manliness, humility and the El Paso special

noon in Pecos texas: 100 degrees and rising. i am off the bike after 210 miles of hot riding, walking into Lucia's Mexican Food, looking like biker trash in leather chaps, sweaty t-shirt and a few days' greasy stubble. the locals eye me as i eye them; no tables are free. taking this as a good sign (for the food), i ask a red-faced, square-jawed man sitting by himself if i can share his table, and he motions me in.

he's wearing a red plaid work shirt, holding a smart phone in one thick hand, his blond hair cut in a military square. i am not much for company: the last hot hundred miles or so i've just been dreaming of a good meal and a quiet corner to read my sci-fi novel, but this appears to be the one open, promising-looking place to eat in town, so i ease with him out of the stereotypes my appearance has me inhabiting, inviting him to pass out of his too. he is politely surprised that i've come 400 miles this morning, then genuinely so to hear i was in north dakota not long ago. i tell him the trip is somewhere between medical practicality, a graduation present to myself and simple wanderlust, and he seems to take that in stride, moreso when i explain i've just come from my grandparents' house in Stephenville.

Rick is an oil field worker laying pipeline from Pecos to Carlsbad, working 12 hour days six days a week, just come from church this Sunday, his day off. I borrow the menu from him as the waitress comes, ordering a water, and by the time she's returned he orders the Pancho Villa burrito plate; i get the El Paso special. A comment about the blazing west Texas weather compared to North Dakota leads him into stories of the day it snowed in Arizona at bullfighting school, then a well-told tale of him getting tossed 20 feet in the air by a bull, sandwiched by comments that he was a wild kid, ready to get rowdy at the drop of a hat. a split disc in his back keeps him from that now, as does a shoulder hurt in the marines. He joined straight out of high school, spent time in Okinawa and was prevented from going to the first Gulf war with his squadron because of his injury, something he's never quite gotten over. "It was like losing family," he says, blue eyes boring into me for a moment, hands turning over his phone. "I'd been with those guys for three years, through training, dealing with Noriega in Panama." He presses the phone to the table. "Then they decide to fix me just as we're going to war."

Rick's been in oil ever since, i learn as waitress sets down our food. the El Paso Special is a tamale, cheese enchilada and taco on a bed of rice and greens; his Green Burrito plate is two unadorned beef burritos in a pool of chile verde. as we eat, Rick tells me he worked near home in Hillsboro Texas for five or six years, then natural gas prices fell, and his work got moved out here, 6.5 hours away. he gets home about once a month, and though he doesn't say it, I can see he misses his family. He tells me his wife is working on buying a new home for them, and a social platitude from me about the wife spending his hard-earned money has him suddenly looking serious. I try not to look surprised as his eyes begin watering, and he tells me that actually they have passed through some hard times. it comes out that money was not always as good as it is now, that he had been spending more than they were making, and his wife, secretary at the church, had started taking money from the church to supplement their income--he pauses here to wipe his eyes and steady his voice. Rick felt partially responsible for this, and tears come again as he describes her confessing what she did in front of the whole congregation--and how the church had forgiven her, how one man had even come and washed her feet.

And I see then the other side of the Texas that has often seemed, in the last few days here, conservative, ideological, uncompassionate, backwards: i see the solid values of this man, as unafraid to cry in front of a stranger as to risk death for his country, passionate about forgiveness and open communication like he is driven to work long days to give his family a good life. Rick said he knew I'd just been repeating a common expression in mentioning his wife spending money, but that it hadn't been easy to admit his part in the stereotypical wife overspending, that they'd had a real struggle learning to communicate again, learning forgiveness for each other, getting it from their church.

our relationship shifted then, for a second, him becoming more like a father than an equal. he told me to be careful in choosing a wife I could talk to, who shared my values. then he apologized for getting emotional, and I thanked him for being honest and giving me that bit of wisdom.

I have been privileged a few times in my life to hear other people's life stories, in their own words. Earlier this spring, I spent five hours talking with 'Grandpa Tom' about his colorful, roller-coaster life, and writing up a version of his story as part of a class on ethnographic methods[1]. A few years ago, sitting with Mama Anderson in a Masaka hospital while she recovered from a near-fatal HIV-aggravated bout of illness, she told me her tumultuous story, from a deprived childhood to living as a positive, single refugee mother of two. When I left university in 2004, i felt i had as much or more to learn from other people than from any books i had or would read--and i still feel, after two years of grad school reading (mainly) good books, that life stories are irreplacable gems, laden with wisdom you won't find elsewhere, if you are ready to listen. The vulnerability of trusting a stranger with difficult parts of your life is not something i expected from a tough-looking oilfield guy sharing a table with me in Pecos, Texas, but Rick did not hold back from me, going so far (which is far, for a normatively masculine military man) as to cry, and talk about lessons he's learned in humility. for the space of our plates, maybe 45 minutes, we are more than strangers, more than friends: we get back to being two human beings, different in many ways but honest with our experiences of life, with no more investment in each other or the conversation than good will. if only all my interactions could be like this.

the waitress came with our checks, and i thanked him as we stood up, shaking hands, becoming again two american men with awkward, masculine ways of carrying ourselves. he apologized again for talking so much, i thanked him for it, then he insisted on paying my bill, a gesture that felt heavy with cultural meaning. i walked back out to the bike bemused, feeling that something much bigger than a little table talk had passed between us, something much better than my sci-fi book and i might have shared at a table in the corner. Rick struck me as everything that is good about pride, the military, nationalism, conservatism and Christian faith--things i don't always see easily. i saw them in him, a stranger, and was humbled. as i pulled my bike up to the stop sign, he was stepping out of the cafe, and we waved a final time, two human beings appreciating each other, and letting go.

[1] i don't know if i will ever do long-term anthropological fieldwork, but i will admit i'm in love with the method: spending time with people, learning from them about their lives, and writing in a way that their particular, culturally-situated knowledge can be shared by a broader audience.

rest stop outside van horn texas, 2pm

brain freeze is better than body meltdown.

life of simplicity, life of complication

there is something sweet and innocent in being exhausted.

after a long, hot, 500-mile 3-state day on the motorcycle, i've come to rest south of Amarillo, Texas. lying here, watching stars out my tent window, feeling a cool breeze pass through Palo Duro canyon, i feel life is simple.

life is simple. isn't it?

i don't always feel this way--maybe this simple good feeling i'm having, lying alone in a tent on a quiet night, surrounded only by bird and cricketsong, is what people are seeking when they go on vacation, because normal life is too complicated, too stressful, too busy. in response, we seek the simple.

but i think we also seek the opposite. don't we? i had a late night last night; friends convinced me to stay one more day in Boulder, so that i could go with them to what has become a weekly ritual: Wednesday night karaoke at (slightly divey) Catacombs bar downtown. it was one of those special nights, when good songs are sung, people are happy, friends meet. the whole day was good for me--i spent it with some of my best friends, sitting, eating, walking, biking, talking, from ten am to 9 pm when karaoke started. just that simple sharing of thoughts, along with food and sunshine, was all that i had needed to really feel good. but i bring you to the catacombs of my last night's memory because, while i think it's true that we all desire the simple, i think we nevertheless often seek complication.

think about it: why do we love hearing stories, in which everything gets complicated/dramatic/dangerous? why get ourselves involved in movies, novels, lengthy television series? because we love it when things get messy--we feel this makes life interesting. in Uganda, i used to think that, in lieu of lots of TV to bring dramatic stories, people tended to make their own lives more dramatic--as well as revel in the act of gossiping [1]. take karaoke for instance [2]. people at karaoke bars, at least at Catacombs, don't sing the simple songs they love, don't "dance like no one's watching," don't applaud purely based on apprecation--they sing outdated and somewhat foolish songs, to elicit a laugh or shock of recognition on hearing a good, forgotten song. if they dance, it is done hyper-conscious of the audience watching, and sometimes becomes a mockery of what dancing should look like, dancing only made possible by the implied hipster dismissal of such dancing, etc. applause too is not just applause--at least at Catacombs, it varies based on friendship/loyalty to the singer, appreciation for the choice of song, and overall performance (theatrics, ad libs, spontaneity, back-up dancers/singers, etc.) not just how well it was sung [3].

and this is all, of course, complicated by the pleasures and pains of human relationships: friends in different stages of friendliness or disagreement, people seeking new friends or sexual partners, even strategic relationships with the karaoke DJ (my friends and I have our suspicions about the Catacombs DJ...) to ensure regular rotation or even getting bumped up in the cue--there is a sense that success in all this rides on how well one does behind the mic (as well as who one dances and applauds to, and how much).

since it's a bar, the ace of all complications is also involved: courtship. guys and girls of a 20something age are dancing together in a dark room drinking cheap drinks: this is a recipe for complication. and yet, simplicity be damned, we seek this too, right? who doesn't want the complicated magic of a sexual/romantic/life partner, unless they've just had an overdose of it? who wouldn't do all kinds of outlandish things--like dress and shape their bodies the ways girls are expected to, or do the foolish manhood-proving things guys feel they're expected to? and this is where the notion that we all seek the simple gets complicated. or at least, this is where we see it's not a simple/complicated either/or. simple and true though it seems to say that all we want is a simple life , our actions in daily life, no less than courtship, show something different. when has it ever been as simple as the Fonz or Snoop Dogg snapping their fingers to get chicks? so dreams of slow days in Tahiti and less stress be damned, we also seek complication.

is it that we feel our lives are boring, too simple, not stimulating, not satisfying... so we seek complication, for its own sake?

maybe sometimes this is the case--but i think simplicity and complication are often more intimately linked than this. think about it: why do we go to the ridiculous lengths we do in order to find mates (other animals do this too, note)? because simple walking up and requesting sexual and/or lifetime favors from someone else is unlikely to work [4]--so we do all the things that might make this work, in our particular social and animal contexts. i think in many cases when we seek complication, we are actually seeking satisfactions of simple needs or wants we have, and have not gotten. our simple desires get complicated because we are trying more and more complex ways of fulfilling them, when simple ways don't work (or we are not courageous enough to try the simple ways).

let's back off from courtship and its extreme complications for a second, and think about the gaining of friends/respect. this seems to be one of the things thats going on in karaoke--people are performing hoping to be liked by those who are listening, but instead of just singing a song they like, they sing a phil collins song they half-like and half think is funny for how dated it is, and their dance moves are also somewhere between purely inspired by the music adn mockery of the times in which that music was popular--sarcastic tongue-in-cheekery for the sake of simple acceptance and approval, or sex appeal. thus do we complicate our actions to seek something we are not otherwise getting. in other cases, maybe we are just not brave enough to do it the simple way: rather than just talk to someone who looks cool, we try and impress them through our karaoke skills [5].

so let me revise my own thoughts to say i think there are two or three things going on, when we seem to think we seek simplicity, but actually seek complication. one might be seeking complication for its own sake--though you could argue in loving stories and dramas, what we are doing is seeking vicarious fulfillment of needs we can't get simply in real life. another, maybe more common, reason to seek complexity is that we turn to it only when we can't get what we want simply--while the need or want in question is itself simple, for whatever reason, satisfying it is not (kids [especially of divorced parents] who go to great unconscious lengths to win their approval might be an example of this--become an astronaut to be sure your parents will love you).

deeper than this, i think there is a third reason: our difficulty sometimes appreciating simple good things. this is a difficulty that makes us, for instance, want to read a good novel while lying on the beach, instead of just lying on the beach. or makes us want to watch TV or surf the internet while we eat, instead of just appreciating our food. or want more friends when we already have good ones we could know deeper and appreciate more. more sauces on our tasty burger or fries. more features on our phones than we'll ever use. more, not better.

so at the end of all this, a return to the simple: maybe we are making things complicated just for the sake of simple needs and wants--but maybe there's a simpler way to get them. if all i'm seeking on this warm summer's evening in palo duro campground is peace and relaxation, why read a book or watch a movie on my iPhone? why not just lay here and breathe deep til sleep comes? maybe there are simpler ways to get to a lot of the simple things we want--including that ace of complication, human relations. one of these simple ways, i think, is cultivating appreciation: taking time to notice where you are, what you have, to find the good in that before you run seeking an imagined good somewhere else. breathe for a second, right where you are, and notice everything that's good. i bet there's a lot more than you were conscious of, down to the joy of functioning hands and the peace of not fearing armed assault.

in the end, there is one simple need that we all want, which is calling me: sleep. isn't it lovely to have a safe place to sleep at night? think about this next time you drift off. good night.

[1]: is this a trace of Christianity's original sin, that we are sometimes just driven to say something troublesome, do something wrong, complicate something just for the sake of doing so? i think fundamental ethical perspectives ride the answer--that is, between those who feel there is evil, people who choose the less-good/bad for its own sake, and others who feel no one would ever consciously choose the less-good/bad, and that all apparent evil is only confusion on the part of those doing it. is there evil, or only misunderstanding?

[2]: this is not the downplay the manifold variances observed between and among karaoke bars and boxes both nationally and internationally--simply to say that a number exhibit the complex characteristics witnessed weekly at Catacombs

[3]: example: a few weeks ago, a staid-looking young lady in thick glasses and a modest dress got up and stone-faced a version of Snoop Dogg's 'Gin and Juice,' including stressed "bee-otch"es; the audience loved it because the match was so comedic, not because she rapped it particularly well

[4]: even the socially-dramatized Fonz/Snoop Dogg power of the the dry-run pickup (nanpa in Japanese) is actually loaded with expectations: you have to be the cultural superhero of the Fonz of Snoop Dogg, or be playing something close to them, to do this at all. For women, in the heteronormative sphere we are used to seeing such dramatizations played out, you have to have all the right kinds of beauty, the right mix of sensuality, purity and power, to attract such a superhero, or have the confidence to take him straight-out. and it pains me that such unlikely dramas play out in everyday lives with feelings of inadequacy, years spent chasing ephemeral goals, much pain and suffering for the sake of something that never had to be that complicated. some churches get this done quick and easy right--what would life be like then?

[5]: A much different example of this is an electronics engineer i tutored in Japan for a few months. deeply concerned with what was going on East Timor, he felt he wanted to do something, but first needed to make his English better to be able to do something there--and then probably to use English to learn their native language, and also to get a better position in his company so he had enough money to take time off to do something, and also this, and that... to my thinking, he might simple have organized a teach-in or fundraiser in his own time, with the skills he had at hand. i had this same hitch in my thinking for a few years, thinking i wasn't ready to go do work like i did in Uganda, that i didn't know enough and hadn't developed myself enough to do it well--eventually, i just decided i would have to do it as i was, half-ready. maybe we are never more than half-ready; we only have 70 years to get this all done, if we're lucky. really, we only have today.

life and chicks

i want you to look at this picture for a minute. just look at it.

what do you see here? the chick in front is less than 30 hours old: i picked her and 149 others up from the Regent, North Dakota post office the morning this picture was taken, packed like fluffy sardines in two holey boxes, shipped on hatching from Mt. Pleasant, Illinois. she is ostensibly one of the dumbest animals out there: not only the hard-wired and notoriously stupid chicken species, but a totally inexperienced one, running purely off instinct.

is that what you see in her gaze--mechanistic instinct, survival only, the famed avian stupidity? i do not dispute these are there; in fact, in taking care of these chicks over the next week, i ascertained they are in fact quite unreflective creatures. but to me there is something more here, looking out of these black eyes, inhabiting every newborn in that converted watermelon box. maybe this is because i held them, watched their baby feathers grow bigger each day, heard their chorus of chirps in the morning as i opened the coop door to bring water and food. but i think this newborn's gaze is eloquent: there is a curiosity here, an innocent wonder, that says much more than we usually do about chickens, about animals (non-human animals, that is) in general. when i look in this hen's eyes, i feel that my gaze is met, returned, by another life--recognize in it the same force that animates me.

maybe i'm anthropomorphizing. it might be easy to look at this being from a distance, from the overheard view people raising chickens get most of the time,

and see only chicken nuggets in the making, a tool for making money, making food, something useful only in its relation to human life. but if you get down on the chick's level, as in the first picture, i think it's hard to deny there's something more, that there is something we recognize in the chick's gaze, because we share it.

life.

we share life. not only in the sense that i, as chicken tender, have power over their lives, nor the sense that we, as consumers, have the power to purchase their dead bodies to eat, in effect giving us all power over their lives. not even in the sense that we share the moments of our life in which i am with them, cleaning their bedding, refilling their water, holding this or that one in my hand, talking idly to them as i do the daily chores. we share life in the sense that while we are different, while i can talk of my own intelligence and boast of many material differences with this baby hen, we are on a basic level the same, animals alive for a short while, making sense and survival of our surroundings.

this means something.

for some, it means meeting this chick's gaze is uncomfortable, because it exists for us to kill and eat, because we support the killing of animals like this every day. for us who feel this way, looking at the first picture may not be comfortable, like thinking about the feathered, breathing body our hermetically-packaged chicken breasts came from may not be comfortable. for others, the life we share means a commitment to not supporting the killing of animals, perhaps out of a sense that we are no more entitled to life than they are, despite our cultures, languages, etc [1].

for me, it means something different still. holding these chicks in my hand, looking them in the eye, i am sometimes uncomfortable with the fact that they are only here because we have plans to kill them and sell their bodies for money. but this is inescapable, if we are to live: animals live by taking other lives, whether they are lives of animals, insects, or plants. i am aware that in eating meat, i am causing more death, because i might have consumed plants similar to those the animal consumed directly [2], deriving much more nutritional value than is eventually passed on to me through the animal [3]. but i do not buy ethics by degree: that one wholesale taking of life is better than another because it is a more efficient taking of life, or a taking of less lives overall--those are practical, not ethical, concerns [4].

if it doesn't mean i should stop eating meat, then, what meaning does this shared gaze, this life, hold? according to my understanding, it means i owe the chicken respect. i do not see a fundamental difference between humans and other animals--we are all equally old and evolved lifeforms; though we exist in different ways, we are all alive. i know how i want to be treated, based on the fact that i'm alive: i want food, water, freedom to do what comes naturally (Marx might have called this control of my own labor), whether that is writing blogs or being able to walk without feeling confined. living things are not machines or tools for us to use. when people treat other people this way [5], i find it offensive (though i'm surely guilty of this sometimes too). Immanuel Kant argued this is because humans are rational, are able to understand right and wrong, and to decide their own courses of action based on this rational understanding--an ability none of us should ignore by trying to coerce or force others to do what we'd like them to. i am not saying chickens would be able to join in this reflection on ethics if they spoke English, but i AM saying they are more than simple stimulus-response mechanisms, and so we should not treat them like machines.

simple as they are, these chicks nevertheless have their own needs and wants as living creatures, and i think insofar as we are also living creatures, especially if we are in positions of power over them, we need to respect those needs and wants. i don't think it's necessary here to invoke the idea of souls, and argue the chicken has a soul, i have a soul, we all have souls, etc. the fact that we both are alive is enough. this is the Golden Rule--treat others as you want to be treated--we just have to understand what 'others' and 'you' mean in this context: treat other living beings the way you, as a living being, want to be treated.'

so this is what we're trying to do for these chicks. we don't scare them for fun, don't keep them crammed in cages with their beaks cut off because it's cheaper; we try and help them be as healthy as possible. our interest is not altruistic: we will benefit from these lives too, as we do from those of all the other plants and animals that have died to keep us alive so far. the point is to treat the animal, or plant, or person, with respect so long as they are alive. aside from one's own species, this respect doesn't include not killing them--that's a way of life that is literally impossible [6] . it includes, while they are alive, respecting them as fellow living beings.

admittedly, part of me still feels bad that these chicks will be killed for food. it's the same part that feels bad that a pig has died to make my brother's barbecuw, that a carrot has to die for me to eat it, that no one gets to live forever. another part of me knows that, unlike factory-raised chickens, ours will be free to wander outside, eating bugs, breathing fresh farm air, moving where they please and generally doing exactly as they wish, til we take them for slaughter. small consolation? this is what i have come up with, my relationship to other living beings, after seven years of being a vegetarian, and many more thinking about it: a promise to avoid eating meat that has not lived a life similar to the one this chick will have. this is what comes from me looking a cow, a chick, an eggplant in the eye--a sense of respected based in shared life. i'm not advocating you or anyone else do the same: what i'm advocating is that you not avoid this chick's gaze, but meet it, and decide for yourself what sharing life means.

[1] some might say especially in light of our cultures of war, languages of difference, practices of environmental destruction, etc.

[2] though i know from talking with ranchers in north dakota that cattle often graze areas that are unfarmable, so this doesn't hold up perfectly

[3] they say around 90% is lost in eating animals instead of plants directly

[4] unless it can be proven that my meat consumption causes food shortages in other places, but my sense of global hunger is that it more about EXCESS food from the US being shipped to other places, and moreso the global economic system that supports that, as the way we consume what is produced here

[5] i mean when we use each other; like when you invite someone to a potluck you don't actually like because you know he makes a mean casserole

[6] unless you know a way to keep your immune system from killing unwanted bacteria and viruses that enter your system--and if you do, then it will likely result in your death, a different sort of impossibility of living this way

of mozzarella and matooke

what is african pizza?

it seems pizza has entered the Ugandan culinary imagination, if not yet its repertoire. on handpainted signs in front of restaurants, listed after 'african and fast foods' you can sometimes now find pizza, though you're unlikely to find it within. it's more common on the laserjet banners of upscale restaurants, whose menus may not boast the actual item, but whose color advertisements feature a slice being pulled by cheesy strands from a full pie, collaged with photos of ribs, curries, hamburgers, generally international things the restaurant may not actually serve. at other times, you find pizza listed on the menu (assuming you've found a menu at all), but will be repeatedly told it is not available.

there are a few reasons for this:
the first is that menus often seem to be more like five-year plans than statements of current availability: foods the restaurant wants to work up to, whether it's having rice, or dried fish, or luwombo [1], or the mysterious but desired entity Pizza.

another reason african pizza seems not yet to exist might be the difficulty of sourcing pizza's ingredients, especially cheese-- tomato sauce, while not common, could be made, and wheat flour, if not yeast, is readily available. but cheese--that ubiquitous, slightly salty or sweet rubbery meltable dairy substance beloved of the European-influenced, cheese is rare in Uganda, despite a thriving dairy industry (now and then advertised as diary products).

being rare, it is also expensive: while you can get a liter of milk for twenty cents, a big bag of sweetened yogurt for forty, rounds of cheese, typically only found in upscale grocery stores, go for at least five or six dollars, meaning having ingredients on hand to even conceivably make pizza involves a big expense, and risk if customers might not actually know or like pizza.

being both rare and expensive, it is not often eaten, and this is probably the biggest obstacle to pizza becoming an actuality in Ugandan mainstream food: the fact that many Ugandans don't actually like cheese when they try it--regular white cheese is received here something like bleu cheese is in america: by a select few.

on top of this is the challenge of baking. not the actual process, which is easily enough mastered, but the paucity of ovens in kitchens set up for steaming, boiling and frying. add these factors together, and you've got some real obstacles to overcome in bringing those pizzas from imagination to savory mouthfuls.

and yet it remains popular on menus, signs and advertisements around, Pizza, and is increasingly being actually served in very upscale restaurants in bigger Ugandan cities. how to account for this apparent mismatch between local palate, ingredients and methods, and a growing national imagination?

perhaps it is commercials for pizza hut and dominoes, seen between segments of bootlegged american TV shows, watched over and over in homes lucky enough to have TVs and DVD players. perhaps it is a legacy of Italian missionaries, like those who built the extremely-well-attended Catholic church in Gulu, having proseletyzed more than spiritual bread to the local masses. or perhaps it's a growing foreigner presence here, on whose longings a few entrepreneurs have capitalized, and on whose capitalization other entrepreneurs longing for at least the image of success have also capitalized: an image of culinary sophistication, of international mystique, of modernity. i think perhaps the real reason for pizza's appearance in Uganda is all, or none, of the above: it is our infectious old friend Capitalism.

is it working? is a regular Ugandan more likely to buy their plate of matooke, cassava and posho from a restaurant, or roadside stand even, advertising pizza? are the folks waiting for their bus to leave one of Kampala's taxi parks more likely to buy loaves of fried bread from wandering vendors if they are called pizza, despite little similarity to italian food? will pizza in time develop a Ugandan form, as the indian bread chapati has, being now a common sight in every village, toasted over a charcoal fire to be taken with morning tea, or combined with eggs as a 'rolex,' or chopped into beans as a 'kikomando'? will wealthier Ugandans wanting international flavor in their own lives, and able to afford it, begin cultivating a taste for pizza, sure that in time they will learn to love it as they do muchomo[2] and chips?

time and the fickle forces of culture, society and capitalism will tell. for the present, a foreigner in Uganda longing for a taste of home is more often than not in for disappointment, finding instead of sauce, cheese and crust the familiarly unsatisfying taste of capitalism in his mouth, in a restaurant (or nation) claiming to offer more.


[1] indvidual servings of meat, sometimes in peanut sauce, wrapped and steamed in banana leaves, typically served at celebrations

[2] grilled kabobs of meat common across East Africa. FOR A GOOD OVERVIEW OF THIS, see The East African, July 30th 2011.

the road to Juba

was a minefield.

i mean, once, yes, it was mined, by the LRA. now it just rides like all the mines were set off. i'd gotten on Kampala Coach an hour before dawn, body wanting that last hour and a half of sleep, but between explosive lumps and holes in the road, the alcohol-sweat-and-smoke stink of the conductor asleep behind me, and the way our bus teetered on the edge of tipping sideways passing semi trucks on the narrow dirt road to Juba, sleep was the last thing on my mind.

i was rewarded with a sunrise to remember: the perfect red orb of the sun, filtered through low-hanging clouds, rising in the east next to an unnamed mountain and casting its first rays on the grass-thatched huts of another unknown village in the increasingly wilder north parts of Uganda.

i was on my way to South Sudan, a country not yet a month from independence, with not much purpose in my head but to see it, to try and litmus the spirit of weeks-old citizens, see what nations are like in the birthing.

my first taste of that was peculiarly disorganized: after the usual lazy chaos of ugandan emigration, and five kilometers of wilderness in which i imagined myself crossing a line on a map, we were made to file out of the bus, slide down a little path on the steep dirt side of the road to an unmarked house that was apparently immigration. people formed in three lines, apparently knowing what they were doing, and then we were made to wait in the sun, about 45 minutes, me wondering how long the bus was going to stay.

during this time, a South Sudanese soldier who was at least 6'7" (200cm?) had selected out the waiters who didn't actually have the 140 pounds (40USD) needed to enter the country, and herded them over to the veranda of a grass house with other glum-looking veranda-sitters, berating them in an English the rest of us wanted to find extremely amusing, and struggled not to, given his gun, our vulnerability, and his sheer size.

so the second taste of new nationhood was lingering militarism: after i'd made it inside the jammed immigration house, and to the front, a soldier was told to escort me to 'room 6,' without further explanation on my part. and i found, to my horror, that room 6 was outside, one half of a certain previously-mentioned grass house on whose veranda a few of my fellow bus riders now sat. on entering, little explanation was given for why i was there (though it seemed obvious i was there because i was white and my passport said United States of America), and i was told to go to a certain tin shack behind a goat tied to a tree and get my passport photocopied.

which i did, with 5 of the last 15 pounds i had changed, after paying the 140 at the earlier desk (without receipt). photocopy duly put in a large pile with other photocopies, i returned to the desk, where my details were copied from a form i'd filled into a less-detailed form, and my photos requested.

photos? back to the tin shed. ten pounds this time: i was dry. hopefully that's all that was needed.

it was--after a couple more desks in a couple more rooms, a few more forms, some fingerprints and a lot of nervous smiling on my part, i was done. the unhelpful part of being done was that i'd seen my bus pull out of the parking lot awhile back, and head down the road. i was stranded.

at least, it seemed that way, but other people told me it'd be there waiting, so i walked hurriedly down the road, chased by motorcycle taxis wanting my fare, and found it sitting a ways up, passengers leaning against the bus' shade. safe.

my third impression of South Sudan was it being more like i imagined Africa than i'd ever seen Uganda: from the border town on to Juba, in six hours of driving, there were very few towns, a scattering of grass-hut villages, and the rest was open African savannah, mountains at times rising lumpen in the distance, as though dropped from a heavenly scoop, silver thread of the nile twinkling in the distance. it was gorgeous.

the road was not always as gorgeous: though it was mainly better than roads are in Uganda, it at times broke into muddy rutted shifty dirt roads, bridges that looked unlikely to support our weight (and protested loudly at our passing), and leaning detours that again threatened to flop our bus on its side. i began calculating how many pounds of passenger i would have to breathe under, being in the window seat, if it did flop over; how long before i'd get to climb out the top. it didn't look pretty.

we were stopped two more times by immigration before reaching Juba, once for a perfunctory document check, and later for a more perfunctory recopying of the passport, which was again duly laid in a pile without an indication to the officials who'd sent us to the copy shack that we'd actually done it. disorganization.

waiting to cross the long bridge over the Nile to Juba town, to the left i saw a goat that'd climbed on the hood of a newish car, and appeared to be licking the bugs from the windsheild. this understandably being a funny sight, a lot of us looked over. on the other side of the bridge, our bus was stopped and a soldier boarded, demanding who had taken pictures. i was instantly afraid they'd take me, since i was white and actually had been taking a number of pictures, but they took someone else instead, who apparently had photographed the bridge. i was thenceforth too afraid of becoming a desaparecido to take any photos, til i literally saw my French friend Thierre photo a couple of soldiers on the roadside without repercussion, but i remain a touch afraid of the lingering militarism, which i take as the remnants of a nation that fought for years to get its independence.

my fourth impression, formed on the basis of billboards, banners and signposts festooning the streets, is of pride: everyone from Vivacell to the Islamic Council to Tusker Beer is congratulating South Sudan via signpost for its independence, thanking the martyrs (soldiers) because their 'blood has cemented our national foundation,' commemorating fallen leaders and generally being excited about July 9, 2011, the birthday of brand new South Sudan.

my fifth impression was of a rat warren, of everyone and their goats wanting to take advantage of me, and filth everywhere. but that was the taxi park, and another story.

trust, paper/violence and shady bus conductors

when can you trust strangers?

Marlo Morgan, in her first book about the impromptu walkabout she took with aborigines of Australia, talks about life as a series of tests, which you are given over and over til you pass. this has seemed true to me, or at least a good metaphor for our, and particularly my, inexplicable experience. speaking in her terms, one of the tests i seem to be taking on this trip is how and when to trust people i don't know.

travel is a natural time for this to come up: you aren't familiar with the people or places around you, and often not even the language or culture that informs them: you are a stranger, or put the other way, all things are strange to you. this is part of the pleasure of travel-- the joy of discovering, coming to understand and even embrace different ways of living those universal aspects of human life we often assume can only be done and understood the ways people at home do.

we are also vulnerable in that discovery: to simple error, and to conscious manipulation by others who are reading to take advantage of our error. but mistrust and overprotectivity keep us from experiencing the very wonderful things we have come to experience--instead of following the little clues and hints that get dropped, you stick to what you know, spend too much, find yourself alone in your hotel room dreaming of home. so what to do--get taken advantage, or not take advantage of you get when traveling? let me tell you the particulars of my exams:

ever since i was abandoned by a bus i'd booked in Kigali last year, and saved miraculously by the folks at Kampala Coach, only to find their bus safer and nicer, i've held them in high regard--i trusted them. so there was no doubt in my mind who to take from Gulu (Uganda) to Juba (newly independent South Sudan): Kampala Coach. yet when i showed up at 6 am to board the bus for Juba, the attendant told me it was 50,000 instead of the 40 i'd been quoted the day before. he said this was for a nicer bus, etc., which i only half-bought. i talked him down to 45, then found when i was on the bus that my ticket only said 40: he'd pocketed the five, knowing and exploiting my innocence of the actual price. call it traveler's tax.

a ways past the border, in the rather unpopulated and wild interior of South Sudan, we came across a bus broken down in the middle of nowhere, and took on as many passengers as we had empty seats. these people were very grateful for the lift, and had promised to pay on arrival in Juba--only to find the conductor demanding money of them right there, or that they get off, this time without their bus or other people, in the middle of nowhere.

a long argument ensued, the mechanic getting involved on the side of reason and compassion, the new passengers feeling quite precarious, the conductor demanding unreasonable prices in other currencies they might have, people muddling through each others' half-known languages to defend their interests... and though i wasn't part of it, either as passenger or conductor (i was in the seat next to one of these people), i felt palpably how vulnerable these people were to the whim of the conductor (who smelled of alcohol and cigarettes, had been sleeping most of the trip, and wore his uniform shirt dirty and half-buttoned). how their trust had been in vain, how close he was to abandoning them in a unsafe situation over money, tens of dollars actually. and in feeling for then i wondered about myself, about any of the ticket-carrying passengers, how real our claim to passage to Juba was. whether the next time he came around to check tickets he wouldn't just rip mine up and demand money anew, knowing i more than anyone else here, by virtue of my skin color, would be good for it. i've been told that Uganda's long-time president once said, 'How can i who came by the gun be removed by paper?' how can i, who came by paper, stay except through more? fundamentally, paper (law, rules, order, respect, that is) is always only as good as the people who understand it, whereas violence is universal (and often the real underwrit of paper).

once in Juba, i found the taxi park to be (as usual) a den of thieves--all wanting my money in one way or another, many claiming to be advising me against other thieves in the process. all of this is familiar and unfazing in Uganda--but here, on top of the chaos of vans, buses, motorcycles, goat herds and humanity jostling each other on their way somewhere, the situation, the currency, many of the languages, and fundamentally the people were unknown to me. i at first felt everyone was telling me inflated prices for lodging (12 dollars instead of the 3 i'd been paying in Uganda, 100 dollars in a place that looked worth 25), til i realized everything in Juba is actually about three times the price of Uganda. so i spent about an hour refusing actually legitimate prices, honest vendors, feeling cheated, targeted for my apparent ethnicity--not trusting anyone.

and yet, in the end, you have to trust someone. you have to sleep somewhere at night. eat something. buy water, take a taxi, talk to someone, enjoy yourself in this place you've come so far to see. so, around the time i was feeling this, i let a Kenyan bus driver convince me to go for supper with him and his wife--and give me lots of that old advice on how to stay safe, who not to trust, what foods not to drink, etc. he seemed genuinely concerned for my welfare, and a nice guy, if not entirely logical in his thoughts/English abilities. we went to a dingy tin-walled place with decent-looking food, where he insisted i get an entire half a chicken for myself, with beans and bread, and i just followed along... only to find he wasn't eating, his wife only getting something small, and the other unexplained man with us not eating either. and that he wanted to hold my change for me til i was done eating.

only, when we were done eating, he wanted to take me somewhere else--we ended up in a bar, one of these classic taxi park bars that are playing Ugandan music too loud on old speakers, dark interiors with half-broken chairs facing a small tv set showing the accompanying music video, men nursing bottles of beer, not talking, likely having seen and heard those videos multiple times. they have always struck me as depressing and very uninteresting places, and in this instance i'd just lugged a 50-pound bag around looking for lodging after a hot and bumpy ten-hour bus ride, and was still wondering why he wasn't giving me my change back.

so i decided enough was enough, id given him the benefit of the doubt, and he remained doubtful. i demanded my change, and he led me back to the guesthouse first, where he was going to bring it, later, apparently (his English was not always intelligible). i demanded it then, there, and gradually the whole character of our relationship shed skins from him being an altruistic guide for me, the needy foreigner, to he just another person seeing in me money and wanting to use it, in this case to get money for drinking apparently. i had to lead him back to the bar, feeding his sense that i was still buying it just enough to get my change (i'd paid with a big bill; otherwise i would have just left him), then finally let him down/let him know we could only be friends, and that i could only trust him, if money wasn't involved. at which point he, like Justin, lost interest and left me.

to be honest, like Justin, i'd seen the signs. i actually don't really trust people who are very ready to give me advice on how to be safe, who to trust, etc.--because they are typically the ones ready to use me. but can i on that basis ignore everyone, assuming they just want to use me? there are always good people around, and they are usually the best part of travel, hearing from them about life. so despite my drinking partner Matthew back in Gulu saying 98% of people weren't going to get to heaven (which prompted me to mention Kenny going to heaven in the Southpark movie), maybe my skills at reading people just aren't good enough yet. it took most of an hour before i decided this Kenyan was using me, and even then it turned out he wasn't after my riches so much as someone to buy him beer. this, apparently, came from having had such a white friend earlier, whom he kept referring to as though i knew the man, though i kept reminding him i didn't.

so who can you trust, among strangers? no one? may be that is the safest answer. it is also the loneliest and least interesting: it would have left me in my room an hour after arriving, wondering if i'd been overcharged for lodging and the meager meal i was eating there alone. at other times, trusting people has led to great experiences and good friends--and part of both of those has been the leap of faith involved in saying 'i don't know you, but i will trust you.' on this trip, over and over, i have made that leap only to find i jumped into thin air, and had to catch myself in the way down. what lesson am i to learn from this? i don't think it is to trust no one. it also can't be to trust everyone, because then i would get taken for everything i own. so how do you know whom to trust? life is apparently asking me to answer, and will keep asking til i get it right, til i trust myself enough to choose the right person.


NB:
maybe it's life to choose for me, and me just to read the signs: wednesday night, trying to call a friend of a friend in Juba who wanted to host me, i had almost given up on asking people to use their phones (i offered to pay them in return), having met only with non-English speakers or those disinterested if i didn't want to change money. then without speaking a tall boy asked me the number, dialed it, and handed it to me. after talking, i tried to pay him, and he refused, his friend saying "He has given you his phone." i paid him instead in gratitude, a smile, and was on my way. am i innocent in feeling his one gift has counterbalanced all the attempted takings i've met with?

big f&%k off camera

[this post involves a bad word.]

i finally own, as my friend Stacey would put it, a big fuck-off camera. before embarking on the peaceboat ride we took in 2007, Stacey bought a large and expensive camera, a Nikon maybe, a fuck-off camera, so named not only for its imposing size and apparent technological superiority, but also flagrant display of wealth in places where few can afford to have a camera at all. on top of this, add the typically intrusive, insensitive tourist's use of this to document 'the locals,' and you have a big fuck-off camera. as in the camera itself says 'fuck you' to the locals, because you have the money, and the power, and with that camera, you're using them.

Stacey went on to take gigabytes worth of pictures during the course of the trip, more than anyone had time to actually sort through (i've tried). on the voyage before that, the web writer also had a big fuck-off camera, a Canon i think, which she used judiciously for covering the activities of the boat. i had the opportunity to use it a couple of times, and was entranced: the flashing lights in the sight as the lens whirred into focus, the satisfying snap of each shot, the flash which snapped up cobra-like from the frame when needed, the bewildering array of buttons and dials on the back. more than anything, the shots she took were what got me: the pyramids of giza, sunset on the carribean, the jungles of sri lanka, all in vibrant, golden hues my few-hundred-dollar point-and-shoot couldn't come close to.

i've wanted one since. the point-and-shoot was finally stolen in Uganda, after two full trips around the earth and numerous private excursions to photogenic locations. in preparation for this trip to Africa, i decided enough was enough. i will not let the beautiful sights of my life go without at least attempted documentation. so i did it. i bought a big fuck-off camera.

and that is what it has felt like since: a large expensive middle finger to Uganda. so i am caught between wanting to document the things i see here, because i appreciate them, and not wanting to appear a totally unappreciative foreigner by pointing my big black camera at things (let alone people) and shooting them, for me and me alone to later relish, print out, show my friends, chuckle bourgeoisie chuckles about the backwardness of the dark continent. it is very much an unequal relationship, another sort of marx-inspired alienation.

to be clear, the inequality is not because of my camera. the inequality is because our global economic system is skewed towards countries like my own, at the expense of countries like Uganda. my camera is just a focal point for it, the shooting of pictures a moment when the economic disparities between me and my fellow human beings here becomes embarrassingly, or rudely, apparent--instead of the muted undertone it always is, that my ability to be here at all implies. owning it is also such a moment for me, because i am acutely aware how very much money this would be for a Ugandan, when sold, so though thieves are comparatively few in Uganda, i am paranoid about it being stolen, and consequently carry it at all times like a rich person clutching their wallet in the ghetto. it's embarrassing, but real.

what this has meant, beyond an extra-heavy bag (its not called a big fuck-off camera for nothing; it's big and heavy), is that i have a lot of photos of landscapes, of things, of plants, and few of people save in the background, where i'm hoping they'll be less likely to take offense. i am reluctant to raise the Canon's middle finger at the people i am trying to live and study with, and this reluctance has mostly won over my desire to remember the texture of a grandmother's face, the wonder of four adults and a baby on a single motorcycle, the beautiful people i meet everyday walking around Gulu town. the only exceptions to the rules are kids, for whom the world is not yet an economic reality, and a glance at the playback screen after the picture is taken is more than enough entertainment to justify the fact that i get to keep the image and they don't.

maybe a polaroid would be less of an inequality, if it could be made to take two photos at once, one for me and one for them. but it would also be grossly expensive and cumbersome to use. so i am photoing lizards, picturesque doorways, sunsets, blossoms, but not a lot of what actually drew me back to Uganda-- its brilliant, beautiful people. i guess the middle finger of my big fuck-off camera has proven true the expression that when you point one finger, four point back. the awkwardness of forced self-awareness, of facing my own privilege each time i want to capture something of the beauty i'm seeing, has been enough to keep me from pointing much. but it is still there, the unseen reality that actually makes all this so picturesque, because it's so different from the place where i come. we don't have handmade wood benches this polished from constant use. buildings that dilapidated from decades of use. technology that quaintly archaic still in parlance. and most of all, we don't have people like the people here, who have to do this kind of work this hard, who take the hand life has dealt them and manage to produce this much laughter and peace from it, whose faces tell stories faces at home never could. but i will not retell them, can't bring myself to distance and possibly offend the very people i am appreciating in the act of appreciating them. so i keep them like most Ugandans do, in memory, in a fondness that, lacking 10 megapixels of detail, makes up for it in detail a photo can never have: the story of how you got there, what you shared with this person, the sounds, smells, tastes you remember of that place, that day--all the (other) details that make up a life.

that's the best way to remember things anyway. no big fuck-off needed.

some moments crystallize

walking up from the clothes vendors along the marsh, i pass an audio rental shop, blasting Aerosmith's song from Armaggedon from the speaker cabinets. and i don't know how to explain this to you[1], but some moments just crystallize--
i don't wanna close my eyes
ahead of me, the intersection opens on market stalls of tin sheets, motorcycles crossing in rivulets of dust, i take another step
i don't wanna fall asleep
and my mouth begins moving of its own along with the words, ladies in bright dresses caught in the wind midstep across the road
cause i'd miss you babe
and i feel, a grin spreading from corners of my mouth, each moment here is precious--realize again that it is a privilege to be here,
and i don't wanna miss a thing
that there is more to see than i can take in, white-breasted crows wheeling over the rusting chimney of a pork joint:
cuz even when i dream of you
that i have been thinking of this country, these people, carrying them like secrets a year and a half in my head, singing their songs
the sweetest dreams will never do
to myself--ahead a young boy in white shorts carries a plastic pail of sesame wafers on his shoulder, dodging cars across the street
cause i'd still miss you babe
and i feel myself at once here, now, and living in Boulder, in North Dakota, in Thailand, in Japan, passing through the thousand places i've passed through, right here
and i don't wanna miss a thing
how all they are all tied together--me, aerosmith, Gulu, and the young boy in white trousers with a pail of sesame wafers on his shoulder. i hurry after him, singing


[1] i am maybe one of the few of my generation not desensitized to the effect music on everyday life: i thought for a long time part of the lure of ipods, aside from commodity fetishism and novelty, was how a small wafer in your pocket could generate a wealth of soundtracks to take the edge off everyday life, to at least set the background of the ground you were moving through, something only you could hear. music is powerful: having a song in the background can suddenly imbue everything with meaning, emotion--but if it is on all the time, if you need your ipod to walk outside, i think it loses that charm, and becomes mere distraction, something to take you out of rather than add color to the place and time you are in.

boda stories, ch. 1

i am the disappointer of boda (motorcycle taxi) men. Gulu is rife with them, leaning on their 100 or 150cc bikes at every corner, scanning the crowd for anyone in likely need of a ride.

i should be a prime example of such a person: most of the foreigners you see on the street are whizzing by on the back of boda, so its assumed i will want to do the same. i don't, usually--aside from a fear of falling over backwards and blacking out into nonexistence (helmets are rare), id rather walk, because i see more, can stop easier, greet people, explore the little things i see. that, and i usually don't have a particular place i'm going. so i am endlessly turning down offers for rides by boda drivers, disappointing hopes for a good fare every time.

so today i step out of the Montana Hotel with a bit of anticipation--not only do i have somewhere to go, but i need a boda to get there in time. within sight are four separate clusters of boda drivers. i raise my hand and not one but two bikes converge on me from opposite directions. i ask them to decide who takes me, not wanting to get involved, and they are polite but both obviously wanting the fare; i find out why on my ride out to the Boma Hotel.

after the usual greetings, me talking into his ear and he replying as he weaves through pedestrians, overloaded bicycles, asian cargo trucks and a host of expensive NGO SUVs, Vincent and i begin lamenting the current state of Uganda. it's too hot, there's no rain, food prices keep increasing, along with petrol, and passengers are getting less and less. it's always like this, he says, after an election: the public officials spend all the government's money on their election campaigns, and then everyone suffers for a few months because there's no money.

at this point we've passed the swampy area, and traffic slacks a bit as we round a deteriorating roundabout onto a dirt road. the worst thing, Vincent tells me, is that for drivers like him, who just rent bikes, they need to first make at least ten thousand shillings to give to the owner. everything above that is profit. fall below it too many times, and the owner will just rent the bike to someone else, and you're out the only work you've got.

i'm familiar with the system: a lot of teachers or low-level businessmen save up to buy motorcycles, then employ otherwise-redundant young men to drive them, for a guaranteed return every day. but today, Vincent tells me, and most days lately, he can't even make it to ten, so not only is the owner angry, Vincent works all day for nothing, leaning on his bike in the dust and heat and exhaust, scanning the road for potential passengers, making 500 or 1000 shillings at a time.

here's the moment of perspective for us first-worlders: the money he's trying to make, ten thousand shillings, it's four dollars. it's six in the evening, he's been working all day, and Vincent says he has 6000--he's made a little over two dollars all day, and unless he lies to his boss (which he can't do every day), he won't keep any of it.

i believe him: he's got no reason to lie, asks me for no more than the standard fare when i get off. i've seen how hungry these drivers are, how there are far too many for the amount of people needing rides. i give him something extra, wish him luck, and watch him head back the way we came, towards the next waiting spot, the next ride, the next fifty cents towards being able to buy supper tonight.

what i forgot

was the value of soda:
not the 8 to 1500 shillings you'll pay for it at a store, but the cultural value--soda makes an occasion special. indicates a time for celebration. lends a meeting extra weight. turns a meal into a feast. the whole process is elaborate, is imbued with significance far beyond the suspension of sugar, water and chemicals ought to allow: there is ritual here. it is brought forth laid over on a clean bowl, paper-packaged straw beside. the server opens it, but leaves the half-bent bottlecap resting on the lid to indicate it's clean, it's fresh, this is your bottle of soda, to be taken at your leisure.
as a guest in Lukaya, and an old friend welcomed back, i have been treated to many a soda in the past week: when stopping by a friend's place, they will send a child away with quick Luganda, to return bearing soda, sometimes only one for me, if they can't afford to share the privilege; when i come over for a meal in the evening, either hot tea or a glass bottle of orange fanta is waiting for me; visiting a school i'm friendly with, the headmaster suddenly asks me, "please, what soda can you take?" for him, he's taking Mountain. dew, that is, which came to Uganda with much fanfare when last I was here, and still appears to be the hip choice--its glass bottles still bear fresh logos, not chipped and fading like the reused bottles of Coca-Cola, Stoney Tangawizi and Mirinda that have born the celebratory beverage for many a wedding, introduction, feast and special occasion.
in Uganda, soda is not a beverage, not to be taken when merely thirsty, save by the monetarily-privileged few. for the many, it is the mark of a special time, a celebration that comes rarely in a year.
unless you are an old friend from abroad coming visiting: then Christmas comes every day.

what i forgot was how to walk:
i found myself constantly coming up behind road/sidewalk/shoulder/path-blocking slow-walkers, wondering what my bad luck was, til i realized i was breaking the East African speed limit: what's the hurry?
i stayed here long enough last time to realize people don't walk slow because they've got nowhere to go, nothing to do (after all, Americans walk fast even when they don't have somewhere to go, something to do): they walk slow because it's hot. they walk slow because they might not have eaten in awhile. they walk slow because there is much to see, people to greet along the way. they walk slow because it isn't slow here--that's normal walking speed; it's me who's getting unnecessarily sweaty just to arrive somewhere sooner.
i was even joking with one of our kids, Namanda Grace, that we walk so fast in America, that there's no way she could catch me. Namanda is a little spunky, so she went on disagreeing with met, til we finally decided to end it in a walking race. well, i did end up outwalking her pretty severely... but that might have been culture, or it might have been her being 12 years old. i told her we'd try again next time i came back. anyway, since then i've remembered to slow it down a pace. what, after all, is the hurry? i wouldn't want to miss something.

what i forgot was that i am made of money:
i remembered all over again as strangers began randomly asking for money, sometimes half-joking in Luganda, sometimes in all seriousness, sure i had plenty to spare. then friends began asking, more discreetly, but also with much more compelling reasons. then my organization began asking, in roundabout ways. and i remembered all over again what it is to accept my own limits, to give what i can when i want, and to be able to say no in other cases, without being rude, feeling targeted, etc., but simply kindly from a place that knows i can't personally solve the world's problems, but i can personally make my own by giving more than i can afford. still, compared to Uganda, the bums in Boulder are nothing (though they often are more clever in asking), and i've had to remember again what it is to daily face poverty, instead of just noting it as an ongoing phenomenon over breakfast, reading the news.

what i forgot were the smells:
smell of charcoal, smell of truck exhaust on the highway, smell of mangoes, ripe or rotten, smell of food on the fire, dry clean smell of eucalyptus groves in the wind. i forgot the smell of friends, how i can individually distinguish many by their body odor, as im sometimes told friends in the states can distinguish me. the smell of african earth after a rain. the smell of a kerosene lantern on a night with no electricity. the smell of our kids, smell of our gardens, smell of Uganda.

what i forgot was the heat of the sun:
it didn't take long to remember.

what i forgot was how hard it is to get food:
when you are hungry midday but not ready to commit to the course-and-a-half of mainly starches that is a Ugandan restaurant meal: non-restaurant vendors are few, and they usually start cooking at dusk, serving after dark, so unless you have the facilities at home to cook, and some food there, you find yourself as i did, many times, wandering around wondering what i was going to eat. fortunately, the few ladies i knew who have fried cassava, sell avocadoes and tomatoes, or samosas at midday, were mostly still in their usual places, and i got by with a little help from my friends.

what i forgot was my bicycle:
the same 15-year-old specialized rockhopper i rode and carried through East Africa has been my friend Anthony's the last year and a half, and it was sitting unchanged in his courtyard, some local additions notwithstanding, when i first walked in and saw it there. i guess i have a sentimental attachment to my bicycles, as they've been my main form of transport the last ten years, and i tend to have just one or two for each country i live in. so seeing the old rockhopper was seeing my time in Uganda all over again. we spent another week together riding the dusty backroads of Lukaya town, another old friend among many.

what i forgot was Luganda:
how to greet, how to listen, how to intonate, how to barter, how to have a slow afternoon chat. but it all came back: i guess listening to those gospel songs and talking to myself in some obscure african language while riding my bike to school was all worth it. friends were as amazed as i was at how much i can still speak. in Gulu it's become my one proof that i am more than a clueless foreigner in Uganda, so long as I get a chance to speak it in a primarily-Lwo speaking district (remember, Uganda has around 44 languages in a country the size of Oregon state in the US).

what i forgot was that western culture in Uganda comes mostly as interpreted by China:
because we export very little to Africa, and China much, but people here as former European colonies want European-like things. with the influx of US media (our one mainly unfiltered import, though you'll often find crudely dubbed half-commentary half-translated versions of our movies instead of the originals), people now especially want the life of the United States--in this China has found a niche industry. the nice things, it manufactures and sends to Wal*mart. the knock-offs and flimsier versions of all those things, it sends to Africa, with less time spent on design, on marketing, on quality control, and on safety. yet these things are taken as commensurate with the things Ugandans see foreign people manipulating in the media, and so they are a measure of monetary sucess here, and treated very well, and sold in the most expensive stores in the capital city, and treasured as the signs of a life well lived, even if they remain on a shelf in the house unused, while the locally-produced, totally appropriate, typically-environmentally-friendly, durable and cheap goods are used, abused and replaced when needed as necessities but not niceties of life. for me, it is all foreign, but i'm in the special position of being expected to see something of home in China's marketing of Western life for an African audience.

what i forgot was how much i love this place:
but i am also remembering how much i wanted, after five and a half years abroad, to be back in my own country, and how true that still is, much as i enjoy a visit and spending a little time in a place i once lived. the US is still home, is still the place i can do the most, and ultimately will feel the happiest and most settled. so friends there, don't get worried i'm not coming back this time. and friends here, don't get worried i won't ever come back: the life i've lived so far has condemned or committed me to a consciousness that's split between a few different countries, a few different cultures, and will always need all of them, at least a little, to feel complete. so i have the feeling, much as i love my home in Boulder, that i will be back again.

facing poverty

does need excuse dishonesty? can murderers change?

it's not easy, working with people in actual poverty, when you come from a position of relative wealth. it's not easy because there is no line between actual need, and the amount people in need think they can reasonably get from you. from me, that is: the inhabitant of the most developed country in the world, who spent five million shillings on the plane ticket alone, who owns both computer and camera, and likely a car... what are the small costs of Uganda to such a one?

i do not resist or deny this perspective: it is warranted. i am rich, by many standards (though not that of most people in my home society). people here are in real need: not only has Uganda been in a drought that's caused food prices to more than double, but this part of Uganda is still recovering from a 20-year civil war that destroyed a lot of traditional safety nets. into this need i drop, like a bloody piece of meat among unfed piranhas, then want to be friends with the people i find here, and expect them to help with my research out of the goodness of their hearts.

well, i understand at least that this is a little unreasonable. in Lukaya, i entered a similar situation willingly, saying that while i did not have money to give, i had time, skills, and connections, and for a year and a half, i did my best with these things to ameliorate the global economic inequalities that make me, a regular person in the states, a rich man to folks here. and i had to accept that all the people outside my organization, and many of those within, who asked me for monetary help were just beyond my means. i did what i could.

now in Gulu it's different: i am not here to be administrator of an organization, i've not come with a chunk of money to distribute, nor do i personally have such a chunk. as a matter of fact, i have borrowed money just to be here--but these are unknown details to people i meet on the ground, who see in me only excess/plenitude in a landscape of absence.

this is not the easiest situation in which to research.

and so i have already run in to problems, beyond the regular requests for money i get on the streets everywhere in Uganda. the first person i found willing to tell me about his experiences, and who seems in fact to have a fascinating and relevant story to tell, is also now fixed on getting some of my money for his own. this is James, the one written about in a previous blog. the day we met, he asked me kindly for help feeding his sick sister, and himself, because they had no money, hadn't eaten in days. i gave him the benefit of the doubt, and about six pounds of dry food. yesterday, we met up and he told me the outlines of the amazing life he's lived, a story which would take a couple more intensive interviews to really unravel, at least for my purposes.

at the end of it, James asks for another ten thousand shillings, to buy charcoal to cook the food with. now, this excuse seemed a little thin (i knew ten thousand was too much), but it didn't need to be thick: the context we both understood is that i am much richer than he, and for his help, i ought to help him a little.

is that wrong? maybe, not, really. but when i went to the hospital that night, only to find his sister alone, and after consulting a nurse learned shes not his sister at all, hasn't been fed for days (in Uganda its family members to feed and care for patients), and in fact has no family left in this world, then it started to seem wrong. he lied to me, repeatedly, even took me to see this sister, in order to get money out of me.

but how wrong is that? should i blame him for being hungry, and seeing in me a chance? i certainly dislike his use of someone innocent and actually much needier to get what he wanted out of me. i appreciated his participation in research, though from the start it smelled a little fishy, but now because i know he is at least in part manipulating me to get what he wants, i have to doubt the authenticity of everything he's said, believable and compelling as it is.

do i blame him for having had a hard life (being abducted by the LRA and forced to kill, and living in a refugee camp since escaping), and seeing in me a chance at equity? do i apply my own morals in saying he ought to have asked directly, and that equity cannot be taken by force, but only made when agreed on by all parties? or do i have compassion on his situation, forgive him for what he's done, keep working with him?

ultimately, i am planning to do none of these: i will rather tell him up front that money can't be part of our relationship, beyond maybe sharing lunch, and much as i want to hear the rest of his story, accept that this may mean he no longer wants to cooperate with me. i cant blame him for being money-focused in a situation of such need. what's sad is that ultimately i feel we are united by a noble purpose, and divided by another: that is, i want to understand his experience, and people like him, and share that understanding with the world through my research, ultimately bringing more international awareness and understanding to the area, and similar situations, hopefully preventing further conflicts from starting. i think he shares this desire with me. but we are divided by me wanting it to be purely that goodwill relationship of working on something good together, and him wanting it also to be a relationship in which he gets paid, and not even up front, but through trickery at that.

the part i didn't mention is that he used to command a platoon of two hundred child soldiers, and once presided over the massacre of an entire school, around five hundred people... so i'm a little nervous to confront him! and my anxiety stems directly from one of the central questions of my research, and, really, my life: how much can a person change? how much of character is permanent? how can we ever know if someone has been transformed, as born-again christians and former murderers may claim to be? how could they ever know, really?

i'm not sure these questions are ultimately answerable, except in the negative, in practice, or for oneself. i am meeting James at eleven tomorrow: i guess then i will know the answer, for one person at least.

is this the walk of a killer?

following James down the broken cement tiles of Gulu market, rusted tin and black plastic roof overhanging crowded stalls, i kept my eyes down, watched his gait: a long lope in loose brown slacks and worn plastic sandals. was this how he learned to walk in the jungle, in the Sudanese desert, gun across his back, leading a platoon of child soldiers?

James was almost the first person i met when i stepped off the bus this morning in Gulu, a city in northern Uganda that for many years was the epicenter of a conflict between the party/army in power, the NRM, and the Lord's Resistance Army. the LRA was, or is (they're no longer in Uganda), a group of rebels notorious for abducting children and forcing them to become soldiers, sometimes inducting them by forcing them to commit atrocities.

i had no idea James had been connected with them: as i was taking my first steps into Gulu town, thinking of little more than finding a cheap place to stay and maybe an internet cafe, i noticed him walking next to me. he greeted me, and i responded, then tried the one word i know in the local language, a greeting. he was soon telling me he would teach me more Lwo, would like to take me to his community...

and alarm bells started going off in my head. by this time, a year and a half into africa, the bells are facially silent--i don't let on that i think i may have been targeted for a scam, any more than i look awkward and glance constantly to and fro when i arrive in a new place, like i would if i wanted everyone to think i was a clueless newcomer.

instead i walked with him, neither encouraging nor resisting his enthusiasm for a deeper relationship between us, until we came to a guesthouse, at which point i said i'd like to check it out, so he might as well continue on. he said instead he wanted to just tell me his story briefly. i assented, and in moments i was reading a hand-written letter explaining that he was from a nearby refugee camp, and had come to town with his little sister, who was coughing up blood, but their mother hadn't yet arrived, and they'd been two days without food. a sad story, i know, but also a likely one--the alarm bells continued clanging unabated. i try to mix this cynicism, born of experience, with some benefit of the doubt, born of hope, into a cocktail that takes the edge off my distrust without getting me totally duped. so i didn't immediately discount his likely story, but asked some questions.

it became] less likely and more interesting: he was not only living in the camps, but said he had been abducted by the LRA as a child, and had been made into a commander, before escaping with his company and undergoing rehabilitation through World Vision and settling in the camps. this so happens to make him exactly the kind of person i am interested in, the kind i came to Uganda to talk to this summer: after having researched a different topic that i was told was too politically volatile to safely research, i have been searching for a new topic to make my focus, and have come here on grant money from my university to test out different possibilities.

the best among these, in terms of fitting what i'm interested in (intersections of spirituality and conflict), and being specific (rather than just 'spirituality in Rwanda post-genocide' or 'spirituality overcoming ethnic violence in Burundi') is the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in northern Uganda, following the end of the war with the LRA. not only does the LRA's leader, Joseph Kony, claim to be possessed by spirits, i have been told the rehabilitation of children forced in the LRA to rape, maim and kill is also being done in religious contexts. so spiritual messages were used both to induce them to do terrible things, and to try and fit them back into a society in which such things are not allowed. im interested in exactly how both of those conversions took place, whether either of them were really successful, and basically hearing from kids and rehabilitation workers alike about how spirituality has played a part in what's happening here.

so here James falls into my lap, the moment i set foot in Gulu. or is his perfectly sad story, like so many others i've heard here ending in pleas for money, not totally true? mixing belief and doubt, i took the middle path with him: i said i'd buy some food for him and his sister, then we'd meet again tomorrow to talk. i think i am good at reading people, but they are not open books to me: looking into his eyes, i didn't know if the disturbance i read there was a former life of anarchy and violence, counseled into one peaceful enough to ask quietly for money in a desperate situation, or the more familiar young male disturbance of wanting to get ahead in a very difficult environment, and finally being ready to do things like lie and manipulate to make money.

so as we walked into the market to buy him some food, i kept my eyes on his step, wondering who he was and had been, really, and whether i was being duped or taking my first step into a project that might become my professional focus for years to come.

it's hard to say. he wanted to buy more food than id planned for, so i cut his ten pounds of maize flour to four, trying to keep the total cost under ten thousand shillings. after getting some beans and cooking oil, i left him at the entrance to the market, promising to meet tomorrow at the same place and time, for him to tell me his story, and also visit his younger sister in the hospital. i'm looking forward to it with antipathy and anticipation, born of still not knowing whether ill be helping some people who really deserve it, or just getting taken advantage of. i feel naked here without the disarming power of decent fluency in the local language, and also that i am now beyond my experience, in dealing with former child soldiers and a society that was for years terrorized by civil war. are the instincts ive built up around other people and places adequate or appropriate for people here? does war really change a person and place? how, and for how long?

whether meeting James was a lucky or unlucky coincidence remains to be seen; either way i believe it will bring me closer to answering my questions.

what i remembered

of Uganda was burning pink sunsets, banana plants, ladies weaving mats in afternoon shade, the city crunch of people, cars, exhaust and waste, a myriad of jumbled two-year-old memories that together make a world separate in my mind from the others in which i've lived: africa. and now i've come back to that world, to see if and how it still exists.

much of what i remembered is still here: the sun still sets in a crimson gold flush, air thickening as the light sparkling slows, caught in dust and humidity and the collective exhalation of the billion plants and animals that make up this place, now including me.

my kids are still here too: the minute i crested the small rocky rise on the road that leads to the center, the kids i worked with for a year and a half were running, screaming my name (Uncle Levy, that is), arms wide, faces beaming. id wondered somehow if they'd remember me, really, or me them--whether the intervening year and a half had been more insulation between our feelings and reality could again be crossed... but after the initial crush of hugs and laughs and greetings rushed out in a jumble of languages, it was clear these were the same kids i'd known, worked with and worked for since november 2008. the reunion went on for days, as i kept finding more of our kids at the center, or resettled with families, others boarding at school, even two we brought back from the streets--and every minute was magic.

the food is as i remember it too: my first morning here, i had to walk into Entebbe town and get a heaping plate of it: steaming yellowish substance (matooke, steamed mashed local plantains), triangular white sticks (cassava), crescents of yellow squash (nsuju), and rice brown with seasonings and frighteningly crunchy from the occasional missed rock or clump of dirt. all of this seasoned with a third of fresh-caught tilapia in its own yellow broth. since then my friends have been spoiling me with home-cooked meals: slow-cooked beans with bitter eggplants or dried silver fish, white potatoes, meat in its own broth, spaghetti boiled with fried onions and tomatoes, smoked fish in peanut sauce, and variations thereof. on my own, i grabbed a couple of street food staples i'd been longing for, rolex (from 'rolled eggs,' fresh flat bread rolled up with an omelet, cabbage and tomatoes) and chikomando (deep-fried flat bread chopped up and mixed with beans, a local favorite made fresh nightly by Mr. Fire Base). the consensus is that America has been good to me--in other words, i've gained weight since leaving Uganda, but people were trying their level best to get me to 'increase' again, and i just may have!

the highways unfortunately remain true to recollection: permanently under construction, torn up and deteriorating in places, a series of bumps and near-misses as you careen past oncoming traffic. though to be fair, the main highway seems to have improved some: mainly in the run-up to elections, apparently. on the flipside, the backroads of Lukaya also remain basically unchanged: quiet, meandering, bright in afternoon sunlight or peaceful in light of stars and moon. i have a habit of remembering roads in places i've lived--the roads i drove often in nebraska, routes id bicycle to work in Japan, and the dusty red backroads of Lukaya i walked so many times chatting with friends.

the rest of Lukaya is much as i remembered it: a few more trees gone in the towering eucalyptus plantation behind town, the road toll taken down for rebuilding but mobs of white-coated vendors still there chasing cars, same ladies i knew working in the same crowded dark stores, everyone happy to see me again, me or maybe both of us amazed we remember each other after all that time.

the best refreshers of my memory were friends, all the people i knew and worked with the year and a half i was here. much as we've all grown older, some of us started families, changed life paths, etc., i couldn't help feeling no one has really changed: the special things i came to love in each person were still there, shining, making me grin. i guess we just go on being the people we are, learning some and adapting to our environment, but all the while expressing who we are and what we've experienced to date, how we are drawn to live life. i am grateful to have known so many people who do it with such grace, on both, on all sides of the water. more than anything else, they are the parts of life most worth remembering, and hardest to forget.

six hundred months to live

today doing homework in the kitchen, i thought about having six months left to live. mike and his friend from WatchTower--they always come in pairs--had just been here to unsuccessfully proseletyze me, and talking to them id watched the snow, falling since morning, fall in thick tufts from the trees. going back to the reading i would be doing all day, 1970s feminist theory in anthropology, i thought about an email my dad had sent, about how they'd found a malignant spot of skin cancer behind his ear. chances are good it will be completely frozen off in the usual procedure, but he'd warned us all to get checked. the year and a half i lived in Uganda, i never wore sunscreen, and the back of my neck now itches some times, has large bumps on it. so i thought about if those bumps were cancer, if i'd waited too long to get them checked, if the cancer was even now spreading through my body. this morning i woke up and found a poem a friend had written to me on facebook about how much she valued our friendship, and recognized that i feel the same love. i imagined telling her i had six months to live, telling all my friends here, telling my family. thought then what i would be doing with my life, instead of reading this 1970s feminist anthropological theory--

probably spending more time with friends, with family, maybe editing some books i've half-written. going back to Japan, going back to Uganda, to Montana, to Nebraska, to all the places i lived and seeing the people i knew and love once more, not to say goodbye but to say thank you. i thought about taking my family with, if i could, to show them the parts of me they didn't yet know, my friends in other countries, so that all the important people in my life could meet and know each other before i die.

i wondered if i would try to make a child, if biology would take over and push me to recreate my combination of genes in harmony with some else's, maybe an ex-girlfriend still in love with me, if some of my last days of earth would paradoxically--or naturally--be spent trying to make more life.

snow on a the pile of firewood behind our kitchen was individual white blankets two inches high lining the top of rough bark, bottoms still dark brown, expressions of a life now gone, the nature of trees living and dead from which they'd been cut. three days ago my friend's two-and-a-half-year-old daughter had laid such a blanket on me, as we pretended to sleep, made painstakingly from torn squares of toilet paper. i realize how fortunate i am to not--so far as i know--have only six months to live. i probably have much more than that: ten, two hundred, five hundred... if i live to eighty, and i am twenty-nine, i have about six hundred months left to live. only six hundred. SHOULD i be making children? shouldn't i be spending more time with friends, with family, with all the people ive known and loved in life, making sure they know that i love them? should i really be sitting here reading 1970s feminist theory in anthropology?

i believe the answer to all these questions is yes, so long as what i do is guided by what i love, what i feel fulfilled in doing. i have been given and made a good life, three hundred and fifty months of it, and whether the months remaining are six or six hundred, they are gifts to be spent in gratitude. today doing homework in the kitchen i realized i have too many things to be grateful for, that my heart is still struggling to hold them all at once. even the opportunity to do this homework is one of them. smiling a quiet smile, letting this moment too into gratitude, i turn back to read.