New Year Kodiak

The Ugandans had it right. It’s terribly cold in this state I call home. And it’s dark now for half the day. After living in Alaska for 27 years, I thought I was an old pro at navigating the midwinter night but I’m having difficulty on some of the gray noontimes. Then, on other days, the sun shining on snow and water is so brilliant the briefness doesn’t matter.

Other “normal” things are insanely easy. Like washing clothes in a machine and then putting them in a dryer. Flipping on lights and not wondering when the power will go out. Drinkable water. Deep, hot baths. Jumping in my car and driving to the store.

And easy access to the internet. The connection to the world I missed the most when I was elsewhere in the world.

Back in my New York Times habit (online, every morning), I am reading, day after day, about Kenya. Jeffrey Gettleman reports of people, in the hundreds, who have been killed by those who are angry and others, by the thousands, who have been uprooted. Emails from Kenyan friends tell me they’re OK but some of them are living in fear. I remind myself that life has a way of going on. Kitale is a long way from Kisumu and Kibera (at least by Kenyan roads) and my hope is for the work of those at Manor House to keep thriving, for the students to continue their agriculture studies, for Samuel and Peris to keep up their program with farmers and AIDS-impacted women and children, and for Esther to find a way into the work she wants to do. The last thing they need is a large-scale setback. Life is hard enough as it is.

After spending nearly six months in Africa, I am working long days to pay the fiddler (she who dances…). I am grateful to a literacy organization for making me focus hard these weeks on a book that is soon to be finished. But when I slap my laptop shut at night and when I open it early in the morning, I’m also working on how to move along deliberately, more mindfully, less consumptively. More pointed in a positive direction.

Don welcomed me back with lots of fires in the fireplace, and I love eating salmon sandwiches with him in the afternoon and talking politics and life. Hanna and Heather blessed us with their presence at Christmas time, as did Don’s son David and Sue. We enjoyed walks on the snowy trails of Abercrombie Park and gatherings with the whole Kodiak family. And Marie is still sending word from Uganda where she's been savoring a five-week break.

The communities that made me part of them are what I miss the most. I’m grateful for friends and kindred spirits everywhere, close at hand and close in thought. Carla in Jozi. Nyongesa in Kitale. Emmanuel wherever he is.

To all of you who still check my blog, I send wishes from Kodiak that the new year be a good one for you. May a new inhabitant of the Oval Office not be the only change we create this year. I for one would like to make this trip around the sun count.

Karibu New York

Blue winter skies then a snow storm welcomed me back to the U.S. where I’m warm in the company of Marie this week. For weeks before my departure Ugandans expressed sympathy that I had to leave. “So cold, it’s terrible,” people kept saying. Their idea of Alaska is that it’s cold year round. Compared to the hot, humid day I boarded a plane in Entebbe, it is. But when I walked out of JFK on Tuesday morning, the air felt great. Fresh but not freezing. Yahoo! But then the temperature dropped and yesterday the snowfall began. I’m home!

It likely will be cold and definitely dark when I get back to Alaska next week, but I’m fine with that. If you like seasons and contrast, Alaska is a great place to live. But it’s kind of funny to think about going home when I have felt so much at home in the last six months. I’m not really sure if I’m going home or going back or (one hopes) going forward. My internal compass has gone haywire or maybe it’s gone true. I’m not sure which, or whether it matters. Like the signpost on Itambira Island that has two arrows pointing opposite directions, one saying “This way” and one saying “That way.” I laughed out loud the first time I came to that fork in the path. There was no going wrong! “That way” led to a bench on a bluff overlooking Lake Bunyonyi. “This way” led back to my cabin.

But the points on the globe are not all created equal. Flying from Entebbe to New York City on Emirates lands you briefly in Dubai, where urban landscape rises out of desert and sea like an eerie futuristic mirage. Now I’m walking the village of Manhattan and sleeping on an air mattress in Marie’s little apartment. Last week Don mailed down my scarf and gloves and black wool coat so I can walk around disguised as a native.

I am so lucky to pause in NYC with Marie for a few days. She understands every word that I’ve uttered since arriving. When she found me in emotional meltdown next to the green bananas in the grocery store on my first day back, she understood that too. The first night here I cooked rice and beans for us and she devoured a plateful before going to take an Econ exam. It’s the final week of her first semester at Columbia, so she’s welcoming me in the midst of paper-writing and all. As she is underway with her Master’s program in International Education, Christian is wrapping up his UNICEF job in Switzerland. After Christmas in Uganda, the newlyweds will be together in the U.S. completing their graduate work.

I’ll start planning my own coming year after another night or two of sleep. A week ago I was walking on a little dirt road through a herd of those long-horned cattle that are everywhere in southwest Uganda. This week I’m trying to keep pace with hordes of Manhattanites. Next week I’ll be briefly in Anchorage then back to Kodiak in time for Heather and Hanna to join us for Christmas. My bank account is in serious need of replenishment so I am happy that work awaits me. But I’m eager to dive more deeply into agriculture and development and write a piece or two in the coming months, and it will be awfully nice to have internet access for any research I need to do. Right here in Marie’s room I can flip open my laptop and be instantly online at any moment of the night or day. Or I can drop into a coffee shop or any of the student lounges because the whole neighborhood and campus are wired. In fact, the whole city is wired at unbelievably high speeds. Documents load faster than a sudden in-breath. The only thing that takes patience is taking the time to think a complete thought.

If I lived in NYC I might not bother to travel the world because it’s all here in a tiny radius. Within a block of Marie’s door there is an Ethiopian restaurant and an Indian restaurant and a salon where Olga from Russia and Evelyn from Puerto Rico give manicures. The other evening I had dinner with Marie and her friend Anne from Uganda who works with Adult Education in Teso and is in the same International Education program here at Columbia. Later that night I walked up Amsterdam Ave to the Appletree store to buy tape and get some boxes and I bumped into Anne again as well as Sarah, a Maasai woman, who is also doing graduate work at Columbia.

It seems I’ve left the physical, visceral Africa and landed in philosophical discourse, surrounded as I am by even more students of development than I encountered in Uganda’s backpacker inns. At the Entebbe airport last week I read in Kampala’s Daily Monitor that the Gates Foundation has just launched in Nairobi a $13 million grant for research on African women in agriculture. This is great, but what about Esther in Kitale who needs a chunk of land and Anastacia in Narok who needs money for the mini-training centres for women farmers that they would like to start now? I’m a scholar by nature as much as a traveler and I know that throwing money and dropping aid are not as easy as one would hope, whether you are a country or a person. But I’ve just been living in places where input right now could make big differences.

For the last few months I’ve been giving small doses of tangible assistance and large doses of moral support. I don’t know what will come of any of it in the long run. My time in Africa intensified my desire to understand the issues of this part of the world, and my friendship with many remarkable people fuels my intention to remain connected. The news of the world cuts a wider swath for me than it did a year ago. While I was in Uganda, the big Commonwealth meeting came and went, 29 people died from Ebola, and a Kenyan won the Kampala marathon (a Ugandan runner placed second). While I was in South Africa, the country was elated to win the Rugby World Cup and shocked at the shooting death of Lucky Dube (which also saddened Ugandans and probably music fans everywhere), while the leadership struggles of the African National Congress heated up. The other day a Kampala taxi-driver informed me that my country was going to have its first woman president but back in Kenya everybody wanted to talk with me about Obama.

And here I am back in America on this island packed tight with people and prosperity. I woke up early this morning and went out for a latte but found the streets quiet and shops still closed at 7 am. On Kodiak Island by this hour of the morning Harborside Coffee would have served lots of customers. Here, to pass an hour’s time, I walked up Seminary Row to the park on Morningside Drive, where the sun was an orange ball coming up over the East River and people were walking their dogs on the crunchy remains of yesterday’s snow. I loitered along the black wrought-iron railings that curve around the park and took pictures of the frozen droplets hanging from the branches. I’ve always loved that about New York – millions of people and so much cement but nature and seasons still rule.

The recent months have been a very good time in my life but not the first or the last. There is so much more to do. I am grateful to Marie and Christian for getting me back to Africa. After leaving South Africa in 1973 I always wanted to return but never did anything about it. Their wedding is what brought me back to the continent and introduced me to east Africa and gave me a new family as well. And I’m grateful to Carla for sharing her life in South Africa and taking me on so many good adventures. Not just the trips around the country but the fun of sitting in front of her windows eating platters full of fresh greens from her garden and gem squash and quinoa. And conversation. And chocolate!

My entire time in Africa I stayed healthy, probably a fluke of birth. To be a traveler at all is a privilege. To meet people suffering from AIDS and malaria and hunger is a reminder of the responsibility of being alive and aware. Somehow in a continent that faces so much poverty and poor health, I received more inspiration than despair.

It’s been fun to share my journey via this blog. I’ve tried to keep entries brief but they end up longer than I myself would have time to read without stepping out of the usual time crunch. So, to all of you friends and family and readers known and unknown who have made the time to read, thank you! To you diehards who encourage me to keep my blog going, be careful what you suggest. And if you haven’t discovered the quotes at the bottom of the screen, scroll down to see what I’ve stumbled upon most recently.

OK, it’s time to walk down Broadway to find Marie and friends at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. Not a bad way to suffer jet lag.

Back to the Sunshine

The Sunshine Hotel! I’m back in Lyantonde. I’ve dropped in to see the folks I worked with in July and early August at the Rakai Community-Based AIDS Project. Alas, I won’t get to see my students again. They are on break this week and their graduation has been re-scheduled for next week. By then I will be far away. But it is so nice to once again see Julie and Vincent and Wycliffe and Francis and others on the staff. It’s quiet around here now though! No interns, no Nicole, no Tonopah or Rose. And many on the staff are, as usual, in the field doing the work they do so well.

Goretti asked me this morning if I wanted to get online. (Is it warm on the equator?) The last time I sat in this room, five of the seven interns were at the one internet hook-up. Now they are back at their respective universities – Makerere, Kyambogo, Uganda Martyr’s University – and I sit here happily gorging on internet time but missing Maggie and Justine and everyone else. It’s fun when Francis comes in to talk for awhile, then Goretti, then Mayega, then Julie. Yesterday I walked with Julie to the farm and found Angela in the farmhouse and John Ssemaguzi in the banana field. John looked healthy and stood with his usual beautiful posture. Angela was recovering from another bout of malaria.

This week has been a time of revisiting and savoring and moving into the future. Earlier this week I was in Masaka just north of here visiting St. Jude Family Projects, the organic agricultural NGO headed by Josephine, who I met at the Kenya workshop and symposium. It was wonderful to see Rael as well, a young Kenyan woman who graduated from the Manor House program a year ago and is new on the staff of trainers at St. Jude. And, as fate would have it, a whole bunch of folks from Manor House were at St. Jude on a two-day study tour, so as well as seeing Josephine and Rachel (Rael’s Uganda name) I had the joy of spending time once again with Nyongesa and Joshua and Mlegwa and Margaret and a bunch of the others who let me be part of their lives for that wonderful month of August. This week, for two sweet days in December, I was reconnected with these people who are intent on creating healthy soil and sustainable lives.

The Kenyans (many of them making their first-ever trip to Uganda) left Thursday morning in the school bus that brought them from Kitale. I was planning to take a public bus on down to Lyantonde, which is an hour south of Masaka. But Josephine was very concerned about the Ebola outbreak and insisted on sending a driver to take me. A few years ago hundreds of people died of Ebola and now cases have erupted in western Uganda near Congo, but who knows where it might spread. Apparently it’s been known since August but only recently reported, and lots of people are really pissed at the government for not publicizing the outbreak sooner. Whether it was a matter of medical confirmation (the official word) or the deliberate withholding of the nasty news until after CHOGM, I don’t know. The reality is that some people have died from the virus and others are scared, and I’m having to not do what comes naturally to me – shaking extended hands.

The chances of being exposed to the Ebola virus are probably exceedingly slim, but it was protective and loving of Josephine to drive me to my next destination. And it gave us a chance for more conversation. Six months here and I still have so many questions and so much I want to know.

As for the fun-loving ladies at the Sunshine, they welcomed me back and laughed in glee to see the photos I printed of them. My room has received a fresh coat of white paint, but the same holey (not to be confused with holy) mosquito net is hanging over the bed. In July I took it down and hung up my own permethrin-treated mosquito net for the duration. This time I got out some thread and repaired about twenty holes in the Sunshine’s beleaguered old net. Maybe I’ve picked up some of the resourcefulness of the people in this part of the world, where locally available you-name-its are used to fix everything from broken bicycles to holey exhaust pipes (and stores have names like “Blessed Hardware” and “God Almighty Automotive”).

And yes I celebrated my birthday by living that day with the same gusto I’ve been living most of these days. Actually, until that evening I forgot to tell anyone it was my birthday. Too busy leaving some dear people and arriving to others. Malko sent me a sweet “Happy birthday, mum” SMS and then I learned that his day is coming up so we made a plan to celebrate together when I’m back in Kampala on Sunday. I do love birthdays, mine and others, and it was fun having tea and chapattis with Julie at the Sunshine that evening, and now getting emails from daughters and Don and family and friends. YES! as my student Ruth would exclaim if she were here. I am now officially and happily 54. Maybe I should start acting my age, whatever that means.

Kampala...in December

Once again I’ve been in my favorite east African hub – Kampala, where we all started many months ago, where I awaken to the Muslim call to prayer, where bodas and taxis do not move silently along like boats on Lake Bunyonyi. The drastic differences between the rural southwest and the urban center of Uganda are comparable to what Alaskans sometimes call the urban-rural divide. It’s a worldwide phenomenon – people leave their villages to seek livelihoods in the cities (for better or for worse). But this city, right now, is HOT. When the bus pulled out of Kabale, the air was still cool. The temperature steadily rose as we moved north.

Kampala is where I get to enjoy the company of my Ugandan family. Saturday night I had an Indian dinner with Charlotte and Malko, whose Introduction for marriage will be in March (wish I could be here for that occasion). Yesterday we hung out at Ted’s house just to enjoy his company before he leaves. I had thought Ted was going on another business trip. Turns out his position is being transferred to Paris, so he and Brenda and their sons are moving to France – today.

I’m headed to Masaka and Rakai with the intention of making the most of my last week in Uganda. But a weekend pause in the city was a nice boost. I splurged and got a room at the Speke Hotel where I’ve been taking luxurious showers and eating big breakfasts and spending time on the wireless internet. Hanna found me on gmail this morning and we had a live chat – with Heather too. I called my parents on Skype, and Don twice, and now I want to call Carla. I walked over to Web City Café to print some photographs, and the guy helping me pointed to my photo of Marie and Christian and said, “I know that guy, he works for the U.N.” Big city, small world.

One of the best days during my Lake Bunyonyi interlude was visiting Beatrice, who runs a program in Kabale called Women in Small Enterprises – WISE. I met Beatrice in August at the agricultural workshop in Kenya, where I also met Josephine who runs an organic farming NGO in Masaka called St. Jude’s where I’m headed next. Agriculture and sustainable communities are some of the things I want to write about when I’m back in Alaska, and it’s great to see more of what these amazing women are doing.

Because Charlotte will be in Burundi doing refugee work when I return to Kampala to fly out next week, she asked me what I wanted to see or do this weekend. I told her I hadn’t been to Namirembe Cathedral, which sits atop one of Kampala’s hills. I thought it might be nice to check it out since I’d read that the view of the city was lovely from there. What a lucky day for a visit! The Kampala Singers were doing a concert of Christmas Carols, just as the sun was getting low. Both the orchestra and the choir were wonderful, especially a soloist whose voice was a clear, deep, gorgeous baritone. But how strange to sing about holly and ivy and snow while sweat rolls down the back! So it really is December, my birthday month, and my first time to sing Christmas Carols on the equator.

Getting around by Ugandan kayak

Last spring (northern hemisphere spring) when I was reading descriptions of Uganda, I decided to visit Lake Bunyonyi if I had a chance. So here I am in the far southwest corner of Uganda, staying in a cabin that overlooks a sparkling mountain lake and faces terraced hills that rise steeply from the banks of other islands. It’s just as Lonely Planet and my Bradt guide describe, even more interesting because in a strange way it reminds me of Alaska – the coolness, the rain, the luxuriant moss that hugs the brick sidewalk leading to the shower.

I’m staying on Itambira Island at a backpacker’s paradise called Byoona Amagara (which means “whole life” in the local Rukiga language). A boatman named Gad paddled me here in his dugout canoe made from a eucalyptus trunk. When I asked if he had a paddle for me, he swung us around in his low-tech, perfectly designed boat and went promptly back to the dock where another guy tossed us a second paddle. I hadn’t paddled in such glorious waters since kayaking with Marybeth in Prince William Sound last May. Little warmer here, though.

Kodiak Island is an hour’s flight from the Alaska mainland (or ten or more hours by ferry) so it feels kind of natural to be an hour’s paddle away from the mainland here. This island is tiny compared to Kodiak; you can walk all around Itambira and criss-cross it a time or two in a couple of leisurely hours. There are paths everywhere (after all, this is rural Africa where feet are the major form of transportation). So everyday I walk and find new paths. But best of all is being on the water and learning to guide one of these canoes – which feels like a kayak to me – in a steady line. I watch the local boatmen using a paddle on just one side of their boat and moving straight through the water. How much easier it would be for me if the paddle were double-ended! “There’s no secret to it,” Gad said. Then he told me he’s been paddling one of these boats since he was five or six years old. The other day I paddled the perimeter of Itambira by myself. The wind helped a lot by giving occasional resistance. But it’s a lot easier with two people.

I love water and boating like my sweetheart loves snow and skiing. He gets a huge rush of aliveness by skiing down a steep slope; I get a deep sense of peace paddling or swimming in an ocean or lake. Though people here say the water is cold, I find that Lake Bunyonyi is a perfect temperature for swimming, which is safe thanks to the absence of hippos and crocodiles and bilharzias. Cynthia, a French-Canadian girl who was here when I first arrived, was delighted to learn that I too am an avid swimmer. She immediately led me through a short stretch of jungly trail to a dock where we lowered ourselves from a ladder and dove in. Just us and some curious river otters in a deep, dark lake.

Ted emailed from Kampala to warn me of the steep escarpments and cold nights, and he’s quite right about both. The mornings and nights are mountain-air cool and the slopes are shrouded in fog every dawn (think Gorillas in the Mist). Then by mid-morning it is hot. Clouds build quickly and bring thunder and rain, and then just as instantly the sun pops out again. You know the saying claimed by everyone from Kansas to Ketchikan, that “if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes”? Well, here it’s the literal truth. I put on my warm Capetown sweater then strip down to a tank top. Back and forth, all day long.

Byoona Amagara has a canteen where people gather and eat meals, and I’ve met several Europeans and North Americans on short holiday who are volunteering elsewhere in Uganda. The most popular accommodations here are dorm-style beds, a camping area, and two geodomes, but I’m in a spacious, one-room cabin that sits a ways back from everything else. It’s called Amaizi (water) and the strange thing is that it’s made of logs (most homes around here are made of mud or bricks). Amaizi has a big deck, an outhouse in the back, and a shower in the side yard. It’s a thatched log cabin (how’s that for an architectural oxymoron) and not a drop of rain gets through the roof. As far as hybrid Alaskan-African cabins go, the thatch roof is more efficient than the log walls, which have crevices that let in the daylight and lizards. The luxuries of not needing insulation!

The quietness here is profound. As a seeker of silence, I find myself in a place where I fall asleep to the sound of crickets and wake up to birdsong. That’s about it. Oh, and the soft lapping of water as people paddle by the island. After four days here I was startled by something anomalous but kind of familiar then realized I was hearing a motorboat. If you’re in a hurry, that’s an option. But the dugout canoes far outnumber the boats with motors. And no generator noise around here! Byoona does use solar power, but the stars and moon provide most of the light after dusk (which I supplement with the little headlamp I bought in Johannesburg).

Most days the rains are gentle and brief but one storm this week rivaled Kodiak’s weather. The big windows on the windward side of my cabin have no panes, just canvas covers which I usually keep rolled up for maximum light and air. When this storm arose, I rolled down the canvas sheets and fastened them but the wind billowed them out like sails, and the sideways rain came in and pooled on the wood plank flooring.

So it goes during the wet season. It rains, it shines, it blows, then it’s utterly still and peaceful. I sleep like a baby during the dark hours then get up with the birds just before dawn.

It’s strange to come around to the other side of the world and find myself in a place that reminds me of home. Here’s something even stranger: I am in a beautiful, pure setting with time on my hands to rejuvenate, and what have I been experiencing? Loneliness, and restlessness. Afflictions that may be predictable for travelers but for a self-sustainer like me come as a surprise. For five months I’ve been so occupied and fused with purpose, especially in the midst of the Rakai and Manor House work, that loneliness hit me only on sudden, rare moments. In South Africa I had Carla’s constant companionship. The moment I got to this sweet cabin, I thought Oh, this is meant to be shared. I miss Don, I miss Carla, I miss my daughters. How wonderful it would be if just one friend dropped in.

But in fact I am not alone. Cynthia from Canada was great company for those days that our time here overlapped. Now she’s back in Kampala teaching French and English and writing to primary kids. It was nice to meet the teacher from Brooklyn who’s volunteering in Jinja, and Jen who is doing a one-month rotation in Bujagali before going back to P.A. school in Denver. The people who run this place – African, American, Czech – are fun to get to know and so welcoming to all of us who show up here. And I’m surrounded by birds of all kinds – from the little yellow weavers that flutter around my cabin to the pair of three-foot-tall crested cranes that grace the meadow every dawn. People, birds, otters, the whole spiritual nourishment of this corner of Uganda, and I’m feeling alone and antsy. Go figure!

So if anyone has an urge to write me, please do! And if you’ve emailed my GCI address and not gotten a response, try the same name at gmail.com because GCI won’t open up much of the time in this part of the world. I finally signed up with Google’s gmail so I don’t drop totally out of contact. The travails of travel…

p.s. three days later... I've had this post sitting in a Word file waiting patiently for an internet connection. Today's the day - hooray! (Or maybe it's crazy how much i enjoy getting online when I'm on a remote, solar- and starlight-powered island.) I have some photos to plop in but that's probably really pushing my luck. I feel settled here now...in time to savor another day or two, and address some of the questions on my mind (returning, "what's next" kinds of questions). I would still love to hear from any of you!

The Queen comes to Uganda

Yes! The long-awaited CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) will happen in the coming week right here in Uganda. In just a few days Queen Elizabeth herself will land in Entebbe, be escorted to Kampala to open the summit, and grace Ugandans and fifty heads of state with her presence. She was last here in 1954, so it’s about time for a repeat visit!

And I think…I hope…the country is ready. When the bunch of us from the states arrived at the end of June, we picked up our bags in a small terminal and walked out the door past workmen in bright jumpsuits engaged in rebuilding and enlarging the humble Entebbe airport. The going was slow when we left the airport because the road was being rebuilt. Construction was happening everywhere, in fact! New hotels were going up, old ones were getting facelifts, everything was being spiffed up. All for the impending CHOGM.

That was five months ago. The other day when I arrived from South Africa, I walked into an airport so transformed I hardly recognized it. Well, almost transformed. The signs reading “Toilets” at the end of the new, huge luggage carousel turned out to be harbingers of the facilities yet to come. Who knows, maybe bathrooms will be installed by Wednesday! But no doubt about it, Entebbe International is a new airport. And streets are lined with flowers and flags.

Chogm – not even an acronym anymore but more like a new word in the common language here – happens every two years. Uganda is honored and excited to host the 2007 meeting of commonwealth members. I’m an outsider when it comes to understanding the gut-level significance of membership in an international organization involving many countries that were once (and not that long ago) colonies. What I’m more aware of are the contemporary interests of the east African community for autonomy and economic development, the ANC turmoil in South Africa as that fledgling democracy cuts its teeth, and the dire situation in Zimbabwe. But there’s no denying the strange way that history – even one of empire – throws nations into a common arena and leaves them to sort things out as co-players. One thing the Commonwealth has done has been to take action toward countries that do not uphold democracy, like its suspension of Nigeria in the 90s and Zimbabwe more recently.

One boda driver asked me if the Queen were a friend of mine! I’m afraid I won’t even be here to stand along the road and greet her because I’m heading out for points southwest just as I’m getting back into the Kampala swing of things. Maybe it’s that swiftness thing again – the disorientation of leaving one country and emerging into the light of another day and another place. I decided to check into the Backpackers Hotel and take a day or two or three to collect my wits and make a plan for my remaining time. In my thought-gathering and belated scheduling, I managed to ground myself but I missed some of my beloved family. When I called Charlotte, she was catching a plane for Thailand for ten days of training. Ted was just returning from two weeks in Nigeria, and his work will soon take him to Paris. But Malko was in town so we had a lovely afternoon together yesterday, and I caught up on the news of all the Ugandan sons and daughters I claim as my family.

So when the sun rises tomorrow I plan to catch the Post bus to Kabale, probably stay there the night, then go on to Lake Bunyonyi for a week or so of sitting, writing, and walking. I will revisit Rakai on the return trip because the graduation of the students I worked with there has been rescheduled for early December. And there’s more! A couple of the Ugandan women I met in Kenya run programs in southwest Uganda, and I hope to visit them as well. And if I’m lucky maybe I’ll even procure a permit for Bwindi.

So as Kampala holds its breath that the power stays on and the traffic flows and the CHOGM meetings proceed smoothly, I will be savoring my last few weeks in southwestern Uganda’s hills and lakes and islands, whatever they bring.

Coast, Cape, and Jozi

We just returned from one last jaunt before I leave South Africa – a trip down the stretch of coast known as the Garden Route. We flew to Port Elizabeth on lowfare Kulula then rented a car and followed the curves of the Indian Ocean coastline, which winds past Jeffreys Bay, Knysna, Wilderness and one walkable beach after another. We spent many mornings and evenings walking along the surf and finding sea shells. No bellies to bury in the beach but our bare feet loved the silky sand!

We spent a couple nights in a cabin above a rocky beach at Tsitsikamma National Park, where we could sit with face to the ocean and back to a forest of indigenous trees. The trail we had planned to hike had been closed due to fire, but we figured out how to act like tourists and did little hikes and drives and explorations. One day we got harnessed up for a zipline experience, which was like hanging from high wires to zip back and forth across a river gorge.

Turns out Capetown is not the tip of Africa, as I thought when I was last here. The real southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, where a little road leads past a lighthouse to the monument marking the spot, and the waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans do their wild dance. On the afternoon that Carla and I reached this point, a wind was whipping up the sea and trying to blow us over. I'm sure it's a cousin of the winds that blast Kodiak Island.

In the lovely town of Hermanus, we stayed with Carla’s friends Micky and Daan (sounds like “Don”), who have a pasture for a horse called Welvaart and a huge vegetable garden covered with wire to keep the baboons out. Micky also grows old-fashioned roses of more varieties than I knew existed, and she makes incredibly fragrant potpourris. Each morning we drank rooibos tea and ate bread that Daan bakes in a woodstove. One day we took a long hike on the trails of Fernkloof, a beautiful area on the ridge above Hermanus where proteas grow profusely - whole hillsides of proteas.

Every time we drove to the seaside we saw whales. Southern right whales come to this coastline every spring to mate and calve in the protected waters down here. They feed in Antarctica during the other months. In Alaska I often have the pleasure of seeing orcas and humpbacks and belugas but usually not as close as these right whales, who lazily hang out just offshore with their babies (BIG babies), occasionally rolling or leaping or lobbing their tails.

We drove on to Capetown on a rainy afternoon, then next morning in sunshine we meandered between the coast and Table Mountain. The vistas are breathtaking, and I would love to return to do some serious hiking.

While in the Cape I reconnected with some of my South African German family – people I still love after all these years. I had corresponded with my mom Ruth for fifteen or twenty years after I lived with them in Johannesburg in 1973, but had lost contact in the last ten or fifteen years. I found Gunter, the oldest son, via a google search so I picked up the phone and found out that it was indeed the right family. So one afternoon in Paarl, just north of Capetown, Carla and I had tea with Ruth. Fun to find her looking so good and to converse about new things and old. She had moved to the Cape seven years ago after Hermann passed on. Gunter also settled in Paarl, Renate lives in Pretoria, and Harald is in Capetown.

That evening we had dinner with Gunter – a tall, handsome version of the 12-year-old boy I knew – and his wife and their two children. A big sign outside Gunter and Gisela’s home reads “Human Bean Sanctuary,” which Gisela reminded me comes from The BFG (Big Friendly Giant) – one of the many Roald Dahl books I read to Marie, Hanna, and Heather when they were small. So it was great to be human beans together around their table, and Carla did her best to occupy the two lively children while I caught up with Gunter and talked about African matters with Gisela.

From Capetown we took another Kulula flight. It felt kind of homey to get back to Jozi. Maybe I’m getting fond of this partly old, partly new city. I’m definitely becoming more adept at carrying home around inside me. And Carla has been a provocative, insightful, and protective guide to post-1994 South Africa. She has gotten to know this country more deeply than I did and has a connection that goes beyond mine. Sometimes we have feisty exchanges that alternately make me mad and challenge my thinking, like a microcosm of South African politics. Being present in this country, even for just a couple months, lets me know, again, that judging something from afar - whether positively or negatively - is easier than making sense of things close up.

It’s something of a marvel to reconnect with someone beloved from birth in a new and quite different situation. There are times when I wonder how in the heck Carla became this person I am getting to know afresh. There are other times when she seems a perfect reflection of her mom or dad, who I know so well. I have treasured this time together. We laugh so much and talk about everything, just as we did when we lived a few blocks apart on the same street where our parents still live. Carla knows how to laugh so well and it’s as contagious now as it was when we were ten.

Yesterday we went with Romeo and Tebatso to Maropeng, the Cradle of Humankind world heritage site, built into a grassy hill outside of Joburg. A wonderful place for all of us hominid descendents to visit! Tebatso tried to explain to us what maropeng means. "Home sweet home" is perhaps the closest English translation. Returning to one’s place of origin is another way to describe it. Tebatso said that walking through the displays at Maropeng made her ask questions, mostly about death. It made me ask questions too, mostly about life. And being there with Romeo was just plain fun. He picked up a drill that was part of one hands-on exhibit, probably inspired from watching Carla (earlier in the day) use the drill and other things from her bottomless toolbox to replace a broken lock at Tebatso's home in Soweto. So wonderful to have these 21st century bodies and brains. Now if we can just remember that none of us are passengers on spaceship earth (in the words of Marshall McLuhan many years ago) - We are all crew.












Just when I’m getting used to being a “we” – eating, sleeping, and laughing in the company of my new/old cousin friend – I’m soon to take off for Uganda. My youngers and elders are also in motion right now – Heather and Hanna driving from New York to San Francisco, Mom and Dad from Nebraska to Oregon. I will have one more stint in Uganda before flying to NYC where I will find one of my loving anchors (Marie!) and then by mid-December I will be back in Alaska with another loving anchor (Don!). How long I will stay put, only time will tell.