PCVs in Uganda: The Egyptian Liberation Front’s Fab Five).
9 – the number of hours we spent on a bus from Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo on Sunday, still hoping to make our flight.
2 – the number of hours we spend driving around the roadblocks (read: vigilante groups of Egyptian boys and men protecting their neighborhoods from looters and thugs by any means possible; read: whips, chains, 2x4s, bats, torches, meat cleavers, guns, molitov cocktails, bricks, knives, sabers, blow torches, seriously we saw it all) looking for a safe place to dock the bus.
30 – the number of said roadblocks we must have passed through during the attempt, and on the way to the airport, with bated breathe and jagged heartbeats at each.
7 – the number of Egyptians who took it upon themselves to ensure our safe passage to the airport, despite the personal risk involved (note: this riot was in no way about foreigners).
6 –days of true vacation we actually managed to get in. Amazing. More to come on the wonders of Egypt later.
6 – and finally, days over my scheduled vacation that I was away from Uganda.

Thanks, Renee. And thanks, readers. I'll try to write something of my own soon!

Miss Abigail's Japan

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:53:55 GMT

That night, we took the Super Hitachi north to Tomioka, Abigail’s village. We arrived late at night but Abigail wasn’t worried as we walked the quiet streets of her town. “It’s Japan! Nothing ever happens here” she assured us throughout our trip, whenever we did something that raised a red flag in the back of my mind. Maybe so, but I’ve been too long in the Third World to let my defenses down completely! We arrived at her tiny apartment unscathed and exhausted.

Abigail’s door locks in a unique way that I can’t even describe; maybe she can post a reply explaining. The door opens onto a landing with a cupboard for her shoes and steps leading up. At the top of the steps there is a small closet to the right and a hallway leading to her room on the left. The hallway branches off into a corner for her washing machine (what luxury!) and two small rooms containing her toilet (which has a warm seat and is capable of doing anything asked of it, including your math homework. No wonder Japanese kids have a reputation for being smart!) and a small bathtub/ sink and shower. A refrigerator and microwave oven are snug in the space between the stairs and the bathroom. Her “kitchen” is located in the hallway. She has a small cupboard hanging over her sink and two burner stove between the bathroom and her room. The tour finally comes to the main event: Abigail’s room! Her twin mattress rests at chest level on a built in frame with stairs that open for storage space and a closet below the mattress for additional storage. She has a small desk for her computer and other office supplies, with a bookcase mounted above on the wall. A table and chair complete the furniture and most of the space in the room. There is an air conditioner high on the wall next to the window, which opens to a small balcony you can’t stand on because its taken up by something bulky and electronic. She has a few short lines strung outside the window to dry laundry. Welcome home!

We went to school with Miss Fay the next day. Her school is very clean with a lot of resources and very small class sizes. We traded in our shoes for slippers in the entryway. You could tell the “sports” students from the “academic” students based on the type of slippers they wore. Abigail shares an office with the other white teacher at the school, an Australian who lives in the same apartment complex. Abigail's first class was French, with, if I remember correctly, only eleven students. She is technically an assistant teacher, but Abigail led the entire class, and, surprise surprise, she’s an excellent teacher. It was interesting to see her lead the session in a mix of French, English and Japanese, and fun to help her with a game using vocabulary for clothing items and colors (they’re still in their first year!)

The second class she taught that day had something to do with sports in the title, and this bunch of students was a lot different than the well-behaved French class. These kids were unruly and loud, their futures dependent upon their physical skill instead of brain power. Abigail had created a game for the kids to play; us visitors were the lesson. It was an attempt at Jeopardy complete with a complicated scoring system, that had the kids using their English to ask each of us questions in turn about our visit to Japan, America, and in my case, Uganda. It was a lot of fun, but rather embarrassing when the kids were instructed to sing me a Japanese song and I was serenaded with a love song by a teenage boy with a devilish smile and a penchant for taking off his shirt.

The last class of the day was cCommunications, where we were instructed to act dumb and have the kids teach us Japanese. That wasn’t hard, in my case. The kids were split into three groups and paired with one of us for the hour. At the end, Sayre, Rebecca and I were to stand up and show what we had learned. Rebecca and I stumbled through our phrases with the aid of our cheat-sheets. Sayre crumpled his sheet and spewed something out rapid-fire as the students’ mouths dropped open. Hah! Obviously, he’d had a few previous Japanese lessons!

That night we made stir fry with more vegetables than I knew what to do with, and drank a delicious Lychee Sake while playing Hana-awase, a very addictive Japanese card game that I am unexpectedly good at. While in Tomioka, I took advantage of the grocery store and the opportunity to cook for myself and ate things not widely available in Uganda such as broccoli (lightly steamed, for breakfast more often than not!) and cheese and crackers.

The next day, the four of us took the train a few hours north to the city of Sendai, where Abigail's other Australian friend lives. Sendai is more manageable than Tokyo and a great place to shop. I bought new underwear, which is exciting to a Peace Corps Volunteer but probably not for you. I wear a size medium or large in Japan, which makes me wonder what fat Japanese women do for clothing. Yes, fat Japanese people exist! I was quite surprised, but after seeing McDonalds and KFC all over the place, it wasn’t so much of a mystery.

That night we went to a gyoza restaurant. Gyoza are technically Chinese, Abigail tells me, but it was still one of my favorites in Japan. They are like pot stickers, if you’ve had them. Little packets of dough with a mixture of meat and vegetables inside that are fried on a griddle until they are a little brown and crispy on the outside. You prepare your own dipping sauce with vinegar, soy sauce and chili oil and want to eat until you explode.

The next day dawned grey and frigid, with sheets of rain falling endlessly on the other side of the window. But we had no choice: today was the day for Matsushima, rain or shine. I had left my rain jacket, jeans tennis shoes and any other remotely warm clothing in Tomioka, so I braved the weather in a skirt and light fleece. Mistake. That was quite possibly the coldest day of my life. It was somewhere in the 50s Fahrenheit. Brrrr! Matsushima is on the coast, and is one of the top three must see sites in Japan, or so Abigail says. It is famous for the collection of rocky, tree-covered islands found in the bay. There are two red painted bridges leading out to some of these islands, where you find among the trees and boulders statues of Buddha and shrines and pagodas with piles of shiny yen offerings and spent sticks of incense. The larger bridge took several minutes to cross, with the wind biting fiercely over the open water. Rebecca and Abigail ate barbequed squid for lunch; Sayre and I saved ourselves for dinner. We went out again in Sendai, this time to a uniquely Japanese style restaurant. Your party is enclosed in your own room with sliding rice paper screens for privacy, although sound carries. Waiters come by to take your order, quietly sliding the screen aside and writing your requests on pads of paper. The menu is filled with a variety of small bites of delicious things. We ordered pickled cucumber, yaki soba, French fries, edamame (boiled soybeans), more gyoza for me, and various sticks of meat for the others. Quite delicious!

The next day we returned to Tomioka in time to visit the beach (Tomioka is also on the coast) before dark. The water was freezing, of course, but there are some very picturesque columns of rock, topped with scraggly pine trees, a short ways off the coast. The result, most likely, of different types of rock and millennia of erosion. It was strange, standing on the coast in Asia, having come from Africa, and knowing that Seattle was just across the ocean, nothing separating me from the land of my birth except the wide expanse of water. Home, just there!

Check Ikaho Off My Life Goals List

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:28:45 GMT

Copious apologies for the delay in posting.

We made it back to Tokyo, where Rebecca and Sayre stayed to explore the city. Abigail and I took the train and a bus to a little place called Ikaho. Back in high school, when I was just starting to get sick with the travel bug, I decided to close my eyes and point in the back of the atlas and someday go wherever my finger landed. I did this two times; once it was a place in Japan called Ikaho. The other will take me somewhere in Russia. With Abigail living in Japan, what better time to visit the islands? And what better time to finally go to mythical Ikaho? Indulgently, Abigail agreed to accompany me.

The excitement mounted the closer we got to Ikaho, which is situated a few hours north of Tokyo. At the train station, we fumbled over directions and with the help of an old couple that didn’t speak a word of English, boarded the correct bus, which was then stuck in traffic for way too long. I didn’t know what to expect when we got to Ikaho. We stepped off the bus on a nondescript street and found a quiet town with hills that reminded me of the ones in the neighborhood I grew up in. We aimlessly followed a street and found at the bottom of a hill a temple with a parade about to start. As we came closer, the throng of men dressed in blue and white tunics secured with a golden rope belt over tight grey pants started towards us carrying a huge gold and red shrine. The men turned towards us and began hopping up and down in time to the clapping of wooden boards and taiko drums.

A friendly shopkeeper standing next to us explained that today was THE holiday of the year. The procession would move throughout Ikaho, stopping in front of shops and homes delivering blessings for the year. What luck that we had arrived when we did. Not only was this day THE holiday in Ikaho, but we were perfectly on time for the commencement! Ikaho was meant to be...

Ikaho is known for its onsen. The public baths in town are lauded for the healing properties of the iron found naturally in the waters. We wandered through town in search of the baths, and happened upon the center of town, a collection of winding streets and small shops. We stopped at a small park overlooking the valley and purchased squid cakes dusted with fish flakes and dumplings cooked over the fire and dripping with a dark sauce. Neither of the snacks were to my liking, which was not the norm. Without trying to, we kept following the procession of men with their shrine. In an attempt to avoid them, we detoured a few streets and found the “famous” stone steps of Ikaho, where crowds were milling up and down the granite steps engraved with words I couldn’t begin to understand or even sound out. We climbed the steps up to a quieter street that wound away from the center of town through the trees, and followed signs to the onsen, where we stripped down in the dressing rooms and joined the throng of naked Japanese ladies in the steaming pool outside.

The ladies spoke in hushed tones, overshadowed by the raucous laughter and shouts from the other side of the bamboo fence where the men’s pool was. Abigail and I soaked in the hot, faintly yellow water and watched the sky transform itself from blue to pink to indigo between the pattern of maple leaves enclosing us overhead. Africa’s dirt lost its hold on me with the prolonged heat, and sloughed itself from my skin into these healing waters of Ikaho, the place I’d waited years to come. Check that off my list of things to do before I die: I said I’d go to Ikaho, Japan, and I did!

Warm and unbelievably clean, Abigail and I walked back through town, now twinkling with paper lanterns. We caught the bus and the train and returned to Tokyo. The next morning we set out to get tickets to a sumo wrestling match. Tokyo was cloudy and cold, with a few sprinklings of rain. Sumo tickets were sold out, unless we wanted to drop upwards of $100, which we didn’t. Instead we wandered through a Japanese garden, complete with shrines and koi and a fat orange cat meditating next to the water on a bed of moss.

We met one of Abigail’s friends at a sushi restaurant for lunch. I ordered a variety of rice balls covered with slices of different types of fish and other sea creatures. Wasabi was hidden inside already, to my surprise. Sushi in Japan is mainly rice and raw fish. I don’t really enjoy Japanese sushi. I was hard pressed to find sushi rolls the entire trip, although 7-11 was usually good for a limited variety of rolls. I rather prefer sushi rolls, especially the ones with vegetables. I suppose I’m lucky that this type of sushi is more common in America than it is in Japan.

After lunch, we set out to see Tokyo. We visited a long string of souvenir shops and a large shrine where we wafted healing incense smoke over ourselves. I had my first, and definitely not my last, green tea ice cream cone, bought in front of a pair of Buddha, said to bring mercy and wisdom to worshipers. We took a subway to the Tokyo of movies, all hustle and bustle and crowds, lights and tall buildings overwhelming the senses and making me long for Africa.

RAT WARS!

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:04:28 GMT

We interrupt scheduled blogging to bring you this breaking news: War has been declared on the foot slopes of Mount Elgon in Eastern Uganda between two formidable armies: PCV A. Wolfe and Rattus norvegicus.

After seven months of illegal occupation of my ceiling, Rattus norvegicus advanced the front lines to the ground floor of my home. It really hadn’t bothered me that they were in my attic. I mean, doesn’t every Peace Corps Volunteer have at least one type of vermin living in their home? I felt rather spoiled, actually. In Togo, I had not only rats but bats in my ceiling. My drop ceiling wasn’t flush with the wall, which meant their excrement would fall down around the edges of my rooms. I taped up the cracks with duct tape to prevent the daily occurrence of this, but every couple of months I would have to re-do the taping, when the load of rat and bat feces began to overwhelm the duct tape’s strength. One of the only bad things about my little West African haven was ripping the tape down, having the mess shower down upon me, and having to sweep it all up. But in Togo, the rats and bats mostly stayed where they belonged. Only a few times did they venture into my own living space. Once, coming back after a week away, I found one drowned in my toilet, molding. Once I had to smash one with a book. Thinking back, I probably had mice though, not rats. They were tiny, and my trusty West African guide was more than enough to end their lives when I slammed it down upon them.

In Togo, I also had scorpions (including one pregnant one), tarantulas, camel spiders (dare you to look up why they’re called that), and the long-running drama with every imaginable type of ant, among other things. It was unpleasant, but didn’t affect my life all that much. Here in Uganda, I have those rats in my ceiling, an occasional outbreak of ants, and cockroaches in my cupboard which seem to be immune to insecticide. Until recently, I felt myself comparatively lucky here: nothing that can cause me immense pain or suffering. Then the neighbor boy, Peter, was sent into my attic to eradicate the mice, and all the trouble started.

Peter is a sweet boy who is just starting to go through puberty. I’ve liked him since the beginning. He is respectful and helpful, and takes care of my passion fruit vines when I’m away. I don’t blame him for what happened, but when I look back to that day he knocked on my door to inform me he was going into the crawl space above the rooms of our building, I wish I had stopped him. I didn’t know he was going up there to try and kill the rats. He killed a handful with his stick, but didn’t get them all, and that night the trouble started.

Some idiot in Uganda had the not so bright idea to start putting ventilation bricks in all modern houses, so I have three small collections of these bricks with holes in them in each of my two rooms. Ostensibly, the idea is that even when the doors and windows of the house are closed, the ventilation bricks will allow airflow, decreasing stuffiness. The only thing they actually do, however, is to serve as a “doggy door” of sorts for those unwelcome pets known as insects, lizards, and rats. After a few weeks suffering the mosquitoes in this place, I cut the bottom off my mosquito net and covered the ventilation bricks to keep them out of my house. Remarkably, it worked for the most part.

When Peter went up to the attic with his stick, the rats got scared, and abandoned their erstwhile residence. But they liked the neighborhood and didn’t want to leave. The mosquito netting over the ventilation bricks was no barrier for them: they tore through it with their sharp teeth and entered my home. I was first aware of this when one dropped onto my mosquito net at three AM with a squeal, startling me awake with a jerk of my head which brought my skull into contact with the headboard with a loud crack. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night as I chased him up and down my bedroom, throwing the East Africa guide at him without result; it just bounced off him. These Ugandan rats are “serious”. Towards dawn, he stopped scurrying around and I assumed he had gone back outside.

The next few nights were worse: through sleepless hours of observation, I learned of the holes in the mosquito netting over the ventilation bricks and stuffed the holes with socks as a temporary deterrent. But the rats were taunting me. Each night they were there, jumping on my mosquito net, knocking pots and pans over in my kitchen, eating my onions and vegetables left out of the cupboards, dragging my clothes from their shelves into corners to make nests and chewing them to bits as they urinated and defecated on them.

During daylight hours, exhausted beyond belief, I had replaced the socks in all the ventilation holes that I thought were large enough for them to squeeze through, with rocks, but nothing seemed to help. They still got in Somehow. Every night they were there, driving me closer to insanity, no matter what defensive measures I had managed to implement.
A few days in, as I was sweeping up the pellets and dirt and scraps of clothing and food they left for me each morning, I moved a suitcase and a ball of grey-brown fur shot out at me. It was five in the afternoon; I hadn’t had the energy to clean until then. The little bastard had been in my house the entire day. They went to bed just as I should have been waking up, and in my sleep deprived state I wasn’t aware that they hadn’t gone back outside to their nests. I thought they were scavenging in my house at night, looking for food and materials, and returning home at dawn. Now I knew they intended to make my home theirs. It was officially time to declare war.

They’re intelligent little brats, and it was bloody difficult to find their hiding places, although I knew they were there. I decided to remove everything but my furniture from the bedroom so they wouldn’t be able to hide in my clothes or stacks of paper. Unfortunately, my bed is sufficiently large enough that a rat can escape underneath it beyond the reach of the stick with a nail poking from it that I had found outside.

After almost a week of sleepless and nearly sleepless nights, I was going away for the weekend, and I felt reasonably confident that I had finally blocked all of the rats’ entrance points to my home. Before leaving, I knocked about underneath my bed and rustled all the stacks of paper and didn’t see any sign of them. I had seen at least two individuals in the past days: one the size of my clenched fist, the other double that. I locked my doors and hoped I’d find everything like I left it.

When I returned, my spices were no longer on the shelf, my Tupperware had been gnawed, and they had evacuated their bladders and bowels on everything. The door between my two rooms which I had locked had piles of wood shavings at its base, and one of the rocks in the ventilation bricks in my living room/kitchen was displaced. It had fit in the hole nicely, but I hadn’t had to pound it into place like the others. The rats had figured out how to move it and entered the house. When they couldn’t access my bedroom, they gnawed the bottom of the door viciously until they could squeeze underneath.

I cleaned up their mess and pounded rocks into every single ventilation hole in the bricks no matter how small. I scoured my bedroom before turning out the lights, locked the door, and stuffed the caterpillar hair towel (which I hadn’t yet had the courage to use) at the base of the door, reinforced with every heavy book I had in the house. I thought if they were at least out of my bedroom that I could have a decent night’s sleep, but I was wrong. Every time I started to drift off to sleep, they ran around the kitchen, knocking things down, fighting, and pulled at the caterpillar hair towel in an attempt to get into my bedroom.

I was paranoid, and from time to time I would get up to check that the towel was still under the door and the rocks in the bedroom ventilation bricks were still in place. I suspected they were in my cupboard with all the treats from America I’ve received in packages lately, (shout outs go to Lynne and Daniel, and Randy and Patti), and I got up once and emptied everything out, but there were no holes in the wood and my dried fruit, nuts, soups and gummy bears were safe. I couldn’t sleep; I was afraid they would get into my bedroom and pee on me from on top of my mosquito net again.

Next morning my suspicions were confirmed. The rocks were still in place in the ventilation bricks. The rats that had been wreaking havoc the entire night had been there when I pounded in the rocks. There was no way in or out of the room, with the towel firmly in place at the base of the door. The only place they could hide was behind my cupboard. Not for the first time, I wished that Julius, the neighbor’s cat, hadn’t disappeared. Then again, he probably wouldn’t be much help. He ran away when they got a new kitten, which is about the size of one of the rats. Julius was terrified of the kitten. It was time to fight dirty: I bought rat poison and at the Ugandan’s suggestion laced a collection of tomatoes with the stuff. I went to bed with the towel at my door, but I didn’t sleep. The rats were as loud and energetic as ever the entire night. In the morning, the tomatoes were ripped apart but not consumed. Rats are surprisingly intelligent, and I was full of despair.

The war had been raging for over a week. I had had no more than a couple hours of sleep each night, sometimes no sleep at all. My frying pan had been bent when a rat had knocked it off the shelf. My onions and vegetables were eaten. My spicy peppers were scattered all over the kitchen. My caterpillar towel had a huge hole in the middle where they had eaten through it, trying to get into my bedroom. My bedroom door had been gnawed. A dress and a skirt now had holes chewed in them. I had been peed on, and my mosquito net had been stained. My plastic compost bucket had teeth marks in it. Each day I had to sweep up the collection of torn papers and plastic bags, rat excrement, and bits of my clothing and food. My floor had patches of sticky, dark rat urine everywhere. And then, like an angel from heaven, I heard Julius meow outside.

I grabbed the bag of little silver fish I had left over from when I had attempted to befriend Julius, before the kitten had scared him off. It was a long shot, but maybe he was only scared of small animals if they were of the same species. Besides, it was the only shot I could think of. I emptied the bag outside my door and called him over. His black fur was brown with dust, but I pet him and scratched him and spoke to him. When he settled down to the fish, I went in the house with my door open and emptied out my cupboard. I pulled and pushed and slowly moved the heavy cupboard away from the wall. I smelled a rat. I grabbed Julius and threw him behind the cupboard. There was a cacophony of loud squeaks and he emerged a few seconds later with a rat in his jaws. He took it outside and I ran for my camera; this was a beautiful sight. I sat with him as he broke it's skull and chewed through the bones and muscle. He ate it all, the tail going down his throat whole. I imagine that would tickle. I knew there was at least one more rat; I rubbed Julius behind the ears and threw him back behind the cupboard. I took my stick with the nail and thrust it under the cupboard, searching. In another few seconds, Julius emerged a second time with a second rat in his jaws.

I was reminded of Avata, my first cat, and the story my parents always told me, when he caught two squirrels in one day. He always ate the head first, skull and all, but that day, he got full, and left the second half of the second squirrel under the kitchen table. I hoped Julius, an African cat, could handle two rats in one day. Sure enough, the second rat went down the hatch much like the first. I wasn’t sure if there were any more rats, but Julius followed me eagerly back into the kitchen, so I decided to try again. I stuck the stick under the cupboard again, but nothing happened. I looked over the edge at Julius, who was sniffing at the pile of clothes, papers, and plastic that had been their nest behind the cupboard. Among the rubbish was an uneaten slice of poisoned tomato. I grabbed it with the nail on my stick, “don’t eat that Julius!” I took it over to my trash can, next to my pile of shoes. I heard a rustling noise, but before I could react, Julius had the third rat in his mouth and was trotting out to the porch. I went out to watch. I don’t like killing things, but these rats had caused me a lot of grief.

Julius must have been getting full. He had eaten two large rats in the last twenty minutes, and was faced with a third. He seemed tired, and he just sat for a few minutes with the rat in his jaws, its eyes bulging and blinking and its chest heaving. Then he put it out of its misery and slowly ate it. A group of chickens clucked over, intending to overpower the cat and get whatever tasty thing he had found to eat, but I kicked them away. Julius had earned this, and while it would be nice to add rat to the list of weird things I’ve seen chickens eat, they probably wouldn’t have finished it, and then I’d be left with a carcass.

After the third rat, Julius and I went back inside and he sniffed around the cupboard as I tipped it up so he could find any more rats that were hiding, but there were none. He sniffed around the rest of my kitchen/living room, and I let him into the bedroom to clear it as well. No rats. What a beautiful idea. I went outside and sat with Julius for a long time, petting him and telling him how wonderful he was. I hadn’t always had faith in him, but he had really come through for me this time.

That night, I went to bed with dreams of a good night’s sleep dancing in my head, rocks hammered into each hole in the ventilation bricks, no matter how small, and the caterpillar towel stuffed at the base of my door. That was four days ago, my house is still rat free, and I haven’t seen Julius since. He had appeared suddenly in my time of need, just like an angel, and disappeared just as suddenly. I hope I never need his services again, but I do hope he comes around again. I rather like him.

Nota bene: The title of this blog is best enjoyed to the tune of the “Batman” theme song, i.e. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-RAT-WARS!

Halfway Around the World

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:08:13 GMT

You know you’re good friends when you’ll cross continents for someone else. Abigail is living in Japan for a year, teaching English and French at a high school several hours north of Tokyo. As soon as Abigail knew she’d be going to Japan, I knew I’d visit her, even if that meant obscenely expensive airfare from Africa. When Rebecca and her boyfriend booked their tickets to visit her, I seized the opportunity to see them, as well, and somehow found tickets arriving and departing within a few hours of their itinerary.

We left İstanbul as the sun was setting and as dusk settled over Earth I saw that the Black Sea is actually dark blue, despite what its name suggests. Darkness came and we flew over Russia, the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan, and China. This flight felt more normal for me, as I watched movies back to back and devoured delicious Turkish meals and complementary bottles of red wine hour after hour. The sun rose again, and I felt tired, again, but we were passing over China and the Yellow Sea and I knew that even if I could drift off, I wouldn’t have time for a sufficient nap before landing. The clouds parted, allowing me an aerial view of South Korea and the Sea of Japan before we crossed into Japanese airspace and flew up its spine, over Kyoto, past Fuji and out above the North Pacific before we turned for our entry into Tokyo.

Finally at my destination, I obtained my (free!) sticker visa and proceeded down to baggage claim, where I located my backpack and attempted to wash myself in the restroom. I had been through a lot since my last shower: an entire dusty day in a taxi in Uganda, an overnight flight, a whirlwind tour of İstanbul, and twelve hours in a second airplane. Once I was in a fresh change of clothes, I set out to wait for Rebecca and Sayre’s plane to arrive. They were slated to get in about two hours after I did, so I found a bench and sat down. A few curious, worried Japanese airport guards approached me on the bench to instruct me that I could exit the baggage claim area through those doors just there. I smiled and explained that I was waiting for my friends that were arriving on flight such and such at such and such a time and hoped it was okay that I wait for them here. They smiled and bowed several times and assured me it was okay. Whew! I don’t know what I would have done if I had been kicked out.

In the baggage claim room, they didn’t announce when flights landed. There were a few television sets which showed what carrousels served which flights, so I eagerly awaited my friends’ flight number and proceeded towards their carrousel. Passengers on their flight started to trickle in and grab their bags; slowly by slowly it seemed the whole plane came to collect their luggage, but I hadn’t seen one redhead in the bunch (Rebecca!) and I was starting to feel nervous. A Japanese man in a uniform finally stopped the carrousel and pulled off the unclaimed bags. I found Sayre’s bag, so I knew they had checked in to their flight, at least. The Japanese man let me move Sayre’s bag next to mine in the corner as I anxiously examined everyone coming down the escalator into the room. What was I going to do? I’d have to leave the room in order to contact Abigail, who lives several hours outside of Tokyo, but I had no yen, and I didn’t know where our hostel was, or even when Abigail was scheduled to arrive; sometimes not having easy access to the internet has a downside! I had hardly been involved in planning this trip at all!

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I spotted my friends, who had been waiting in line all this time to get their visas. We passed together through customs and out into the world. First stop: the JR railway office to pick up our Rail Passes that would allow us to take the majority of Japan’s trains for free. We attempted to get money out of the ATMs with some hassle, and then took a roundabout journey to our hostel in the Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo.

We set our bags down and went in search of sustenance. We found a small noodle shop that we later learned was a fast food chain, Japan style. Our noodles and rice were decent and cheap for Japanese standards. We walked back to our hostel and I felt like a new person after I showered in the hot hot pressurized water. We were staying in the cheapest place we could find: a hostel called Asakusa Smile that gave us bunk beds in a small dorm without much breathing room. We collapsed into bed for a few hours, waiting for Abigail. I woke to her voice in the hallway and climbed down from the top bunk to greet her. It’s amazing how your lifelong friends can bring you back to yourself in ways that no one else can. I have a solid group of wonderful friends in Uganda, many of whom I hope to be friends with for the rest of my life, but seeing Rebecca and Abigail reminded me how different it is when people have known you for so long. I met Rebecca in the fall of 1997; that’s over half my life ago. Abigail and I have been friends for a respectable ten years. Few other people know me like they do. We chatted energetically for a few minutes before drifting off to sleep; we would have plenty of time to talk in the next few weeks.

The next day, we woke early and got breakfast at 7-11. From an American perspective that probably sounds disgusting, but 7-11 in Japan is actually quite a nice place to get an easy meal. They have rice balls (triangles of rice wrapped in nori seaweed with something nestled in the middle. Abigail gave us educated guesses as to the contents based on the prices, but her method wasn’t error-proof. I enjoyed many a rice ball over the two weeks. I found many things in the middle: sour plum paste, tuna and mayonnaise, salmon, greens in sauce, chicken in spicy red sauce. Other options at 7-11 and other “convenie” convenient stores: salads, sushi rolls, yogurt, sandwiches, bento platters with all sorts of things, juices, cold coffee (Starbucks!) in disposable cups with straws. There were also the chips, cookies, cakes, candies, sodas, fried chicken and hot dogs you would expect in America, but it was nice to be able to find healthy options at any corner market. After breakfast, we went to the train station and made our way to Mitake, south of Tokyo, on the way to Mount Fuji.

Mitake is a mountain village accessible by a cable car that clings the side of the mountains through the trees at a stomach-sickening angle. From the cable car station we followed the paper lantern lined concrete pathways-the streets of the town, through the forest towards the center of town, where we located our ryokan, a traditional Japanese hotel with tatami mat floors and rice paper sliding walls. We set our things down at the ryokan before going in search of lunch. We found a small restaurant that had all sorts of noodle soups. I ordered a delicious udon, thick rice noodles in a rich broth with pieces of vegetable, strips of nori, and other things I didn’t recognize. For dessert, we ordered rice candy which came as a clear glob on two wooden chopsticks. We were instructed to knead the candy together using the chopsticks until it was “silver and edible.” It was slightly sweet, very sticky, and a lot of fun to play with.

From lunch, we followed our map up to a temple to pray. There are temples everywhere in Japan. At the larger ones, there are pools of water with bamboo ladles for you to wash your hands and your mouth. You approach the temple, bow, clap twice, throw a coin or two into the wooden slatted receptacle, pray, and bow again (or some version of this… I never quite felt I was doing it right). At some of the larger temples, there is a gong to ring after praying. We wandered around the temple and shrines before heading into the forest for a hike. The forest reminded me of the Pacific Northwest, with all of the evergreens and moss, and it was nice to feel at home even if I wasn’t. We passed through the trees and over streams as the path became more and more faint. Eventually, there were ropes and chains along the way, guiding us where to go, but as the path became steeper and steeper we realized they were also functional. We came to a ladder which was metal and sturdy and impressive to Abigail and me after the rickety wooden ladders we used in Dogon Country in Mali, but I think Rebecca and Sayre were a little more dubious.

We climbed up through the trees and came to the top of the mountain, where we had been told we would have views of Fuji, but the trees were too thick and mist covered the farther mountains. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t see Fuji from the ground, since it is such an icon of Japan, but I had good views of it from the plane and we saw so much else in Japan that it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The path continued down the other side of the mountain, but we decided to turn back the way we had come; the sun wouldn’t be shining for much longer, especially since the day was overcast, and we had agreed with the little old lady at our ryokan that we would return by 6pm for our bath. We weren’t quite sure what that meant… she had insisted we set a time, so she probably had to prepare something… would she be washing us herself? Would the four of us be bathing together? We didn’t have a clue. We hiked back down the mountain and made a slight detour down several hundred practically vertical metal stairs to the waterfall we had heard from the main trail before returning to our ryokan on time for our bath date with the old lady.

In Japan, they enjoy slippers. When we entered the ryokan, we were given slippers at the door to wear inside. We were to leave these slippers at the sliding rice paper door to our tatami mat room. You always walk on tatami either barefoot or in sock feet. When you leave the tatami again, you put your slippers back on. When you open the door to the bathroom, there are several pairs of slippers embroidered with “toilet” for you to utilize while there. When you exit, you resume your other slippers until, of course, you get back to your tatami room. We retrieved our toiletries and set out in our slippers to find the old lady. She showed us to the baths, which were actually onsen. Sayre went to the men’s onsen and Rebecca, Abigail and I joined a lone Japanese lady in the women’s.

An onsen is a public bath, usually, but not always, separated by sex. Before entering the baths, you wash your body thoroughly. At ryokans and nicer onsen other places, toiletries are provided. There are one or more baths in the middle of the room, and along the walls are shower units to clean yourself. You sit on a stool and wash your body with the showerhead. Once you are clean, you enter the pools of steaming water, holding a small towel in front of you modestly. Once you are seated, you can fold the towel and place it on your head, or use it to squeeze water over yourself or place it in your lap. We showered and entered the one round, steaming pool of the ryokan’s onsen. The Japanese lady left soon after we arrived, so we had the place to ourselves. It was so refreshing, all of this hot, clean water every day. I was afraid that my pores would again release so much dirt, but it wasn’t too bad.

At the hotel we stayed at in Kampala for our Swearing-In in April, there was a sauna. The first time I went in, my sweat brought with it little collections of dirt from my pores; it was disgusting. It didn’t happen to anyone else, and I was embarrassed; it would appear that I hadn’t been washing myself very well. After having thought about it, though, I think the dirt had been accumulating ever since 2007 when I moved to Togo. Here in Uganda, you’d be hard pressed to find a hotel that doesn’t have running hot water, but in Togo, hot water and even running water were something of a luxury. I remember when my Mom and I stayed in a nice hotel in Ghana and the hot water actually lasted more than a few minutes and was actually hot instead of warm. I couldn’t believe it. I had, literally, forgotten that that was possible, that you could have that any time you want, as long as you want, in America. I sweat a lot in Togo, but not as much as in that sauna in April. I think two and a half years of cold bucket baths had left some dirt in my pores even when I scrubbed hard with my éponge, even when I had hot water while home for the holidays between Togo and Uganda. Still gross, but hopefully more understandable? Anyway, I was relieved not to have a repeat experience in the onsen of Japan.

After our baths, we sat down to dinner: rice, Japanese curry, a breaded salmon fillet with a small salad and some boiled starchy root, penne pasta with a red sauce (for us Americans, I guess), sweet corn chowder, pickled greens and daikon, a salad made with something similar to water chestnuts, but with a lacy pattern of holes throughout, and of course green tea. It was quite tasty. We retired to our tatami room, which looked out over the hills to the twinkling lights of the suburbs in the valley. We set out our thin futons on the tatami and curled under the comforters with uncomfortable pillows. Beds in Japan aren’t that comfortable.

We woke to view the sun rising, red, over the mountains across the valley. Breakfast consisted of rice, a fried egg, miso, green beans with mayonnaise (which I tried to avoid), steamed okra with sesame seeds, small strips of nori which I filled with the rice and dipped in soy sauce, more pickled greens and daikon, and green tea. After breakfast, we gathered our things, bade farewell to our tatami room, and walked back along the lantern-lined streets to the cable car. It was a new day for new adventures.

Stay tuned for the next installment from my time in Japan...

Istanbul was Constantinople

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:44:41 GMT

The clocks at the airport informed me I had arrived an hour before schedule, so I think it took five and a half hours to fly from Entebbe to İstanbul, although my e-ticket posted the flight time as seven and a half hours. Maybe vayama.com allows for African Time for flights originating in the Motherland? Regardless, it was a rather short overnight flight for me. I’ve become used to the long hauls between continents, so I was rather surprised when there wasn’t time to finish my third in-flight movie. I had left Entebbe hours after the sun had set, and descended into the twinkling lights of İstanbul before the first hint of dawn on the horizon, so all I saw of the Nile’s twisting path through Uganda, Sudan and Egypt were occasional electrified cities spilt into the desert far below me. The Mediterranean was a wide expanse of pitch black.

When we deplaned in İstanbul, I was exhausted. I hardly ever sleep on planes, and this flight hadn’t been an exception. I had fourteen hours before my flight to Tokyo, though, and I really wanted to see a bit of the city. I went to the restroom to collect myself, where signs instructed me to flush the toilets twice in order to conserve water. I followed the directions, although to this day I’m not sure whether they were meant as some sort of joke, or were a failed attempt at translating the Turkish.

I wandered around for a while, confused about where, exactly, I needed to go to get out of the airport. Finally, I saw a sign pointing towards the visa desk. I handed 20 USD and my passport through the window to the sleepy Turkish man, who pasted a sticker into one of the few remaining empty pages of my Peace Corps passport. That was easy! I followed signs towards customs and slipped through the short line with my new sticker visa. On my way towards baggage claim (and an exit, I assumed) I stopped at a money exchange counter.

I had American dollars, and needed Turkish money, but that’s about all I knew. After several minutes waiting in line, it was my turn at the counter. I hesitated a moment before using my Seattle accent to explain to the sleepy Turkish woman behind the glass that I was in Turkey only for the day; my flight left that evening, but I wanted to go into town and see some of the sights since I had the time. I was sorry, but I didn’t know how expensive things were going to be, or the exchange rate or even, I’m sorry, what Turkish money is called. She looked at me blankly; one of my less impressive cross cultural moments. I took a deep breath and tried my Ugandan voice. How much, do you think, would it cost in Turkish money to go into İstanbul, walk around and see some sights, buy lunch and maybe some small souvenir, and return to the airport this afternoon? Not surprisingly, my Ugandan voice didn’t help. The sleepy lady said in heavily accented but grammatically perfect English, “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you are saying; I cannot help you. Please try the man at the next counter.”

Getting cash wasn’t turning out to be as easy as getting the visa had been. I had waited in the sleepy woman’s line instead of approaching the man at the next counter because there was no line, and I wasn’t sure if he was in business at the moment or not, since it appeared he worked for a different exchange company; I had no choice now. I approached him hesitantly and repeated my story in my Seattle accent. He listened intently (the first Turkish person I had encountered who didn’t appear sleepy) and informed me, politely, that Turkey uses “Lirasi” (Lira, in English) and that I would probably need to change around $80 US to do what I wanted. Excellent, thank you alert Turkish man!

I passed dozens of different car rental booths and tour companies on my way towards the exit, before a handsome man beckoned me over to his booth. I had originally been planning to wander around İstanbul on my own, using the city map a friend had found for me in the Peace Corps office, but after the money exchange experience, I had decided to leave it up to fate. I wasn’t going to seek a tour out, but I wasn’t dead set against one, either. I felt as exhausted as the majority of the local staff looked behind their counters. I had missed a night of sleep after a string of inadequate nights spent packing and talking with fellow PCVs; I wasn’t sure how much English was spoken, or how helpful people would actually be to a blond woman who tends to revert to a Ugandan accent when misunderstood. I took the cue and followed him into his office.

The handsome man didn’t have to try and persuade me at all. He gave me glass after glass of cool water as I perused his brochures. I picked a half day tour that would get me back to the airport in plenty of time for my flight. I bought an overpriced Turkish delicacy at an airport kiosk while he arranged for a taxi. As it grew light outside, I ate my flaky-crusted, potato and spice filled savory breakfast roll and was grateful that I would not be in complete charge of getting myself through the day. As excited as I was to see the city, I was bone tired and probably shouldn’t be wandering alone through a foreign city with my passport and other valuables and a ticket for a plane that wouldn’t wait.

The handsome man escorted me to the airport parking lot where my taxi was waiting for me. We sped out of the airport and along the coast of the Marmara Denİzİ (Sea of Marmara). The air was fresh but cool at this hour of the day. Gradually the sun rose enough to sparkle the water and soon it was bright in the sky. We turned in to a maze of cobblestoned streets and the taxi stopped at the Albatros Hotel, where I was to wait for the tour to pick me. I stood outside the hotel for a while, observing the awakening of the city in this quiet neighborhood. A woman down the road was sweeping; a group of men sat chatting around their yellow “taksİ” cars and thin, strong street cats played in the sun and scavenged in the garbage man’s cart for breakfast. After twenty minutes, one of the men behind the desk at the hotel came out for a cigarette, and told me I could wait at the restaurant on the roof until my tour came.

I accepted his kindness, although I had no intention of buying the overpriced breakfast he surely thought he had sold me on. I slipped out of the elevator and found an empty table on the terrace overlooking the city, where no one bothered me. I looked out on a hillside crowded with buildings and omnipresent mosques; there are over 3000 in İstanbul. After half an hour observing the quiet neighborhood of Sultanahmet, and seeing a plethora of tour buses pass below me, I began to worry that my tour was running late, or not coming for me. The man with the cigarette had assured me they would fetch me on the terrace, but I returned to the lobby to wait. Finally, almost an hour late, a breathless woman breezed in to the hotel and announced she was here for me, and a few others who had been waiting in the plush chairs by the television. We were led to a crowded bus, and I sat near the people who had been picked from the same hotel. They introduced themselves; they were all New Zealanders, two couples and a daughter of one of them. We drove around Sultanahmet to a few more hotels. My new friends explained that the tour companies pick up everyone who is going on their tours in a given day with a fleet of buses, and rendezvous on the road to sort everyone into which tour they have paid for. As luck would have it, the New Zealanders and I had chosen the same tour.

Karen and Des adopted me for the day, and Philip, a Brit who they knew from a tour the previous day, completed our foursome. It was nice to have someone to talk to, and they were sufficiently awed at my peculiar status: living in Uganda, currently in Turkey, headed to Japan that evening. The tour bus hugged the coast along the ancient city walls of Constantinople as the guide spouted information at us. In general I despise tourists who travel this way. I much prefer discovering places on my own, and not putting myself above the people. I enjoy paying 50 cents for rice balls with sauce de sésame and wagash in a shack on the muddy banks of the Kara River, instead of paying $10 for a plate of rice and sauce at some upscale hotel promising a “real African culinary experience.” Anyway, as much as I despised the idea that I was being chauffeured around in an air conditioned bus (and the chills it gave me) like the thousands of other foreigners descended upon the city with their cameras and sensible walking shoes, I appreciated that in this one situation, it was much nicer than wandering around by myself. Perhaps the best perk of the tour group was I could take picture after picture without feeling guilty or culturally insensitive, although I most likely should have. Mob mentality: everyone else is snapping away; so can I!

After passing the Haliç (Golden Horn), an inlet separating the European side of İstanbul in two, the bus stopped outside Mısır Çarşısı (the Egyptian Bazaar, also known as the Spice Bazaar, although plenty else is on offer) and I stepped gratefully into the heat. My New Zealand friends and I walked into the covered building and were hit with a thousand different aromas. The walkway was concrete and the stalls were neat and contained against the wall. There were so many colors and smells to take in at once! We made our way from one stall to the next, looking over baskets of teas, heaped basins of pungent spices and glass display cases of watches and gaudy jewelry, much of it utilizing the Muslim Eye that is purported to keep safe those under its gaze. Shimmering belly dancing costumes hung from the ceiling, cloth shoes were crowded onto tables alongside beautiful deserts dripping with honey, Turkish Delight and magnificent Turkish pottery. One day, I am going to be rich, and I am going to buy my tableware in Istanbul and find a way to get it all back to Seattle undamaged. Somehow!

My New Zealand friends were overwhelmed with the bustle of the market and the shopkeepers. I nodded in sympathy and kept quiet; to me, the market was unreal. It wasn’t crowded. You could walk at a normal pace and without coming into contact with another person. In Africa, you are squeezed through the throng, getting other people’s sweat on your skin as you fight your way through to where you want to go. You are walking in mud and/or dust, and hawkers are calling and pulling at you from all directions. Men are hunched with huge sacks of grain, shoes made from tires, and who knows what all; they call to you with a gasp to get out of their way and you somehow squeeze yourself even tighter into the bodies around you. The shopkeepers in the bazaar stood docile, smiling encouragingly. Some of them would greet you quietly as you passed, and only the most assertive of them would politely invite you to look at their wares. The New Zealander’s stressful situation was a refreshing one for me. Here, “just looking” meant “just looking.” The stalls of cloth, cheeses, soaps, hookahs and of course spices, were configured in a neat “L” and we were free to wander at our leisure, taking photographs and samples. The bazaar was like a dream, and my senses were overwhelmed trying to take it all in. I bought one thing: a bag of saffron the size of my fist for about $3, not because I have all that much use for saffron here in Uganda, but because that stuff is usually so expensive, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

From the bazaar, the tour bus took us to the Kabataş İskelesi (a dock) where we boarded a ship for our cruise up the İstanbul Boğazı (Bosphorus). The Bosphorus is the waterway that separates Europe and Asia. İstanbul is the only major city in the world that spans two continents, and it was here that, technically, I first entered Asia. We were on the water for close to two hours, heading up the river from the Marmara Denİzİ. We passed all sorts of historical buildings and beautiful residences, but I have forgotten all of their details now. I do know we saw Dolmabahçe Sarayı (palace), Deniz Müzesi (Maritime Museum), Çirağan Palace Hotel, Şeret Stadyomu (Stadium), and Ortaköy Camii (Mosque) on the European side before getting to Rumelİ Hisarı. The Rumelİ Fortress was built in only four months by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1452 prior to the Conquest of İstanbul. It was built to control and protect the Bosphorus, and is considered one of the most beautiful works of military architecture anywhere in the world. We crossed to the other side of the Bosphorus, and Asia, after Rumelİ, for the return journey. The Asian side of the Bosphorus did not have as much grand architecture, and surprisingly, it felt different than the European side had. Asia wasn’t as busy or cluttered. It looked more like a forest than part of the city. We did pass one notable structure, Beylerbeyi Sarayı (Palace). My New Zealand friends invited me to the lower deck for Turkish tea, which comes in a tulip-shaped glass with a wooden stirring stick and individually wrapped sugar cubes.

Our half day tour was over, and the bus took us back through the city to Sultanahmet, and dropped me again at the Albatros. I had about two hours before the taxi arranged by the handsome car rental man would take me back to the airport. I set out to explore the neighborhood, and this was my favorite part of the day. I didn’t feel like a tourist, although it was obvious that I was. As I wandered up the cobblestone streets, I noticed how clean everything was, and how calm. I entered a few of the more interesting-looking shops. The shopkeepers were again courteous and welcoming, but not overbearing. I could “just look” without feeling guilty that they had turned on the lights and music to create a pleasant atmosphere for me, although I probably wouldn’t be buying anything. With that said, I couldn’t help but buy a few small pottery bowls for myself and my Mom (they made it all the way to Japan and back to Uganda in one piece, now to get them to the US!) The colors are so rich, the bowls so expertly crafted with dots and swirls; the texture and design are irresistible.

I meandered up and down the streets, careful to keep track of where my hotel pick-up point was. I stumbled into the Arasta Bazaar, standing quietly across the street from some ruins and a mosque whose muezzin sang the call to prayer so beautifully that I got goose bumps, but not as beautifully as in Sokone, Senegal, whose muezzin brought tears to my eyes in the pre-dawn darkness of our mosquito net and probably could have converted me. The words in Turkey were familiar; the prayer was the same but the accent was different than in Francophone Africa. Although I had less than 10 Lirasi left after my purchase of the small bowls, I entered the bazaar. The walkway was wide, and flanked on either side by glass-fronted shops. The men standing outside the shops greeted you so humbly you were compelled to greet them back. Sometimes they commented on how tired I looked and asked me if I would like to sit, but there was no guilt, no sense that they were owed a sale for their kindness. I looked at their rugs and felt hats and exquisite pottery, and salivated with all the delicious odors coming from the small gathering of food stands at the end.

On my way back towards Albatros, I stopped at many little restaurants to read their menus. It was hard to choose just one; there were so many irresistible aromas wafting around me. I had only a few Lirasi to my name, so I settled at a restaurant offering Turkish soup for around $5. I sat at a table outside along the sidewalk in the shade of some trees and watched people going about their business. Every few minutes a tour bus would drive by, and I felt smug, sitting there on my own at a restaurant while the tourists were led around the city like children who can’t be trusted. Never mind that I had been one of them only an hour before. The waiter brought me a bowl of thick lentil soup and an entire baguette. It was delectable. The things I ate in İstanbul, and the spices and aromas I smelled in the city reminded me of a sort of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern fusion, which I supposed makes geographical sense. My Turkish culinary experience is not very large, but everything I saw and everything I smelled made my mouth water.

I still had some time to kill before the taxi picked me up, so I wandered the streets on the other side of Albatros. The place was almost deserted as I lazily strolled the cobblestone streets, listening to the sounds of everyday life. A lone hawker passed me, pulling his cart of plastics, and I had to stifle a laugh because Africa found me even here. The breeze was warm and the sun was hot and I felt like I could live in İstanbul for a while and be perfectly happy. Islam is present here, but it is not obnoxious. Most women forego headscarves, and they do not use Arabic script but their own alphabet. I am told that a lot of the freedoms in Turkey, its difference from other Muslim countries, stems from the time of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who fought to develop the country. İstanbul is a modern city; it could be almost anywhere. The cars are nice, and there is a main street (cadessi) named after John F Kennedy. There are no street children, and I was never terribly “Yovo Priced” because of my foreignness. It was sometimes hard to communicate, as with the woman at the money exchange booth, but the people are nice and helpful and I could certainly pick up Turklish as easily as I have become fluent in française Africaine and Uganglish. I saw children’s play equipment everywhere, although it was seldom in use. Public displays of affection are common and perfectly acceptable. Hookah, of course, is very popular here, but I also noticed a lot of people smoking cigarettes.

I returned to the Albatros to wait for my taxi, which was 45 minutes late due to “traffic” and once it had arrived, and I knew I would still make my flight in plenty of time, I could smile at the fact that African time happened in Turkey, too, sometimes. Speeding down the road on the coast of Marmara Denİzİ with the sun on my skin, I thought back to just that morning, when I hadn’t known Turkey at all. Although it was only nine hours later, I felt as though I had some small claim on this place, or it had a claim on me, because I had fallen in love and I wanted desperately to return. When I close my eyes now and picture İstanbul, I am walking along one of those cobblestone streets, with the warm breeze in my hair and so many irresistible aromas of different treats waiting just around the corner. I remember a place where people aren’t hurried or too preoccupied with just surviving, and take great pleasure in the simple, but important, things in life.

The whole day, I felt like I was in a storybook. İstanbul is a gentle, ancient city with friendly people and so many places to explore and delicacies to consume; I was left with the ache of wanting more. Even though I had only two hours to kill at the airport, I quickly exhausted the Duty Free shops and anything else of interest. Turkish Delight was sold in every shop, and there were heaping plates of the stuff, studded with pistachios and dusted with powdered sugar, everywhere. I took advantage of this, and sampled dozens of varieties. I’m not sure why it has such a reputation; it tastes nice, certainly, but after a few pieces the gelatinous texture gets to be too much. In my opinion, Turkish Delight isn’t all that delightful, but Turkey itself… now THAT is delightful!

River Nile

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:26:24 GMT

John Hanning Speke discovered the source of the White Nile (now known as the Victoria Nile) to be Ripon Falls in Jinja, Uganda in 1862. 148 years later, my training group and I set out on an arduous trek through the wild African bush to do what many thousands of tourists had done before us. We were determined to go white water rafting on the longest river in the world. No threat, however great, could keep us from our dream. Malarial mosquitoes, Nile crocodiles and bone-crushing boulders submerged in the rapids make most people run for cover, but we are fearless explorers, following in the steps of Livingston, Burton, Stanley and Speke himself. We laugh in the face of Bilharzia and water snakes.

But seriously folks…. The raft company picked us up with their tour bus in Kampala early in the morning for the two hour drive to Bujagali Falls, ten kilometers north of the Source of the Nile. There are several companies in Jinja that provide tourists with rafting packages. Every single one claims to be the cheapest, the most Extreme, and provide services the others don’t, like free pick-up and drop-off in Kampala and free meals and lodging for one night. So we went with the company PCVs had used previously and given good feedback about.

We arrived at the site, sitting on the East bank of the river, and enjoyed our free coffee and fruit salad before signing the company out of any responsibility for our injury or death and storing our valuables behind the bar. They gathered us together to run through a few safety details and pass out lifejackets, helmets and paddles. We were to bring nothing but the clothes on our backs (although they did carry a few items in the waterproof locker on the rescue raft, like sunscreen and a camera to take pictures, which I will post online, Inch Allah). We followed our guides, barefoot, down to the banks of the river where we spilt ourselves into three groups based on how Extreme we wanted our experience to be.

My group wanted to go all out and get the most out of the whitewater, which we learned meant that our guide would purposely flipped our raft a couple times so we would feel Extreme, although we did get to choose some higher grade rapids on occasion, and didn’t always flip. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we got anywhere near white water, we had to spend a good 45 minutes in a quiet pool away from the current learning how to paddle and help the rescue kayak rescue us and flip the raft right side up again. Finally, we set out. Our group consisted of three rafts containing me and my friends, the fourth safety raft, which held our lunch and the camera in its waterproof box, and was manned by a muscled guy who could row like no other, and four or five rescue kayaks for when we, inevitably, flipped.

Not far from our calm pool was the first rapid of Bujagali Falls, a series of impressive grade 4 and 5 rapids. We were the last raft to go over, so we got a nice view of our friends disappearing over the lip of the river into nothingness. Then it was our turn. We paddled and paddled and WOW that’s some white water… we got down and held tight and were plunged straight into the belly of the beast, but we made it through and it was exhilarating. We didn’t have much time to collect ourselves before the next plunge. One of the first two rafts had flipped on the previous rapids and they ended up going over wrong-side up.

We got into position paddling, paddling, paddling and “DOWN” our guide shouted. A wall of spray loomed before me and then all of the sudden I can’t breathe; I’m under water, still clinging to my paddle, but not long enough to register much more before I surface next to the overturned raft. Two of my friends also stayed with the raft, Somehow. We flip it and the guide pulls us one by one awkwardly over the edge. Gradually, the ones who were swept away are delivered to us on the backs of the rescue kayaks.

A few minutes later, we come to “Total Gunga” a grade 5.5, and the most difficult rapid the guide will take us on unless we choose to brave “The Bad Place” just before the end of the day. Having just been thrown unceremoniously from the raft on a grade 4, I’m not exactly looking forward to the upgrade. Paddle, paddle, paddle hard and “DOWN!” I grab the rope tight in both my fists and try to keep my eyes open. We go over and land in a hollow of water and are thrust upwards and back down and the water is hitting us from every side but we don’t tip and the experience is exhilarating. Seeing the roiling water looming above us in the hollow, I felt certain we were in for another sudden expulsion; making it through Total Gunga with all my friends still safely crouched in the bottom of the raft tasted all the sweeter for my doubt.

We paddled and crouched through a few more lower-grade patches of white water without much action, with one notable exception. We were midway through one rapid when all of the sudden, our compatriots on the other side of the raft were suddenly, conspicuously gone. We had made it through the rapid without overturning, but the water had still claimed its taste of muzungu flesh. The kayaks brought our friends back in the suddenly calm water, and our guide told us we could remove our helmets and swim for a while.

I rather liked my helmet, so I kept it on as I flipped backwards over the side of the raft into the wide River Nile. I swam over to my friends from the other rafts. We laughed and recounted highlights of the day so far as we let the current take us swiftly downstream. The cool flow of the river, beautiful skies and picturesque banks covered in vegetation provided a calm environment to take it all in and I felt like a child, splashing and playing in the legendary waters.

All of the sudden Renee and I were spinning around each other in circles, fast enough that everything except her face, split into a wide smile to mirror mine, was blurred. Our laughter spread up into the wide blue of the sky as we realized we were stuck together in a whirlpool, and we were helpless to do anything to remove ourselves. Spinning around Renee, my eyes locked on hers and my sides hurting with the laughter that wouldn’t stop, I remembered the day we met in Philadelphia, when she walked into the hotel room we would share for a few hours before being whisked off to stay the night in New York City in a successful attempt to make our flight to South Africa the next morning. She is my first, and best, friend in Uganda. She has been my roommate from day one. We have made it through homesickness, homelessness, more incidents of bodily function than anyone (even a Peace Corps Volunteer) should have to deal with in their lives, matooke, Mefloquine, guard dogs, Giardia, bombs, boats and of course Ugandan beers. Now, six months after meeting, we were caught in a whirlpool on the White Nile, uncontrollably grinning at each other, and I couldn’t help but wonder at the people and places life throws at you.

The whirlpool spit us out just as suddenly as it had grabbed us, and we had time to collect ourselves before we went over a grade 2 without our raft. The move was okayed by our guide; this white water was so unthreatening compared to the rapids we had maneuvered earlier that he abandoned ship and joined us in the water. Once the water calmed again, the guide heaved himself aboard and pulled each of us in turn back onto the raft. We paddled for a few minutes before coming ashore at a pre-arranged location where an Equator Rafts truck was waiting for us with water and a delicious potato salad and stir-fried noodles and vegetable lunch.

The afternoon was calmer than the morning had been. We went over a handful of grade 3 and 4 rapids without losing anyone over the side or tipping. In calm waters, we lay in the bottom of the raft, resting and enjoying the sun and blue skies. Once, one of the rescue kayaks sent up an alarm; he had seen a water snake. After a few moments, we, too, saw the head low to the water, rippling swiftly between the kayaks and rafts. I’m not sure if it was poisonous; Africans tend to think everything is deadly, which is probably a good assumption with so many nasty creepy crawlies around, but it looked harmless as the kayakers furiously beat their paddles on the surface of the water, and I couldn’t help wondering if they were overreacting.

We came ashore again to take an “after” group shot just before the camera battery died, and scampered over the rocks and through the woods a short ways down the river. The guides hefted our rafts over the rocks at the edge of the banks past some white water that was “too strong” although I don’t think the safety raft came ashore, so apparently "too strong" was meant for us only. Still, I was thankful not to have gone there when I saw what we had skipped-a churning white mess that tossed the rescue kayaks like toys.

We had one more stretch of white water to go that day-The Bad Place. Aptly named, it didn’t look much calmer than the stretch we had just avoided like the plague. Each raft could choose to go either the "unlikely to stay in the raft" route, or the "almost impossible to not flip" route. We watched the first raft go down the “safe” route without losing anyone, and geared up to try our luck. It was intense, but we made it through intact and paddled hard to turn around and get to shore before getting swept towards the nearby rapids and down the White Nile on our way to the Mediterranean a few thousand miles downstream.

The third raft had chosen to go down the harder rapid, the true “Bad Place” and we had a good view of them going over the first drop before we lost sight of them for a few moments. After a few beats too long, the raft appeared, upside down, with the guide and one out of eight of our friends riding the rest of the white water in this way. A few more beats passed before we saw a slew of helmets pop out of the mess and shoot downstream. I tried to make a quick headcount as the rescue kayaks sped toward our friends, but our guide swung into action to rescue one of the helmets that was rapidly heading towards us. As we paddled hard towards him, we watched the kayaks nimbly pick each of our friends out of the current like they’d been doing this every day for years. Oh yeah, they have.

Climbing from the raft onto the rocks, I realized my legs were weak; it’s scary to see people you love at the whim of the churning white waters of the longest river in the world. They were all glad that they’d done the real Bad Place, although some of them admitted they felt like they were going to drown. We climbed up the cliff-like banks on our shaking legs and boarded the bus that would take us back to the launch site, drinking celebratory Nile Special beers.

As the bus pulled into the site, a sprawling collection of buildings on the East bank of the river at Bujagali Falls, we heard drums beating and saw a group of Ugandan men and women decorated in traditional clothing and face paints. “They’re welcoming you back” the guides told us, and I smiled, although I knew it was all show, for us “tourists.” We retrieved our baggage from behind the bar and climbed the hill to our dorms. We had a few hours of daylight left to relax and take in the remarkable view of the river and surrounding countryside. There were a few rocky islands in the midst of the flow, clogged with too many trees trying to eke out an existence, and flocks of black and white birds calling out and flying low over the surface of the water, looking for a meal.

After dinner, the guides pulled the couches from the dining hut out to a grassy patch a dozen meters from the water and lit a campfire. The warmth was welcome, as Uganda is generally too cold for my Togolese tastes, and the wind was blowing steadily off the water. I sat late into the night talking with my friends and gazing out at the river, blue-white and powerful under the full moon. It seemed even more violent in this half-light; the guides explained that the dam at Owen Falls is opened every night, increasing the volume of water traveling downstream. Moonlight wasn’t the only reason I now thought those rapids looked impassable.
Eventually, we climbed up the hill to our beds and fell asleep to the roar of the River Nile.

Walk Like A Man

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:21:36 GMT

The week after I saw Ray’s birth, and how Beatrice bore the pain with little more than a grimace, I saw what seemed to me the other side of this coin of pain without complaint: male circumcision without painkillers. The Mugisu are one of two ethnic groups in Uganda who practice male circumcision, although the practice is now promoted by the Ministry of Health as HIV/AIDS prevention, and there’s talk of making it mandatory across the country. The Sabiny tribe, who live less than an hour North and East of my site, also practice circumcision, but unlike the Mugisu, they traditionally circumcise both sexes, although I hear the practice of female circumcision is falling out of fashion.

In early August, the Opening Day of circumcision season was held South of Mbale. I didn’t attend; I had homes that needed visiting, and it didn’t sound like I would be missing much, except the appearance of Mu7 (this is how the papers refer to the president, Yoweri Museveni) and the stampedes and tramplings that seem to happen every time Opening Day rolls around. Representatives from all over the kingdom gather to celebrate and decide when each town will have their official circumcision days. A friend’s village was selected to circumcise their boys about a week later, and we got the chance to see it there firsthand.

My friend lives at the base of Wanale, the table top mountain that is the scenic backdrop of Mbale. We took a taxi to a nearby town and started walking from there, up the hill towards her town. Before long we could hear the drums and shouts of celebration. We quickened our steps, asking everyone we passed where, exactly, the circumcision would be held. Everyone seemed to have a different idea of where this was. We came to town and saw a procession of maybe fifty men, women and children, all surrounding a scantily clad boy covered in yeast and beads. This was one of the candidates for circumcision, but we were told he wasn’t being cut today. Tradition states that each candidate dance for two days before being cut. Mugisu culture doesn’t allow candidates to use any painkillers, and they are not allowed to take alcohol to numb the pain. The one concession is that candidates can choose not to sleep for the two days of dancing before the cutting, to “lessen” the pain. Personally, I doubt this helps all that much.

We hung around a bit longer, waiting for more candidates to dance by, or for some other clue as to what was going on. We passed a drunk man, ranting about how his son was being cut, but word on the street was that the son was somewhere up in the mountains and wouldn’t be cut for hours. Finally, a teacher from one of the schools took us under his wing and told us we had to go up Wanale to see the cutting. A candidate and his crowd passed by, and we started jogging behind the throng.

For the Mugisu, this is probably the most important time in a male’s life. Before he is cut, he is a boy. Once he is cut, he is a man. He is allowed to drink with his fellow men, he no longer stays in the family house but has a hut by himself outside, and he has a say in the community. Every Mugisu male must be cut. If a boy has reached the age of 18 and is not cut, he has until the next season before he will be chased down and circumcised, even against his will. If a boy has reached circumcision age but dies before he has undergone the procedure, he will be cut postmortem. If he is not, his family will be cursed.

A Mugisu is traditionally not allowed to be circumcised in a hospital, using painkillers. If you are cut in this way, your community looks down on you. There is no escape. There are stories of Mugisu “boys” (remember, you are not a man unless you have been cut) who somehow escaped circumcision and have been living abroad for years. When word gets out that he is returning to Uganda, a group is dispatched to intercept him at Entebbe International Airport and he is circumcised then and there. There are stories of old men (“boys”) who make it their entire lives without being cut. These old men are circumcised after death, too. To be a Mugisu male over age 18 and not be circumcised is a feat in itself, but your foreskin’s days are numbered, and there is literally NO escape. Mugisu men have been known to drop their drawers in public, some numerous times, to prove their manhood if there is question about whether or not they have been cut. The Mugisu say their president, Mu7, is a “boy” because he has not been circumcised, even though he is of a different tribe. This is serious stuff.

To be sure, those boys who do not want to be cut are the exception and few and far between. For the vast majority, they are eager to undergo this all-important ceremony, to prove themselves and reap the benefits. They are given land, they are given cows, they are given permission to drink and have sex and marry because they are men once they have been cut.

One more thing. As I've said, they aren’t allowed to use painkillers, and they are expected to go through the procedure willingly. But they are also expected to be cut without showing the pain. No crying out, no writhing on the ground, no grimacing, not even a twitch of the lips should betray what is happening. If you do twitch or cry out, you will be shamed and bring shame to your family for the rest of your life. It seems as though a twitch may quite literally ruin your life.

Across the kingdom, tradition is somewhat different. In the mountainous Manafwa district, boys are traditionally cut at a younger age, between 9 and 12. They are more lenient with these young boys, and if they cry out or twitch, the community is more forgiving. Times are also changing, and the West is influencing the culture. These days, some families are choosing to circumcise their sons at birth, or at least in a hospital later on. It is not quite so important as it was before, but you wouldn’t know that from appearances.

We followed the crowd, jogging up the red dirt road towards the summit of Wanale as the clouds gathered ahead of us. I was in a dress and flip flops, my Chaco’s left at home because they rubbed a blister. The mass of people ahead of us was moving faster and faster, it seemed, as the elevation grew. We converged with other masses of people surrounding other yeast-covered candidates. A drunk man handed us sticks to wave in the air. Everyone had something; a palm frond, a banana leaf, a jerry can impaled on an iron rod. We moved forward as a single being, everyone singing and chanting, the old women ululating and suddenly the clouds at the summit burst and we were immediately drenched. But the crowd pressed on, drunk on tradition and local brew. I kept one eye on our “guide” and another on the quickly deteriorating road ahead of us. We soon branched off into the bush, to follow the traditional route up the mountain to the dancing grounds. New blisters were forming fast as the mud and rain tried to separate me from my flip flops (which miraculously only happened once).

We continued upwards, praying for the rain to subside until we were told that this was a good omen. The boys being circumcised today had the added benefit of being washed of their wrongs before being cut. It would have been easier to be happy for them if I wasn’t soaked to the bone and seriously starting to worry about my camera. We finally reached the dancing grounds and the scene before us can only be described as tribal. Dozens of groups were running back and forth in the mud and the rain, which was showing no signs of letting up. Everyone was dancing, drums were beaten, whistles were blown, and we found a sliver of shelter under an already crowded overhang where I shot a few snippets of video before one candidate and his entourage decided it would be funny to dance next to us and splash us with the mud and water pooling everywhere. It was decidedly NOT funny. We ran from overhang to overhang, observing the chaos and trying to figure out who was being cut today, and where.

Finally, with the rain still pouring down as strong as a showerhead, we were informed that those being cut today were not being cut here, but back down the mountain where we had come from. So we took off again, slipping and sliding down the bush path which was now a river, still hoping the rain would let up soon. A huge blister was forming between my toes where the strap had been rubbing, but there was no time to think about it. We had to keep going.
After probably two hours (but who was counting?) of deluge, the rain finally slowed and came to a stop just as we were arriving back in town, where I literally wrung my purse out before entering a small shop and purchasing a roll of toilet paper and a plastic bag. I thoroughly cleaned and dried my camera, which doesn’t seem to have been harmed at all, and stored it in the plastic bag, safe from my dripping purse and dress and any future rainfall.

We had evidently made it down faster than the candidates who were to be cut, because no one was around. We waited for a while, having lost our guide, and finally heard from another man that the candidates were only coming down from the mountain to be mudded, before returning to the dancing grounds to be cut. Mudding is the final step before cutting. Once you are mudded, there is no turning back. Before that point, a candidate can back out and chose to wait for the next season (the next even year), but once you are mudded, your contract is signed. Exciting news, but there was no way our aching feet could run back up the mountain. We were in the middle of deciding to leave when the drunk man from a few hours before passed by, inviting us to come for his son’s circumcision which he seemed to think was imminent. We asked around, and word on the street was that the man’s son was in fact being circumcised soon, at his home nearby. He was being mudded as we spoke at another location and would be arriving soon. We found a guard my friend knew from her school, and he told us when our boy arrived. Other candidates were passing by, headed back to their homes further down the road to be cut, or just dancing, slated to be cut tomorrow or the next day.

It was starting to get late in the day, and although my clothes were no longer dripping wet, they were damp, and I was starting to get cold. How much could we trust these people, who had previously informed us the boys were to be cut at the top of the mountain, then changed locales to the bottom, back to the top and now, conveniently, to just down the road, very soon…

But before I got too cold, the guard spotted the boy and his convoy coming down the hill, and he led us along a path through the maize fields to a clearing with a few houses. The drunk man was there with a man with a knife, a “surgeon” who is actually trained to cut, an option that wasn’t available in the old days. There was a rice sack spread on the dirt, and the surgeon took a handful of some brown powder out of a small packet and let it fall through his fingers onto the rice sack. The guard hurried us in to position on either side of the rice sack, front row seats. A circle quickly formed around us and suddenly the air was muggy and the heat was stifling all around me. The circle opened and a band of young men ran forward, the naked candidate pushed to and fro by his friends towards the middle. He stumbled towards us and jumped onto the rice sack, standing tall and proud, his entire body covered in mud the color of his skin.

The surgeon pulled hard on his penis (which in itself I imagine is excruciatingly painful) and made one swift cut down. Another man took it up, pulling the foreskin down to reveal a white tissue. I glanced quickly between the circumcision and the boy/man’s face. Not a flicker. He looked sleepy, bored, almost. The only giveaway that he could feel the pain was his contracting stomach muscles. They cut, and cut again. The crowd was deafening, all screams and cheers and whistles. The man next to me pointed frantically to a piece of foreskin the surgeon had missed. Done, whistles blew and he calmly started to walk away. They pulled him back, though, and I was embarrassed to realize they had called him back so that my friend and I could take photographs. He turned again and walked away, followed by the crowd.

The guard ushered us along to a nearby house, where we found the new man sitting, wrapped in a sheet. It is customary to give a little money to the man, and we fished a few thousand shillings out of our pockets and handed them over without qualms. We were, after all, taking photographs and videos of his penis. He accepted the money with a slight nod of his head. He must have been in a lot of pain. We were told the pain lasts for about a month and a half, but that he would go to the clinic tomorrow for a tetanus shot and other precautionary measures. Before turning to leave, his father, who had gathered up the rice sack with the brown powder spotted with blood, and pieces of his son’s foreskin, pulled his son’s sheet aside to reveal his bloody penis and thighs smeared with red, encouraging us to feel free to take a photograph. We declined, as my friend already had a similar shot from a previous candidate. We congratulated him on becoming a man, and walked back the way we had come.

I knew it was going to be intense, but I didn’t know it would be that intense. I have an excellent video that you are welcome to see, if you can stomach it. Mostly I was just in awe at how this guy stayed so stone cold still and bored looking. Mind over matter, sure, but my God. I guess it’s just one of those things that you can’t completely understand if it’s not your culture. Thousands of young men do this each circumcision season and only a small portion of them show any emotion at all. If you are brought up your entire life for that one moment, I’m sure it’s easy to understand how you do it without so much as a twitch.

This Time For Africa

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:01:46 GMT

If you think my heart is not still broken from Togo, you are wrong. If you think it will ever wash off my skin, if any drug can eradicate it from my blood, you don’t know the first thing about love. For better or for worse I carry Togo with me in my cells. Togo is a part of me. If you analyze my DNA, don’t be surprised to find the outline of this skinny little country buried deep in there, inseparable from my bone structure and blond hair, right next to Préwa’s smile and the smell of the first rains.

I am doing a lot better than I was for a while. I’ll never know how I left. I was certainly not the one strong enough, foolish enough to let Préwa out of my embrace and walk towards the car. It was not me that waved goodbye to my gathered family. It couldn’t have been. But someone did that for me, someone took over control and guided my body out of there, down the length of the country, through the last few days in Lomé and the last goodbye to Essossinam, onto the airplane, through Casablanca and New York to my parents’ arms in Seattle. That’s when I returned to myself. I was broken but whole in Seattle. I was Home, and overwhelmed by love and family and wanted nothing more than that while at the same time holding at bay a cascade of pain and regret and my heart with its hairline cracks. I was okay, I was Home, even though Soumdina was Home. I dealt with it by not dealing with it, and then came Uganda.

Uganda at first was all new and interesting and different but adventure. I made it through training with the promise of something unknown waiting for me at my new site, and the love and support of my fellow Trainees. I held judgment until I felt I could judge. I came here, and there were a lot of things I didn’t like. I had tried to come without expectations, and on the surface, I had only a few, which were for the most part met. But what I didn’t realize was that I had a secret hope, more than expectation, and that was the hope that my site would resemble Soumdina more than it ended up doing. I kept telling myself “You knew it would be different.” But that didn’t seem to ease my pain. I knew it would be different, and it was, and I was going crazy.

June was a hard month for me. I was still figuring out my place here, and wasn’t as comfortable as I am now. I wasn’t yet sure that I would get out of Uganda what I was hoping to get out of it. I was stuck on the differences, the inferiority of this place when compared to Togo. I spent a lot of time angry at the situation, and although I was sick of always comparing the two places, that’s all it seems I could do. I refrained from complaining out loud, or writing long blogs about how Uganda isn’t as good as Togo, and here’s a billion reasons why....

Gradually, I came out of it, though. I came to realize that yes, Uganda is different. I told myself, “You knew it would be. But you know what else? You said you WANTED it to be different. You WANTED a new experience. So as much as you don’t like that experience right now, it’s what you had said you wanted, so deal with it. You made a decision with a clear head that it would be smarter to leave Togo than to stay, and now you have to live with that decision. And it still is logically a better decision.” Somehow, with that small change in syntax, from “You knew it would be different” to “You wanted it to be different” I felt a whole lot better.

Simultaneously, I got more into my work and things were running more smoothly. People were starting to eat and enjoy Moringa, and I felt like I was making a difference. I sucked it up and called Togo, which I had been avoiding partially due to Togocell’s horrendous service and a few unsuccessful attempts at connection, and partially because I just didn’t think I could handle it. It is always bittersweet, calling Togo. I am grateful to know everyone is doing well, but it is painful to know that they miss me just as much as I miss them; that they are suffering too. And missing Togo is always more intense after I call, because it all comes back to me in a tsunami of emotion. Préwa is growing up without me there to see it. Brigitte gave birth to Alidah in April and I don’t know what Essossinam’s daughter looks like. Marc and Edouard are laughing and sitting and soon will be crawling and walking and talking.
By the time we were celebrating the 4th of July in the middle of Lake Victoria, I could honestly say that I was happy here in Uganda, while before I was hovering somewhere between happy and unhappy, and neither label would adequately describe my feelings.

I have come to a happy compromise with Uganda. It isn’t Togo, and it never will be. It can’t be; it shouldn’t be. Uganda is a good place but I don’t love it. It will never be in my blood, although it is leaving it's mark. And I’m okay with that. How much of this is due to Uganda itself and how much of it is due to my wounded heart, I’m not sure. I know it’s a little of both. Uganda certainly isn’t as special as Togo, and I’m certainly not opening myself up to it in the same way I did for Togo.

But sometimes Togo hits when I’m not expecting it and I am overwhelmed and left gasping for air.

Magnim, Préwa’s older brother, is a unique little storm of a boy, mischievous and sweet as honey all in the same moment. He was my favorite for the first two weeks, until Préwa toddled into my life. He is naughty and playful and will break your heart with kindness and caring if you’re not careful. His toothy grin is tattooed on the back of my eyelids. He had this funny little walk, sort of a waddle. He would splay his legs and turn out his feet and bend his knees, and pump his little arms as he went. He was hardly ever wearing more than one of his two or three pairs of ratty dark blue or black “cotton & relax” underwear. Five minutes after his three baths a day, he would be dusty and snot nosed again. Throughout my two years, I would hear him singing at the top of his lungs on some mission through the clearing several times a day. He would be chasing a tire with a palm branch, expertly keeping it upright and in motion. Or he would be carrying water or a hoe or a few cobs of corn to or from the fields. He would be dressed in his uniform, on the way to or from school and I would call him back to fix his collar.

Magnim was always loud and funny, and usually singing the chorus of a song he didn’t know all the words to. Most days, at least once, he would come waddling up to my verandah to spend time with me, shouting the words to this song. Having never heard the song on the radio or otherwise, I assumed it was some relic from a long time ago that he had picked up somewhere.
Just before the world cup started, I was sitting in a taxi on my way back to site when all of the sudden the song comes on the radio and tears prick at the corners of my eyes. For the first time, I was hearing what Magnim must hear every time he sings to himself. The World Cup arrived and with it a cover of the song everywhere. Shakira’s voice now sang “Waka Waka” at every turn, where I was accustomed to hearing Magnim’s voice. I haven’t figured out who Shakira covered, but Magnim must have heard that song somewhere several years ago, and taken it to heart.

Last weekend, the night before white water rafting on the Nile (blog to come shortly) I was out dancing with friends in Kampala. Late into the night, “Waka Waka” comes on, and all of the sudden all I can see is Magnim, walking past my verandah in his ratty underwear, covered in dust, elbows pumping, knees out, singing to himself at the top of his lungs and I close my eyes and dance for him because if I don’t I think I might die and he sings better than Shakira ever could. All of the sudden I am lightheaded and the hairline cracks on my heart are straining and I have to hold on to something or I will float away with the sorrow.

A Miracle

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:48:05 GMT

They always say birth is a miracle of life, and you sort of accept it without really thinking about it, at least I did. I mean, of course it’s a miracle! Two people make love and nine months and some pushing later all of the sudden there’s a new human being crying and breathing just like the rest of us. Pretty cool. I’ve seen the photographs of my birth countless times, heard stories, and even seen that video of a birth they show in Sex Ed (which I seem to remember is even called “The Miracle of Life”) but none of that prepared me for Sunday, the 1st of August 2010.

We had been waiting for a while. I remember, back when I first started working with the CSP caregivers, probably in May, seeing Beatrice and thinking she was probably due in a few weeks, her stomach was so large. No, they told me, not until September. I found that hard to believe, but what do I know?

In early July, Beatrice came back from the clinic, saying they told her not to come back until she was in labor, which we took to mean that she was full term (which she very well might have been). I was always on call, waiting for them to notify me it was time. I went up to Kitgum in mid July, thinking that I was probably going to miss the birth, but I didn’t. Every time I left my site I was worried that I wouldn’t make it back in time, but the baby never seemed to come. I was starting to get anxious, and worried that something was wrong, or at the least that the baby was getting too big and it would be a hard labor for her. I talked to my colleagues, and we decided Beatrice should go to the clinic to see what they had to say. I was fully expecting them to induce, she was so big.

I was gone when she came back to the organization that day, taking photographs of a house that had been damaged by the rains to send along with a request for funds to make repairs. I was told upon my return that the doctors had told Beatrice that she was having twins. Initially, I was excited. Twins! With the possibility of me being able to see this birth, how lucky was I to get two in one shot?! But I suspected Beatrice and her husband wouldn’t be as happy about it. They told me Beatrice looked sad at the news, and from their perspective I can see how it would be sad. Not that they don’t want the child. But Beatrice is only 30 years old, and this was her 7th pregnancy. It’s bad enough adding another mouth to feed when you’re already struggling, but two?

Beatrice went into labor two days after she was told she would be having twins, sometime before dawn on the 1st of August, while I was celebrating a friend’s birthday in a nearby or very far village (depending on what you have to get back for!) Beatrice was at a midwife’s house in town. There was no time to get her to Mbale, our action plan since we learned about the added risk of a twin birth, and it being Sunday, the clinics in town weren’t open. But babies don’t always wait for clinic hours, so the midwife constructed a shed at the side of her house to accommodate mothers giving birth on the weekends.

The call woke me from a deep sleep early in the morning. I asked how far along she was. Were there contractions? Had the water broken? Was she pushing? I didn’t want to miss it! I was told she was “about” which I took as urgency, but I think to Ugandans is just a way of saying “in labor, sooner than later the baby will come.” I was somehow alarmed; we had decided to take Beatrice to Mbale on Monday (the day after she ended up giving birth) to get an ultrasound of the babies, and to warn them that we’d be coming for the more difficult birth of twins when she did go into labor, but now there was no time for an ultrasound or transport to the relative safety of the regional capital. The babies were coming now and all I could do was get to her myself.

I hurriedly gathered my things together and said goodbye to my friends, still curled under their blankets. Somehow, I made it back to Mbale in decent time and called for an update. I was told I had time. I had hope that I would still make it, at least for the second twin. The entire trip, I was praying for my safe arrival and the health and safety of Beatrice and the babies. We pulled up in town and I practically ran to the clinic where I met my colleague. She led me into the midwife’s compound, where I saw Beatrice, still pregnant, with her husband. I had made it!

I was starting to feel weak with hunger, cold and nerves. Beatrice didn’t look to be popping in the next few minutes, so I went for milk tea and chapatti, with her warning not to take too long. When I got back, we waited around for a while, and Beatrice walked, grimacing slightly every few minutes, which is the only way I knew she was having contractions. Her slip was wet, so I knew her waters had broken. I was excited, but not exactly sure how to act with Beatrice, how to support her. It’s a different birthing culture here; there would be no special breathing and counting to ten as she pushed. I was impressed with her husband, who walked with her to the latrine and brought her things. Most husbands leave once they’ve dropped the wife at the clinic, if they escort them to the clinic at all.

Eventually, Beatrice went into the shed next to the midwife’s house and I could tell things were moving along. After a few minutes, the husband motioned me in, and left the two of us alone. Beatrice was on all fours on the bed, which resembled a wooden table more than a place to rest, and was covered with a weathered two inch piece of foam and a waterproof tarp. Beatrice was rubbing the small of her back, and took my hands, pressing down hard. The midwife came in a few minutes later and made her lay on her back. Beatrice had given birth to the previous six children at home with her husband as midwife, and had always squatted with someone behind her for support, getting strength that way to push, so I was mildly upset with the midwife for making her conform to convention on her back, but I didn’t say anything.

Contractions were coming regularly; Beatrice would writhe a bit and sometimes grab onto me tightly, which made me feel worthwhile, because I really didn’t know what to do. The midwife checked her cervix a few times. Eventually Beatrice took off her slip, so she was bare from the waist down. The wooden bed looked horribly uncomfortable, and the foam didn’t extend to the raised headrest, so I took my pagne (cloth) and balled it into a makeshift pillow. It was interesting, to see the change in Beatrice. When she was contracting she would writhe and do what she needed, but between, she was talking normally, although the flirtatious, laughing side of her didn’t return until a few days later, when the pain had subsided.
Once I had remembered to look for the tightening of the womb at the next contraction, it didn’t seem to come. After a while, the midwife said the contractions weren’t coming fast enough, and she came over to us and started pulling at Beatrice’s stomach, as you would at cotton to fluff it. She did this until I could see the womb tense and raise beneath Beatrice’s skin, and then the midwife was forcing her legs up against her sides, and I was trying to hold them though the contraction.

I got into better position behind Beatrice and the midwife instructed me to hold onto Beatrice’s fists, stuck behind her knees. I did this, watching the midwife work and all of the sudden the head was crowning and my throat was tight with emotion. I was holding onto Beatrice’s fists and pulling back, crouching over her with the effort. I glanced down from time to time to see she had her eyes tightly closed and a sheen of sweat on her face. She was trying, pushing so hard. She wasn’t breathing like women in the States do. In fact, I don’t know if she breathed once through it at all.

I don’t know how many contractions came, or if it was just one long one. I don’t know how long this all took, either. I was in the moment; the head crowned, and then it looked like the midwife was pulling at the child but I’m not sure how much force she was using. As if in explanation, she murmured something about the child not being able to do it itself, and it being a big baby. I wondered, but didn’t ask, if this meant there was just one baby in there. We still didn’t know for sure if there would be one or two babies this morning. The midwife pulled and there was its right shoulder and a pocket of amniotic fluid with a little blood, and then it slipped out in one fast motion and I don’t think I was breathing, either, because I was so in awe, and somewhere low on my level of conscience, I registered my throat catching again.

Throughout it all I didn’t really think about the fact that I’d never seen a birth before. I didn’t really think, just observed and helped where I could. It was at once the most natural thing I’d ever seen, and the most fascinating. I held Beatrice’s fists tight to keep her legs back and watched as she pushed a tiny little person from between her legs. It was nothing like the photos and videos I’d seen. This was happening right in front of me. I could feel the raw power coming out of Beatrice. I felt her pain and her strength, and my God, there was a new little life coming into the world right in front of me. It was truly a miracle.

The midwife held the baby by its feet and rubbed it and hit it a few times until it cried, then put it on Beatrice’s stomach and covered it in a cloth while she rubbed it some more and tied the cord and cut it. It was making a few noises, but no hearty cry, and the midwife said it wasn’t being loud enough and picked it up and hit it again, hard, several times until there was a shrill cry and that was, apparently, enough.

I stroked Beatrice’s face and hair and smiled down at her, trying to relay all my love and gratitude and wonder, but her eyes were mostly closed. At some point, I noticed that the baby had a penis. It's a boy, umusinde. But you know, until then, several minutes into his life, the question of gender hadn’t come to mind. I was so wrapped up in just Baby. The midwife swaddled the boy and handed him to me, and I cradled him, showing him to Beatrice; she smiled weakly. The midwife massaged Beatrice’s stomach and pulled at the cord, another thing I’m almost sure you’re not supposed to do. She pulled at the cord and the placenta came, and I was still holding the child. He was white, just like the other new African babies I’ve seen. His mouth was red, and his lips were glossy and smooth. He was making sucking motions and sticking his tongue out. The father was there, and I handed the child to him (sometimes fathers here don’t hold the child for the first three months) and he looked at him. He asked in Lugisu if it was a girl, and I told him no, “umusinde.” One big healthy boy. Mixed news. Not twins, no doubt a relief, but also no sister for the lone girl with, now, six brothers.

The midwife helped Beatrice to dress, and set up a bed on the other side of the reed wall. I donated the sheet and blanket I had brought to sleep over at my friend’s house, and the result was a nice little place for Beatrice to rest. She looked dazed, and was still in a lot of pain. We put the child down next to her, and he began to nurse. He took right away and sucked strongly. We sat there for some time; I was right next to Beatrice, holding the child when he wasn’t nursing. Beatrice seemed to be in more pain now than when she was giving birth, and she whimpered from time to time. We got her some painkillers and a Coke, which I think helped a bit. We sat and talked and took photos and it was a nice, quiet time, and I realized that’s the only place I wanted to be. With the new child and Beatrice. I was glowing with it all.

Beatrice seemed to be doing better sometimes, but then pain would come again. The baby nursed a few more times. She hadn’t taken dinner the night before; apparently she hadn’t had an appetite. She didn’t want to eat now, either, but I tried to convince her she needed to eat at least a little something to give her strength and help her produce milk for the child. I was rubbing her back for a while, because it had helped her when she was in labor.
Eventually, preparations were made to go home, and I was left with the baby alone in the room. I lay next to him just looking. He was mesmerizing. I kissed his forehead and carried him outside for his first motorcycle ride. I followed on foot; I wanted to get Beatrice some Moringa, for the iron and protein and other nutrients in it. I stopped by the office to harvest a bag full of leaves. When we got to their house, I found a version of the old Beatrice, smiley and laughing, except still moving painfully and jiggling her womb to get it to stop paining.

She was excited for the Moringa. She wanted to eat it “now now” which made me happy, because before she hadn’t wanted to eat anything. Her children had gathered firewood. Her husband was out to look for food. Sometimes I think they’re well off, compared to some of the other families, because they have a few animals and grow vegetables, but then sometimes… I hear that they don’t have food, that she said she doesn’t know what she’s going to eat. It’s hard to know sometimes. The baby cried from inside the house, and we left with eggplant and local bitter eggplant and seeds for greens, presents from the family.

I stopped by the next day to see how the baby was doing, and how Beatrice was recovering. I carried another bag of Moringa leaves. My counterpart came with me, and at one point asked me what the child’s name was. I’m always a little confused when I name a child. It’s never been a clear-cut thing. There’s always a language barrier and my reticence to force an unfamiliar, hard to pronounce name on the parents. So I told him that if the parents accepted, I would like to name the child for my maternal grandfather, Ray. He told me to tell Beatrice, so I faced her and said it again. She smiled, but I wasn’t sure if Ray had stuck, and I didn’t want to force it. I left site a week later for two weeks of In-Service Training, still unsure if the child was called Ray.

Ever since I saw the birth, I had been thinking hard. I absolutely loved it. I had never seen something so amazing, been so awed. I want to see it again. I want to learn more about it. Maybe this is what I want to do with my life… maybe I want to learn how to deliver babies myself, so I can see this miracle over and over and help people safely into the world. Maybe… most likely… I am so uncertain when it comes to this, but maybe its time for me to buckle down and just decide.

A few days after I returned, I crossed paths with Beatrice and the child, who was now dark-skinned, but still healthy and big, with a head full of soft, black hair that is the texture of European babies’ hair, silky, but with the unmistakable promise of becoming African with age. Beatrice had returned to her former self, loud and flirty and laughing. As soon as she saw me, a wide grin split her face and she waved vigorously. As she approached me, she turned the child towards me, loudly proclaiming “Ray, Ray, Ray!”

So it had stuck, after all. I took Ray into my arms, and his lips twitched into a smile in his sleep. Did he recognize me? I had seen him emerge from the womb; I was the first one to cradle him in my arms. I was the first one to kiss his forehead. I am the one who named him. Ray Joshua Muwanguzi.

Attack of the Fuzzy Caterpillar

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:23:39 GMT

Monday, the 31st of May started out a normal day. I woke up, I went to work, I came home, I went to shower, and then... (Insert scary music here.)

My shower is a concrete box, with a hole at the base of the far wall for a drain. A few pinpricks of light are let in with the cracks in the door, but mostly I shower in a hazy darkness, which had never bothered me before. Togo has me trained to do stupid things in the dark. Remember when I was thiiis close to stepping on that pregnant scorpion I somehow avoided in order to smash with my trusty West Africa guide? You’d think I’d have learned, but no. That’s why I hadn’t brought any outside source of light into my concrete box at dusk.

About halfway through my shower, my left hand started to tingle. I didn’t think much of it until I got out and saw hundreds of fine brown hair-like fibers sticking out of my fingers, mainly the ring finger. The finger was already red and swelling. I wasn’t sure what had happened; maybe I had brushed up against some nasty weed, or one of those fuzzy caterpillars everyone was so scared of in Togo. I tried to remove the fibers with tweezers, still wrapped in my towel (my finger was making itself urgently known by now), but the fibers had a way of sticking close to my inflamed skin, and, well, I wasn’t that successful. I did the best I could, and lathered up with hydrocortisone. I comforted myself with the knowledge that all things pass; surely when I woke up in the morning it would be a bad memory and nothing more. I’d never seen anyone who had been fuzzed by one of those caterpillars, but Essossinam had told me, the first time I’d seen one and instinctually known not to touch it, but had plucked it up with a leaf and taunted him with it, laughing when he scrambled away from me, that the itching subsides within a few hours.

In the morning, my fingers were covered in tiny itchy blisters and the hand was visibly swollen. I no longer had knuckles, and the entire thing was a hot, vaguely painful and intensely itchy mess. When I came in to work, I showed them my hand. Our cook grabbed the offending fingers (there was lesser damage to the surrounding fingers), and rubbed them vigorously against her head, which angrily popped the blisters, making the itching unbearable, but also removed the hairs. They told me it must have been a fuzzy caterpillar. Somehow, in the dark of the shower, I must have brushed up against it on one of my walls. Apparently, rubbing the affected patches of skin against your hair is the only cure, the only way to get the offending hairs out. Unfortunately for my current predicament, I hadn’t needed this information in Togo, and the hairs had had an entire agonizing night to marinate my flesh in their poison.

Fast forward through the daylight hours of the 1st of June, 2010 to dusk. Before showering, I scoured my concrete box for the culprit, who seemed to have moved on. No sign of him on the floor or the walls; I even checked the ceiling. Confident I would not be repeating the terror of the previous evening, I began to bathe. This time, halfway through my shower, my right ring finger began to itch. I hurriedly washed the soap off my body, escaping into the light of the last rays of the sun. Sure enough, I had teensy little brown hairs lodged in my finger. After a half-hearted attempt at rubbing my finger on my own scalp (just to rule it out) I ran, dripping, clad only in my towel, to my counterpart (and neighbor) and hurriedly explained the situation and pleaded with him for the use of his hair. He had been there that morning, when the cook had extracted the hairs in this way, so he quickly accepted, and let me rub my fingers all over his scalp. The hairs were removed, and the next morning the newly affected fingers were a little swollen, but mostly normal, as opposed to the initially attacked digits, which were still bubbly with blisters.

To make matters worse, as I was relieved by my neighbor’s kindness, I could also feel patches of itch erupting over my entire body, in places he couldn’t help me with. Somehow my miniscule tormentor must have infected my towel, either under his own volition or with the help of my ravaged fingers brushing against it. There was nothing to do but attempt removal with the tweezers, and my pot-scrubber, which I thought would imitate African hair but only works half as well.

The evening of the 2nd of June 2010, the third night of my ordeal, I again checked my shower thoroughly. I even broke out a flashlight this time. No sign of him. I washed my face and reached into my basket for the soap, and saw something dark fall back into the basket. Bingo. I finished, and wrapped my alternate towel around my body (the offending towel was still heaped in a pile outside my door, and would remain there for quite some time). I took my entire shower basket back to my porch, and found the caterpillar inching towards escape through one of the holes. I hesitated a moment before reaching for a rock and smashing him. I am a bad person for it, I know, but I couldn’t let him free; this little guy was obviously out to get me, probably sent on a mission by his cousins in West Africa to finally taste the sweet sweet flesh of the one who got away.

I had told one of the female staff at my organization about the hairs stuck in various parts of my body not appropriate to display anywhere in this country, and she in turn shared this information with my counterpart, who confronted me about it the next day. He was so sympathetic, and so worried about me, ever since that first attack. He wanted to know WHY I hadn’t asked his assistance with the rest of the hairs (this wasn’t vaguely sexual at all, he’s a genuinely nice guy) and when I explained that some of the hairs were in areas it would be uncomfortable for both of us to have him rubbing his head, he replied “I would have closed my eyes!” I declined again, to which he said “I would have worn a blindfold, you don’t have to worry!” I tried a different tactic. What would his wife have said, if she knew he was rubbing his head on my inner thigh, blindfold or not? “As long as it didn’t go any farther, she would understand; it’s a matter of life and death!” As I mentioned, I didn’t get any creep-o vibes from him, and truly think he was just offering out of the goodness of his heart and his sense of responsibility for my well-being, but it was hilarious how adamant he was that I SHOULD have requested his assistance. Life and death.

This genuinely nice guy is the one who eventually washed my towel. I was in favor of dropping it down my latrine, rather than risk a repeat of the torment, although I hate wasting anything. When the towel had sat untouched in a pile outside my door for a while, he asked my intentions with it. I told him I was waiting to recover a bit more to dispose of it; he was welcome to it if he wanted to risk it, but there was no way I was ever using that towel again. He laughed at me for being so scared, but sure enough, as he was washing it, he started to break out in bumps. But these lucky Africans carry the cure around with them, and he simply rubbed his skin against his own head and was fine. He refused to take my towel, even after washing it himself, so I grudgingly took it inside pinched between two fingers, but I haven’t had the guts to use it yet.

The itching mostly stopped after two weeks, and the left ring finger was the most severely affected by far. It’s hard for fingers to swell adequately, which I think contributed to the severity of the hairs stuck there without removal for an extended amount of time; although the hairs on my torso and legs were also not removed for a time, it was easier for my body to cope with these. As the swelling went down in my ring finger, and the blisters popped their clear fluid, the itch was released. Every few days, I would see one or two little brown caterpillar hairs appear just below the surface of my skin. I think the swelling pushed them down into my flesh, prolonging the torment, and as the swelling decreased they would surface. I removed them with one of the cheap Chinese razors available at every boutique in Africa. I thought the hair I removed in the Ssese Islands over 4th of July was surely the last, but last week, on the 21st of July, seven weeks after I smashed the offending fuzzy beast, I found three more hairs resting just beneath the surface of the skin on my scarred ring finger.

The finger remains bumpy, probably with remaining irritation from the hairs likely still lodged somewhere beneath my skin (the bumps tend to disappear when I remove the hairs) If I turn into an old maid because no man in their right mind wants to slip a ring on my poor finger, I’ll be very upset. The moral of the story is as SOON as you start itching and find little brown hairs sticking out of your skin, find your favorite African, or really, anyone close by who will let you rub yourself on their head, and just do it.

Update: Hours after writing this report yesterday, the 27th of July, while sitting in an hours-long meeting in Lugisu, I found and extracted yet another caterpillar hair.

I'm On A Boat!

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:39:02 GMT

This year I spent the 4th of July with a group of friends on our own private island just south of the equator in the Ssese Islands of Lake Victoria. Yes, you read that correctly… we had our own private island. We’re just that special, and we’re just that proud. I’ll say it again… our own…private…island! It’s just about as cool as it sounds. Except for the third night, when a South African and a Brit showed up out of nowhere, my friends and I were the only residents besides a handful of Ugandan staff and the two Israeli women who had been tourists until the owner of the island, a white Kenyan, had asked them to babysit his island while he was away doing business in Germany.

Getting there was an… adventure. This place has a website (http://traveluganda.co.ug/banda-island/) and is run by a white man, plus this is Uganda which is almost the first world compared to Togo, so for these reasons I had assumed that the boat we would be getting there by would be roughly equivalent to something seen in Puget Sound, maybe in the ‘60s… but I had envisioned something with a boat motor, something to steer with, maybe. Truth be told, I hadn’t really spent much time pondering the mode of transport. I heard “private island in Lake Victoria plus your best friends in country” and signed on without much thought to particulars.

We arrived in the coastal town of Kasenyi, a small place mostly taken up by a school (where we stopped to use the restroom one last time) and the marketplace. There was one main street with shops and a bar, and at the end, the crashing waves of the lake which, if we hadn’t known better, we would have taken for the Indian Ocean. Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa, and the second largest in the world if I remember correctly. Regardless, it is massive. We wandered the market, buying a few last items (mostly pineapples) before setting out on our adventure. When the boat was ready, they called us down to the shore when, almost without notice, one of our friends was sitting atop a man’s shoulders and chauffeured through the crashing waves to a wooden boat about 20 feet long that was pitching in the surf. In rapid succession, all of us made this trip, the men sitting astride the men’s shoulders, while the women were held as though it was their wedding night and the groom was carrying them over the threshold. Unfortunately, this made for some very wet backsides on the female members of our group, as the porters could not adequately keep us from the waves. We were hurriedly deposited in the rocking boat with our luggage, and the men who had carried us began demanding outrageous amounts of money for their services. Because they hadn’t given us a choice about being carried, and it was so blatantly a case of “muzungu price” we put up a fight. We would give 1000 shillings (50 cents) but that was all. It was chaotic for a few moments, with the boat tipping, trying to keep track of our bags, arguing with our porters, searching for small bills or coins to appease the soaking wet Ugandans, and more white people arriving on board and urging us to move forward towards the bow.

Somehow, we managed to get ourselves settled and our bags stowed mostly out of reach of the water in the bottom. I think it was about this time that someone mentioned that the ride would take an estimated three hours. Three hours?! I had also not considered how long this boat ride would be. Oh well, I didn’t worry too much. I was with my friends, and we were on our way to our OWN PRIVATE ISLAND! The engine was revved, and we were off! Yesss… we were all insanely excited, to be On A Boat and on our way. Someone pulled out their iPod and played "On A Boat" because, well, we were on a boat and going fast and... well... something along those lines. The enthusiasm waned after maybe half an hour, when we could still distinguish with clarity the different stalls of the shoreline market.

A word on our transport. Those of you who visited me in Togo, or who have seen photographs of the beach, have seen the colorful wooden fishing boats that are so common there. Now imagine one of those boats, minus the pretty paint job and the interesting name (such as “Are you God?”) and drop it in the middle (okay, not the middle, the very very edge) of Lake Victoria. Add the equivalent of a lawn-mower engine and that is what we had entrusted our lives to.

We had gotten the short end of the stick. The weather wasn’t ideal. We were heading straight into the wind, and the surface of the water was scarred with white-capped waves. I was sitting on the East side of the boat, and was splashed rhythmically throughout the trip. Even after several hours, it still struck me that the water was not salty (duh, it isn’t the ocean!) Despite all appearances, we were not, in fact, at sea. About halfway into the trip, which ended up taking five and a half hours instead of the three we had braced ourselves for, after one of our men had evacuated almost 1.5 litres of liquid from his bladder (not once but twice!) and we had already scandalized the Ugandans with our bodily functions in water bottles with the tops cut off, we became aware of the first signs of trouble.

How to speak of this tactfully… Well, hmm... I’m pretty sure you have all heard me speak about this kind of thing before, and there is no way you will be as scandalized as the unfortunate Ugandans on our vessel, so here goes. One of our members (I think we became two distinct clans on that boat… the Heathen Whites, and the Disgusted Blacks) who had been sleeping peacefully almost from the start of the trip (or so we thought) opened her eyes and mentioned that for the past two hours she had suffered stomach cramping and had been holding her bowels. We didn’t comprehend how bad it was; only the person experiencing the distress knows what needs to happen, and when. What could we do? Some time went by, and I started to smell something unpleasant. I didn’t say anything; all of us at one time or another let out a shart. Sharts happen.

A few minutes go by, and suddenly things are happening very quickly. Our friend tells us she doesn’t think she can hold it; she has failed a little bit already at holding. The guy sitting next to her is in shock, his face blank. We switch into action. My best friend in country trades places with our dumbstruck friend, and the two of us work as a team. The sick one asks for a knife, which I rummage out of my bag. She cuts off her underwear. Let me pause for a moment to tell you how much I respect this move. It is genius. I don’t think I would have ever thought of it. I would have been helpless, trying to remove my soiled panties using the generally-accepted technique, down my legs. She cuts off her underwear, the pee bottle is passed back to us and I cut the top wider as she begins to defecate into several black plastic bags that are subsequently thrown over the edge. I finish up the plastic water bottle and my best friend assists her as she evacuates her bowels remarkably quietly. The entire incident takes place with little more soundtrack than the feeble engine and the slap of the waves. I take a moment to glance around.

The Ugandans know exactly what is going on. The men are grimacing and averting their eyes. Our sick friend is sandwiched between my best friend and the feet of a heavily pregnant woman who has been sleeping this entire time, stretched along a narrow plank. The woman chooses this moment to stir, and kick at our poor sister to make room for her. You can’t blame her. Surely under normal circumstances her lot would have been the worst out of all of those on the boat. The Ugandan man directly on the other side of the pregnant feet says a few hushed words to her in Luganda, and I am thankful that I don’t know the language. The pregnant woman stops trying to weasel more room for herself and covers her head again.

I don’t know how long this goes on, but we are still a fair ways away from the islands that finally appear closer than the coast and Kasenyi. At some point, we have crossed from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere. The sun is setting in a vibrant display of pinks and oranges that reflect off water that has calmed somewhat from the afternoon’s agitation. Finally, after releasing almost a liter, she feels safe throwing the bottle overboard (sorry Mother Nature). Toilet tissue. Hand sanitizer. Seasickness overcomes another of the Heathen Whites in the front of the boat and she vomits repeatedly into a black plastic bag, which also goes over the side. The only bodily function that didn’t happen on that boat is the pregnant woman giving birth. Our sick friend is shivering now that the sun has gone down and her ordeal is over. I wrap her in my pagne and a fleece and am thankful that we are sliding ever closer to the shore, just there!

Our pee bottle overboard, another of the forward Heathen Whites decides she needs to relieve herself (thankfully just her bladder) and cuts the top off an empty box of mango juice. She is crouched in the bow of the boat as we get close to landing (she didn’t hear our calls that we were almost ashore) as two of our big men block her from further scandalizing the Disgusted Blacks. There is a thump, and the smell of urine on the wind. She had fallen over, spilling her box and soiling her jeans like a five-year-old. But thankfully, we had reached Banda.

We hopped on shore in the gathering twilight; our sick friend went into the grasses for another round. A man approaches us, and says “Welcome to Banda!” There is some confusion, as he is offering us his services as a boatman to take us to our resort. As our first boat retreats into the night as fast as its little engine will take it, ignoring our shouts, we realize we have been duped. We had paid the first boat to take us straight to the resort’s beach, but instead they must have arranged with a friend to drop us here, where he is waiting conveniently, because we required another boat trip to reach our destination. Suddenly we don’t feel so bad about the mess we left on the bottom of the boat, the mango juice box that was left on the bottom “for the next person” by the last Heathen, who didn’t realize how close to shore we were.

We board the second boat and take a short 15 minute trip around the island. I sit holding our sick friend against me as we glide through the calm water with a sea of stars above our heads and the dark outline of the island against the ever-so-lighter night sky. We round a bend and see a fire blazing. It was one of those moments you think about when you think "exotic" or "adventure." Arriving at a tropical island with fire flickering under the starry sky... Finally, when we come ashore this time, we are in the right place.

We are shown a stone cabin in the woods and set our bags down before returning to sit around the campfire. It is great to finally be here. Soon, we were called to supper in the Castle. The Castle! Our own private island boasts a castle, too, if you weren’t previously convinced of its awesomeness. The castle was imposing in the dark. There was a long hardwood table and high ceilings flickering in the lantern light. It was only the next morning that we saw the four foot long blow-up banana in the corner. Not so medieval during the day.

I soon came to the conclusion that we were staying not on an island so much as one huge anthill. Everywhere you looked you saw entrances into the vast maze of their living space below your feet. The website had promised no biting insects, but to make up for this there were tiny sugar ants literally everywhere, and flying moths at night that swarmed the fire. It was a beautiful day and we spent it lounging in the hammocks and on the beach (which had fewer ants). It was strange to walk around in our bathing suits (appropriate because we were on our own private island!) without fear of being inappropriate. The two Israeli women mostly kept to themselves, and the Ugandans only made appearances when they brought our food, or when we sought them out for various tasks. Our sick friend had made a miraculous recovery and was in tip top shape.

After lunch, I went exploring with a couple of friends. We had heard rumors of a trading center on the other side of the island, with a market. We were itching for snacks between meals, as the quantity thus far had been suitable for a typical American instead of the Ugandan portions we have become used to. We talked to them that evening before dinner and the portions increased. We set out on a path towards the end of the island we had originally arrived on, accompanied by two of the island dogs that were spoiled and fat like only a white man’s animals are. The myth of no biting insects soon came crashing down as we entered a part of the forest that was swarming with buzzing, flying, biting mosquitoes. After inhaling several just through breathing, I covered my nose and mouth with my handkerchief until we climbed out of their range. The dogs seemed to know the way, and there was a path, faint in places, for us to follow. We came to the top of the rise and had excellent views of the surrounding islands through the taller trees. We could even see the Castle. About this time, we noticed we had lost one of our canine friends, as well as the path. We were in the middle of someone’s cassava field but even our remaining dog didn’t have any idea how to proceed, except back the way we had come. Back through the throng of mosquitoes to the remainder of a lazy day on the beach in the middle of Lake Victoria, just south of the Equator.

That evening, more of our friends arrived. They had had less eventful voyages (thankfully for everyone involved) but were still relieved to be on solid ground. After a satisfying supper, we spent the evening sitting out by the fire on the beach under the night sky before retiring to the beach-side cabins we had discovered and taken over that morning. I fell asleep to the sound of the waves.

The next day, the 4th of July, was much like the first day except it was overcast for the majority of the time. We lay around and relished doing nothing. Most of us are teachers or, like me, attached to organizations that keep us plenty busy, so it was a welcome relief to have no more responsibility than to drink our banana rum cocktails and come when called for meals. After lunch, we donned all manner of jorts (jean shorts) for Jort Stock 2010. Jort Stock is a tradition back home for one of our group members, and we decided to have it as our theme for the 234th anniversary of our nation’s independence. Jort Stock 2010 involved more banana rum and more lazing on the beach, but now in jean shorts.

The next morning, after a similarly lazy evening, we ate breakfast and worked out our return travel. We decided to “louer” or as they say here, “special hire” the island boat to take us back to Kasenyi, which was one of the smarter ideas we’ve had in this country. The weather was more cooperative this time, and we made the return voyage in a record two and a half hours! The ride was much more comfortable, with just us and the friendly boat captain (who we knew from our days on the island) with mattresses cushioning the boards beneath us, and life jackets provided. We were relaxed as we rode through the water listening to someone’s iPod, and I’m proud to say that absolutely no bodily fluids were involved. We arrived back in Kasenyi, where our world was plunged from the calm of the boat immediately into the chaos of a few days before. Suddenly we were surrounded by men submerged to their waists demanding our bags and our bodies. Our bags were at the front of the boat, and one of our men rapid fire went from dozing in the warmth of the sun at the prow to protector extraordinaire.

We didn’t want to be carried through the water, and we didn’t want to have to pay these men any money. With our bags protected, we started to make our way to the front, but these men who spend their days soaking wet, carrying bags and people to and from boats, weren’t going to give up that easily. Working in unison, they began pushing our boat farther back from the shore. I suppose they thought that then we would be obliged to use their services. But the engine came to life and our boatman surged us forward back to shore, where we could easily hop off onto the sand. How grateful I am towards him! We called out our thanks and turned our backs on the lake, looking for a way back to Kampala, and home.

And with that, our Big Boat Adventure came to an end. One thing will live on, however. And that is the epic story of our boat trip to Banda, when every bodily function possible besides childbirth befell us.

Friends of Moses

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:24:14 GMT

The weekend that the World Cup started I went hiking along the table mountain that rises out of the plateau closest to my village. I live at the base of Masaaba, Mount Elgon. The summit is usually not visible from my village, hidden from view by the ever-present storm clouds and our proximity to the 8th largest mountain on the continent. I have only seen Elgon once, on my way home from visiting friends who live a bit more north than I do. It rises out of the ground with a base that takes up the entire horizon and elegantly slopes to its summit. It was an amazing sight. When you get nearer, though, your view is hidden, and all you see of this giant is the plethora of table mountains that stretch out from Masaaba like the roots of a tree. I imagine an aerial view of the area with the valleys in between each root, the rivers and waterfalls glinting in the sun that shines through the clouds that have been here as long as I have.

The table mountain I live closest to is called Butandiga, and stretches from me, at the edge of the mountain, closer into the hills, where my two closest Peace Corps Volunteer neighbors stay. We woke early and prepared a large breakfast, more in celebration of being together than in preparation for what we imagined was a few hours hiking before another large celebratory meal around lunchtime. We took a car a few kilometers down the dirt road, just past the bridge, and started hiking East towards Butandiga, slowly rising through lush fields and banana plantations. Every few minutes we passed through small clusters of houses where the people stopped their chores and their play to stare at us inquisitively, first for our pale skin, and then with a smile when we greeted them in their mother tongue. Soon we began to make our way up the steep slopes of the cliff-like rock. The plantations continued on either side of the path, and we were passed several times by groups of bare-footed children carrying young plantain trees (two or three feet long) on their heads with the roots still clumped with dirt for transplanting. Sometimes these children stayed with us for a time, and sometimes they hurried past us with the sweat beading on their foreheads. When we reached the top (feeling as out of shape as possible-the five-year-old without shoes had climbed the same route in half the time) we came to a village sharing the name of the mountain-Butandiga.

The thought that everything here had been brought up in the manner we had seen- by the population on their heads, reminded us not just how hard life could be, but how hard a person can work. From Butandiga village, we could see across to the next table mountain snaking out from the direction of the mountain proper. There was a beautiful waterfall coursing out from its lush side, and our group quickly agreed that we were hot and sweaty and wanted nothing more than to swim in the pool at its base. We started our descent to the base of Butandiga mountain, intending to cross the valley and climb up to the waterfall. It was around 1pm by now, but the exercise was holding our hunger at bay. The afternoon rains, however, were right on time, and we saw the clouds gathering closer to Masaaba, getting ready to soak us to the bone. We decided we must find a car back to my friend’s village to avoid the impending storm. We asked directions of whoever we came upon, and turned West, away from his village in the valley on the other side of Butandiga, towards where we could find a car to the paved road and back home. There was a dirt track wide enough for vehicles to pass, but we didn’t see any. The rain was threatening behind us. We saw a small side track going into the fields, and for some reason, we turned from the main track. It took us a short distance before spitting us out in the middle of a clearing.

An old woman grinned at us and greeted us while setting out plastic lawn chairs. We sat down to greet her, in order not to be rude. Her English was limited, but we could greet and exchange pleasantries in her language. She kept talking about Moses, friends of Moses, who I assumed was the one from the Bible. Almost everyone here lives and breathes and eats religion. At first I thought she was telling us Moses had brought us to her clearing, then that she was with an organization known as Friends of Moses. Finally we figured it out. She knew a white man named Moses, and thought he had sent us there to greet her.

Just when we were rising from our seats to take our leave, the first fat drops of rain fell, and the woman pointed to a large cement building; her home. We took off our muddy shoes and hoped the mud on our clothes was minimal, stepping in to an entryway plastered with photos of Jesus. She led us into a sitting room crowded with overstuffed chairs and introduced us to her grandson, who watched over us for the next hour and a half as we waited out the rain in these strangers’ home. The woman came in after a few minutes and told us tea was on its way. We couldn’t refuse; that would be rude. We sat there and made small talk with her grandson, who, it turns out, will be attending the school my friend teaches at starting next year. Mostly we just sat talking in low voices to each other. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, we just didn’t know what to do. At least 30 minutes passed, and nothing happened. Had we heard wrong about the tea? The rain was letting up; maybe we should just take our leave. Just then (of course) the woman came back with thermoses of hot water and a tray laden with tea leaves, sugar and a plate of mandazi (fried dough balls) each with a fork stuck into the top. We were thankful for the food and the warmth of the tea; I had doused myself in a small waterfall at the edge of the path before we saw the storm coming and was still damp, and very cold. We drank our tea and she brought another round of mandazi. The woman never sat with us, and we had all but given up conversation with her grandson, who still sat across from us awkwardly, refusing to share the mandazi or pour himself a cup of tea.

We finished our second round and rose to be on our way. The son became animated again, and the woman and several previously unseen members of her family were waiting for us outside. There were thanks and hand shakes all around, and a few more mentions of Moses (although we had tried to tell them we didn’t know him) before we were escorted back to the main path by the old woman’s son. We asked him how far it was to where we could catch a taxi, and he told us it was 11 kilometres to the paved road. This should have warned us what we were coming up against; I guess we just couldn’t imagine such a large road without at least one taxi. He escorted us at least a kilometre down the road; I assumed they shared this culture of accompaniment for important guests with the Togolese. The farther you go, the more important they are. Essossinam insisted on seeing me to Lomé, and wanted to go with me as far as the airport, but Peace Corps wouldn’t allow him in the car for that final journey from the bureau to the airport. This shows, if there were ever doubt about how much my Togolese family loves me, that they care greatly for me. Essossinam has promised to be there with Préwa at his side when I step through the door after clearing customs on my first visit back. He would have taken me all the way to my parents’ doorstep if he could. He would be here in Uganda now.

Our new friend walked quite the distance with us before turning back. Maybe they still thought we knew Moses, or maybe they took a liking to us for other reasons. We said our final goodbyes and continued walking along the track of churned up mud snaking along the side of the mountain three quarters of the way up. Somehow it was not as sticky with clay as the mud around my town, which I slog through on home visits to the Child Survival Program members, pulling hard to remove my feet at every step. The track was wide but muddy, with pools of water and ridges of rich brown soil that had hardened out of the mud’s reach. I think someone had built them up in places; other times we could tread on the sides without too much trouble. We walked as fast as we could, sometimes trotting out of boredom with the monotony of mud and cliff face and coffee trees. The track wound around the side of the mountain. We were waiting for our descent; we were still high above the plateau. Although there were frequently rises in the path, the descent on the other side returned us to the same elevation. We walked on. We still weren’t quite sure where we were going. Finally, I recognized Sisiyi Falls, a beautiful, accessible waterfall just a 15 minute drive from my house. It fell from the same table mountain that produced the waterfall that had lured us to this side of Butandiga. It took ten minutes to drive from the paved road up to Sisiyi; we couldn’t be more than a few kilometres from the paved road.

We were hopeful now; we had passed a rockslide at which a huge boulder was blocking the majority of the road. We now understood why we hadn’t seen any taxi. Those vehicles we had passed were stuck between the end of the road and the rockslide, not that driving in that mud would have been very pleasant even if we had the option. At each rise in the road we were certain that the other side would bring our steep descent down the mountain to the paved road, but it never seemed to come. Hunger was starting to make itself known to a few of us. I was still blissfully unaware of mine. Finally we came to a sharp turn in the road (it was sunny and warm by this time) that marked the very tip of the top layer of mountain that rose as a cliff above us. The lower portion fanned out into a gently sloping base. From here, we could see in three directions. We saw the table mountains to either side of Butandiga, and the narrow plateau that extends just a few kilometres out from the roots of Elgon before falling to the flat plain that extends until the distant Moroto mountains and beyond. I could identify the paved road coming around the bend from Kapchorwa, all the way through my village towards Mbale Town. I now knew where this track would take us, and pointed it out to my friends as encouragement. We continued walking and soon came to a fork in the road, where we were lucky to find some locals that could point out the way for us. I had a nice conversation with a woman and her daughter in Lugisu. Mainly just greetings, and patched-together phrases like “Rain…bad” while pointing at the ever-muddy ground beneath our feet. We were descending rapidly now as the sun was falling faster towards the horizon. We emerged onto the same dirt road that I use to travel between my site and my closest neighbors’ village, and caught a taxi back, traveling in half an hour the distance it had taken us 8 hours (minus a stop for Tea With Strangers) to walk.

I had been thankful that walking hadn’t turned into an effort. I appreciated that my body could put one foot in front of the other without my having to think about it. When we stopped walking, though, I could feel the exhaustion in my muscles as the taxi jolted us home. My feet were wrinkled with the moisture of sweat and mud, and the borrowed football cleats had given me some nasty blisters. We picked up ingredients for a simple feast in town and ate and rested before watching the first game of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. It had been a long day, but we had seen a lot, and sheltered from a storm by an unknown Ugandan family that may still think we were sent by someone named Moses.

Genda ogule ku clinikie

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:44:03 GMT

Because one of my goals here in Uganda is to figure out if healthcare is the career for me, I thought it was very important for me to start work at a health center as soon as possible after arriving at my site. Although things had worked out beautifully after the whole “Community Health/Economic Development” mix-up, and I was placed with an organization with some health-related work opportunities, I still wanted some more hands on experience. After the first week at my organization, mainly sitting around waiting or watching other people do things, I also wanted to separate myself some from the CDC. No Volunteer is expected to work solely on one thing at one place; I wasn’t sure they knew that. They were (still are, actually) so excited to have me that I got (still get, actually) the feeling that they wanted or maybe expected me to spend every waking minute at the Centre. So I asked my supervisor to introduce me at the local clinic, which she graciously did. Two weeks to the day after my arrival here, I walked 45 minutes down the highway to the health centre for my first day.

It was exciting but somewhat awkward. I could tell they didn’t really know what to do with me, what to expect. The introduction the week before was short. My supervisor gave them my name and a few words about the Peace Corps and the CDC. The nurse I was meeting with gave me an overview of what facilities were available. Then we decided I’d come in the next week to start. I confess I didn’t really know what they should do with me either. Way back when I was arranging my extension, I assumed I’d be placed with a health centre; they would have an agenda, and I’d just slip in and do what they asked. But in real life, it wasn’t the clinic that had asked for me. I had asked them to take me, and therefore it was my job to have the agenda. But I didn’t, except to learn whatever I could about health to help me figure out my life.

I walked in, and found the nurse I had met the week before. He thanked me for coming and told me I could help one of the women who was sitting at a table on the verandah. She was taking patients’ information before they went in to see the nurse. Patients are expected to bring an “exercise book” usually used for notes in school for the staff to write in. We were charged with taking the patients’ name, age, sex, village and the date. Once they made it through the waiting line in to the nurse (usually for a meeting of under a minute) he scribbled notes about symptoms, a diagnosis, and treatment. On this particular day, the patients then returned to us so we could copy this information into a large ledger for the health centre’s records. This was difficult for me as a lot of the words were foreign (medications, mostly) and it seems the stereotype about doctors’ handwriting being terrible extends to Uganda. I was a bit overwhelmed by this; I didn’t want to get anything written down wrong. Since that first day, I’ve never been asked to copy diagnoses into the large ledger.

The first couple weeks, I was content to be the receptionist and occasional baby-weigher. Just being at the clinic made me feel good, and it was a lot more interesting to sit there between patients and watch them than sit at the center and watch the staff preach. That first month at the Center was a bit awkward; I hadn’t yet found my niche in CSP but felt I should be at the center every day to get to know it. This meant a lot of sitting around suffering through the lessons with the kids. At the end of May, the second school term started, and with it, a more “normal” schedule. I secured my place as Child Survival Program mascot and started visiting homes and really enjoying my time at the center. I switched my days at the clinic from Thursday Friday to Tuesday Thursday so there was a bit more variety in my schedule.

With Tuesday came James, another nurse who took to me immediately, and who gave me the creeps almost immediately. He came in Monday through Wednesday, so I hadn’t met him before. He took me under his wing almost from the moment he got there, but that didn’t turn out to be such a good thing. That first day, after drilling me about my religion and love for God, he told me all about Uganda’s options for putting me through medical school, and how he was going to give me a good background here at the clinic. He would put me on “rounds” and give me an opportunity to learn about everything we do there. This sounded great, since I was tiring of being the receptionist, and weighing babies was starting to aggravate me because they didn’t know how to do it correctly and I didn’t think I could do anything about it.

The clinic here is large enough that there aren’t special days identified for injections and baby-weighing. While it’s great that the community isn’t restricted and can come whenever they have time, this means that it is almost impossible for me to change the way of doing things. In Togo it was somewhat easier. Every second and fourth Thursday the women would come in to the health center, a captive audience of the entire population using the services. The staff had no idea how to correctly use the child growth monitoring tool, but that was easily fixed in one day and soon they were marking the child’s weight on the graph and interpreting the findings for the mothers instead of just telling them “as long as the child isn’t losing weight, you’re fine.” Here, there is no time or date for child growth monitoring, and the only “staff” besides myself that I’ve ever seen take an interest in it is the mentally challenged man who seems to have latched himself on to the clinic and walks around holding the children’s heads and kissing them in between shouting out the approximate weights he reads on the scale.
If the clinic was my only work here, I could try to hold some sort of seminar to teach staff and mothers alike how to correctly weigh their babies (no clothes!) and use the information as an actual gauge of a child’s health rather than just the vague “immunization” I think they perceive it as now. Some mothers load up their children fully clothed to take their turn hanging precariously from the scale and don’t even try to read an amount. To be fair, some mothers do try really, really hard to get a reading (if they’re illiterate, I think they appreciate the mentally-challenged man’s shouts. For almost all of them, though, I think they subject their children to the scale not because they know how it can help keep their children healthy, but because they are told to. I view it as similar to those couples who, before having sex, carefully follow all the proper steps with a condom, except put it on a broom handle or a banana instead of the man, because thats how the demonstration went. They fail to understand how the condom works. These mothers are failing to understand how baby weighing works, not because they are stupid, but because it wasn't explained very well. They are told "weigh your child and she will be healthy" and believe it.

I spent several weeks cheerfully jumping up every time a mother picked up a pair of the blue shorts with attached strap and started poking her child’s legs through the holes. I would gently inform them that they should take off their child’s clothes, mostly through hand motions, sometimes feeling like a pervert when they looked at me strangely... Most mothers let me slip the strap over the hanger on the scale and arrange the child’s arms to prevent flipping, and to read the result. But the next step, when I asked for their child growth monitoring card, or at least a slip of paper to record the results, was always trying for me. I asked in broken Lugisu, sometimes pointing out another woman’s card, so the majority of them had to know what I wanted, but most often the child’s weight remained a scribble in ink on the back of my hand and was never written anywhere else.

When the mother did give me her card (the majority of them had them but didn’t know their purpose) it didn’t actually make that much difference. The records weren’t kept well, and no one was there to interpret the lines for the mothers. One good record means nothing when you don't know the child's history. At most, 1% knew what the lines actually meant, and I’m not fluent enough to be able to explain it. What is needed is a sympathetic local to take out the time to learn from me how to read the chart; that a line going up (weight gain) or horizontal (no weight change) does not necessarily mean everything is a-okay. The child’s line must be compared to the printed lines for normal weight gain, underweight, and severely underweight for age. A child weighing 8 kilos could be very healthy or very sickly depending on how old they are, and that’s something the majority of mothers don’t seem to understand, as well as a lot of the health workers. Over time, the joy I initially felt with baby weighing dissipated and it just made me angry every time they did it wrong, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Pair this with James, who every Tuesday took great pleasure in controlling me (he seemed to think God sent me specifically for his purposes) and had me helping him with increasingly boring paperwork in the back, away from the people, interspersed with awkward conversations about religion. Uganda is the most religious country I’ve ever been in. The concept of not believing in God is as foreign as not needing air to breathe; it’s not even on the table. Since it’s not an option not to believe, what is important is exactly what you believe and if you are “saved” which I’m pretty sure means born again. When you meet someone, it is not uncommon for the second question they ask you to be about your religion; only your name seems to be more important. For me, my beliefs are personal, and I only discuss them with those I am very close with. The first day I met my supervisor, we had this conversation, and she and the rest of the staff at the CDC have been very respectful of my wishes and my religion and spirituality have not been brought up once. James, however, does not take this as an answer. In his view, I should be open to telling him everything from how, exactly, I pray, to my favorite verse in the bible.

The final straw, I think, was a few weeks ago when he called me in to the consultation room where he had been sitting for an hour or two, doing what I’m not sure, but not calling in the throng of patients waiting to be seen. He told me he had something to show me, and handed me a budget for a wedding. I politely looked it over and handed it back. He then asked if I could “help.” He was getting married, but it was very expensive, and since I’m rich and white couldn’t I pay for it? He didn’t say it quite so directly, I mean, he is Ugandan (they’re maddeningly indirect) but I was still very uncomfortable. I explained yet again that I’m a Volunteer and don’t get a salary. I am given a stipend so that I may house and feed myself, but I am not a typical muzungu made of money.

The icing on this clinic cake is that the staff haven’t been paid since last July (they are employed by the government) and medications ran out at least a month ago. After a week of this, a big delivery truck arrived and I thought we were saved, but it turns out the shipment for our clinic was missing. We were given the drugs for every other clinic in the district (they come to us to pick up their supplies) but ours was not included, and we’re not allowed to touch their boxes. Since then, we have had to turn the dwindling number of patients away. After the nurse diagnoses them, its my job to tell them “Genda ogule ku clinikie,” “go to the clinic” we don’t have medicines to treat you here. It makes me sick to think how many of these people fail to be treated because of this mix-up. Some of our patients come from deep in the village, 15 kilometers away, paying for taxis they can’t afford because they are so sick. I can’t imagine that all of them then pay even more money, or walk even farther, to a clinic that has the medicines they need.

When I first got here, I felt the need to work at an actual place of medicine, but its not turning out that way. The clinic hasn’t turned out to be what I had hoped. Although they tell me they will let me do more than paperwork, its not turning out that way. Once, they did ask me to inject a dog-bite victim with a dose of rabies vaccine, but I declined. It is against Peace Corps policy, but also, I’ve never given an injection before, and I highly doubted that guy wanted to be my guinea pig. I’ve never taken an oath, but that part doctors say about “do no harm” is important to me all the same.

After James asked me to pay for his wedding, I decided to cut my clinic days to once a week; Fridays so I am there when he is not. That was several weeks ago, and I haven’t actually been back, for various reasons. I don’t want to quit on them, because I do feel that I am useful there, so hopefully I will have time next week to go. But it is difficult; I am busy at the CDC, and happier there than at the clinic, so eventually, I will probably stop going to the clinic altogether, especially if the staff never gets paid and we never get our shipment of medicines. It’s hard for me to sit back and watch people not come in to work day after day, but I don’t feel as though I have the right to say anything. They haven’t had money coming in for a year now, and still they come in to work most of the time…

She Loves You So Much

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:02:57 GMT

I mostly work with the Child Survival Program (CSP) at my organization. This is a program for 34 caregivers and their 36 children (two sets of twins). The children range in age from over two years old to still in utero (but we only have one remaining). The CSP program is very intensive and generous. For three years these Mother Child Units (MCUs) will benefit from the program. There are monthly meetings with all MCUs with a program running from morning to afternoon. Everything at my organization starts with a prayer and some bible study, but after that there is discussion of how things are going in their lives, and in the smaller groups (determined by village) that meet on a weekly basis. Then some staff members give a talk or two about a previously decided topic. Last month, the program director spoke about breastfeeding following my well-received Moringa oleifera presentation. I kept it really simple; some of these women haven’t attended a day of school in their lives.

I started with a quick nutrition lesson about the three basic food groups. I’m not up to date on how they teach the food pyramid in America these days, but here they follow the Go, Grow, Glow model. Go foods (carbohydrates) give you energy. Grow foods (proteins) help you get big and strong. Glow foods (vitamins and minerals) help you not fall sick or recover faster if you do, and they make your skin and hair nice and pretty. At which point my co-worker pointed out how nice my skin and hair are… indisputably because of the Moringa I eat. I let that one go, for the cause.

Here, it is pretty easy to fulfill your Go Food quota. Unless there is famine people have enough to eat. The problems arise when it comes to Grow and Glow Foods. Animal proteins are expensive unless you are producing them yourself, and most people, for example, sell the eggs their chickens lay rather than giving them to their children, for the money they can get. The problem with proteins from most plant sources is that you have to pair them with others to get the full benefit. Beans are great, and not necessary to purchase, but then you have to think about eating them with rice or corn or something to fill in the missing amino acids… Children need even more Grow Foods than adults since they are growing so fast, and they’re the last on the list to receive them. I sympathised with them on the difficulty of finding money to purchase expensive meat and milk. But you know what? Moringa, unlike most plant sources, contains all the essential amino acids to build strong, healthy bodies. So you don’t have to worry about pairing it with something to get the full benefit. And if you grow it, you don’t have to worry about finding the shilingi to buy it! A cheer went up in the room, the women were ululating and clapping and smiling immensely. Until then, they had blindly trusted me when I told them “Eat Moringa, it’s good for you” but now they knew why. But that’s not all.

Glow foods, fruits and vegetables and greens, are also hard to come by. They eat spinach-type greens occasionally, but most everything is out of their budgets unless they grow it themselves, and again it is more likely to end up in a market stall than in their families’ bellies. But our friend Moringa has a laundry list of vitamins and minerals in its leaves just waiting to help your immune system fight off disease. I didn’t go into the specifics of vitamins and minerals; maybe in the future. What I wanted them to know is that if you have 100 grams of Moringa powder, and 100 grams of orange, there is seven times the good stuff (Vitamin C) in the Moringa powder. More bang for your buck. More of these things you need to be healthy are in the Moringa that you can grow in your yard than in the fruits and vegetables you can’t afford at the market. In a country where 50% of the women are anemic, Moringa, with its 25 times more iron than the same quantity of spinach, is priceless. Again, at this small revelation, the crowd went wild.

Some of the women had eaten Moringa in the past weeks at my suggestion, and gave testimony to its pleasing taste and how it makes them feel stronger, and fills them up quickly. They gave examples of how they had prepared it, and I suggested a few ideas as well. Steamed, boiled, fried, in sauces, powder in porridge, over beans and in your chapatti dough… be creative! It was wonderful to have Ugandans gunning for it as much or more than me. They’ll listen to me because I’m white, but they’ll listen to Ugandans perhaps even more. We’ve given out seeds to each caregiver and everyone is excited to start growing and eating. There is a lot of potential with this tree, and not just for nutrition… hopefully I will be reporting this all to you as time goes on!

Aside from the monthly meetings where they are given a lesson in how to raise their children healthily and happily, there are the weekly meetings according to village. Sometimes these are at the center and we sit in on them (it is mainly bible study, but also a general re-connect) and sometimes these are at a member’s home. Each home is also visited at least once a month to check out the situation and see where they need help or advice. With all the rains this season, more than one family has had to move houses because of the water, and even still, many of the homes which are floored with dirt are damp even if there is no standing water. We check to see if they have a latrine and shower and are using them, whether they have built a Tippy Tap hand washing station (I taught them those!), if they have a rack to stack their dishes after washing rather than setting them on the ground, and other such things. They have been taught how to maintain better sanitation with simple measures like these at the organization, and we want to see if they're putting what we've taught them to practical use. I think part of the reason we go is also to make sure they haven’t sold the items they’ve been given. And they’ve been given a lot. Mattresses, mosquito nets, lanterns, soap, baby powder, vaseline, Moringa seeds (its a “requirement” that they plant Moringa; I don’t think anyone is arguing). These are apparently the poorest of the poor families in the area, so it wouldn’t be too shocking if they sold the items we had given them for the cash.

I like these visits a lot. It gives me an inside look into how Ugandans live (although entering the home here isn’t the same cultural oddity it was in Togo, so it isn’t a privilege of any sort) and a chance to get to know them individually. I also love to see where they have taken my advice, specifically. The first visits we did after the Tippy Tap lesson, before we had given them jerricans to build them, when house after house already had them built, I was so proud. I taught them that. They had listened. They had learned. They had constructed. Somehow they had found the materials without the help of the organization for once, and that showed me that they really care. The little fences constructed around their Moringa seedlings to ward off livestock touch my heart.

The home visits also give me a much needed break from the urbanity of my home and work. Almost none of them live within hearing-distance of the road, and when we go deep, we escape the power lines and can see the beauty of this place instead of the tarmac and exhaust that muddle it all for me. After two years in my little haven in Togo, I need beauty in my life on a daily basis, but I don’t always get it.

When we aren’t out visiting homes (sometimes we go to check up on a sick caregiver or child even if it’s not on the schedule) we are at the office. I share mine with the two other staffers working for CSP. Mostly I chat with people at these times. I don’t do much paperwork, which l like. The hands on stuff is a lot more fun for me, plus I’m a Volunteer, and they’re PAID to do the paperwork stuff! I wander over to the kitchen and peel plantains for lunch or pick Moringa off the trees so we can eat it instead of the local greens. I fuss over my Moringa in the nursery we have filled with 500 seedlings (so far) in the shell of the Resource Center, construction of which stalled after the brick-laying stage (a common scene in Africa... you get a little money and start to build, and then money is finished and you wait indefinitely until more comes). Sometimes, if there is electricity, I beg use of the computer with a modem and attempt to check my mail or post a blog, which sometimes miraculously happens in a single day if electricity holds long enough. I write the blogs from home on my laptop, so its just a matter of uploading it from my thumb drive, but eh, electricity here! A lot of the time I’m just sitting and reading a book. Most days, at least one caregiver comes in to get a voucher for the clinic. The program pays for the child or the caregiver to go in for treatment whenever they are sick.

My co-workers in the CSP always tell these women “she loves you so much…” because I am teaching them Moringa and bring fresh ideas to the program. They thank me for loving them, and I always nod in agreement… But I don’t know if I do love these people. Sure, I care for them, and I want them to heed my advice and do well for themselves, but I don’t think I love them. I don’t know if I can, after Togo.

Now a word on development… I don’t want to judge my organisation, but I don’t actually agree with a lot of what it does. Yes, it is helping these people. They wouldn’t be sleeping under bed nets or going in for treatment when they are sick if it wasn’t for Compassion. But what happens when the three years are up? We are giving these children a good start, but I’m not sure how they’re going to fare once they are set loose. So far I haven’t seen enough of the kind of development that is glacially slow but strong as iron. I know it’s in the agenda to get these women doing some sort of Income Generating Activity (IGA) so they have some money to speak of and can provide for their children better in the future, but so far I haven’t seen it. I have dreams of them producing Moringa powder and selling it, of them learning to promote it and reaching deep in the village on a scale that my single person can’t, but that will take time. We have to build the foundation, get trees planted and growing and get them eating it and strong so they have the energy to plant whole fields, and then harvest, dry, prepare and package the powder. I have several other ideas of IGAs that they could do, so hopefully I can give them some of the development I believe in.

There are development workers everywhere, here. Gone are the days when you knew every white person in the country (Togo). It seems that in Uganda, everyone has funding from someone somewhere and has been given the majority of what they have. And it provides quick results. Uganda is leaps and bounds above Togo in terms of development. But in the end I think Togo is luckier. They aren’t getting used to things handed on a silver platter. They will develop very slowly (maybe the world will discover them at some future date, stuck in the crack of the open atlas) and they will become another Uganda, but I doubt it) but if they never get used to money pouring down from the First World, once they get there they will be able to stand alone, and Uganda will always have to cling to its benefactors. Who would have thought remaining unknown could have an upside?