To Home and…

We’ve wrapped up the report and construction drawings for the primary school in Sudan, and I’ve almost tied up all the loose ends that were tossed in the corner back when it felt like I had all kinds of time here. And a sad note about those days: they’re almost over. I leave the country in a few days and will be leaving the continent a few days after that. There’s a short stopover in London and then it’s back to the U.S. of A. for what is likely to be an extended period of mooching from my folks. (Followed by what? Good question, that.)

I have one more bit to offer before I go. It’s long and sentimental. Forgive me.

–

There are nights here when the moon is full and shining so brightly that it casts shadows. There is no light pollution in our neighborhood, so the moonlight that shines in through my window and illuminates the room is bright and metallic, shining in straight, geometric lines down onto the tile floor where it is swallowed and diffused, pooling like spilt silver. It is a pleasant beacon of sleep here, at once somnolent and mysterious. There were rolling, grassy fields and the silhouettes of massive trees, the moon presiding over them both with a moody, ethereal glow. People move peacefully through this kind of night like itinerant ghosts, walking and wandering and whispering until morning.

And there are mornings in Kampala during the rainy season when the skies cloud over and a gentle electrical storm will loiter over the city. It doesn’t always rain during these storms leaving the landscape of shifting clouds defined and beautiful. They are a deep, dark, ominous gray, and they move independently of each other in large, cumulous blotches. Lightning strikes off in the distance and each rumble of thunder arrives and rolls into the next so that they end up combining into a single, extended growl of earthly discontent. The rumble can last for minutes.

I have walked what seems like a thousand dusty streets in my time in Uganda, and they were all beautiful. I only wish I could describe it to you in a meaningful way. At dawn when the air is fresh and a layer of fog hangs low over the horizon, reflecting shades of yellow and orange, each layer and depth of the landscape a different shade of humid morning. At noon when the earth is crusted and the foliage is a brilliant green under the intensity of the midday sun, the rusted dust coloring the sweat on your arms and neck. At dusk when the light is warm and golden – and I mean this literally, how the light is always golden before sunset and almost translucent because of it – and it is so pleasant to be walking just for the sake of walking, watching your long shadow slowly fuzz at the edges.

I have passed many people on these streets. Children who laugh and run and smile with such pleasure that their joy becomes contagious. Young men on motorcycles with enormous smiles and the excitement of life pulsing through their bodies until they just can’t resist the urge to make their bodas go!, go!, go! Old men, stately and confident in their gray hair and creased faces. Women carrying baskets on their heads and babies on their backs, their faces worn with the sorrow of life and loss and other unspeakable things, but the burdens of all allayed by the consummate grace of their posture. (They walk tall, always, and with such strength.) And visions of myself and the men I used to be: tentative and awestruck; then comfortable and at ease, basking in a season of purpose and the satisfaction of our day’s work; finally, nostalgic for a place I know I’ll soon leave, a place I have loved and hated for all that it is and all that it isn’t.

And there are so many sights and sounds and smells I never even attempted to describe. Like the bees the size of my thumb that chew wood and buzz around like miniature, black helicopters (and just as loud). Or spiders, the size of a quarter, that have horns – literally, horns – and exoskeletons that look like they’re made of shiny plastic, the looks of which make you wonder how long you’d live if you were unfortunate enough to contract a bite from one. Or how even from a safe distance crocodiles and lions are fearsome creatures to behold in the wild. Or how the wind blows over a calm savannah plain and you can hear a soft whistle as it passes through the branches of the acacia tree (and how if you can mimic this whistle, you can coax a giraffe into perking up and gazing at you with puzzled curiosity). Or the deafening cracks of thunder that occasionally disrupt the night, so loud and great that you feel the force of them in your belly. Or the stink of the Nile in its slower parts, the water just fighting stagnancy and mixing with soap and detergent and other waste, and all of it mixing with the smells of midday humidity and sun-baked fish.

There is this and so much more that would require a lifetime of writing to explain, and even then I would fail to impart what it is like to live in Africa. There is just too much to describe. And even if I were to try with a novel of words and a decade of introspection, I couldn’t do it justice. Because the truth is that even after some months living here I have come to realize that I myself do not know Africa. I have only reached an equilibrium with it. Despite the ownership I feel over these streets, streets I have walked so many times, and despite how much I’ve allowed myself to be assimilated, this land is not mine and it never will be. I am just a visitor: a man who came and left. Still, my relationship with Africa has been significant and complex and affecting – at times, almost overwhelming. Africa has taken from me; there are places where my blood has literally stained the soil. And I have taken from Africa, too. In some ways as simple as taking pictures on safari. In some ways more significant. I’ve allowed this place to seep into my worldview and perspective and it has at different points altered my pace of life, caused me to reevaluate my relationship to my faith, forced me to reconsider my response to poverty, and so much more. The list could go on forever. But for everything I have taken, and for everything I may claim to understand about this mysterious continent, I do not really know it, and I never will. Ah, have I explained myself at all?

As my time in Africa comes to an end, I feel a tad silly for this display of sentimentality. I wasn’t here all that long, after all. It was a sojourn. I’ve tried to pinpoint why exactly I’m responding so strongly to the end of this adventure, but to no avail. If a short stay could be so affecting, I shudder to think what a long stay would do. The scars and marks and bruises of that journey would surely be deeper and every bit as indelible, and that is no trivial affair.

I’m running out of words here. Last thought. The foliage in this place will encroach and grow forever. You can choose to hack away at it and drive it back, or you can surrender and let those roots and limbs and vines snake around your body, and you can cede to a slow, profound assimilation into the African soil. The people will place gentle and violent hands on you in the voids left by those plant tendrils. Those hands will pull and caress, prod and support. And you will feel it all – every smile, every glare of undisguised hatred, every moan of sorrow, every heartbreak, and every elation. You will feel everything, and there will be times when that burden is a happy responsibility and times when it is terrible and scalding. I guess you just have to trust that, in the end, you will look back and find that it was worth it. And it was.

–

I think it’s time to close out this edition of my blogging career. Maybe I’ll resurrect this thing again if I can find a new adventure to take on, but until then my challenges are going to involve things like having to share a bathroom with my sister. (Can’t wait, Kaylie, really.) My thanks to all of you who directly or indirectly threw kudos my way for what transpired at this web address. It means a lot that you took the time to read, and I’m still baffled – though certainly pleased – that there was something here that prompted a response.

I also want to specifically thank all of you who have supported me in any number of ways through my time here. Please know I’m extremely grateful. I’ll be stateside in just a couple weeks, and I look forward to catching up with those of you I have met, and maybe having the opportunity to meet those I haven’t. So, until then. So long, farewell, etc.

More Pictures

Pictures

To Sudan and Back: Part 3

To Sudan and Back: Part 2

Our work took take place in a village southeast of Malakal called Nyongrial.  We were working with a Sudanese expat living in Canada.  He was a Lost Boy, and he was returning to the country for the first time in eight years.  He grew up in Nyongrial before becoming a refugee at the age of 14, and though he doesn’t intend to return with his family, he is still invested in the village.  (He has even purchased land.  When asked why he bought land he doesn’t intend to resettle, he replied, You have to buy the land so that you know where you were. Fair enough.)  He has a vision for a borehole, a school, an orphanage, and a health clinic to be constructed in Nyongrial.  Our organization sent a team of nine to survey the land, perform preliminary design, and collect enough information to produce a set of construction documents for the borehole and the school.

Nyongrial is a three-hour drive from Malakal.  Moving through the area is a journey through scenes straight out of National Geographic.  Plains as flat and as golden as Kansas wheat fields stretch out as far as the eye can see then continue for miles and miles.  The parched grass hay rose to my waist and as I walked the fields, I often imagined lions lurking just beyond my field of vision, stalking somewhere out there in the golden haze.  (These visions became more eerie after our host told us the villagers do occasionally lose cattle to lions.)  The upper layer of soil, known as Black Cotton Clay, retains heat like a paved street and is pocked with alligator cracks big enough to turn an ankle in.  Near the river trees sprout in all sizes and shapes, each of them appearing through the dusty haze like an individual oasis.  The river is wide and slow here, and the river is life.  The dry and rainy seasons are clearly defined in the region, and there is no rain in the dry season.  The river is truly the only source of water, and so not surprisingly, the villages are never settled far from it.  Large, circular mud huts with conical, grass hay roofs are the traditional style of housing.  The roofs are tall, maybe 15 feet high at the center, and many of them are topped by a tiny mud minaret.  Woven grass fences demarcate property boundaries.  Cattle are tethered individually, just outside the fences, to wooden stakes driven into the ground so that it looks like each cow has its own parking space.

We stayed even further down the road in a village called Baliet at the Police Commissioner’s compound.  The Police Commissioner, like many of the older Sudanese men we met, was a no-nonsense man with a quiet confidence and a slightly imperial air.  He introduced himself, asked a few polite questions about our business, then guaranteed our security as if the matter had been settled months ago.  (And indeed, I always felt safe and comfortable in Baliet and the surrounding villages.)  Accommodations were basic.  Like the rest of the village, there was no running water and no electricity.  Unlike most of the rest of the village, there was a single pit latrine and a bathing shelter.  We shuffled plastic chairs around to stay in the shade of a big tree, and took tea and meals from a tiny coffee table.  It may sound rough, but, honestly, I’ve camped in worse conditions.

The moon was full during our stay and shined silver light so brightly it cast shadows.  The nighttime of chorus of animals contained the usual braying donkeys and roving, snarling packs of wild dogs, but also, curiously, an assembly of white birds in a nearby tree that randomly broke long periods of silence with quacking arguments, sounding like an angry congress of ducks.  And there were drums.  Drums that thumped and beat long into the night for reasons we never discovered and could only wonder about.  They beat ceaselessly, often furiously like some sort of announcement.  To escape the heat, and because there wasn’t enough room otherwise, we slept outside on cots.  Mercifully, the temperature dropped into the seventies each night and a cool breeze blew in from the East.  Sleep was fitful.

We were treated to some joyous displays of culture.  We attended church on Sunday in a grass hay structure.  The sermon and traditional songs were all in the Dinka language, and to close the service, the children performed.  Men used ropes and rubber to beat big, leather drums while the kids shuffled in and performed a song and dance routine, their thin voices calling and responding to each other while they swayed back and forth and kicked their legs.  Afterward, the congregation exited the dim building and formed a line, one after the other, after greeting each person in front of them.  We followed suit, and by the end, we had shaken the hand of each smiling face in the service.

Days later, after our work was complete, the villagers in Nyongrial slaughtered a bull and prepared a feast.  They threw a celebration and gave us gifts: traditional clothing, necklaces, and the like.  Then, wonderfully, the focus shifted to our host, the man who had made all this possible.  A few ladies danced with him inside the circle we and the rest of the villagers had formed, and then, as we looked on, they all skipped off into the nearby field while the rest of the village laughed and cheered and clapped.

I still have no idea what it all meant, or even if it was significant, but one thing is for sure: Sudan is alive with a real, pulsing, passionate heart.

To Sudan and Back: Part 1

We flew (thankfully) from Entebbe to Malakal, Sudan in a nine-seat plane.  The flight took four hours with a fuel stopover each way in some tiny village in the middle of the bush.  This was my first experience flying on a small airplane, and I was surprised by how vulnerable the craft was to turbulence and other factors, like the pilot’s twitches.  The airplane rotated about funny axes, shifting and swaying like it was a toy suspended from cables, often reacting to the airspace like a small fish fighting its way upriver.  Fortunately, both legs were relatively calm weather-wise.  Which was welcome.  I found that at a cruising altitude of 12,000 feet, you never really leave sight of the ground in a meaningful way and thus have a pretty good idea of how far the fall would be.

We arrived midday in Malakal and walked with our gear on a sizzling tarmac littered with U.N. planes and helicopters.  We entered the tiny terminal and were ushered to the front door by a steward who assured us we were “most welcome.”  We passed no customs or immigration, and nobody gave us a second glance.  I asked one of our team who had been before when we would suffer the traditional entry process, and he replied, Oh, they don’t do that here. Ok.

Seconds after exiting the plane we were assaulted by the heat and dust of the place.  We learned the value of cross-ventilation that night trying to sleep in rooms still sultry with the day’s heat.  A portable thermometer read 102° F when we turned in and a cool 87° F when we woke up.  I tossed and turned, sleeping in fits and starts and often thinking to myself, Wow, my shins are sweating. Heat seems an obvious thing to observe about a place, but I did it often during our stay.  It was an oppressive and constant heat, often dictating the pace and efficiency of our work, and I was always acutely aware of it.

Malakal is laid out in a series of long, straight, dirt roads that intersect at right angles.  Land plots appear spacious and clearly defined, at least in comparison to East Africa.  Sheet metal serves as roofing material and security fencing, reflecting light and conducting the sun’s ruthless heat.  Donkeys pull carts that carry river water, woven grass, and other necessities.  Three-wheel taxis (that look like emasculated Smart Cars, if that’s even possible) seat four passengers and scoot around with an agility that is useful on the city’s crusted, ill-maintained roads.  Tall, slender Sudanese walk everywhere, smartly dressed and seemingly unperturbed by the heat.

Security is certainly a priority (at least after you’ve entered the country).  Men – soldiers and personal bodyguards – carry automatic rifles around like briefcases, not exactly brandishing them but discretely drawing enough attention to them so that you are always aware of their presence.  There is a 10pm curfew for bars and other places where people meet, and soldiers make spot checks around town to enforce it.  A trio of armed soldiers stopped by our guest house on the last night and ordered that the hotel restaurant be closed.  The moody red and green lights that leaked between the bamboo poles of the structure went dark, and the music went silent leaving us with only the light from a few fluorescent bulbs and the sounds of the night.  (As a side note, Sudan is also way behind on the music scene.  The playlist wandered from old school Ja Rule to Spanish Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony duets to obscure boy bands – and way too much Michael Bolton for any of us to take it seriously.)  Earlier that same night, we arrived on the outskirts of the city after dark and passed through several security checkpoints.  The driver approached each cautiously and shut his headlights off at the first sight of a soldier, leaning out the window to offer reassurances and explanations.  A heated argument broke out at one checkpoint, and a drunken soldier aggressively shined a bright flashlight in our faces at another before waving us on.  We eventually passed through them all and ended up arriving without real incident, though I assure you we were aware of the tension of the process.

The city sits on the border between the north and the south.  There are noticeable geographical divisions within the city, and the street you’re on mostly determines the scene.  Arab influence brings mosques, lively markets and cafes with delicious street food.  Christian influence brings churches, quotidian (to put it nicely) architecture, and eateries that serve donuts and other Western confections.  It is impossible not to notice the differences in these cultural influences, as well as the way the city has accommodated them both.  (It seemed to me akin to filling a glass jar with blue and yellow gumballs: the confluence doesn’t yield a bunch of green gumballs but rather a bunch of blue and yellow gumballs mixed in with each other.)  Yet the people have at least this in common: they all navigate the same heat, the same dust, and the same daunting task of trying to rebuild after the last civil war while simultaneously attempting to avoid a new one.

It is election season, and the political scene was ubiquitous and inescapable.  We were witness to several stump speeches during the week, and once, the speech was given to us as if we were the ones set to cast the votes.  Rallies streamed down the streets.  People piled into the back of trucks and carts wearing cheap visors and waving paper flags.  A single megaphone led chants while people on the street turned their heads to follow the slow processions.  Posters with cheesy portraits and a brief description of the candidate’s politics littered the city accompanied by the symbol each man chose to represent himself so that the illiterate can still vote.  Your choice is a bicycle, a pair of eyeglasses, and a walking cane.  Please choose carefully.

Another Return to Ngenge: Part 4

So, after all that exposition, it’s probably time to explain why I’m in Ngenge again.  Turns out I’m working and not just here to take pictures and write stuff.  (No, seriously.)  A nerd alert is probably appropriate at this point, as I’m going to offer a brief description of the work below.

The previous two visits I made last year were part of the information gathering effort.  We made a list of boreholes that needed repairs and ranked them according to the type of repair they needed, how important they were to the community, etc.  From that list, 14 boreholes were selected to receive repair under this contract.  Some of those boreholes are currently inoperable (some for years), some are failing, and some are working but are due for preventative maintenance.

Now, after months of administrative effort and coordinating people and places, the work has begun.¹ A firm from Lira (in the north of Uganda) is performing the repairs and my organization is here to oversee and coordinate the work.  The work is slow and deliberate.  It is all done by hand, and the repair team earns each repair with sweat and considerable strength.  But they are enthusiastic and motivated, and they enjoy their work.  They have completed repairs on several boreholes and should have the rest of the work completed within a couple weeks.

Let me assure you, seeing water pour from these repaired boreholes is a wonderful sight.  The water is fairly heavy in minerals, and it tastes like you would expect an alpine river to taste – like mountains and earth.  But it is cool, clear, clean, and safe to drink straight from the tap.

Even more encouraging is that the repair team is coaching a local team of mechanics how to maintain and repair the boreholes.  Ideally, these trainees will be prepared and equipped to sustain the operation and maintenance of the boreholes entirely within the community.  So the next time those $15 rubber seals wear out, the village can launch their own repair operation and not be forced to rely on outside help.  This is a marvelous thing and arguably the most valuable piece of this entire effort.

In addition to the repair work, the local diocese is performing training sessions to educate the community on topics like hygiene, sanitation, and safe water use.  The idea is to mitigate the frequency of water-related disease – 8 of 10 hospitalized people in the area are treated for water-borne illness – by teaching the community about transmission routes, ways to prevent said transmission, etc.

After the repairs are complete, the second piece of the work is to drill brand new boreholes.  (I alluded to the process behind this work in a previous post.)  The newly drilled boreholes will provide water to those who have already resettled and allow others to proceed with resettlement near the new water access points.  Hopefully, it will preclude the need to pull water from rivers, streams, and other generally unsafe water sources.

Ok, nerd alert is over.  In summary, exciting stuff.²

…

¹ (I realize I should have utilized an exclamation point there, but I’m not really an exclamation point kind of guy.)

² (I know, again with the exclamation point.  You can imagine your own.)

Another Return To Ngenge: Part 3

I’m okay, Mom.

Another Return to Ngenge: Part 2

We drove forever one day, almost to Kenya. We drove through plains spotted with acacia trees (read: the flat-topped, Lion King trees) and little else and we drove through a narrow strip of swamp and we drove along the hills and then we drove some more. The road is made of rusty red dirt and has potholes shaped like and as big as empty hot tubs. The driving is often painfully slow. We are passed today at different points by both a bicycle and a donkey. Still, we see much. A wild ostrich, a rarity, regarded us intensely as we slowed to take some photos. Other sights are not so rare. Stray dogs with visible rib cages laze in the villages. Cattle roam on and off the road as they please, sometimes tended and sometimes not. We occasionally pass men on bicycles, and I always wonder, Where is he going? Children in various states of undress stop what they are doing to watch our car pass, and when they see Brittany or me, they shriek “Muzungu!” with so much genuine surprise and excitement that it never really gets old.

The sense of isolation is palpable and it increases the further we drive. One, two hours without seeing a single soul. No birds, even. We reach a village near the border that seems like some sort of metropolis because of the emptiness of the land before it. To my surprise, this isn’t our destination, and we turn off the main road and head straight into the bush for another thirty minutes. We pass two people in that time and they look like lost pariahs amidst all that dry, cracked land.

New boreholes aren’t installed until they become necessary. Typically, this relates to a certain number of people living in a newly formed community. Word gets passed along that an area is being resettled and that they need a borehole. We visit first to prove that there are in fact people there, that they do exist and are indeed living in this new village. This may sound odd, or maybe even crass, but words cannot describe the immeasurable separation that a mere five kilometers from the nearest established township can place on a new village. Even our guide, a Ugandan, wanted to stop driving at one point and turn back. But he was convinced by one of those lost pariahs to keep on and we arrived to find nearly 300 households scattered along the river. They have no borehole, and they need one.

We return each night to the cool, highland air of Kapchorwa. We are staying at a guesthouse that serves delicious meals in giant portions. Each day I spend in the valley adds new meaning to the meal I enjoy each night. At some point, it became unnerving, almost upsetting. Eating dinner became something to process, something to consider, as significant as faith and art and friends and everything else I hold dear. As long as I am spending my days in Ngenge, I don’t expect that to change.

Another Return To Ngenge: Part 1

It is hot, and while it was always hot here, it is hotter than usual on account of the dry season.  There was nary a cloud in the sky our first day until very late in the afternoon, and even the few that formed hurried away from our skyline like hipsters fleeing from yesterday’s scene.  The unabated sun is searing, scorching the earth and everything on top.  I swelter in the car, my back melting into the seat, but in the few seconds after stepping into the sun my shirt is dry as a bone, occasionally caught in the hot wind like a diffident sail.  As we walk through the knee-high brush grass, we kick up mini dust storms.  The grass seems to disintegrate from the disruption, sneezing plant particulate that smells like sunburned grass hay.  Animals – goats and donkeys, mostly – huddle around circular mud huts, seeking out the one foot of shade offered by the traditional straw roofs.  The lucky ones find unattended huts that have lost their mud walls – so that only spindly poles and a straw roof remain – and stand inside like abandoned houseguests.  I see two benches, a small charcoal stove, and a donkey that surely had to duck to enter the door standing in the center, looking forlorn like donkeys do.

It hasn’t rained in forever, or so it seems.  I ask whether the end of the rainy season brought any relief and people just shake their head, No.  And the dry season, in theory, will last another two or three months.  If the rivers didn’t have their source in the fertile highlands, I think even they would succumb to this arid heat: evaporated, or greedily soaked up by the riverbeds, or maybe they would just lose their way in the ever-expanding alligator cracks that propagate like cancer beneath our feet.  Who knows.

Still, this is a beautiful place.  Not in a traditional way, and not because it is easy on the eyes, or a pleasant place to visit.  It is a beauty borne of respect.  It is an austere beauty.  It is a beautiful place because it does not hide its treacheries.  Because it reveals your own weaknesses, and because it is easy to see how it would claim you.  Like the desert.  And the people that inhabit this place are beautiful, too, for their resolve and the eternal shine of sweat on their foreheads and the way they break into smiles so easily, often at nothing more than hearing two words in the local dialect from a giant muzungu.

Bosco drives and waves out the window to friends and acquaintances.  Travis, he always starts when he addresses me, we go? Yes, we go.  Justine and Yunis ride in back with Brittany (another intern) and cluck like hens in a chicken coop, laughing up a riot about who knows what.  Kepsubim, the local dialect, is inscrutable to my ear.  From familiarity or whatever, I’ve heard enough Lugandan (the dialect mostly spoken in Kampala) to be able to pick out certain words and phrases – though I’ve no idea what most of them mean.  But Kepsubim is a different kind of animal and each sentence sounds like one continuous word containing twenty or thirty syllables.  Their conversation is easy on the ears.  Justine has a playful, childlike voice that always sounds slightly excited and amused.  Yunis is her elder but laughs so often that she is often unable to contain her giggles long enough to speak.  Bosco listens silently to most of it, offering a sonorous tidbit here and there and chortling straight from his belly like a grandpa would.  It’s a joyful, musical exchange.

We drive from borehole to borehole like we always do and get out of the car to take pictures and scribble notes.  Crowds inevitably gather around us, partly out of curiosity and partly from the novelty (and, often, unconcealed wonder) of seeing a couple muzungus walking around these parts.  Children are especially curious.  They often feign fear of me and I occasionally oblige the illusion by pretending to chase after them.  They squeal and run away, turning around to confirm the expression on my face is playful.  I can’t help from smiling while I do this and they return my smile with giggles and bright eyes.

The toddlers are more skeptical, though.  Last time we came through, I reached to pinch the arm of a chubby boy on the back of his sister and he immediately broke into tears, screaming bloody murder.  Those around laughed it off, giving me big smiles, but the boy wasn’t having any of it.  I learned today that there is a myth, a remnant of the oral tradition, that a spirit with a white face haunts the area looking for children to eat.  I think to myself that it may be to my advantage to learn the Kepsubim translation for something like, Don’t worry, little one!  I don’t intend to eat you! But I don’t have the smarts to retain the several hundred syllables I imagine the phrase contains, so a smile will have to do.

The Art of Seeing

I’ve been showing the new interns around in an effort to help them get oriented.  We went downtown, to the market, and around our neighborhood.  These experiences are new for all of them, of course, and watching them react to the surprises and shocks that assault you during your first week here has highlighted all the absurd and shocking things that now seem commonplace to me.

Yes, the driver of that car did get impatient, pull out into oncoming traffic, and clip that boda, causing him to skid out.  Yes, that military soldier is gesticulating affably and waving his automatic rifle around like it’s little more than a lit cigarette.  Yes, there was an enormous step ladder balanced on the back of that motorcycle.  Yes, our taxi has been stuck at this intersection without an inch of movement for nearly 30 minutes.  Yes, that man is urinating only three feet from that busy sidewalk.

There are sadder sights, too, that unfortunately also seem commonplace to my eye.  Yes, those men working at the rock quarry are breaking rocks with hammers and pieces of metal.  Yes, that child does sit downtown all day with her tiny hands held up in supplication, begging those that walk by for a few shillings.  No, these sights don’t bother me as much as they used to.  Fresh eyes are a valuable asset.

We also took a trip to Jinja for a day of manual labor at one of our construction sites.  The Nile is so calm in this stretch that it seems plausible, maybe even romantic, to hop on a boat and float all the way to Alexandria.  Looking over the wide, peaceful river, feeling that easy breeze, you tend to forget that just down river there’s a series of intense rapids, massive and powerful waterfalls, and an army of crocodiles and other cantankerous creatures.  (No, Mom, I didn’t seriously consider this.)

To Egypt and Back

I’ll offer a brief recap of a couple weeks traveling around Egypt.  We started in Cairo, went north and west to Alexandria, and then followed the Nile south to Luxor, Aswan, and briefly, Abu Simbel.  Our traveling from city to city was done by train which took us along the river, through towns and villages, and an overwhelming amount of desert.  After arriving in a city, we walked anytime it was feasible, and we discovered this is a fantastic way to see Egypt.  We saw ancient temples, King Tut’s loot, the pyramids, palm trees, sand, feluccas, killer sunsets, ancient walls, mosques, and more sand.

And as cool as all that stuff was, it really just ended up being filler between meals.  Walking most places allowed us to be tempted by every bakery, restaurant, and street food vendor we saw, and more often than not, we gave in with absolutely no resistance.  When ordering in English wasn’t an option – which was often – we simply pointed at what we wanted.  We ate mountains of falafel with a wide variety of fillers and condiments, koshary (a wonderful dish consisting of rice, pasta, lentils, chick peas, and green peppers mixed with a spicy tomato-based sauce), schawerma sandwiches, sun bread, flat bread, and so many more items I never learned the name for.  It was all fantastic, and the culinary experience ended up being the highlight of the trip.  Ok, the pyramids were pretty sweet too.

There was much more to the trip than just food and sights.  Two weeks in a Muslim culture was enough to offer its own culture shock (twice, in fact, being entirely different than both the U.S. and East Africa) and, further, was more than enough to challenge my very Western preconceptions about the country.  Egypt is a complicated place, a place of contradictions even, and far too slippery to be easily and accurately categorized – especially from afar.  My full notes on the trip ended up being some 7,000 words long.  I’ve no intention of subjecting you to all that but will only say it is an incredibly interesting, surprising country filled with warm, welcoming people and certainly worth visiting.

Time for pictures then.

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Year-end Wrap Up

I’m always shocked when I look at the calendar these days and see that it’s the middle of December. The weather here is playing tricks on me; upper 80’s and humid is summertime weather, and it just isn’t delivering the Christmas spirit like a cold Colorado day would.

My team wrapped up our project – which contains the construction drawings and final report for the children’s home in Kenya – about a month ago. Since then, we’ve been wrapped up in cleanup work, filler work, weekend adventures and goodbyes.

I came over with eight other interns back in August. (We were nine…I am tempted to draw a parallel to Lord of the Rings, but it would only work if it was rewritten so that Frodo – me, probably played by Detlef Schrempf – ended up alone at the end, super annoyed that Chipotle’s current business model doesn’t have expansion in Uganda as a top priority.)  I’ve met many other people along the way, too. The one thing we’ve all had in common is our transience. People come and go. The interns, save one, left last Saturday, and the last of my social circle leaves today. This is a significant exodus. We did nearly everything together – certainly everything of significance – and I’d guess 99% of my time was spent with some combination of them.

The silence they left in their wake is odd. I walk the same streets and go the same places, but I find myself reevaluating what I thought I knew. Those people were a big part of my experience here, a big part of the Africa I came to know. Without them, the place is different, somehow less familiar. Their absence is forcing me to process things again, to inspect my conclusions from my first four months here and determine what is valid and what isn’t. And I think this phenomenon is independent of the fact that I grew pretty fond of them all. (Contrary to popular belief, I am not a robot.)

Anyway, I have a little time off ahead of me. I’ll be going on holiday with another to Egypt and Ethiopia soon and staying through the new year. (I’d guess chances of me posting a picture of the pyramids at some point are pretty good.) Work will then begin in early January with a new batch of interns arriving. I’ll be going to southern Sudan for my project trip this time around as well as continuing my work on the Ngenge Valley water project. I’m very excited about it all, and I intend to continue writing and posting pictures on this here weblog until I run out of words and/or pictures.

So with that, I’ll wish an early “Merry Christmas” and a “Happy New Year” to you all, post some pictures and be done.

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The Number Three (3)

These are pictures. Two from Ngenge and one from Kigali, Rwanda.

Two Unrelated Items

1. I’ve found the Ugandan version of the ice cream truck. It’s a man who rides a bicycle with a plastic thermos full of multi-colored ice cream strapped to the back, selling tiny cones to pedestrians. And like a proper ice cream man, he has a way to announce himself. His jingle is a curious combination of Christmas carols: “Frosty the Snowman,” “Here Comes Santa Clause,” and “Jingle Bells.” I know nothing about this man, but based on the jingle alone, I like to imagine he is of good humor and a huge fan of irony.

2. I’ve decided to extend my stay in Kampala until May. I quite like it here, and the folks I’m working for claim to like me. I’m pretty sure they mean it. But even if they don’t, I’ve decided I’m gonna call their bluff. (Suckers.) Please consider yourself informed.