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.