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.

Altogether elsewhere

For ten days we’ve been hanging out in Johannesburg taking care of business as usual or, in Carla’s case, unusual. After several weeks of observation and intermittent participation, I’ve decided that Carla’s life fulfills the old definition of self-employment – working 100 hours a week to avoid working a 40-hour week. Some of us will do anything to remain independent and explore the deliberately thin lines between work and play!

Yesterday the play included cutting and bending the wire handles for the metal candle sculptures that Carla sells at the market. It took only one hour to get a nice blister inside the finger I used to squeeze the wire bender tool, but Carla let me know that if I want to hear about some really interesting jobs I can ask her brother about the things he has helped Carla create over the years.

Living and working with Carla also involves a lot of moving things around. From the house to the garage. From the garage to the yard. From the yard to the market with a few more times in and out of the car and garage depending on what we are making and what the weather is doing. Moving baskets from KwaZulu-Natal province to Johannesburg is just one little part.

And we’ve added a little terrier named Spotty to our day’s work and play. Spotty belongs to Carla’s friends Sue and Trevor who have gone to the states on holiday. We are housesitting so that Spotty has someone to entertain. The only real work is unlocking all the doors and gates whenever we take Spotty out for a walk. The house and garden are lovely but the security measures troublesome to one who comes from a place where I come and go without locking anything and carry only one key – to start my car. I know from what I’ve seen and heard that the security here is warranted. But it still defies common sense for me – that crime should reach such a level and that people can live with such onerous “protection.”

Political and cultural and lifestyle scenarios aside, the most basic differences that disorient me are the physical matters of time and space. I’ve gotten used to subtracting ten hours from the day before I call my sweetie, but I have to continually remind myself that the folks back at home are moving quickly into winter as I walk around under a warm spring sun. Summer will be in full blast here by Christmas time. But I don’t need to worry about being seasonally troubled then because I’ll be back in the dark and cold latitude of 60 degrees north.

Way back last June, it was strange to leave Alaska’s 18-hour days and plop down into Uganda’s equatorial twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of dark. Now I’m getting used to other strange things, like facing north into the sun. Carla’s flat is always cool and dark because it faces south – very strange for a sun-loving, south-leaning Alaskan. I’ve also apparently been fooled by birdsong. For weeks I kept hearing a cuckoo clock and finally asked Carla, “Does Natascha have a clock that keeps cuckoo-ing?” (Natascha is the German woman who lives above us). Turns out I’m hearing the real thing – birds making their two-tone call. As if to highlight my disorder, the words to the Old English cuckoo song arrived in an email – Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu!

Traveling from the far north to the equator and then to the southern hemisphere makes one become a new learner of simple things, not just the sun’s habits but how to handle my own habits, like what food to buy from street vendors, where to exchange currency, how to load air time onto a cell phone and make a call. Each time I cross a border I learn greetings and thank yous in a new language – so many languages in Africa! Now in South Africa I am re-learning English. When I thank someone here, they do not say “You’re welcome” or “No problem” but instead just smile and say “Pleasure.”

My friend Paula in Alaska said something recently that reminded me how it’s not only hemispheres that can flip. She observed that at 25 she was working with Cambodian refugees along the Thai border, while I was starting to raise children. Now my daughters are grown and I am out doing my own volunteer work, while Paula is a new mom. Many ways to navigate through a lifetime!

It’s not just the small things of everyday existence that compel – how to phone a friend, what to eat, where to lay my head tonight. It’s the big things as well – what am I doing here, in this particular place, in this body and this life? Questions of survival and purpose come with equal urgency.

Auden’s phrase “altogether elsewhere” keeps echoing in my head. I have a sensation of being somewhere where things are all turned around or at least out of kilter, and it doesn’t feel very poetic. But it’s not always a bad thing to misread cues, mistake a bird for a clock, and feel like a foolish foreigner. It keeps my brain and heart alert and my sense of humor intact. It also keeps me present. For instance when Spotty – who has one auspicious spot – wants to play, we stop everything else and just play. And last night, at the Moonlight Market (with Spotty safely at home), I walked around in the warm night air and noticed one beautiful sight – Carla’s candles lighting up the tea garden.

The Swazi, Zulu, and Drakensberg circle

Roadtripping and camping with Carla is a great way to experience South Africa. We’ve just returned from an eleven-day trip that took us east to Swaziland then south into KwaZulu province and then back to Johannesburg by way of the Drakensberg Mountains.

We went to Swaziland to visit some friends of Carla’s and just to look, hike, and camp. It takes only five hours to drive from Johannesburg to Mbabane, the capital of this small, independent country – actually a Kingdom ruled by a Swazi king and his mother – located entirely within the borders of South Africa. We stayed in the Malkerns Valley at a place called Nyanza Cottages but we preferred to camp rather than stay in a cottage. We had a whole meadow with jacaranda trees and hibiscus and a view of the mountains, and peacocks wandered in and out of our area and sometimes perched in the trees above us. In the morning, as we ate papaya and Tia’s muesli with rice milk, a whole clan of vervet monkeys came into the orchard next to our campsite and watched us through the branches.

The last time we had pitched a tent together was on the Nebraska shores of Lewis & Clark Lake when we were teenagers. I’m not sure if we’ve changed much since then but our eating habits have definitely improved. In those days we kept our six-pack of Coke chilled in the lake, and if we cooked it was probably hot dogs over a fire or a Girl Scout foil pack. I also remember that it rained hard one night while the two of us were camped at Weigand and Carla suggested we dig a trench around our tent to capture the rainwater and keep ourselves dry. The trench plan didn’t work very well but we had fun digging it in the middle of the night and laughing so hard it didn’t matter that we got soaked.

Last week we spent two nights in Swaziland and both nights it rained. But we were cozy and secure in Carla’s big tent with a fly that kept us and the whole tent dry. There is nothing more wonderful than being snug in a sleeping bag and listening to rain on a tent roof. By morning the thunder and lightning and wind were finished, and the roosters and hens and chicks were crowing and pecking and running around the yard. The sun rose from behind the mountains and by afternoon it was bright and dry.

Carla’s friends told us that Swaziland was settled by people coming north from Zululand seeking a peaceful kingdom. Somehow the mountains and broad valleys exude a sense of restfulness even to one just passing through. We spent some time having coffee and seeing the art work sold at a place called Gone Rural, which markets crafts made by Swazi women and employs lots of local people in a restaurant as well. We also drove through a little game reserve, but it was so hot we just pulled over and sat back and ate our avocado and corn cakes.

The middle part of our trip was the basket buying in KwaZulu. Carla has been buying baskets from Zulu weavers since 1994 and selling them in Johannesburg. Before we ever left Jo’burg, she described the roads she drives when she makes these trips and the weavers whose work she markets. But I continually had an “ohhhh, that’s what she meant” sensation as the experience actually unfolded. She had told me there was one time when she drove to KwaZulu, bought a whole load of baskets, and drove back to Jo’burg the next day. But she said it usually takes two or three or maybe even four days. I didn’t understand how it could take that much time. In my image of the process, Carla simply made the purchases from a large group of women, like at a marketplace where everyone has gathered to sell their wares. I was soooo mistaken.

The first morning we left just after sunrise and drove an hour on a tarred highway before turning off on a little road that was scarcely discernable from a trail. When we got to a rickety set of sticks strung together with wire and stretched across the roadway, Carla stopped so I could hop out and open the gate. This brought us to the homestead of Rosalia, who came out to meet us carrying a large bulging shape wrapped in a blanket. She pulled off the blanket and handed Carla a beautiful basket, saying how much she wanted for it. They agreed on the price and Carla handed me a notebook to start recording the transactions. Rosalia also produced a basket made by a neighbor who was hoping to sell it to Carla, and a third woman showed up with some baskets she had made as well. Carla knows just enough Zulu (and Rosalia just enough English) to communicate the basics. The rest, as far as I could tell, is understood more by relationship and tone and mutual intention than by actual words.

The stop at Rosalia’s was just the beginning. Later that morning we were high in the hills of KwaZulu on a clay road bed that curved alongside gullies and eucalyptus trees and ascended into thick fog that made the distant hills disappear from view. This was the one time we got stuck. We were on a steep stretch and the road was muddy from all the recent rain. But with Carla’s driving and my pushing and a bunch of sticks under the tires for traction, we managed to get unstuck. Carla called one of the weavers who has a cell phone and the word went out to find us atop this ridge. So we sat there in Carla’s Toyota Venture for about an hour before weavers began to arrive, first some young girls with their mothers’ baskets and then some older ladies and then another and another, all carrying baskets in bags and blankets atop their heads and hoisted at their sides. One by one, they showed their work to Carla. For every purchase, I wrote the weaver’s name and the size of the basket and then I counted out the payment for each happy weaver.

We finished on the third morning. In all, Carla bought enough baskets to fill every cranny in her vehicle and I met several groups of weavers who came out of the hills, literally. Wherever Carla stopped, women would emerge from distant houses. “Cahla!” they would call, as though they’d been expecting her for weeks, even if some of their baskets had long strands of ilala palm still sticking out from the rim. “Tomorrow! I will finish tomorrow. What time will you come back?” When Carla introduced me as her cousin, someone always grabbed my hand to greet me with the same triple handshake that so many east Africans use, but the Zulu names were new for me – names like Zandile, Tholi, Phindile, Thandi, and Sibongile. One girl introduced herself as Beyonce, snapping her fingers and doing a little dance move as she spelled her name for me. Carla told me it was a new name since her last trip.

Most of the time I had no idea where we were or which river we had crossed, but Carla seems to know by heart the remote, beautiful land where Zulu homesteads and gardens are scattered amongst a network of winding roads. The one route I did learn was the corridor road through Hluhluwe and Imfolozi game parks that we drove each day as we came inland from the St. Lucia wetlands where we stayed. “Keep your eyes open for wildlife,” Carla told me as we drove to the weavers. One morning a couple elephants were visible from the road, then buffalo, then impala. One late afternoon driving back we came upon five rhinos just beside the road.

We decided to spend a night in the Hluhluwe game reserve when our basket work was done, so we stayed in a rondavel at the Hilltop rest camp. That afternoon we drove leisurely through the park. It was fun to round the first bend and come upon two elephants doing some serious tree munching. We sat still and watched them reach their trunks up into one tree after another. Huge branches came crashing down, and those elephants curled their trunks around those leafy branches and scooped them up into their mouths like candy. Later, all the warthogs we came upon were skittish and ran off before we got close. We saw zebra and impala and other kinds of antelope, and guinea fowl in the low grass along the road. In the early morning as we drove slowly out of the park, several groups of giraffe were grazing near the road, and we saw more elephants and zebras as well. But my favorite sight was a dung beetle pushing its little round prize across the road right in front of us.

We drove south along the coast and buzzed right through Durban with one stop (at a great crafts place on the harbor called the Bat Centre) then we turned inland again toward the Drakensberg. I remembered this range from a trek I did in 1973 – somewhere in these mountains though I have no idea where exactly – and Carla has spent some time here too. We found a lovely campground near Cathedral Peak which we made our “base camp” for a little exploring and hiking. We had a wonderful hike to some waterfalls and a pool that reminded me of Hawaii (so of course I went in) and we also saw San Bushmen rock paintings. So exciting to find depictions of eland and hunters leaping with their bows.

So Carla is reintroducing me to South Africa and reminding me of who we are. It amazes me how she speaks like her mom at times and makes faces that look just like her dad. The same goes for me, of course. One time I made some remark and Carla exclaimed, “You sound exactly like your mom!” And then the last time we were setting up the tent, I went up to Carla with some serious comment that made her bend over with laughter. “The way you folded your hands in front of your waist when you said that! That’s exactly what Donnie does!” Hmmm, I don’t know what possessed me to take that pose, but I had to admit she had a point. My dad does stand like that sometimes. Carla and I may be on the other side of the earth but we’re still two girls from Wausa.

Foreign travel as an antidote to fear

Since arriving in Africa, I’ve been so immersed in new people and places that each time I’ve sat down to write I’ve just processed the latest experience and not said a word about overarching matters. Lately I’ve had time to catch my breath and ponder what the heck I’m doing, and I want to download thoughts on one of those global matters: fear and the traveling girl. (OK, more accurately, the older woman traveler).

Before leaving Alaska, I was astounded at the worried comments and sober admonitions I received. “Uganda?” almost everyone repeated with an appraising look. “Do be careful.” It’s hard to say whether people were assessing my sanity or their recall of African geography and events, but I did tell more than one person that Idi Amin has been gone a long time and that Uganda might in fact be an interesting place to visit.

I remember an incident from two years ago when my daughter Hanna and I drove our old Subaru from Anchorage to the east coast. Driving down the Alaska Highway late in August, we pulled into a gas station one afternoon in a little town in northern British Columbia. As the young Canadian man filled the tank, he asked us where we were going. “New York City,” I told him. His eyes flashed concern. “New York? Is it SAFE to go there?” he asked, glancing at Hanna and back at me. “Yes, it’s fine,” I told him, but he looked so dubious that I found myself explaining that millions of people live there and work and raise families and manage to survive. “I guess I’ve just seen the movies about New York,” he said. “It looks so dangerous I wouldn’t dare go there.”

He is right, of course. There are crimes and killings that happen every day in New York. And there are crimes and killings and health disasters and wars in Africa. But staying home in fear of the unknown just doesn’t make sense to me.

In the U.S., I live in the same media environment that everyone else is immersed in, and what pops into mind at the mention of Africa are the tragic things: Sudan and Darfur in particular, the terrible state of things in Zimbabwe, eruptions of violence by rebel soldiers in several regions, and so many refugees that the state of existence for many Africans seems to be in permanent flux.

My point is not that poverty and disease and danger should be ignored. My thought is that restricting knowledge to the headline news and fearing for my own safety is not a reason to stay away, or to stay ignorant, or to be fearful. Not that everyone needs to go traipsing off to remote corners of the world. Some of us have peripatetic feet and some of us are happier at home. As one who is called to wander and see for herself, I can say that the picture is so much bigger than any one of us sees and more multifaceted than the news media report.

What travel can do is inject doses of understanding into issues that seem overwhelming. It’s true that Africa has millions of children who have lost parents to HIV and AIDS. It’s uplifting to see firsthand the people and programs that are actively assisting those children. On my first day at Rakai, a counselor took us to visit a household where both parents had died in the last couple years. The counselor had just learned that the children were living there on their own. We knocked on the door and an eight-year-old boy answered. He talked to us shyly, telling us that his siblings were in school and a neighbor checked on them regularly. What struck me was not just the real face of this “child head of household” but also the counselor’s calm compassion in bringing care to this family of children.

And malaria, so big in the news, is more real than I ever imagined. People are continually getting it. Africans, that is. Like other northerners I’ve bumped into, I’m protected by the anti-malarial tablets I pop every week. Plus I usually sleep under a mosquito net. But for those born on this continent it’s a different story. Four or five people in the wedding group came down with malaria by the end of the two weeks of festivities. And Angela, the teacher I worked with at Rakai, got malaria the second week I was there. And Esther, who walked five kilometers each day to the Manor House workshop and symposium, came down with malaria after those events were over. And these are not impoverished Africans. They are people with more resilience than many others I’ve met, and they all took medicine to help them get over it and get on with life.

And refugees. Riding on the bus from northwestern Uganda back to Kampala after the wedding, we saw one IDP camp after another. (“Internally displaced persons” is the term used in Uganda and elsewhere.) Charlotte, who works with IDPs in Burundi and northern Tanzania through an NGO, told us about the UN-established camps we saw from the bus that morning after leaving Arua. “It started in 1986,” she said of the rebel activity in northern Uganda. “People run for shelter in schools or churches or wherever they can be safe.”

With so much suffering, it is surprising how much hope is held by so many people. Samuel, who I met in Kenya, showed me the gardens where he and two Manor House interns teach agricultural methods to farmers in the region who are beset by periodic droughts. Samuel and his wife Peris also work with women affected by HIV, teaching them gardening so they can meet their basic food needs and vocational skills so they can earn an income. Samuel and Peris have turned their living room into a resource center for their program, and they live with their two children in less space. In the yard outside, a big pile of bricks marks the place where they plan to expand their program space. They do not yet have money to build an expansion, but they have complete faith that it will happen.

I’m finding that tragedy is present in profound ways in Africa, but suffering is not the only reality. Resilience is here too, and kindness, and determination. In Uganda and Kenya I found such an entrepreneurial spirit and so much energy for building lives and livelihoods. Ugandans are especially receptive to visitors and often ask, “How do you find my country?” In Kenya I constantly heard Karibu! (welcome). In South Africa I’m still getting the feel for things. The infrastructure is leap years ahead of most countries to the north, but the political climate is testier.

As for the dangers that can beset a traveler, anyone who has experienced a theft or a mugging or a miserable experience with lodging or transportation knows that travel (whether foreign or domestic) is not always fun. If one is lucky enough to avoid serious misfortune, there is still the uncertainty of traveling where the language is unfamiliar and the cues (social, physical, or whatever) are even more undecipherable. When you can’t interpret words or faces or road signs, finding the way through a city or a situation can be difficult.

I follow my daughters’ instructions to not walk alone after dark and I take other basic precautions. I seek guidance from locals and hear their protectiveness, like the hotel staff in Kampala who told Dad and Don and my brother and me, before we exchanged our American dollars for Ugandan shillings, “Watch out, there are thieves everywhere.” And I file away Carla’s safeguards, like never leaving a car parked on the street in this city. But my idea of travel is not exactly the mainstream model. I choose safety but not luxury, and I’ll take adventure and economy over comfort and speed. I travel to learn more than anything else.

Most of all I follow my instincts about what to do and what not to do. A solo traveler has to be in tune with herself as well as the world around her, not just for safety but for the fullest experience. Traveling solo at 18 was a great introduction to the world. Traveling at 53 is even better. I get fewer passes and more respect, and I love how everyone from Kampala to Kitale to Johannesburg calls me Mama.

It is sad that people in the U.S. hear the worst about Africa and often fear the rest. The fact is, what I’ve experienced here is warmth, community spirit, human kindness, and a desire to make life better. Being here for this blink of time brings me close to what I regard as important – living consciously, having a real idea of how we are connected to each other, and seeing how each of us matters.

OK, enough musing! Tomorrow Carla and I leave for Swaziland and KwaZulu province. So now we need to pack for the road. But one more thing! October 8 is coming soon and I may be far removed from an internet connection so here’s an early HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM! 76 – woohoo!

A village in Africa called India

We just returned from a road trip to Sekhukuneland, a part of Limpopo Province, where we took Romeo and his Aunt Portia to see some of their family. We stayed with Romeo’s grandmother Abina, a Pedi woman in her 80s (or somewhere thereabouts, she doesn’t know her exact age). Carla and Abina’s daughter Pinky were business partners for several years, so Carla has known Abina for a long time. When Pinky died seven years ago, they were not quite finished building a house for Abina. So Carla finished the house which Pinky had designed with generous living space to accommodate the whole family and extra big courtyards and a long porch with arched, open windows. Pinky knew her mom loved living outdoors, and that’s where we found Abina the afternoon we pulled up: on her knees in the courtyard in front of her house, smoothing out a fresh layer of dung flooring to dry under the brazen sun. She has no phone so we couldn't let her know we were coming, but it seemed she had prepared for our arrival.

The village where Abina lives is called India, and the Pedi people in the area are a subdivision of the Northern Sotho tribe. India is a four-hour drive north of Johannesburg through big, open country with rolling hills and long vistas – the “high veld.” Since it’s just past winter and still early in spring, everything is dry and brown except the occasional irrigated fields.

Abina (pronounced “Ah-BEE-na”) shares her house with her daughter Anna and three grandchildren: seven-year-old Baleseng (“Bally-sing”), two-year-old Pinky, and one-year-old Ethan. Baleseng and little Pinky are Portia’s daughters, and Ethan is Romeo’s little brother. So Great Grandmother Abina and Grandmother Anna oversee a very youthful household in their home village, while Romeo lives in Soweto with his mom Tebatso who works with Carla selling Zulu baskets at a marketplace in Johannesburg.

Don’t worry about keeping all these names and relationships straight! It’s easier just to think of everybody as family, which is what Carla and I have been doing since our childhood in Wausa (where my Grandfather David and Carla’s Grandmother Elsie were brother and sister, and almost everyone in our midst was some kind of relative). Small towns in rural Africa are not so different from small towns in rural America, except maybe more like the rural Nebraska of my parents’ upbringing than my own. Every time I see an African child rolling a tire rim along with a stick, I remember my dad telling me that he did the same thing as a child inventing his own toys.

Carla has been to India many times over the years. She tried to prepare me but some things you just have to experience. Like darkness when it gets dark, and no water tap to turn on, and sitting on the porch rather than inside the house to catch what little breeze might temper the mid-day heat. I’ve been seeing these things for months now but an arm’s length away. I remember sitting in the bus riding back from Marie and Christian’s wedding in northwestern Uganda and reaching the outskirts of Kampala just as the sun was setting. The bus slowed to a crawl in the mess of city traffic just as the sky darkened and the houses and shops and stalls lining the streets lit up with candles. The activity didn’t diminish, just the daylight, as people still filled the streets and the housefronts. I’ve also seen countless people – of all ages, in all parts of Uganda and Kenya and now rural South Africa – crowded around pumps filling big, plastic, yellow (and sometimes red or blue) jerry cans. And I’ve seen women and children carrying these jugs of water on their heads, and men riding bicycles transporting more jerry cans than you’d think could fit on one bike frame.

So it’s about time I got to live some of these things myself. A few days give only a bit of an idea, but some idea is better than none.

Carla says Abina used to have a fire going most of the time in the firehouse off the side courtyard, but now she and Anna have an electric burner for cooking food. We ate cabbage and butternut squash and lots of mealie pap, the South African maize equivalent of Kenyan ugali and Ugandan posho, with a gravy made of tomatoes. Everyone sits around the courtyard to eat, and sometimes a goat walks through, finds a banana peel on the ground, and saunters out munching.

The household’s water supply was really low, so on the third day Baleseng and Romeo borrowed eight 25-liter jugs from a neighbor, and Carla drove us to the water pump (about a kilometer away) to fill the jugs. Abina, whose husband died a long time ago, used to pay a local girl to bring water periodically but now she doesn’t have enough money. Since Anna moved to India from Soweto six months ago, she has been getting the water and pushing it back in a wheelbarrow, but her hips have been bothering her lately. Carla and I and Portia and Romeo and Baleseng made a good team in carrying two loads of water – 400 liters – from the back end of Carla’s van through the courtyard and into the kitchen house where we dumped jug after jug of water into large barrels, where Anna scoops it out for cooking and washing. Ethan and Pinky, who are always fetching things for their elders, kept picking up the empty jugs and hoisting them around to help.

While we were there with a vehicle, we drove Abina to see two nieces and a grand niece and a great grand niece who live too far away to reach on foot, so Abina got to visit family and we all saw more of the valley. One day we left Portia to visit a cousin and then Carla and I and the two seven-year-olds drove back into the valley where an uncle lives by himself. He was a tall, wiry man who happily took the two naatjies (tangerines) that Baleseng gave him and let me take his photo. Then Carla drove us places where no road was visible to my eye but we found what she was looking for: a pump out in the boonies where one person can take a “shower” while someone else pumps. When we got back to Aunt Duce’s house I showed her the photo of her brother and she laughed like it was hilarious to see him.

India sits on one side of a valley where one ridge rises just behind the house and another ridge of foothills faces the house from across the wide stretch of flat land. In the evenings, we ate outside in the courtyard just as stars popped out above the ridgelines. When supper was done, Anna lit candles, and the little ones, especially Pinky, kept close by Abina’s side.

On our last day there we got up extra early to take Abina to the doctor in a nearby town. The clinic does not take appointments so people just line up and wait to see the doctor on a first-come, first-served basis. We got there about half past six on a morning that had turned cool and windy. A few people were already sitting there outside the gate, wrapped in blankets. By the time the doors opened at 8 there were about thirty people, old and young, moms with babies, and Carla and Portia and me with Abina, who waited patiently for her turn. Portia went in with her grandmother and later told Carla and me what the doctor said (Portia speaks some English as well as her mother tongue, Abina speaks only Pedi, and Carla and I speak only English).

When we left India yesterday morning we had two more passengers. We brought Ethan and Pinky back to be with their mothers, stopping first at the new SuperSpar store near India to buy some nappies (pampers) so that we wouldn’t have any accidents in the car, then driving everyone to Soweto, the huge township on the southwest edge of Jo’burg.

Now Carla and I are back in her garden flat in a neighborhood that could be mistaken for Phoenix or L.A. We each stood under a hot shower last night and today we had salads for lunch and herbal tea. I miss the laughing and crying of Ethan and Pinky, the low voices of Abina and Anna, and the cousinly banter of Baleseng and Romeo playing with the balloons from Carla and blowing bubbles at their little siblings. And I wonder how Abina will do getting around with her aching kidney and sore knee, and how she will manage without the two little ones at her side.

Another Africa

I’ve been in South Africa for eight days now. Several borders and a couple weeks ago, I was still sitting in Entebbe taking a deliberate interlude, sipping a chocolate milkshake on the lawn and telling yet another inquiring waiter at the Botanical Beach Hotel, “They’ve gone back to New York, it’s just me here now.” Then I checked out and pulled my suitcase a kilometer or two down the dirt road to a more affordable place: a little, round, thatch-roofed banda tucked away in the Uganda Wildlife Education Center, which is a refuge for wildlife saved from various parts of Africa. My cottage had a gas cooker so I made my own tea, and there were two twin-size beds which made me wish my friend Marybeth were sharing the interlude with me. She would love seeing all of my animal neighbors! At night I fell asleep to strange guttural sounds, and one morning I looked out at two ostriches walking by. On the weekend I took a matatu into Kampala and stayed the night with Charlotte. How I love how she calls me Mom! She and Malko and I went to a lively church service the next morning before driving back to Entebbe, where the three of us walked all through the refuge to see the chimpanzees, rhinos, vervet monkeys, zebras, crested cranes, and one sleepy lion.

James from the wildlife refuge drove me to the Entebbe airport in 3 a.m. darkness and I flew to Nairobi and then to Johannesburg in one brief morning. Flying is efficient, but travel by road or by water is better for keeping heart and mind together. I’ve left so many hopes and friends and possibilities trailing behind me and I don’t know if that is kind or cruel. I am not responsible for the whole world but I am responsible for me. And I want to make that count.

So here I am in South Africa feeling completely at home with my cousin Carla but not yet at ease in this country that actually was home for me – 35 years ago. I lived here as an exchange student in 1972-73 when apartheid ruled and injustice was everywhere. Carla moved here in 1994 just before the historic election, which I witnessed from the states in newspaper stories about Mandela and photos of people lined up for miles to cast their first-ever vote.

I’ve wanted to return to South Africa for so long, and being welcomed by my childhood buddy is almost miraculous. But I didn’t expect the wild mix of emotions I’ve experienced since landing here last week. Initially I was stunned at the sight of so many white people, and so many nice cars – driven by both white South Africans and black South Africans – swooshing along on wide boulevards, and the absence of potholes, and manicured neighborhoods. I had a momentary emotional arrest just walking into a grocery store with Carla. It was a huge place with wide aisles and rows and rows of merchandise and bright lights that caught me like a deer in headlights (does a deer ever fight back tears?).

The wealth overwhelms me. It’s not easy reconciling the South Africa I am seeing around me and the Africa I’ve been experiencing in the last few months. First world/third world relationships are hard to rectify.

The other big set of differences – the distinctions between apartheid-era South Africa and contemporary South Africa – are stunning in other ways, hugely positive but with rough edges like crime and safety, issues that are faced by all countries of the world but did not confront South Africa in the same way when it was a police state. When I came here as an exchange student in 1972, apartheid ruled everything. Books were censored, people were banned, and benches in parks were labeled “For whites only.” Black South Africans who worked in Jo’burg either lived in servants’ quarters on white property or rode the nightly train back to Soweto or some other designated township. Schools, churches, hospitals were all separated by race, and the quality of education and care was entirely skewed.

One evening last week I went with Carla to a school here in Johannesburg to see Romeo perform in a student musical. Romeo is a 7-year-old black kid who has cerebral palsy, and Carla has helped raise him since he was born. In his classroom beforehand, Romeo and a bunch of other kids in costumes were hopping around with excitement. That all seemed normal to me. But later, in the auditorium, when the lights were dimmed and the curtains opened and kids of all colors came out on the stage, my heart did a little jump and I thought, wait a minute, where am I, is this…South Africa? I was glad it was dark in there because the tears that I’d felt rising at several odd times in those first few days just finally rolled out.

That program was so fun! All the kids – primary through middle school – had parts in a “round the world to 2010” program that was done in English and Afrikaans and pop songs and folk songs. Four girls in wheelchairs danced to Edelweiss, a bunch of boys did an African gumboot dance, and a large group of cowboys and cowgirls did a square dance when they got to the American portion, which also featured Oprah, Tom Cruise, Dolly Parton, and Paris Hilton accompanied by a guard. A troupe of Michael Jacksons performed, Elvis sang his hound dog song, and Oprah interviewed a boy dressed as the Statue of Liberty, who sang “I’ll do it my way.” Then a bunch of Marines marched in.

The best part was watching Romeo, wearing his hat and Bavarian lederhosen, dancing the folk dance he had practiced with Carla and looking perfectly at home on a stage filled with kids of all description.

So it’s a new country to get to know. I hardly recognize it. But staying with Carla feels as natural as being back in Wausa together. Her garden flat looks out to beds of flowers and vegetables surrounded by trees, and we hang clothes on the line outside to dry. But this is definitely not Kansas anymore. Or Nebraska! Nor is it quite the land that I still hope it becomes. Romeo and a whole generation may have been born after the end of apartheid, but the remnants of an old system don’t disappear overnight. And making sense of the still-strange blend of riches and crimes and cultural diversity that characterize this beautiful country may take a while.

I’d be leaving for JFK this week, according to my original schedule, and back in Alaska next week. But instead I’m staying on for October and November and some of December. Carla and I have been talking nonstop and we’ve hardly begun. There’s lots we have to do. I need to have more time in Uganda too. So a few more months will be a start.

Crossing the border into...September?

How did it get to be September already? Equator weather confuses me. The minor changes in temperature seem like variations in an eternal summer. Yesterday, in the early morning Kitale air, David the Manor House driver had the heater going in the van as he drove me one last time to town. As the bus pulled out, I noticed that all the other passengers were wearing coats and I was the only one wearing only a short-sleeved shirt. Margaret, the head caterer at Manor House, told me that if I came back in December or January it would be hot and dusty. Not fresh and wet like a morning after a night of rain.

Tanzania will have to wait til another year or lifetime. After working like crazy to finish a newsletter for Manor House, I was finally booking a departure when my beloved Heather and Hanna emailed to say they had finished their teaching and filming a week early and were ready to head back to the U.S. So together we birthed Plan B: to converge back in Uganda, where we started two months ago. H & H flew from Dar es Salaam yesterday and I took the slower, cheaper, funner, and only way I know to get here in one day from western Kenya. A series of matatus got me here before sundown: Kitale --> Bungoma --> Malaba --> Kampala -->Entebbe. Plus a final ride on a mini-bike boda. I rode on the back (wearing my daypack) while the driver managed to keep my suitcase upright in front of his body, and he dropped me at our meeting point, a hotel near the airport where we can enjoy a couple days together.

So I found myself crossing the border at the same spot where I passed four weeks ago, and riding in the back seat with a young Kenyan going to Kampala to start school on Monday at Makerere University, sharing biscuits and bananas from my snack bag and from the vendors, and moving slowly through the crazy Kampala traffic, then so relieved to get to the shore of Lake Victoria while it was still the first day of September. H & H were here waiting for me and now we're enjoying a pause. Soon they are going and I am staying.

Last week I found out what happens when I don't get to the internet for several days. Friends start conversing on my blog! Maybe that's another reason I've come here - to connect people at home! I hope all of you who are reading my blog but not posting comments are at least READING the comments. And because I have internet access RIGHT IN MY ROOM at this moment and I want to post this note before H & H get back with our milkshakes, I'm going to respond to my commenters right here in public. Regarding the size of the world, it seems huge when you're flying from that side of the planet to this side, even though that's trotting at jet speed. It seems small once you land, anywhere, because life is here, everywhere, in both its familiar and unfamiliar guises, and it becomes shockingly obvious that we are all breathing the same air and sharing a slice of the same experience.

MY question is, how big is the world for those who live in the towns around here where travel happens by foot (or matatu), and you go only as far as you can walk, and your food feeds you as long as it's coming out of the ground, and your kids are in school now but you don't know if they will be able to continue? Or you got a bachelor's degree in social work (like the guy next to me on my last day at Royal Cybercafé) and you're still looking for work two years later? I know imagination stretches way beyond physical boundaries but how far is that? I feel like a walking lightning rod for imaginations because so many people have a deep wish to go to America and they feel one step closer when one of us shows up on their doorstep. Is the world small enough for some of them to make such a journey? I tell them how far and how expensive it is but I can only wonder how did I get here and what am I going to do about the smallness that I experience?

Abrupt subject change (but also an answer to a post by one of my favorite redheads): I didn't even notice the altitude, but then I didn't start running in Kenya until my second week there so I think my lungs had adjusted. But I also know there's a big difference between 6,000 feet and 8,000 feet. When I used to run Santa Fe trails on my visits to Marie, my running was seriously impaired by that thin mountain air (and I was never there long enough to acclimatize).

Here's something I want to tell Don and all other running enthusiasts. Turns out I WAS in Kenya running territory but didn't know it until my very last morning. I was not out there trotting along but sitting beside David going to catch that first matatu early yesterday morning when I suddenly saw a sleek, fast runner approaching - unmistakably a strong runner, with the relaxed body that belies a fast pace - and then another runner, and another. "Yeah," David said, "this is the part of Kenya that produces lots of runners." He said they "practice" most mornings, with a trainer, running the entire length of this hilly dirt road, the very one that I've been enjoying, east to the edge of town then back to some point farther west toward Mt. Elgon (my feet haven't gone more than a few kilometers in that direction). He said there are three groups - the one around here, one in West Pokot (north of here) and one south a ways - and they get together and compete, and of course many compete elsewhere in the world. "Some of them get sponsors," David said, "and they come back and buy big cars." Lightning rods come in all nationalities.

I have to finish a vanilla milkshake now. Thank you everyone for reading and posting! And I've loved getting your emails!

Gift of a week

Staying in one place and seeing the rhythm of life at Manor House has been a bonus. That may be a strange revelation for a traveler who has not exactly been rushing around. For two months now I’ve been acting less like a tourist than a relative who arrives and just moves in, or a migrant worker who finds a fitting job and claims it. Whatever I am, I’m grateful to have a week to finish some writing, to witness students going about their days, and to visit people I met during the conference who live here in Trans-Nzoia district.

The students start their day early. Some are down at the barns below the soccer field by 6:30 a.m., and later I see them in the classrooms or the gardens or the agra-forest area. Many have just returned from their three-month “attachments” – internships back in their communities or with agricultural NGOs. I’ve learned that the two-year certificate program is 40% theoretical and 60% practical, a combination that works very well.

My days have another kind of rhythm. Monday I spent with Esther and met her husband and two children. Esther is a graduate of the Manor House program and wants to establish a mini-center to train other farmers in biointensive agriculture. We decided to meet at the cybercafé and from there, she said, it would be just five minutes to her house. Apparently that’s in African time. But getting there was a treat. For the first leg we walked across a big open area and past some old rail tracks, then on a dirt route between stalls of vendors that you don’t see if you’re buzzing through town by car. That brought us close to the edge of Kitale town where taxis sit and wait. The driver Esther approached quoted a ridiculously high price (because of me, the muzungu) so I suggested we go by boda boda. So that’s how we traveled the last few kilometers. It was cheap, it was fun, and it was air conditioned. These boda bodas are not motorized mini-bikes like those back in Kampala. Here in Kitale a boda boda is a bicycle, with a big cushioned pad over the rear tire where a passenger sits and relaxes while the rider pedals like crazy up and down long hills.

Walking a kilometer or so down a dirt road after hopping off the bicycle bodas, we reached the quarter acre of land where Esther and her husband built their house just this past year. In front of the house is a large maize garden, and behind the house is a vegetable garden, carefully double dug and planted with sukuma wiki (kale) and onions and flower borders. We ate the delicious lunch Esther had made, and then we walked around her garden and took photos and talked agricultural talk. Kids from the neighborhood joined Esther’s nine-year-old Faith, who wore a Seattle Seahawks T-shirt, and four-year old Ian who ran back and forth in shyness and excitement.

Tuesday I visited Samuel’s farm but I’ll write about it later because there is only so much my heart can process at once. Wednesday I stayed “home” to get underway with the writing for Manor House. Yesterday a few details and a couple visitors punctuated my writing time, then I went into town with Emmanuel who is back from Nairobi, but we discovered that the internet was down (Kenya-wide, they told us) so we couldn’t send or receive any email. That part of the week’s pattern was already familiar.

I am back to running right at sunrise after several “lazy” mornings when I didn’t get out til 7 or so. It’s barely light at 6:30 a.m. but intensely bright by 7:30. The strange equator sun! Such a distant cousin to the northern latitude sun with its long, slow angle to the horizon. I’ve branched out from the soccer field and now run down the lane and out to the road. It’s fun to run a ways on that main dirt road and see people starting their day, on foot and on bicycle and occasionally by donkey cart or matatu.

The matatus – taxi vans – I first learned about when my daughter Heather lived in Kenya. Heather’s Nairobi mom owned one, in addition to her job with an eye care NGO. But experiencing a matatu ride is another “you haven’t lived until you’ve done it” thing. It costs 50 bob (that’s less than a U.S. dollar, let’s see, about 78 cents) for a matatu ride from Manor House into town. The ride takes fifteen minutes but the wait may be an hour or more. To maximize his income, the driver fits in as many people as possible, and that’s more than I previously imagined. Everyone squeezes even tighter to make room for one more person. Then you bump along together. As the guy next to me on one ride said, smiling, “This is Africa.”

The climate here, at least at this time of year, is incredibly nice. According to Don, who googled Kitale’s altitude for me from his computer in Kodiak, this part of Kenya is 6,200 feet above sea level. That would account for the cool mornings that lead into the deliciously warm afternoons followed by the early evening thunderclouds that build, drop rain, then disappear before the next sunrise.

It’s wet season now, a little early some people say. In fact, the rains have been so torrential not far from here that several people died when their homes were washed away. Landslides just west of us, drought to the north. This too is Africa.

A note to Jan about driving: You’re quite right about the clutch pedal. It does remain on the left, even in cars with the steering wheel on the right. Thank goodness for that! It’s surprisingly easy to steer on the right side of the car and drive on the left side of the road even after a lifetime of doing otherwise. But if the clutch and brake and gas pedals got changed around…Yikes! We would have disappeared into a pothole for sure.