Nathan's Notes

Africa on the Big Stage

2010-06-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

I've been home in New Jersey for five days now, feeling a bit strange and not sure how the adjustment back to the US is going. People ask me, and I realize that I don't even know exactly what I'm thinking, and it all feels like a blur in a lot of ways. So, without the ability to process or reflect very much yet, I'll do what comes more naturally: talk about football.

The timing of this World Cup is perfect for me, as it gives me the chance to relax and enjoy the biggest event of the game that I love at a time when I need to relax and move slowly. It is also timely because I've just spent two years in Africa and am now watching Africa's first World Cup. Watching South Africa play Mexico in the opening game, the pit in my stomach told me that I was rooting whole-heartedly for South Africa. I celebrated when they scored the first goal of the tournament, a stunning goal from a player with the wonderful name Tshabalala, and predictically, the South Africans danced. I realized that in this World Cup, more than anything, I am pulling for the Africans. South Africa, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon - I just want one of them to go far.

It might seem strange, as all of those countries are very far from Uganda and culturally very different. They could be rivals. You wouldn't root for Argentina because you had spent time in Uruguay; you would hate Argentina. But this is different. An African team doing well would be celebrated across the continent, millions of people cheering for their "neighbors." Never mind that a Ugandan might know nothing about Ghana: they are fellow Africans, and the success of Ghana would be success for a Ugandan. Africa is a continent that is downtrodden, that has borne the yoke of colonialism, of slave traders, and of murderous rubber-traders, and now bears that of tyrants, of violence, of tribalism, of corruption, of poverty, and of AIDS. It has been said that Africa's biggest crisis is a crisis of confidence, and so I hope for the encouragement of seeing an African nation go far, of seeing people like them, people with whom they can truly identify, succeed on the world's biggest stage.

Am I dreaming? Maybe. But the excitement about this tournament is palpable in Uganda, and people are crazy about any African team when they come up against competition from outside the continent. I found that Ugandans don't seem to identify themselves strongly as Ugandans, rather they identify first with their tribe, and then as Africans (likely one reason that colonial boundaries can lead to African nations being dysfunctional, but that's another, much longer story). There is a sense of African-hood, perhaps arising from their shared skin color and their history of being ruled over by Europeans, which means that Ugandans could revel in a victory by Cameroon as their own victory. At least I hope so. That pit in my stomach is hope. Hope that so many people I know, and millions more that I don't, can take courage and confidence because of the world's biggest game.

So three cheers for Ghana, who secured Africa's first win with a victory over favored Serbia earlier today. May it be the first of many celebrations across a beautiful, downtrodden, and joyful continent.

Hanging In the Balance

2010-05-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a frightening reminder of how dangerous road travel is here, and how precariously life is always perched on the edge, needing almost nothing to push it one way or another. On the way over the mountains, we came to a line of vehicles waiting, and we were told that the Kalita (the coach bus that connects Bundibugyo to Kampala) was stuck. Well, not only was it stuck, it was teetering on the edge of a sheer drop, having spun its wheels on one of the muddy corners and slid toward the edge. One back wheel was off the edge, but it had come to rest, tipped at a terrifying angle, perched precariously above a long drop. There were probably about 70-80 people on board, all of whom escaped without injury. Another foot or two to the left, and I doubt any would have survived - it was hard for me to guess where the bus would have stopped rolling.

A sobering thought for me was that I had contemplated taking the bus yesterday. A couple weeks ago, as I considered my travel plans, I thought that Kalita might be a good option. In the end, I opted to hire a car, a decision that I now consider to have been a very, very wise one. But it reminded me how little control I am in and how quickly life can change. The threat of accident or sickness striking at any time is a constant backdrop to everyday life. As recent events all over the world testify, this isn't unique to Bundibugyo or Uganda, but it does seem more obvious here than in many places.

football pictures

2010-05-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

A few more pictures from the tournament. I hope to get Scott's at some point, but these will have to do for now.

A goodbye party

2010-05-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

My time in Bundibugyo is winding down, a sad realization, and one which forces me to think about how to say goodbye and how to communicate to people that I really care about them, even though I am walking out of their lives. The fact that I'm going to school makes it easier, I believe, as everyone here is eager for the chance to pursue studies, and just about everyone I've talked to assuress me that I'll be coming back here once I'm a doctor. Apparently about half of Nyahuka town is praying for this. What odds do I have against such petition?

As part of the goodbye process, I had a lunch party for a bunch of friends today, kids and young men who I've been involved with and gotten to know. I really do love many of the people in this group, and these are some of the ones who it will be truly difficult to leave. I was counting on about 25 people coming, but of course, with food is involved, about twice that many showed up at my house, many of them rather peripheral kids who I've seen but don't know. I bought spoons and plates this morning, but wasn't prepared for the numbers that came. A woman who prepares delicious Ugandan food did the cooking for me - if you thought I would be cooking Ugandan food for 50 people, you would be crazy. I've probably only cooked dinner for teammates abotu 10 times in the past 2 years. It was delicious, a big spread that was a treat for all involved, but even with chicken, beans, g-nut sauce, cabbage, sombe, and 22 cups of rice we had to carefully ration, and ran short of food by the time it came down to Vincent and me. The kids watched a movie (probably the main reason they like me) while some of the older guys helped me clean up, but the real fun started after that.

The sky grew dark as rain clouds rolled off the mountain, just as we were starting to kick a football around in front of my house. The rain broke as we set up the goals (reeds stuck in the ground about 2 feet apart), and we embarked on an epic, hour and a half long game of barefoot mud football. Vincent and I squared off against each other, joined by other kids between the ages of about 8 and 15, and laughter was the word as we slipped, slid, and fell all over the place. Face plants in mud puddles. Smooth slide tackles. Defenders falling flat on their butts. Sliding, fist-pumping goal celebrations. It was great to just run around in the rain, laughing, playing, having a good time. At the same time, we managed to play some decent ball, as a few of these kids are going to make some very nice footballers in a few years. By the time we were through my yard was left with about half the grass that it started with, and for the first time in 2 years I was about the same color as everyone else around me.

It was a fitting way to begin saying goodbye to these kids, as football has been a big part of my time here. Food, football, and laughter - all things that I have loved sharing with them in my time here.

The National Tournament, part 1

2010-05-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Bundibugyo after 8 days in Masaka for the national secondary school football tournament with the Christ School boys. It was an experience to remember, without doubt. A week of contrasts; smiles and frowns, excitement and discouragement, sun and rain, joyful celebrations and maddening frustrations. I’ll put some pictures here, but the best ones will be those that Scott took, which I’ll post later.

We left Bundibugyo early in the morning in pouring rain, leaving me to worry for everyone’s safety on the tortuous road over the mountains, but despite sliding around a fair amount, we made it safely to Fort Portal and paved roads in reasonable time. Right as we left Fort, there was a sobering reminder of the danger of road travel, as we came upon the scene of a very recent accident, the mangled car lying upside down in a ditch, passengers still stuck inside. We pulled over and ran back to help pull them out, and based on the condition of the vehicle, I thought it was likely we would have to pull a dead body from the car. My first thought was to call an ambulance, only to remember that there is no ambulance. I was thinking about waiting for EMTs to arrive, to make sure that we stabilized peoples’ heads correctly, only to realize that there could be no such considerations. While there was a lot of blood, everyone was alive and we got them out quickly. Most had head wounds and were probably concussed, but we got them in a minibus that would take them to a hospital in Fort, where the driver would be reimbursed for his ambulance service. As we got back in our minibus and pulled away, I looked at the driver and reminded him to drive us carefully. All this, and we had only been gone for 4 hours.

The tournament itself was a good experience and a time of incredible frustration. The organization left plenty to be desired, but after two days all the schools had their players screened and registered. Two of my starters were not cleared right away, owing to slight discrepancies in their names on various documents, but after petitioning the disciplinary committee and meeting with them, the boys were cleared to participate. (In Bundibugyo, names are very fluid, and a person’s name can easily change over time, and additional names can be added or can fall into disuse, making these sort of procedures difficult. One of my players used three names on his primary school leaving exam, but now only uses two, almost getting himself disqualified in the bargain.)

I was accompanied by two Christ School staff members: Ajeku, an assistant coach, and Bwampu, the games master (and a former CSB footballer himself). Alex, the other coach, couldn’t come because his wife was in the hospital waiting to deliver, so significantly more responsibility fell to me. I sat in the meeting where we drew the teams into groups, and I randomly drew us into a group with the host school, St. Henry’s.

A word about the host school. St. Henry’s Kitovu is a massive boys secondary school, rolling in money from the looks of things. 1000 students, many dorms, dozens of classrooms, three football fields, flush toilets, three canteens (stores to buy food and supplies), and acres of space. I saw their O-level test results: 91% of their students scored in division 1, and only one person scored as low as division 3. To put in perspective how hard that is to achieve, it was a major accomplishment the first time that a Christ School student scored as high as division 2. St. Henry’s is also culturally on the inside, as Masaka is right in the middle of the Baganda people, the country’s largest and most powerful people group. In effect, St. Henry’s is the opposite of Christ School. It is old while CSB is young, it is wealthy while CSB runs on a tight budget, it is from an empowered place and an empowered people while CSB is from a forgotten district and a marginalized people.

All of this set the scene for a remarkable turn of events, as the organizers announced that the tournament’s opening match, occurring at the end of the opening parade and ceremony and attended by all other participants (and TV cameras and radio stations), would be played between the host school and Christ School Bundibugyo. My eyes got big and I turned to look at Bwampu, and we both burst into laughter. We were excited and nervous - excited at the opportunity on the big stage and nervous at the prospect of getting humiliated on it, emotions that seemed to be shared by the boys when we told them. It was a veritable David and Goliath (physically too - their players are a lot bigger than ours). This was the sort of story that movies are made of.

On the day of the game, the Coca-Cola banners went up, the giant inflatable Coke bottles were inflated, the Coke marching band played, and at the end of the ceremony, my boys walked onto the pitch through a big red Coca-Cola tunnel, with young children holding their hands, just like the pros do. There was a gleam in their eyes; they realized this was a once in a lifetime experience. I was a bit of a phenomenon, the only white face among thousands of Ugandans of all shades, and as I walked to the coaches area the cameras clicked the people chattered.

Well, no movie will be made of this story. Usually, the David doesn’t beat the Goliath, though you tend to hear about the times that he does. This was not one of those times. We came out strong, controlling possession, passing well, dominating the game to an extent that after 20 minutes, I thought to myself “We’re going to win this game.” Eventually, however, the greater experience of the other team paid off, in combination with our lack of exposure to high quality competition, and they exposed weaknesses in our defense that teams in Bundibugyo hadn’t. We were down 2-0 at the half, but I was still confident and the boys were still upbeat. The game ended 4-0, but the game was nowhere near as lopsided as the score suggests. Of course we were disappointed, but I walked away with my head up, and so did the players. Based on our solid performance, one good but moody player came up to me and said excitedly, "Master! We can win!" I think it was a moment of realization and confidence that, though we were from a backwater place, we could compete on the big stage.

Before I could leave the field, however, I was grabbed by several reporters from with video cameras and microphones, setting up a comical situation in which I could barely walk twenty feet without being grabbed for another interview. I guess I have now had my 15 minutes of fame. The match was broadcast on the radio into Bundibugyo, and while the scoreline wasn’t flattering, Bwampu began getting many calls from people who had listened and who felt like, from listening, our boys were doing very well and had the better of possession. I think that it was a moment of pride, even in defeat, for many of the players, realizing that they were representing their district and that people back home were following them and proud of them.

More to come when I have more time to write…

Fearing Like a Man

2010-04-16T05:48:00.000-07:00

My hands are soft. I notice it most when cooking. People will grab the thin metal saucepans right off the fire with their are hands, unfazed. The first time I saw this, I assumed that the pan was not very hot, and picked it up to move it elsewhere. You can guess how that worked out, and the painful burns left me wondering how he could have handled it so easily. Occasionally, when a pan is really hot, I've seen someone grab a leaf or two and use them as insulation, I would still burn through the leaf.

The other day I was eating at a friend's house, and was in the little kitchen building with him and his sister in law, marveling at the toughness of her hands. A saucepan of boiling water sat on the crackling fire, to which she added maize flour to make posho (think grits). Posho, however, requires a lot of vigorous stirring, and these saucepans have no handles, so she firmly grabbed this blazing hot pan with one hand and began stirring with the other. Occasionally she would change her grip, probably for a break from the heat, but her hand was usually down on the side of the pan, basically among the flames that were licking around her fingers from below. She didn't flinch, didn't show a hint of discomfort. I told my friend how amazing this was to me, and he told me that women here have much tougher hands than men.

He told me about a saying that women have. When multiple women are together cooking, if one of them reaches for some leaves to protect her hand from the scorching heat of the pan, the others will ridicule her, saying, "Why are you fearing fire like a man?" Cooking is so much a part of the identity of women here, that one can be shamed for not having that food-preparation toughness, and resorting to the soft means of protection that men use.

I'm guessing it's callouses, and nerves damaged due to repeated burning, and simple toughness. One way or another, women here are tough. This discussion leaves out the fact that, before building the fire, women collect and carry the firewood. I've seen women who must be 70, tiny, frail looking, and hunched over, carrying on their backs massive loads of firewood that must weigh 60 pounds or more, bent almost 90 degrees at the waist, looking at the ground, slowly putting one foot in front of the other as they move up the road. It's incredible.

So here's to tough women who provide for their families, who spend most of their days doing the mundane things like hauling and splitting firewood, peeling matooke, and taking hold of blazing hot pans - and who don't fear like a man.

Champions!

2010-04-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

Christ School is the champion of Bundibugyo district! Yesterday, we met our biggest rival in the district final. Our first half was brilliant, and the boys did everything I asked of them: keeping their heads in a high-pressure game, possessing the ball, keeping it on the ground, good passing, organized defense, and a high work rate. The only thing lacking was our finishing, and we went into halftime up 1-0 when it should have been 3-0. Nevertheless, I was upbeat and pleased.

I could never have guessed what would follow, as the second half was absolutely horrible. We lost control, the boys lost their poise. I was screaming to my players, "Keep the ball on the ground!" Their coach would then immediately scream to his players, "Don't let them keep the ball on the ground!" One thing I love about soccer is that it is a player's game. The coach can train and prepare, but once the whistle blows, it's up to the players. There's no micromanagement from the sidelines. That aspect of the game drove me crazy in the second half. I was screaming, pacing, shaking my head, my heart pounding, my head in my hands, powerless. Coaching is an entirely different game than playing.

However, we held on for the 1-0 victory, and a wonderful celebration ensued. It took me a couple minutes to transition from my angry coach mode into victory celebration, but it was a lot of fun. One young player in particular impacted me. He's a good kid, very hard working, the kind of player I like to have, and one who will go on to be a big player for this team. He had come on as a substitute to give us a little more defense, and was injured late in the game on a nasty tackle from an opponent and had to be carried off the field, grimacing in pain. As soon as the whistle blew, his arms went in the the air, fists pumping, head back, with pain and joy in his eyes. He looked to me like he might start crying. The emotion in his celebration helped me realize how big this is to these boys. Some of them are orphans, all of them endure a lot of challenges, all of them come from a forgotten corner of this country. This victory which makes them champions may be one of the most meaningful and positive things to happen to them. And now they have the chance to represent their district at the national tournament. There was a crate of Mountain Dew for the celebration, and the boys opened them and shook them like champagne, a fun and happy sight. I helped carry the injured player over the the middle of the celebration so that he could join in the Mountain Dew shower.

Many of these boys have never been outside of Bundibugyo, and I'm excited to have the chance to go with them to Masaka for nationals. We'll meet taller, more skilled players. We'll meet schools with a lot more money. But we'll get to represent Bundibugyo - these 20 boys who get to go on a huge adventure, the biggest opportunity of their playing days. Seeing a new part of the country, opening their eyes, traveling, feeling good about themselves, camaraderie, confidence, learning, growth. That's what I hope for, and I believe it will be a good opportunity for me to invest in them and to show them that I care for and believe in them, even as I prepare to return to the US.

After the game, I told the players that we have a lot to talk about on Monday (not happy things, mind you), but that now was the time to celebrate. And that gave me some freedom to celebrate too.

CSB 1 - 0 Bumadu

2010-04-01T06:09:00.000-07:00

We prevailed in the district semifinals yesterday, against what was probably the other strongest team in the district, and we now advance to the district finals where we'll meet Simbya, our arch-rivals from just up the road, with a place at the national tournament on the line.

The match wasn't pretty, despite a beautiful diving header goal in the early minutes. I was missing two of my best players through injury and suspension, and despite the depth of the squad, we felt their absence. Our opponents, a team from Bundibugyo town, are the first team I've seen that also tries to play a similar style to ours; keeping the ball down, passing, control - as opposed to the fast, frantic, wild, and almost random kicking and chasing that prevails here. We didn't do very well at sticking to our game plan, as we seem to sometimes have trouble keeping our heads in big games, but we still managed to maintain better possession and keep a strong defense. The hard-fought match boiled down to a tense last few minutes, but we held on for the 1-0 victory in the fading evening light.

It was wonderful to see the excitement of the students and staff - people I've never spoken to running up to me congratulating and thanking me, dancing in celebration of a major win, one step nearer to the glory of being district champs. The sunset also seemed to celebrate with us, a beautiful sky from horizon to horizon, the orange light hitting the mountains, intense gold and bright yellows in the west, with pink clouds overhead and reaching over the mountains in the east.

We have a lot of work to do and a lot of improvements to make to be a really good team, but it was a good win and an encouragement to the boys that they can win even without some star players. I was proud of my boys, some of whom were asked to play positions they don't usually play, some of whom had subpar performances but fought hard anyway. Back to the training pitch we go, with confidence from a win, but with an awareness of weakness as well.

A Bundibugyo Evening

2010-03-28T05:44:00.000-07:00

Life here is simply not predictable.

Saturdays are busy - projects, football practice or games, streams of visitors and requests. It's also generally the night when all the singles have dinner at the Myhre's, which is always something to look forward to. I was late for dinner because I was trying to care for the Pierce's former dog Jessie, who now lives on the mission and has had a really nasty open wound, so I ran back to my house splattered with dog blood, showered, and ran up to dinner late (for the record, Jessie is improving greatly). When I got there, Scott was seeing a patient who has stopped by, so I took the meat and threw it on the grill, while Jennifer and the girls finished preparing everything else. We ate a wonderful dinner, as dinners at the Myhre's usually are, and we had just begun discussing what movie we would like to watch when Scott told me that a patient we had seen earlier was back and in need of care.

This old man needed a catheter, so we set up a relatively clean area on the ground in a small building next to the Myhre's house, sterilized some implements, put on sterile gloves and inserted the catheter. Nothing happened. The second try also failed. Since by this time it was 10PM, taking the man to Bundibugyo hospital wasn't a good option as he probably wouldn't be seen until morning, not to mention that the 30 minute drive over bumpy road would be sheer agony for him. So Scott decided to do a procedure then and there. He sterilized some surgical instruments, injected a local anesthetic, and proceeded to cut open the man's abdomen, stick a catheter directly into his bladder, and stitch him back up with the catheter still in place. Remember that this was late at night, so the only light he had was my headlamp and another flashlight being held by a neighbor of the patient. I stood by hoping, probably in vain, that I was being helpful, holding instruments and keeping light on the procedure. Just to review - surgery, blood, urine, on the floor, in the dark - but still well done. Scott told me I'll be horrified when I look back on this in medical school.

The degree of this man's previous discomfort became clear when, after all of this, these unpleasant procedures, this surgery with minimal local anesthesia, he looked at Scott and said "God bless you Doctor." Scott injected his thigh with an antibiotic that is apparently quite painful, and his parting words to us were, "You have killed my leg." After all of that, it was his leg that we killed.

It was 11PM, still terribly hot, and we were both wound up and not really ready for bed, so Scott, Jennifer, and I watched an episode of Prison Break, and I went home around midnight. I found my fridge out, so I had to hook up a new propane tank, light it, and take my second shower of the night, heading to bed at 1.

Animal care, grilling, tacos, surgery, TV, refrigerator maintenance - an evening with a bit of everything. Jennifer asked to me, "Won't it be boring to go back to a place where these sort of things aren't normal?" It seemed like a half-joking question. And my answer would have to be a half-joking yes.

Kick Off

2010-03-19T05:36:00.000-07:00

We had our first football match of the season on Wednesday - it was supposed to be Saturday, but other teams are protesting and causing trouble, a frustrating story that I don't have time to relate now - always a big and exciting event. Especially in the last few months I've been spending a lot of time training the boys, usually at least five days a week for a couple hours. We have talent, and my goal is generally to bring some organization and tactical awareness to the game. The game started a mere two and a half hours late (we had to wait for someone to come and officially commission the match, but he needed to be picked up and driven to the field, and once he arrived he had to lecture everyone involved on the minutiae of the regulations. The bureaucracy here is mind-boggling), but within a minute we were off to a good start with a 1-0 lead. I was really happy with the way the boys played; they have come a long way since I first saw them. Like any coach, I was still frustrated with a lot of things and did more than my fair share of yelling - I wonder what the boys were thinking as I was screaming while we had a 4-0 lead - but it was a good match and was fun to watch.

Football season seems to bring the school together in a special way, and the joy that these boys have in representing their school and being supported by their classmates is clearly visible. Students and young children run onto the field after each goal, dancing and twirling in celebration. The girls beat drums, sing, and chant for the entire match. I think that the matches are a really encouraging experience for the players, and I hope that it's a chance for them to learn teamwork, dedication, and respect.

The game finished an impressive 6-1, so everyone was happy. Except for me, of course, as I was disappointed that we allowed a goal. But it was encouraging start to the season, and I'm hopeful that we'll have a successful year.

Hope

2010-03-12T04:24:00.000-08:00

Kabasa went home today. He was admitted for about 6 weeks, and for the first three of those it continually seemed as though he was dying. He came in as a weak, malnourished child, swollen with edema, whose skin was falling apart and who lacked the strength to stand or even cry very much; he left today a happy, energetic boy with a little meat on his bones, running around the ward, throwing his ball to me, with a heartwarming smile on his face. Six weeks, from the very brink of death to curious, playful life.

I don't know what awaits him. At home, he won't get the same high quality milk and food that we can provide to the inpatients. Who can say what his future holds?

Still, Kabasa gives me hope. It is easy to despair in this place, but in the face of suffering, tragedy, and loss, he is a glimmer of beauty. A little boy saved from death. A life preserved. A father spared the loss of his son. I know I have said this before, but I'll say it again - because Kabasa is walking home today, a healthy boy holding his father's hand, I feel that the world is more right than it was yesterday. Undoubtedly, the world has a long way to go - several children this week have demonstrated that in gut-wrenching ways - but Kabasa gives me hope in goodness, wholeness, and healing.

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the old order of things has passed away."

Tuesdays

2010-03-07T04:20:00.000-08:00

I realize that I provide very little indication of what I actually do on any given day, so here's a glimpse of Tuesday, usually a very long, intense day primarily consisting of malnutrition work.

In the morning I go the health center to do rounds with Jennifer, starting with the severe malnutrition cases. A few of the kids on the ward now:

I first saw Asaba at one of the outpatient programs, and immediately referred him to the health center for the inpatient care that he needs. He's been a troubling case, not responding to receiving the therapeutic milk in the way that we usually see these kids recover. His weight is starting to trend upward, so I'm hopeful that he's finally on the right track.

Tumwine is absolutely pitiful, one of the worst cases I've seen since being here. His body is wasting away, every rib, vertebra, and most other bones are clearly visible, and he is so sick that he has little appetite for the F100 milk that UNICEF supplies to us, so he is another sad case of someone who made it to the health center, but can't seem to turn the corner. Jennifer has said numerous times that she doesn't expect to see him alive the next day, but he has somehow clung to life. Part of his problem is child spacing. His mother just gave birth days ago, so she had stopped breast feeding him during her pregnancy, which was too soon for him. It's painful to see him in such a horrible condition every day, but somehow he's held on, so I try to keep my hope for him alive too.

Finally, a happy story. Kabasa is an object of wonder for me. He's been admitted for a long time, and wasn't responding for several weeks. His protein deficiency had caused major edema, and his skin was deteriorating. About three weeks ago, I said to one of the nurses, "He's going to die by tomorrow. What can we do differently?" Since then, this seemingly hopeless case has been a miraculous recovery. Within days he started smiling, and by now his weight it shooting upward and he's a smiling, playful five year old boy who gives me an energetic high-five whenever I see him, and loves to throw a ball back and forth. Every time I look at him I'm amazed, he brings joy to my day and hope to my heart.

On the first Tuesday of the month we have our motherless program, which supports caregivers to be surrogate breast feeders for children whose mothers died in childbirth, so in the late morning I see these cases. We give beans every month to nourish these heroic aunts and grandmothers, so that they can be strong enough to provide breast milk for these unfortunate infants. Some of the kids to great, and some don't; some families are incredibly dedicated to caring for these kids, while some don't seem to be very invested and are probably looking for any handout they can get a hold of. But I'm always amazed to see aunts, already breast feeding their own child and often struggling to provide for them, taking on the responsibility of caring for another child, or grandmothers who haven't had a child in years but have managed to re-lactate, these wrinkled old women who throw 25-pound sacks of beans on their backs, strap them across their foreheads, and walk slowly, steadily away, perhaps having to cover many kilometers to get back home.

In the afternoon, I jump on a motorcycle with Baguma and head out near the border with Congo for the BBB program, an outpatient nutrition program. The road is always an adventure, especially with the recent unusually heavy and long lasting rains. Their used to be a bridge over the river we have to cross, but it has been gone for years and now the motorcycles drive across when the water is low enough, and men ferry people back and forth on their backs.

Here are some of the kids from the BBB program.

Some do wonderfully on the locally produced peanut paste and soy flour that we distribute, while others don't respond well, but outpatient programs will always have those issues. It's been a great learning experience for me, and I've encountered many interesting cultural issues. For instance, one of the big difficulties with these types of programs is that it is culturally almost impossible for a parent to give a certain food to one child - the supplemental food that we provide, in this instance - without sharing it between all of their children, meaning that often the malnourished child enrolled in the program might not even get the majority of the calories that we give them. But I've had great experiences, worked with some wonderful kids, seen spectacular recoveries, and have built a great relationship with Baguma.

We get back sometime around 4 or 5 usually, and I run down to Christ School for soccer practice. The season starts next week and their are high expectations, so we're training hard every day. After two hours of playing, drilling, talking, running, yelling, and encouraging, I make my way back up the road around 7, with the sun setting behind me, tired, thirsty, hungry, and aching, but usually it's a good ache.

Media Darling

2010-03-03T20:28:00.000-08:00

A quick follow up to my previous post about the camera crews buzzing around on the pediatric ward. A couple of days ago I received a text message from a friend in Kampala saying, "I just saw you on TV! It was about malnutrition in Bundibugyo." I'm not sure who thought I deserved to be on the news. Maybe I have the look that Ugandan news outlets are looking for. I'll call it fame.

My friend was concerned about Bundibugyo - are things really getting that bad? Is malnutrition on the rise as dramatically as it seems? The answer is no, it simply hasn't been reported before. Certainly, the rapid population growth coupled with increased cash cropping aren't helping the situation, but it's simply a case where things have been bad for a long time, but only when the WFP pours resources into the area does it get covered.

It makes me wonder how much of the world is that way. How many horrible situations, how many tragedies, how much oppression are we blind to simply because we don't have the time, energy, or desire to know about them? Maybe it's simply that news networks don't show it, or maybe we would rather be ignorant. But if even many Ugandans have little idea about the severity of malnutrition in their own country - granted, in a remote district - how much do we miss? What might our world be like?

Big Happenings

2010-02-26T22:40:00.001-08:00

Wednesday morning at the health center, and suddenly two shiny silver UN vehicles pull into the compound. I look on with some interest as people climb out, carrying cameras, video cameras, and notepads, people who clearly aren't from around here. Before I know it, the pediatric ward is abuzz with activity, people snapping pictures and taking video footage of some of the most pathetic malnutrition cases, and vying for Jennifer's attention, asking her questions and carefully recording her answers.

As it turns out, today was the launch of a major child malnutrition campaign in Bundibugyo, spearheaded by the World Food Program, and WFP staff and newspapers reporters were looking for information for their pieces on the project. The scene on the ward was unlike any I've seen, the mothers chattering back and forth, probably amused and confused by the commotion. Pitiful little Kabasa, a five year old with horrible malnutrition resulting in massive edema and his skin deteriorating, probably had 200 pictures taken of him, but he, and his father, seemed to like the attention. I was glad that the reporters also wanted to speak with the families of these kids, not only to the hospital staff. Perhaps people who never have a voice will be heard, or will at least feel that someone wants to hear. That, however, is probably overly optimistic.

When Jennifer mentioned one of the programs that I work on she indicated my involvement, and soon reporters turned to me with their questions. Mostly, I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, saying something that would somehow hinder efforts to address malnutrition in the district, or would cast the work being done in a poor light. But there I was, taking questions from reporters from the two biggest national newspapers in Uganda, and almost laughing that they felt that talking to me might be worthwhile. Finally, they asked me for my name and my title, so that they could site their sources. I froze - what is my tittle? I don't have one! But I can't tell them that. Some jocular titles that I've considered for myself here flashed through my mind - assistant bean counter, head of vermin control, nondescript duties officer - but in the end I stammered out something about being a nutrition worker with World Harvest.

It was interesting to hear these reporters talking to Jennifer and trying to get the one phrase that summed up the problem, the core of the issue, while she kept repeating that it is much more complex that any one thing. There's no one thing causing malnutrition here, rather it is a host of problems like child spacing, increased cash cropping, low education levels (especially among girls), and families splitting, leaving the kids with only one parent to provide. The outside agencies want the key point, the issue to address, the sound byte, the target, the money raiser, which isn't a bad thing to want, but the reality is not nearly so straight forward.

Today was the big event, a major gathering in Bundibugyo town, including members of parliament, the district governor, district health officials, and the WFP country director for Uganda. Of course, the program started about an hour and a half late, but here that's actually pretty good. A march through town, led by a marching band (this is crazy stuff for Bundibugyo) kicked off the event. Singing, dancing, and dramas about nutrition provided the entertainment, and in addition to the one or two hundred invited guests, there were hundreds of people who crowded into the open boma grounds to see the spectacle and listen to the speeches. There were some good messages, and while a lot of the program seemed to be just for show, and I'm still hazy on what the program being launched actually is, it was great to see the awareness of the need, and to hear of the commitment of the WFP to the district. This sort of activity and awareness could do good things for this place.

But one of the coolest aspect of the event was that the impetus behind it came largely from research done by World Harvest missionaries. The BBB program that I work on was started by Stephanie Jilcott, a PhD in nutrition who has published research done on malnutrition in Bundibugyo, and this program was furthered by the work of Scott Ickes, whose doctorate was based on his work with BBB. They have both recently presented and published research on malnutrition here, and this major WFP campaign seems to stem directly from that. One WFP worker who I met, an American, asked me, "So do you know Scott Ickes? I've talked with him about this program and we've look at his research a lot." It was thrilling to see the hard, and sometimes tedious, work of other World Harvest people paying off in such big ways - big enough that the UN and WFP are deciding to make Bundibugyo a major focus for their work in Uganda.

What is going on here?

2010-02-21T03:35:00.000-08:00

Several interesting, frustrating, surprising cultural experiences in the the last couple of days.

A good friend stops by my house in the morning, and I invite him in for tea. In seconds, he has grabbed a loaf of bread, cut himself two massive slices, polished off my peanut butter, and used a massive amount of jam in making himself a sandwich. Never did I indicate that I would feed him, nor did he ask - it was simply the obvious thing. It doesn't occur to someone here that I might want to save those things for later, or for another use, or to actually use some of them myself. It seems that in this culture, it wouldn't make sense for someone to have a use for something that would trump supplying a friend while he was over. Therefore, why would someone even need to ask? Also, the idea of saving for later isn't very strong in this culture, for a number of valid reasons, so it doesn't occur to someone that I might be trying to stretch this peanut butter over a couple months rather then weeks. This sort of thing is difficult as an American, and challenges me not to view everything through a narrow cultural lens and to be humble, open to other ways of thinking and understanding.

In meeting with the local chairman to report a recent break-in and theft in one of the houses, he began talking about the string of incidents at my house over the last few months, the have involved children coming in in-between the bars on my windows. The identity of one of the children has become clear, and unfortunately he is a good friend of mine. However, is discussing this, the official would never actually use his name. He said things like, "Your friend," or "That neighbor." At one point he even looked at me uncomfortably and said, "Sorry, I don't want to name him." Social harmony is of utmost importance here, and accusing someone of something, even if they are clearly guilty, is offensive and apparently unacceptable. This sentiment is so strong that, even in a conversation with me, away from those involved, an official can imply the identity of a boy who has stolen from me, but can't actually use his name.

I came across an acquaintance who was cutting lumber from tree he had felled, and he began telling me about the construction project he was using the lumber for. He had paid someone for lumber, but they refused to give it to him, keeping his money and the lumber. My response was to say that they had stolen his money. He replied that he had tried to get the lumber from them, but they had refused again, so he said, "So I avoided a quarrel, and decided to harvest my own lumber." Never mind that they took his money and didn't provide that which he paid them for - he avoided a quarrel. That was the important part. This was shocking to me. Most of you probably know me well enough that I definitely like to avoid conflict, but this passivity in the face of blatant dishonesty and theft still seems incredibly foreign to me. But I suppose that we all see things through the filter of our own culture - for him, the theft was not the most important thing, rather, maintaining social harmony, not making enemies, and not engaging in conflict was the highest priority.

These sort of encounters, along with many others that stuck out a little less in my mind, all of them occurring in 24 hours, are the sort of things that can make my head spin. Make me feel like I just don't understand people here, and give life a continuous background of stress. But they also challenge me, stretch me, force me to think about things in new ways, shed light on many of my presuppositions, and reveal my idols of control and respect. Cross-cultural living is wonderful and terrible, fun and frustrating, exciting and maddening.

Lessons in cooking, and life

2010-02-08T04:06:00.000-08:00

One benefit of being almost alone in the district this week (it's just the Clarks and me) is that I've spent a lot of time with Ugandan friends. Yesterday, my good friend Vincent had me over to his house for dinner, and to teach me about local cooking. So when I arrived at his house at 6:15, I stepped into the kitchen and started helping out.

Now, kitchen is a relative term. This kitchen, and almost all kitchens in this district, is a small, free-standing structure made of mud packed onto a frame of wood and reeds, with a thatched roof and packed dirt floor. One the ground is a wood fire with three stones around it, which support pots and pans over the fire. There is no chimney. Where does the smoke go, you ask? Into my eyes. And lungs. Ok, most of it escapes through holes in the roof and through the door, but my eyes were burning the whole time, and I woke up this morning smelling strongly of wood smoke. The kitchen counter is outside - a piece of wire mesh suspended between four small poles, where food is placed to keep it clean and dry. There is one knife in this kitchen, and no cutting board; everything is cut while in the hand, pulling the blade back toward your thumb.

I arrived while the sombe was in progress, one of my favorite Ugandan dishes, made from cassava leaves. Vincent walked me through the process of making it, and I was glad to learn, and hope to give it a shot on my own sometime soon. Soon after I got there, Vincent's sister-in-law walked over and just started laughing at us. The sight of two young men cooking is so unusual that she couldn't contain herself. In American culture, it is common for women to be the primary cooks, but here, it seems almost unheard of, and certainly comical, for grown men, and especially married men, to cook. This led me to give me to give Vincent a lesson in American culture: in America, a lot of young men learn to cook, primarily to impress women.

One aspect of food preparation here that didn't immediately occur to me is that dishes are prepared serially. That is, first we cooked the sombe, then we cooked some vegetables, then we cooked the rice, then we cooked the g-nuts. All of this after Vincent and already steamed bananas and cooked cabbage, and prior to that, the firewood had to be collected and split, and the fire started. But the time invested is even more than that makes it seem, as the sombe has to be ground by hand, the rice has to be hulled with a mortar and pestle and have the hulls removed (which took over an hour), an I spent about 30 minutes pounding g-nuts, also with a mortar and pestle. Combine all of these activities, even with several nieces and nephews helping out, and we didn't eat until after 9. It was a great dinner, spent with good friends. I sat next to Aliganyila, to whom a previous post was dedicated, and had a great time laughing with Vincent.

The evening made me think about how different my experience of something as basic as food preparation has been. Yesterday, I almost cut my fingers off several times, while Vincent barely even has to look at what he's cutting in his hand. I buried my eyes in my arm when they filled with smoke, while Vincent hardly flinched. I felt like everything took a long time, and, well, Vincent did too, but he is used to cooking one dish at a time, and people here don't rush like we Americans do.

The smoke, the dirt, the arms tired from grinding, the heat, blowing on the fire, the darkness, the laughter, the silence, time passing - a meal. An experience of life. Simple, unremarkable, everyday life. The mundane. The activities that fill up days and years, the necessary things, the very fabric of experience for so many people here, and all over the world. I was glad to be there for it.

Hitting the ground running

2010-02-04T04:42:00.000-08:00

My first full day back was as busy as I would have expected, and then some. After sleeping only three hours the night before, I slept soundly until I was awakened around 7 by a thunderclap that rattled my bed, and I once again had no idea where I was for a few seconds. I set off down the road for the health center, greeting people on the road, and grateful for the cloud cover (I've already been told "You have changed your color, you are now very white").

Wednesdays are always busy at the health center, so I was trying to get back into the swing of things with Jennifer on the pediatric ward as well as working with Baguma on a nutrition program for ARV patients. It was good to be back there, but hard to see so many sick children again. The main event happened in the afternoon, as I went with Baguma for the opening day of a new site for our BBB nutrition program. He had trained community volunteers and taken care of the logistics in my absence, and I came back just in time for the big day. When we arrived around 1:30, there were about 20 mothers there with their children, and I expected that more would come throughout the afternoon. I spoke to the mothers about the program, lavishly thanked the volunteers, and then we began weighing kids and measuring their height in order to evaluate their nutrition status. We began to draw a crowd of onlookers, which didn't surprise me, given that this was a new event at this site, and that there was a white person there (this place is way out in the village). I wasn't prepared for what happened next. More and more children came, and I began to notice that most the kids we were measuring were big, chunky, healthy kids. Then I looked at the stack of papers for kids waiting to be weighed, it was growing rapidly. For every child we weighed, two more showed up. I realized that every mother passing on the road was stopping to have her child screened, and I was told that some women had run to their villages, shouting for everyone to come have their kids weighed - it was possibly the most effective community mobilization I have ever seen. Everyone, healthy, sick, and in-between, was coming to be weighed, probably in the hope of getting a free handout. But after measuring about 100 kids, with at least that many still waiting, we decided that Baguma would do triage, and send away all of those who were clearly not malnourished. Then we started to see the malnourished kids, and we finished weighing and measuring, but hadn't even started evaluating them, after three hours. After sorting through all of these papers, we decided on 17 kids who were in bad enough shape to qualify, and one who was barely clinging to life who I referred to the health center. As I started entering names and date into record books, the fun part began. Baguma demonstrated how to prepare the food we distribute, and watching him teach and engage with the mothers is a pleasure, even if I can't understand much of what he is saying. Then came the best part of my day - watching these malnourished kids stuff their faces with the nutritious food from the demonstration. It is simply beautiful. Whenever we do a demonstration at one of these programs, this brings joy to my heart and a beaming smile to my face - it gets me every time.

It was getting dark by the time we left, and we didn't get home until 7, officially the latest I have ever seen one of these program run. But it was great: eager mothers, competent and excited volunteers, health center staff present and helping, good food, smiles, crying, laughter. I felt sadness at working with pitiful malnourished children, and knowing that they may not improve, but also hope for recovery and excitement at the start of something new.

Return to Uganda

2010-02-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

The north-east winter gave me a frigid send-off, and now, after several airline meals, some bottles of British Airways wine, cramped legs, laps around the cabin, too many movies, and not enough sleep, I'm back in Uganda, where I was welcomed by a wall of hot, heavy air as I stepped off the plane. I can't seem to find moderate temperatures. It's a transition to a different world, but the sights, sounds, and smells have a familiar feel this time around.

Kampala:
The thick dust that stings my eyes. Roads that are more pothole than pavement. Waking up with absolutely no idea where I was. Jetlag. Dogs barking all night; birds singing all morning. The loud, chaotic, lawless rush hour traffic. The hair-raising rides on a boda-boda, weaving in and out of traffic, but only once truly fearing for my life. The equatorial sun. Haggling over prices.The little boy who cautiously approached me and then took my hand and walked with me for a minute - he trying to tell me something, and I trying to tell him I don't speak any Luganda. The ubiquitous garbage heaps. Eating Indian food. The ash floating slowing down through the air like black feathers, and landing on my table, as well as any other exposed place in downtown, as a result of the burning of a major trash dump in the city. Meeting up for a lovely reunion with Heidi. Being completely overwhelmed by the prospect of shopping for the next few months, and responding by shopping barely at all.

The Road:
The first leg is four hours of pavement - using the term loosely - between Kampala and Fort Portal. No lanes: survival is the rule, and the bigger vehicle is always in control. Coach buses come hurtling down hills, swinging onto the other side of the road at breakneck speeds around bends, pushing other cars off of the road, always giving the impression of being about to roll over and smash through anything caught in their way. Children run along the sides, sometimes a mere foot or two from the cars going by. Cows saunter across, seeming unfazed by the vehicles screeching to a halt to avoid them. And the birds - massive, beautiful, tropical birds - swoop overhead, majestic creatures like the Great Blue Turaco and the Black and White Casqued Hornbill.
The second leg is the Bundibugyo road - to which I have dedicated a fair amount of writing in the past year - 3 hours of dirt, rock, craters, and dust. Dust in my hair, dust in my teeth, dust coloring my skin red. Running along the side of the Rwenzori mountains, there is often nothing separating the edge of the road from a drop of several hundred feet. It's beautiful, but the dry-season haze filled the air and shrunk the stunning vistas to small, fuzzy hints of grandeur. On the western side of the mountains, the slopes were ablaze. Fields are often burned periodically, but in the dry conditions and hot breeze, many of these fires seemed to have spread up the mountainside, through forest and brush. I heard it said that many young men sometimes burn land "stubbornly" - probably best translated "just because." Black and gray dominated. The further we came off of the mountains, the more green we saw, the more people we encountered, and the more cries of "Mujungu!" we heard, a sound that I had almost thought that I missed, but quickly remembered that I didn't.

I arrived in the early evening and had great reunions with the Myhres, Ashley, the Clarks, and my neighbors. Kids jumped all over me, telling me they were starting to think that I had lied to them, and wasn't coming back; their beautiful smiles and exited laughter were heartwarming. A clean house was a pleasure to come back to (Scott Will, you are the man), and I took a lovely cool shower to quite literally wash off the road before sharing a wonderful dinner at the Myhres. We sat around, catching up and telling stories long after dinner was over. In addition to all of these great things, there were no snakes, rats, or giant lizards in my choo. But I do hear there have been bats in my house. It's good to be back.

Last Minute Gift

2009-12-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

Here is the information for this year's Give-A-Goat program. I know we're getting down to the wire and Christmas is only a few days away, but this is a wonderful program that really impacts people's lives. Just an idea for something special this Christmas!

Hunger, sickness, loss: the gift of a goat to a family with any one (or more) of these challenges, leads to milk for a malnourished child. This gift translates directly into protein and calories - a very tangible demonstration of the love of Immanuel: God with us. This year, as a result of your generous gifts last Christmas to BundiNutrition's Matiti Project, 109 goats were distributed to families coping with these very real challenges in sustaining life in Bundibugyo. We are so grateful for your generosity. It is a privilege to be your "hands and feet" on the ground here as we see the smiles on a mother's face as the arrow on the scale creeps higher and higher! This Christmas, if you would like to "Give-a-Goat" to provide milk for a hungry, sick or left behind child, $130 allows us to purchase a high grade dairy goat (due to the number of goats distributed to date, we are now able to purchase their progeny locally here in Bundibugyo), train the family in its care, give them a few tools for constructing a simple shed, and then enable them to take the goat home. $200 will allow us to do the same AND to set aside a portion for supporting the ongoing development of a local high grade dairy goat breed in Bundibugyo – an effort to develop a culturally appropriate and sustainable source of milk to boost the protein and caloric intake more widely, in a district where half of all children are chronically underfed. For the third consecutive year, we are offering African handmade Christmas tree ornaments to the first 100 Give-a-Goat donors (at the donation level of your choice). Please read the following directions carefully, and a very Merry Christmas to you from all of us here in Bundibugyo!

How to "give-a-goat":
1. Go the to Give-a-Goat donation page here, http://whm.org/project/details?ID=12375 to donate by credit card. This is the simplest and fastest method, and allows our colleague Ginny Barnette in the Sending Center to quickly confirm your donation and address and mail you the ornament.
2. Send a check to WHM Donation Processing Center, P.O. Box 1244, Albert Lea, MN 56007-1244, writing "Goat Fund 12375" on the memo line. Since the processing and return of the information to Ginny could take a couple of weeks, you may want to email her (GBarnette@whm.org) in order to be sure you receive the ornament before Christmas.
3. If you would like the ornament mailed to a DIFFERENT address than the one on your credit card or check, you must also communicate this to Ginny. A card will be included with each goat describing the program.

A Son's Sickness, A Father's Story

2009-11-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

Sickle Cell Disease is tragically common here. While you may have studied it briefly in high school biology, I'll spare you a discussion of the genetic basis of the disease. Boiled down, it is a genetic disease that leaves the patient with extremely low levels of hemoglobin, so that the heart and lungs have a hard time supplying oxygen to the body. In the U.S. it is a manageable disease. Here it is not. I see hundreds of anemic children with SCD, and I can't think of a single adult with it. You will understand the implications of that.

Aliganyila is my mental image of Sickle Cell Disease. Distended abdomen, stunted growth, big yellow eyes, stick-thin arms and legs, pale palms, malnourished body, frizzy discolored hair. That look, to me it says "sickle cell." He is the embodiment of the disease, as far as I have experienced it. He is also a wonderful boy, playful and amiable, the son of a friend of mine and the nephew of my best Ugandan friend. Jennifer says that his life has been tenuous since he was born. One emergency blood transfusing after another, visits to the hospital or the Myhre's at all hours, rushed trips to the district hospital to get the right blood type, always near the brink, sometimes farther and sometimes nearer, but never comfortably distant from death. A few weeks ago he came to the heath center desperately ill. Heidi told me he had a foot in the grave, and that there was no blood of the correct type anywhere in the entire district. It was supposed to arrive the following morning, but it seemed unlikely that he would survive the night. I went down to the health center to visit him, and it was physically painful for me to see him in the condition he was in. He lay on his side, his breathing rapid and labored, his racing pulse visible in his neck, as his lungs and heart tried desperately to get enough oxygen to his body. For him, just surviving was like running a marathon. Even lifting his head was too monumental and exhausting a task, though he managed to lift his hand a few inches to meet mine as I sat with him. His hemoglobin was just above 2 - for comparison, I would be rushed to the hospital if mine dipped below 8. Just about any child in the States would be dead around 4 or 5. Aliganyila probably hasn't been above 6 in his entire life, with 12 being considered normal. He simply could not get enough oxygen, and he couldn't last long in that state. I don't know if I have ever prayed for anything as fervently as I prayed for Aliganyila's life that day.

Before I continue, I need to mention his family. His father is a friend of mine who lives just down the street - I've eaten meals there and stayed a night or two at their house. He has several children with SCD. About a year and a half ago, before I arrived, one of his sons died of the disease. Then less than three weeks before Aliganyila was admitted at the health center, another son with sickle cell died. A friend told me that he has lost 6 children. And now, with Aliganyila near death, he was facing the prospect of losing three sons in 18 months, and two in less than three weeks. That thought floored me. I can't even wrap my mind around it. I simply have no context that allows me to understand what that would be like. The horror and tragedy of it brought tears to my eyes and a knot to my stomach. I cannot really describe how I felt; horror, anger, pain, doubt, and many other emotions at once. I looked into the father's eyes, full of despair and tears.

Eventually, the blood arrived, and Aliganyila held out long enough to get the transfusion he needed. The next day he was sitting up in bed, and smiled at me as I greeted him. He was alive again. It turns out that at that point, his hemoglobin was still below 4, but his body is so accustomed to the anemia that he was looking pretty good. He received three more transfusions over the next 2 days, but he never got above a hemoglobin of 5, our usual benchmark for discharging a patient. One of the greatest moments of my time here was playing with him one day when I walked into the health center. I held out my fists for him to guess which one I had something in, and he laughed and laughed with embarrassment and chagrin as he guessed wrong 5 times in a row, before finally getting it right and finding the 100 shilling coin in my hand. The smile on his face, the laughter in his eyes, and these coming from a boy who was so nearly dead less than 48 hours before, were some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. And days later, he was back up at my house playing with the other boys.

He is still sick. This disease will never leave him, and as I mentioned before, I don't know of anyone with sickle cell who has survived to adulthood. His prognosis is not good. But seeing him return from the edge of death to his normal, smiling, happy self brought joy to my heart. His father is relieved, though still scared. How could he not be? I'm left to grapple with hard truths and conflicting emotions. The juxtaposition of joy and sorrow, sickness and healing. The suffering of a father that is too great for me to fathom. A wonderful little boy whom I love, for whose life I am now always afraid. A good God, a God of wholeness, and a broken, painful world, full of suffering. One thing I know: my face lights up every time I see Aliganyila, a loved one back from the edge of death.

Grasshopper Pizza

2009-11-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

It's grasshopper season. They're everywhere - flying, hopping, green snacks. You read that right: snacks. Fried or boiled - apparently boiled gives you "the real taste" - people everywhere are chowing down on grasshoppers by the bag full. It makes sense when you think about it, a plentiful, seasonal, nutritious resource, the eating of which also reduces pests on people's crops. But still, there's something disquieting about watching people eat insects.

At our team pizza dinner, Pat showed up with fried grasshoppers, to complement the pepperoni, bacon, and veggies on the topping table. I had heard tell of grasshopper pizza, but it always seemed closer to legend than reality. But soon I found myself munching on a grasshopper - by itself, at first, to get the full experience - and then eating several more on pieces of pizza, thrown on there among the onions, pesto, and tomatoes.

So, there's the story. Grasshopper pizza. Not as bad as you might think. The exoskeleton feels a little strange in the mouth, but it mostly tasted like anything else that you might fry in oil. That being said, I doubt that Pizza Hut will be adding this to their menu any time soon...

A memorable evening

2009-11-15T03:09:00.000-08:00

Some moments stand out, as they are happening, as memorable experience, ones that are unusual or foreign enough to me to make me realize that I'm living in a place far removed from my previous experience. I often say of thee moments, "this will make a good blog post." Last night was one of these moments.

Scott Will and I returned home from the Myhres to find our house broken into yet again (at least the fourth time in the last 6 weeks). This seemingly thoughtful thief never trashes the house nor takes electronics - my computer was out in the open - rather he just takes money and usually locks the door behind him. This time, since we've changed and added some locks, we are struggling to figure out how he got in. This time he found my money. It's frustrating and maddening. My emotions were a combination of anger at being robbed, frustration at not having put an end to these thefts, fear that I'll discover the thief is someone I know and trust, and indignation at being treated this way when I'm trying to do good things here. The latter is the hardest part: the feeling of being unwanted, treated poorly or as a source of money by people who I am trying to relate to, to love, to serve. I believe that part of that pain and indignation is legitimate, but part of it stems from an inflated notion of my own importance and a self-righteous sense of what I deserve. I am often frustrated by the sense of entitlement that I feel from some people here, especially those who have known missionaries for a long time, but experiences such as these reveal to me my own sense of entitlement, a revelation that is poignant and painful in its accuracy.

With these emotions swirling in my head, I went to bed. Or rather, I tried to. I climbed under my mosquito net with a book but stopped when I saw something small in the middle of my bed. As I picked it up, I realized that it was a small cluster of what appeared to be insect eggs of some sort. Insects laying eggs on my sheets is simply revolting. I threw them out and started to change my sheets, now frustrated, upset, and disgusted. That was when things really got good. As I started to change my sheets, a large mouse or small rat darted out of my mattress, along the frame of my bed, and into the far corner of the room. Holes chewed in my mattress, mosquito net, and sheets, chunks of foam littering the floor, dried grass brought in from outside. This meant war. One too many things had frustrated me that night, and I focused that anger on this insolent and unfortunate rodent. I called Scott Will, we stuffed a towel under the door to prevent his escape, and started chasing him around my room, sticks in hand crashing wildly on the floor, both of us ready for bed, in our underwear, at midnight in rural Uganda. We laughed at the absurdity of the situation; it was the only appropriate response. It was then that this moment struck me as emblematic, and we both commented that this was a blog post. After several minutes of running, swinging sticks, stomping, and generally tearing my room apart, man triumphed over beast.

So many things went wrong that it brought some levity to the situation. At least life isn't boring.

Aerial Pictures

2009-11-06T04:45:00.000-08:00

Here are some aerial shots that I said I would try to get. Above is Nyahuka town.

Aerial shot of the mission, with the biggest building being the community center. My house is just barely out of the picture in the top right corner.

The blue roofs are Christ School, and that's the football pitch where the boys train and play.

The small, straight, light green strip near the center is Bundibugyo airfield, seen through a gap in the clouds.

A weekend in the rift valley

2009-11-06T04:34:00.000-08:00

At the risk of representing my life as one spectacular trip after another, here’s an update about my weekend excursion into the great East African Rift Valley. I was accompanying Scott, who was on a trip to see Luke and Caleb at boarding school, and it was a chance for me to see a different part of this continent. We boarded a 4-seater Cessna here in Bundibugyo and flew out on the one-year anniversary of my arrival in Uganda. The next day we flew to Nairobi and hopped in a taxi for the hour and a half drive out to RVA. I was totally unprepared for what it would be like. We climbed higher and higher, reaching over 8,000 ft on the edge of the escarpment overlooking the rift valley, where the view of the plain several thousand feet below stretched as far as I could see, rudely broken by Mt. Longonot towering up into the sky from the middle of the massive valley. The sun breaking through infrequent gaps in the clouds created a beautiful speckled pattern across the plain as far as I could see. We began the descent down the side of the escarpment, and reached Kijabe, home of RVA and a remarkable mission hospital, about half way down, still perched around 7,000 ft with a stunning view of the rift valley. Despite the amazing views and spectacular landscape, perhaps the most amazing part of it was this: the temperature was cool. The air was crisp and clear, with a strong, cool breeze. The cold blue of the sky was unlike any I’ve seen in Uganda, and I commented to Scott that it felt a bit like September in New England – and that came from me, who spent 4 cold autumns in northern Massachusetts. The next morning was cold and rainy. I again commented that it felt like fall in New England. At a high altitude, even in the cool weather I burned badly in the sun after being outside all day Saturday, but this wasn’t the hot humid burn that I get in Bundibugyo; it was a cold, dry, chapped burn, reminiscent of the feeling I get after a day spent skiing. In spite of the discomfort, I thoroughly enjoyed being outside in the cool weather, as it is something I haven’t experienced much in the last year.

I met some fascinating people while I was there, including an American doctor who has been working there for 30 years, and a British doctor who calls his soccer referee’s license the only qualification that means anything to him.

After spending the weekend at RVA, watching the boys play soccer, checking out the hospital, and attending a wonderful cook-out, we got in a cab back to the airport. You might think that this would be a less interesting part of the trip, but you would be wrong. Nairobi is a dicey place at night. First we realized that the driver had alcohol on his breath. Then a policeman, after seeing white people in the car, attempted to stop us in traffic, likely to try to get some money out of the situation. The driver, probably both trying to avoid being extorted and to avoid trouble for drinking and driving, ignored the officer and tried to drive away on the shoulder. I looked behind us, and could only see two things: the policeman’s flashlight bouncing as he ran after us, and the barrel of his gun illuminated by the flashlight’s beam. After the officer slammed his hand down on the trunk of the car, the driver sped away on the shoulder. Next we saw a large pool of blood on the road. It wasn’t hard to imagine how that happened, as people were constantly running across the busy, unlit road. At the airport, the power went out as we were waiting to check in. That’s right, a major international airport, one of the main arrival and departure points on the continent, was without electricity, except for some emergency lights. With computer check in shut down, we waited as each passenger was checked in by hand, with hand-written boarding passes (incidentally, the woman checking us in didn’t have her own pen, asked to borrow one from me, and then asked to keep it, to which I said yes, if only because I didn’t feel like arguing).

The following morning we boarded a Cessna again for the flight back out to Bundibugyo, my first time making this flight. Right after takeoff I discovered a frog around my feet – welcome to the tropics – and briefly considered dropping him into Lake Victoria below us before I thought better of opening the window. Flying in these small planes is amazing, amid spires of cloud hundreds of feet high, one feels much more a part of the sky than when cloistered in a commercial jet that tears through the air at immense speed. Instead of taking us around the Rwenzoris, the pilot opted to go straight over the mountains, climbing thousands of feet as we drew closer. I’ll admit to being a little nervous as he tried to keep the plane under some heavy clouds and over the mountains, a task which gave him rather little elevation to work with. We moved through a lower pass, and I could look up at mountains on either side of us and see individual leaves on the trees below, and we then dove steeply down the other side, almost sliding down the back of the mountains as the pilot searched for a hole in the lower cloud cover to drop through. When he found it, we were almost right over the border and could see the airstrip, Nyahuka, the Christ School football pitch, and various towns in Uganda and Congo from thousands of feet. It was striking to see how close together so many things are, contrasted with how long it takes to move from one to another. Towns that are a 1 hour walk or 15 drive apart appear to be almost touching, with the poor, winding roads making travel between them difficult. Even towns on the other side of the border look to be only a stones throw away (ok, a pretty long stones throw). We swooped low over Nyahuka for Scott to get some pictures - again a bit too low for my comfort, probably only 300 feet - before dropping onto the grass airstrip. These pilots amaze me. The neighborhood kids were abuzz with excitement over the low-flying plane, and one commented that he thought I must have been the one flying it, since it came down so low. It appears that these kids understand, and attribute to me, the recklessness of youth. (I’ll work on getting some of those pictures from Scott. The aerial view is pretty cool).

Sometimes I feel like I’m always writing about my latest trip, the latest amazing place I’ve gone. For one thing, they’re the easiest to write about. But it is true that I’ve seen some amazing things in the past year. So it made me think: life here isn’t easy. There’s the stress of living in a foreign culture, many, many fewer conveniences, the separation from friends and family, the suffering that is constantly before my eyes. But there really are many benefits as well, including the opportunities to see some spectacular parts of the world that I never would see if I didn’t live here.

Pictures

2009-10-18T05:37:00.001-07:00

A few pictures from my parents visit. Here, Gloria is having a wonderful time helping my mom dress up. These kids are fascinated with white-people hair - it's just so different than anything they have ever seen or felt.

My mom and I at the top of Murchison Falls during out travels. Any picture of me with my mom is exciting.

The first and only male lion I've seen here, and it was only about 50 feet away from the vehicle. Powerful and beautiful don't begin to describe it. Probably a once-in-a-lifetime sighting.

And giraffes. Murchison Falls National Park is the only place in Uganda you can see them, and we saw them in abundance.

I'll try to post some more of these but my internet is about to shut down, so time forces me to be short.

Earthquakes

2009-10-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

I awoke to a loud rumbling and my bed shaking. My house creaked and groaned, while everything on my shelves hummed and rattled. In a barely conscious state, I realized that I was experiencing what seemed to be a sizable earthquake. It occurred to me that it might be safer to be outside, but before I could rouse myself enough to decide what to do the 'quake had passed. Seconds later I heard rumbling again, heralding the first of several aftershocks that rattled my house. My neighbors told me that they were terrified and ran outside at 3:30 AM. This afternoon we learned that it was a 5.0 earthquake centered not far south of here. Living in the Albertine rift valley, the same fault line that created the majestic Rwenzori mountains just to the east of me makes earthquakes a reasonably common experience. There have been several recently, most of which I haven't even felt, but this one seems to have been the biggest in quite a while.

While I don't think any buildings here were damaged (and I have no information about towns closer to the epicenter), it certainly causes me concern as Bundibugyo district is rapidly developing and larger buildings seem sure to be built in the near future. In a place where most houses are made of mud, you can imagine the damage that a serious earthquake could do. But the even more dangerous buildings would be larger ones that are cheaply built. There hasn't been a serious earthquake here since 1993, so it's certainly not an everyday occurrence, but as electricity comes into the district, with plans to pave the road, it is clear that this place is changing, and larger buildings, combined with little no regulation of building codes - if they even exist - may be a dangerous development. One only has to look at the recent earthquake in Indonesia to see the damage that such an event can inflict on a developing country with countless poorly constructed buildings.

Sickness and Friendship

2009-10-09T05:27:00.000-07:00

About half of the team is sick at the moment, with what seems to be the result of contaminated ice cream (yes, we make homemade ice cream here, thanks to the Myhre's cow). It's something pretty nasty, beyond the standard intestinal bug. Though I'm running a fever - and frequently running out to the choo - I've been extremely lucky in a couple of ways. First, this is only the second time I've been sick in almost a year, despite living in a place with different, and more numerous, germs. Second, both times I've gotten sick have been right after someone has come to stay in my house. Scott Will arrived last weekend to stay for a few months, so I wasn't alone in my house all night.

This bout of sickness provided me with a truly remarkable experience. Yesterday evening, as I was curled up on my couch, feverish, aching, and weak, my little neighbor Charity stuck his head in my door. Upon seeing my condition, he walked in and just sat next to me, sometimes silent, sometimes patting me on the shoulder, sometimes telling me how sorry he was. As I got colder, he brought me blankets. As night fell, he lit candles in the room and closed the shutters, to protect me from "moving air." He made sure I was taking medicine and even advised me on what ones I needed - "two red and one tylenol." Soon Gonja, Charity's brother, joined us, and he brought me water and cleaned in my kitchen. They brought my clothes in off the line. And they just sat next to me, caring for me in my sickness.

The care and tenderness they showed me was heartwarming. Because of our respective ages and vastly differing access to resources, there is usually substantial inequality in our relationships - they come to me for help a lot more than I go to them, as there is simply more that I can do for them. That, unfortunately, is just how it works, and this dynamic is a difficult part of relationships here. But this illness gave them the chance to care for me, and their concern and warmth brought tears to my eyes.

I thanked them over and over for what seemed to me to be going so far out of their way for me, but they assured me that helping me in my sickness was not a burden, but rather was truly what they wanted to do.

I don't want to look at everything through the rose-colored glasses of one positive experience. These kids aren't perfect. Last week my iPod disappeared after they had been in my house, and reappeared a few days later, more scratched than when it left and missing its case, after I expressed my anger at it being taken. While I can't be certain, there is little doubt that one of them took it. Those types of experiences are also a part of my life here, and these relationships are not always easy. Nothing is as straightforward as a few blog posts might make it seem to be. But seeing the way they cared for me last night made up for a world - or at least a few days - of frustrations. They treated me like one of their own.

A friend I miss

2009-09-28T05:13:00.002-07:00

Meet Mujuni. He is one of my favorite people in the world. A boy of about 4 or 5 years, he has trouble forming words, he has chronically infected and pus-filled ears, a distended belly, and a tiny butt which improbably holds up a ragged pair of shorts. When he has shorts. He sometimes wears a dirty cardigan, sometimes a ratty t-shirt, and sometimes no pants. His infected ears and general state of dirty-ness give him a smell all his own - I can tell when he is at my door just by the smell, and I can tell whenever someone else has been holding him.

When he first showed up at my neighbor's house months ago, he was terrified of white people and would often sneak up behind me to touch my leg, only to flee in terror, arms and legs flailing wildly, when I would turn around. But slowly he warmed up, and by the summer he was a regular fixture in my house, running around like he owned the place, dancing to music, playing with Doug, Tim, and I, and exclaiming "ngeee!" at just about everything. As I would appraoch my house, he would see me from a distance, raise both arms over his head, wave, and run with beaming smile and awkward stride into my arms.

But his story is sad. His parents were very young and unmarried when he was born, getting him off to a bad start. His mother eventually married another man who didn't want to raise another man's child (this is a very common scenario), and his father was either unable or unwilling to raise him. And so he found himself staying with his mother's relatives, who happen to be my neighbors. Sometimes I would find him standing alone in the yard, crying softly. As I would take him in my arms to comfort him, some other friends said to me, "Mujuni is want his mom."

When I returned from my travels in August, after dropping my family at the airport and then going to Kenya, I was excited to see him again. However, upon arrival I was told that he had gone to live with his father's family, about an hour and a half walk away. I was truly saddened to hear the news - I guess, until that point, I hadn't realized how much joy Mujuni brought to my life. But I miss him terribly. His constant presences was sometimes a nuisance, but I love him. So, not long after getting back, Sarah, Ashley and I made the trek out to visit him one day. He was quiet and shy, barely making a sound the whole time we were there. It was sad to see, after he had livened up so much in the preceeding months. For his sake, I hope that he regains the vitality he had found in his time here. Selfishly, I wish he would come back and stay here again so that I could see him, but I realize that it is probably best for him to be with his immediate family. Gonja sometimes tells me that he'll be back soon, which makes me excited at the prospect of being with him again, yet saddened that he has such a volatile family situation.

He is a wonderful, sad, adorable, sickly, loving, happy little boy. And his story is one that is repeated over and over here, where unstable family situations make life volatile and difficult for children.

Instability

2009-09-18T05:05:00.000-07:00

A recent experience with my neighbors has me thinking about illness, marital problems, and the destabilizing effect that these things have on children. I’ll preface this by saying that I realize these are issues all over the world, but they have become more obvious to me here, and I think that some things about this place can make them more acute.

I write frequently about my neighbors Saulo and Majili, and their children, my good friends Gonja, Charity, Gloria, and Nighty. Well, when I returned from my travels last month, Gonja told me that his mom was very sick and admitted at a private health clinic. I went with him to visit her, took a few gifts, and a few days later she returned, seemingly coming out the other side of a serious case of malaria. But not long after that she was gone again, and this time I was told that she was at her family home, about an hour and a half walk away, to recover and receive more treatment. I began to worry as the days wore on. The kids were really struggling without their mom around, both from a lack of someone to cook for them and the absence of her caring presence. I began cooking for them regularly and helping them buy food. With school not in session, they practically lived in my house, having no real reason to be at home during the day. I was quickly exasperated at their constant presence, especially as I was attempting to work on med school applications, but I tried to keep in mind that they were especially needy at the time, and that it was a wonderful chance for me to show them love.

About a week ago, when I returned to my house, I saw the kids walking with packed bags. It turns out that Gloria and Nighty have gone to stay with their mom, while Gonja and Charity were going to stay around for school. But soon, they began making a daily commute from here to their mom’s house – they got their bikes in reasonable working order and rode out there every evening, and back here for school every morning. But now I haven’t seen them in several days, so I don’t think they’ve been in school this week.

Yesterday, when I was walking by a large group of women at the health center, I heard my name and instantly recognized Majili’s voice. She was there to see Scott, apparently having some lingering health problems. I was so glad to see her, and hopeful that she would be returning soon so that her life and that of her family could return to normal. However, it soon became clear that this wasn’t just about sickness. Apparently, the reason she is staying at her family home has more to do with her complaints about the home that her husband has provided her and the ways in which he cares for her. Leaving the family alone, or taking the kids with her, seems to be her form of protest.

So not only do the children suffer from their mother’s sickness, they are caught in the middle of marital conflict. It has affected their nutrition, their education, and undoubtedly their emotional health. None of them have been around for several days, and my house has been eerily quiet. That has been good for med school applications (which are tantalizingly close to being finished), but I’ve missed them a lot. I hope that stability returns to my neighbors lives sometime soon.

Why does it always have to be snakes?

2009-09-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

Snakes have been a big part of my experience in the last few weeks (I’ll try to blog about something else soon, but it’s an.... exciting part of life here). After several snake encounters early on, I hadn’t seen many in recent months. Then, about a month ago, on the day that I received a package from a good friend that included, among other things, a note hoping that “creepy, crawly creatures” were staying out of my house, I was called into my house by one of the kids, telling me that Tim had seen a snake inside. It was apparently hiding underneath my kitchen cabinets, a small black snake – I was picturing one like I had almost stepped on months ago. So Tim, Charity, and I stood around, waiting for him to come out, machetes and sticks in hand. A neighbor came by, and I decided to show him how the snake couldn’t be inside the cabinet, since there’s no way to get from underneath to inside. I crouched down and opened up the cabinet to show him, only to be startled by a hiss right near my face. I looked up, and there on the top shelf of the cabinet, about a foot from my face, was a small cobra, head up, hood open. I sprung backwards, heart racing – I probably could have bench-pressed a truck, I had so much adrenaline pumping. With help from my neighbor Bihwa, we quickly had him out on the floor where he was an easy target. This is, of course, instantly blog-worthy material, but you will understand my reluctance to post anything about it, as it occurred only a few days before my family’s visit. Luckily, there were no snake incidents during their visit.

Even this story had an endearing moment. Being the naturalist that I am, before we threw the body away I wanted to have a look at it, especially to examine the fangs – it’s not everyday one has a chance to look at a cobra (for which I am glad, to be sure). So I grabbed two knives to use as probes, and went outside to see the dead snake. When little Charity saw me a horrified look came over his face and he shouted, shrill with terror, “Nathany! You are eat?!?! You are eat?!?!” as he saw me approaching the snake with silverware in hand. It was adorable. I did decide to hold on to the snake, however, and I took it to biology class the next day to dissect with Caleb, Jack, and Julia. I bet that not many students can say that they have dissected a cobra.

Just a couple days ago, Gonja spotted a snake in my rafters, which we quickly dispatched of. I don’t think this one was poisonous. While I’ve always liked snakes, the fact that so many here are dangerous has changed the calculations in my mind. I figured I was getting pretty good at this.

So, when Sarah told me the other day hat she had just seen a snake in the rocks by her back door, I thought it was no problem. Just to be safe, I called over a couple of Ugandan men, and grabbed a machete and several sticks and went over to her house. I was a little nervous digging through this rock pile with my bare hands, but we soon found the snake. That was when I realized that I really wasn’t quite as prepared for this as I had thought. There in the rocks was a 5-foot cobra, none too pleased that we were turning his home upside down. I can’t really describe the vehemence with which these two men attacked this snake. The man versus snake battle has a primordial quality here – it is reminiscent of the biblical struggle. They are mortal enemies; people will throw more energy into killing snakes than just about anything else I’ve seen, and there is an obvious glee when people have come out on top of this life and death struggle. They live to fight another day. So, sticks came smashing down on these rocks, splintering into dozens of pieces. Sparks flew off of my machete as it clanged down around the snake. I quickly realized that the greatest danger to myself was no longer the snake, but rather getting in the way of these men who were bent on destroying it.

They made short work of it, but it was a big, black reminder of how precarious life can be. As I thought about the delight people take in killing snakes, it occurred to me that people in the US don’t like snakes either, but it’s different here. Here, if it gets away, it could easily end up in someone’s house that night, which is a dangerous situation with people many sleeping on the floor. There are enough dangerous snakes in Bundibugyo that I think people probably see killing a snake as possibly saving their child’s life. And in many cases, it probably is. I’m lucky enough to sleep in a permanent house, in an elevated bed with a mosquito net. But it was another reminder of the many ways in which people’s lives here are often perched on the edge of a precipice, where any number of small misfortunes or common struggles can push them over the edge. The Babwisi have, in general, little margin for the unexpected.

Home

2009-08-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

At long last, I'm back in Bundibugyo, and in most ways it feels like coming home. After an incredible trip with my parents, we said a tearful goodbye at the airport - it was easier this time, but still not easy. Then came a wonderful week in Kenya with Sarah, Ashley, and Heidi, as school breaks are the time that people take a break from the district. So it was an amazing month for travel, but it feels good to be back here. While there are a lot of things I miss about Kenya and Kampala already, I sometimes get the feeling that one can travel too much, and it's good to be back where neighbors know me, even if they don't give me a moment's peace. So, in a frustrating and often foreign way, this place is home, a place I'm glad to come back to, a place that feels right. It's hard to explain how this works in a place where I'm an outsider and that can be stressful to a degree that makes college look like an afternoon nap, but it's true. It has to do with the beaming smiles on Gonja and Charity's faces when we pulled into the mission, and the friends who came from all around to welcome me back. It has to do with the sound of the birds in the morning and the sound of rain on my roof. It has to do with Pat cooking dinner for us when we arrived. It's good to be back.

A couple of re-entry highlights. In one of their most endearing moves yet, several neigborhood children used a slasher (picture a razor-sharp, double-edged golf club used to cut grass) to carve my name into the grass in big letters in my yard. The night we arrived, when I went out to use my cho before going to bed, I found a poisonous snake at the bottom of the door. This was a more difficult "welcome back" moment - sometimes I feel like Bundibugyo delights in slapping me in the face. If he had been actually inside the cho, I would have been seriously disturbed. I returned to find my neighbor Majili, Gonja and Charity's mother, in the hospital, very sick with malaria, and multiple friends have had relatives die while I was gone. It is a sudden and forceful reminder of the realities of life faced by people here, struggles that are far less real to me than to them. I've been away from them as I've been out of the district, but it's as though I've been hiding for a short time, and now that I've come out of hiding they hit me even stronger.

So I'm back, blessed by my family's visit, saddened by their departure, feeling rested from a wonderful week of vacation in Kenya, stressed by shopping in Kampala, glad to be in Bundibugyo, and confronted again with the challenges and heartbreak of life here.

Family

2009-08-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve been notably silent this summer, for which I apologize. It’s been a hectic month, with interns to host, medical school to apply to, and visits to plan, all while continuing my normal work on the team. Just about every time I’ve thought that I should write a post, I’ve thought that it’s probably a better idea to work on medical school applications. I’m now finished with the primary application, but have already received secondary applications to work on. No rest for the weary, I suppose.

But the main purpose of this post is to say that I am incredibly blessed to have my parents and brother visiting me. They arrived about a week ago and have been experiencing life here and just spending time with me and with the team. I still can barely believe that they’re here – it’s a fusion of disparate worlds that hardly feels real. I feel like I exist in two separate worlds, one here, and one in the States, and the two have previously had precious little connection. But now I find myself struggling to believe that I’m walking down the road into Nyahuka with my mom; not only does it barely seem real, it almost doesn’t seem possible. Their visit has been a huge blessing to me. I’ve been anticipating it all summer and it’s truly beautiful to sit around with family in evenings, just talking, drinking port, and enjoying each others' company, something I hadn’t been able to do for nine months. My parents also have my house in a state of cleanliness that it probably hasn’t seen in that same time period.

It’s wonderful to have family see the things that I see and meet people that I know. Their presence here is an amazing gift to me, though it makes me miss my sister even more. This weekend we head out of the district for some travel – a time to see new and wonderful things, to explore new places, to rest in a way that one can never rest in Bundibugyo, and to spend time together. It will be a striking contrast, especially for my family, going from the rugged, sad, hectic, painful, beautiful, and poor landscape of Bundibugyo to a more pristine, natural, secluded beauty of Murchison Falls National Park (with quiet crater lakes and the dirty, chaotic commotion of Kampala thrown in along the way).

2009-07-12T04:10:00.001-07:00

I'm often frustrated by the slow pace of things around here, by how long everything seems to take, and by how I can spend a long time doing things and then feel like I accomplished absolutely nothing. Part of this is my distinctly American value on productivity; I feel that time not doing some productive is time wasted; I tend to see myself as valuable to the extent that I am doing something useful. But part of it is also just that everything here is a little more complicated.

Taking care of a vehicle, for instance, is a little harder than in the States. We don't exactly have local garages. In fact, there's not even a particularly competent mechanic inside of a three hour drive. The Zoolander (the mildly affectionate nickname for the vehicle the singles share) has been having electrical problems recently, so that the wipers come on at random times (but not when you want them to) and it can only be started from a roll. We've kept it parked at my house, on the edge of a hill, so that it's easy to roll-start with few people. We decided that it can't really wait much longer and we needed to have it worked on, but this is a pretty difficult proposition. So, in order to have work done on the vehicle, Heidi and I had to drive for more than three hours over the mountains on a dirt road with a broken shock absorber in a vehicle that won't start. We also had to make sure that we never stalled or turned off the vehicle, as we'd have quite the time trying to roll-start it with only the two of us. When we got to Fort Portal, I left a long set of problems and instructions for the mechanic, we grabbed lunch, and hitched a ride with Pat and Pamela, who were driving out to Bundibugyo, where we arrived just in time for the team pizza dinner. So, even just getting the car to a mechanic turns out to be a full day affair, to say nothing of having him work on it and somehow getting it back out here.

Another humorous-but-maddening frustration occured Friday night. It started when I awoke in the middle of the night to the fiercest storm I've ever experienced. I've never been scared of a storm here, but the thundering of the wind-driven rain and hail on my roof made me seriously curious about the durability of my house, and made me think a few times about how close to my house various tall trees were. I could barely even think, as the roar of the rain on my roof filled my head - it was a sound that I could feel. Eventually it faded and I feel asleep again. Tim woke me up again in the dark of early morning, saying something about water on the floor. I got up and walked into the next room, where I found myself standing in a half inch of water that covered about half of my house. So there we were at 3:45AM, our headlamps on, mopping the floor with towels and ringing them out into a bucket. We filled this bucket probably 10 times - there were gallons upon gallons of water. It made me especially glad for two things: first, the fact that Doug and Tim are living with me this summer, so I didn't have to deal with this alone. Second, the fact that I have concrete floors, so that the standing water didn't really matter.

I'm sure that everywhere, things seldom go as smoothly as planned or hoped, but it sure seems like Bundibugyo is special in that regard. One thing is certain - living here has helped expose my performance mentality and the way I define myself by what I can accomplish, as what I can accomplish here is often very little. It's not something I really expected to learn in my time here, and it's a tough lesson.

Clay

2009-07-09T02:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at the health center, after I’d been talking with the in-charge for a while, he approached me with a curious and perplexed look on his face and something small in his hand. “What is this?” he asked me, as he handed me a bar of yellow clay marked ‘Modeling Clay.’ You know what I’m talking about – the sort of clay that you made sculptures with in elementary school. Heidi and I did our best to explain to him what modeling clay is used for, which was quite difficult. There are no such things as art classes here, and when you try to explain them to someone from this culture, it comes out sounding rather silly. Still, we tried to explain that this is something that is usually used by children to play with and make small men, which is something that should be understood, since I’ve seen kids make things out of the heavy clay soil.

But it really got good when we asked him where this clay came from. Apparently, the last shipment of drugs from the Ministry of Health also included two boxes of modeling clay. Did the shipment contain the TB drugs that we need, since the health center is now out? No. But to compensate for that – modeling clay! The seeming absurdity of it was hilarious. There was no indication of why it was sent or what use the Ministry envisioned for it. I suggested that perhaps they were worried that the in-charge was becoming bored and needed some toys to entertain him. We stood around for a while, just laughing at how ridiculous the situation seemed and brainstorming possible reasons it might have been sent.

I’m just trying to picture the process at the Ministry of Health when someone was deciding what supplies to send to Nyahuka Health Center – “Ok: Antibiotics, ARVs, syringes… do we have any more TB drugs? Hmmm, no TB drugs… what else can we put in there? I’ve got it! Modeling clay! I love modeling clay!” I’m amazed that someone would put that on the list and that a supervisor would then approve it.

Of course, it’s likely that there is some legitimate reason that it was there. Perhaps every health center is receiving modeling clay for some reason about which I haven’t yet heard. Perhaps modeling clay has newfound medicinal properties ;) But I’d rather assume that it is the random and hilarious workings of a national bureaucracy.

What's lifesaving and smells bad?

2009-06-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

The rumble of a truck interrupted our post-dinner celebration of Ashley’s birthday. Doug, Tim, Sarah, Jack, Jennifer and I went outside to meet it and the 49 goats that were packed tightly into the back. Remember the give-a-goat program that I mentioned around Christmastime? These goats are paid for by that program and were arriving for the goat distribution happening this week.

We give these goats to women in primarily two categories. First, we try to give goats to HIV-positive women who are weaning their children to reduce the risk of transmission. But weaning is unhealthy for a 6-month old and these kids often have serious nutritional problems, so we hope to supply them with a steady source of quality protein to help them as they lose their most important food source. Second, we find many newborns whose mothers died in childbirth. These kids generally have a very poor prognosis, since whatever they get to replace breast-milk is less nutritious and less hygienic.

So there we were, together with several Ugandans working on the project, at 9PM on Tuesday night, gathered around a truck full of goats. Someone on the truck handed them down where I was waiting to grab this goat around the legs, like giving it a big hug and holding it to my chest. A pretty fun sight, I’m sure. We carried them into the various pens for males and females of different sizes. They ranged from young female goats weighing probably 20 pound to bucks weighing around 70 pounds. It was a funny and smelly job. I changed clothes and washed my arms and face before returning to Ashley’s party, but it couldn’t fully rid myself of the smell of goats until taking a long shower.

The actual goat distribution was on Thursday, and there were probably even funnier images there. First was the mandatory ceremony, involving speeches from team members and politicians, and lunch (the always has to be lunch). After this the goats were given, and each recipient was matched with a specific goat. Since these are exotic dairy goats, we keep track of them and Lammech visits the goat recipients to do veterinary check ups and the like, so good record keeping is essential. I would be handed a tag number, with the job of going into the pen and find that goat. While this process sounds simple enough, you now need to picture me running around in a pen full of goats who are all very upset, trying to grab one and check its tag number. Numerous times I almost slipped and fell in goat dung and urine. After a while my goat wrangling improved, and I was pretty effectively snagging goats by the hind legs as they ran past.

After all the antics, laughter, and annoyances of unloading and then catching the goats, the meaning of it all hit me again as I watched desperate mothers walk away with children on their backs and goat-ropes in their hands.

A unique applicant?

2009-06-28T04:14:00.000-07:00

I had a thought as I was working on my medical school applications the other day. It occurred to me that I just might be the only applicant this year who was sitting outside to try to get a better internet signal, with five small children playing with his hair, crawling in his lap, trying to braid his arm hair, and hanging from his arms. The foreignness of the situation made me chuckle. Think how frustrated I would be if I were being similarly distracted while trying to work on this in the States! But having the kids to play with did help keep me from getting too bored, since most of the time I spend doing anything online is spent waiting for the next page to load. I suppose I should look over each section of the application carefully, to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes while Gloria was covering my eyes or while Mujuni was climbing up my back. It was actually pretty fun.

A family's fear

2009-06-24T21:26:00.001-07:00

My neighbors were terrified last week, when Nightie, their 2 or 3 year old girl so named because she was born at night, went missing one afternoon. Her mother and brothers were running around the area in states approaching hysteria to varying degrees, calling her name and asking everyone if they’d seen her. They feared that she had been abducted; her mother was in tears, running up and down the road looking for her.

Any hint of abduction is horrifying, especially in light of several things I’ve heard about recently. The boys have told me about some “bad men,” who are often down near the river and will attack and kill anyone they find alone. From descriptions of invisibility, I’ve deduced that they’re talking about evil spirits, which are a pervasive fear here, especially since people placing curses on other people is commonplace. But more concrete and more hideous is the fear of witchdoctors and child sacrifice. I wouldn’t have imagined that ritual sacrifice is something I would encounter, but it’s been much in the news here, especially several months ago. A prominent businessman in Kampala was found to have sacrificed a child as part of a ceremony to protect a building that he was constructing, and the body was buried in the foundation. It’s hard to imagine that level of brutality, and the story brought much needed attention to inhuman practices that no one really wants to think about. In a place where witchdoctors perform child sacrifice, and a place where children run about alone all the time, I can only imagine the fear felt by families when a child can’t be found.

Equally heartbreaking is the belief that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. This leads to countless rapes of young girls - there is currently a 6 year old rape victim on the pediatric ward - with the very real risk of becoming infected with HIV added to the horrendous psychological, emotional, and physical damage that is done. Hearing the story of this girl had effects of both paralyzing me with sorrow and absolutely infuriating me with rage. It’s another horrible, sickening reminder of how broken this world can be.

All these horrors swirled through my mind as I thought about beautiful little Nightie being abducted. Fortunately, none of them came true. They soon found her down in one of the family gardens, near the river, but with a disturbing story of being grabbed by a man and taken there. I still can’t tell how much of that story is from what she communicated and how much comes from the fears of her family; it seems likely to me that she wandered off to the garden and couldn’t find her way back, but who am I to say?

It is believed that, for ritual sacrifice, witchdoctors can’t use children whose bodies have been cut in any way, so I wasn’t surprised when Nightie and her siblings, my friends Gloria, Charity, Gonja, and Afisa, showed up at my door with their ears pierced and pieces of string pulled through the holes. They seemed to think that having a needle stuck through their earlobes was great fun (they even denied that it ever hurt at all), and have since been trying to convince me to let their grandmother pierce my ear. I have declined thus far, and while these adorable kids can make me give in to just about anything, I’m feeling resolute on this matter. As is so often the case, the children around me provided me with an interesting view of culture and life here. There are always new things to think about and wrestle with, sometimes amusing and sometimes sobering, sometimes beautiful and sometimes heinous. How do I respond to these terrors? To the world where they seem to occur with such frequency? I don’t have answers to these questions, but I think that struggling with them is a start.

An interesting debut

2009-06-18T02:46:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I played in my first match for the Nyahuka Hotspurs, the local club soccer team. I was excited to play both because I love the game and because I would be experiencing something new, meeting new people, and getting out in the community in a different way. We drove to the match with the whole team in a big flatbed truck, right out to the border where we reached the primary school where we would be playing.

At the school, there were signs all over the place that were a bit shocking, at least for an American, to see at a primary school. “Say no to gifts for sex.” “Avoid sugar daddies.” And so on. I’ve seen similar signs on billboards in Kampala, but it’s sobering to remember that those are messages that need to be heard by primary school children in this place. Those are realities faced by children here, dangers they face, and choices they may have to make. It was saddening, but there were a lot of important messages and it’s good that these things aren’t being ignored.

As we warmed up for the match, it was clear that the muzungu player was going to be a main attraction. Kids crowded around me as I warmed up and stretched, some of the braver ones sneaking up behind me to touch my shirt or my cleats. I can just picture these kids running back to their friends shouting, “I touched the muzungu! I dare you to try!” The place we were playing is out there, the sort of place where white people have probably seldom been seen, even with World Harvest having been here for 20 years. Neither of the two players whom I know where there, so I felt pretty alone as I tried to learn teammates names. I started at striker – a rather humorous idea if you’ve ever played soccer with me - and I quickly learned that this was going to be a pretty different game than any I’d played before.

For one thing, the field was spectacularly bumpy and uneven, and when coupled with people who play pretty disorganized ball to begin with, the style of play was pretty frustrating. But that wasn’t the hard part. In the first few minutes, I jumped for a header, and as I went up, an opponent just wound up and kicked me in the back of the legs, his foot never coming within 6 feet of the ball, and sending me sprawling. The referee never batted an eye. Minutes later I got someone’s cleats right in the chest, again with no response from the referee. Soon, it was every minute or so one of their players was making a tackle that would probably get him thrown out of any game in the States or in Europe, none of which were ever called. It culminated when they had a corner kick which led to a scramble in front of goal, with players on the ground, everyone kicking wildly. Their chief violence-doer proceeded to begin stomping on one of our players (in cleats, mind you) and punching him in the head, before some of our players were able to pull him away. The referee’s reaction? To ignore it. I suppose that he did give us a free kick, but he took no action against the offending player. I was pretty stunned and it made me think, do I really want to subject myself to this sort of danger on a regular basis? In college soccer, we all constantly risked injury for the team, but I don’t care about this team enough to do that. Plus, in college I could also know that the ref would protect me to some extent.

As the game went on, I continued getting kicked, sometimes more blatantly than others, and several times my temper flared and I went after the offending player on the next play. My coach and teammates were adamant that I be careful to avoid injury (what does that mean?), I think both because they felt that way about all of their players, but also because they didn’t want to muzungu to get hurt. I still have lumps and bruises all over my legs.

After the game I was talking to some teammates about the violence and they were also upset about it, but the general consensus was that “this is the village.” That’s just how it goes here. What do you expect when you come to the village? That’s one of the things that struck me – even when the events happened, there wasn’t much of a response. It seemed like that sort of behavior was simply to be expected and was relatively accepted. There were a lot of comments like “That is just their way.”

Now, growing up playing club soccer in north Jersey, I’ve seen my fair share of violence at soccer games (often between parents), but those incidents generally ended with red cards and police involvement, so there was a sense that, amid the chaos and violence, there was an overarching order. There was a background of rules, order, control, and safety. But none of that existed on Sunday. There was no one to provide safety or to enforce rules. And the fact that these rules weren’t in place, or weren’t enforced, led to the feeling that the violence wasn’t even considered a bad thing.

I got the feeling that outbursts of anger are a part of the culture and as such they are generally accepted. Jennifer told me that in Lubwisi, you say of an angry person that “anger has taken him,” implying that it is entirely out of the control of said person. How different that is for me as an American – think about how important personal responsibility is in American culture. Of course, nothing is true across the board in any culture, but this is a pretty strong difference.

As for the important information, we won the game 1-0. I didn’t score, much to the disappointment of the fans, whom I was told were expecting two goals out of me, but I had fun (when I wasn’t getting kicked), and I hope to keep playing with them some, though I’m not sure how much. We drove back to Nyahuka with the truck full of players and fans singing in celebration of the victory. It was a fun experience, and one that provides a small window into culture and human nature, as so many experiences here do.

Under A Mango Tree

2009-06-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

Today I felt like a bit more of an African, as I walked for over an hour on small dirt paths and through rivers to visit a friend’s church, arriving dripping sweat and panting in the heat. The service was three hours long (also very African), after which I was served a mountainous portion of rice and proceeded to walk over an hour back in the blazing midday sun, arriving in the middle of the afternoon, once again dripping sweat (that’s pretty much my style these days). I’ve found that I can often operate in specific patterns these days, always going to the same places because they’re the only places to which I have reason to go, so it was really nice to get away from the main road and see a new part of the district. I also had the refreshing feeling of being off of the paths normally trod by white people, so I felt as though I was treated more as an individual and less as a member of a group of outsiders (though still an oddity).

This weekend there has been a nation-wide push for polio and measles vaccinations, as there have been a number of polio cases in northern Uganda, and it was really interesting to see how a vaccination campaign actually looks in a rural place like Bundibugyo. On the way back, we passed a mango tree with several benches and a small table under it, a cooler with vials in it and a sharps disposal box on the table, manned by a nurse from the health center. It was as simple as that – an immunization clinic under a mango tree. Easy to access, on a well-traveled path, and perfectly effective. It reflects a lot of the way that life works here, as mango trees tend to be gathering places in this culture. We also passed church services being conducted under mango trees, a crowd attending to a man with a cobra bite under a mango tree, and countless people relaxing and socializing under mango trees. If you’ve ever seen a mango tree, then you might also have an idea of how much fruit they produce, making them centers of dietary activity as well as cultural activity. Mango trees seem to be places where life can slow down: where people seek refuge from the oppressive sun and rest during the long walks that most people here make every day just to get to market, to their gardens, to their school, to their church, to their family. And yet, they are a place where life happens. They’re where friends talk, where local officials mediate disputes, where traditional medicine is administered, where women sell food, where people sing – where life plays itself out. Sitting in the dirt, in the shelter of a mango tree. There’s a true beauty about it.

A stroll down the road

2009-06-04T21:55:00.000-07:00

Walking on the road here in Nyahuka can be a trying experience, sometimes because of reckless motorcycle drivers but more often because of the steady stream of people calling to me, continually pointing out that I am an outsider. The women on the team suffer much more mistreatment on the road than I do, and I don’t even see the worst of it because it’s toned down when I’m around, but even so it can get pretty frustrating. In light of that, I had a truly beautiful walk down the road yesterday evening, on my way to dinner with a Ugandan friend.

There was a light breeze in the dusk air, with smoke rising from dozens of small cooking fires. The loud hustle and bustle of the school-time foot traffic had yielded to quieter movements as people prepared dinner and greeted friends; the yelling voices had mostly turned to casual conversations. There was a calm that I seldom experience on the road, a calm that is different than an American calm, just as chaos here is different from the typically American intensity of life. It was a calm still full of life, but life in relaxation, as the fading light seemed to take with it the gawking and shouting. There was a warm, slow, ease on the road.

An airplane flew due west overhead over head, its trail lit brilliant orange by the setting sun, which also cast a pink glow on the clouds clinging to the mountains in the east. The western sky was a riot of color, the sky above blue, and pink again to the east – a sunset the likes of which I can’t say I’ve ever seen. It was shocking to see a jet airplane in the sky, which made me realize how long it’s been since I’ve been in the States, where jet trails and the rumble of jet engines are simply a part of the environment. I tried to imagine where the plane could be going – mostly likely Nairobi to Kinshasa I though, there’s not much else due west of here, at least not on this side of the Atlantic.

I had a very nice meal with Alex, the man I coach with, and his wife and daughter, which was only briefly interrupted by a minor earthquake. Living right on the central African rift valley, this was the second minor earthquake in about the last month. A fitting end to a peaceful evening.

Alcohol, and self-righteousness

2009-05-31T04:32:00.000-07:00

Alcoholism is a big problem here in Bundibugyo. I see it all the time: men stumbling down the road, sometimes even in the middle of the day, carrying the little square plastic bags in which liquor is sold. It’s a problem for a number of reasons. It consumes a lot of money that is usually hard earned and could be used to feed and clothe the family, or to pay school fees. In a place of intense need, it’s hard to see so much money used on alcohol. It’s also bad for domestic relationships, as drunk men may often return home and beat their wives or children. Men also deal with a lot of health problems related to long-term alcohol abuse. This is something we struggle with when employing people – while I am helping them to support their family by giving them work, I may also be further enabling their alcohol problem. It’s hard to know how to address that, since I can’t control how people will use the money they have earned, no matter how much I’d like to.

It’s very easy to decry men for their drunkenness here. It’s easy to judge, to blame them for wasting money that their families desperately need. But then I have a thought – in their place, how different would I be? If my children were always sick, if some of them had died, if I’d lost my wife, if I had to beg, if food was always short, if I couldn’t give my kids a decent education, if I was unable to provide for my family, I think that some way to escape that harsh reality would be extremely attractive. If I were unable to be the competent provider that a man “should” be (for any number reasons, including those out of an individual’s control, such rapid population growth and soaring food prices), if my very identity as a man were compromised, I bet that some way to leave that behind would be hard to resist. Under those circumstances, would I be any different? Would I have better self-control? As you can guess, I can’t be sure of the answer, but I’m thinking it’s probably no.

So, as I struggle with how to think about the chronic drunkenness that is so often a problem here, I have to keep a frightening reality in the front of my mind. That could just as easily be me. In those circumstances, I might spend that money on a way to escape too. That’s a good realization to help me understand others, and a scary realization as I think about myself. So, I still need to struggle against the rampant alcohol abuse here, but I need to try to do so without the self-righteousness that is so hard to escape.

7 Months

2009-05-28T02:57:00.000-07:00

As of tomorrow, I will have been here in Uganda for seven months. That’s pretty hard for me to believe. In many ways, it feels like I’ve just gotten here, especially as I think of all the things that I haven’t done, and yet it feels like it was a different life in which I said goodbye to my family at JFK. I’ve had so many new experiences, so many thoughts, and so many opportunities that it’s almost dizzying to try to think back over the last seven months. And yet, I feel as though I could be doing so much more, making more of the opportunities that I have, experiencing more new things. It’s a difficult tension, and one that can make me feel alternately exciting, lame, courageous, and ashamed. So, I’m taking a more whimsical approach. Here are some little snapshots of my life:

I ride my bike precariously through jostling herds on longhorn cattle on the road. I pasteurize milk at home. I’ve killed probably a dozen rats by stomping on them. I’ve performed several ultrasounds (under Scott's watchful eye). I’ve stared highly endangered 400-pound mountain gorillas in the face. I have had, in sum, probably about 3 days of anything resembling peace and quiet. I am fully convinced that my neighbor Charity is the cutest kid in the entire world. Even after he shattered the truck window with a slingshot. Which he was aiming at his sister. I’ve learned to drive a motorcycle, on bumpy, rutted dirt roads. I regularly remove bats from houses – a somewhat exciting prospect in the land of Ebola and Marburg fever. I’ve watched children die, and I’ve seen them recover from the very brink of death. I tried to perform a lumbar puncture on an infant (sticking a needle into his spine). I almost fought a mob during a soccer game.

Things I like: Geckos on my walls. The smell of jasmine at night. Fresh, cheap avocados. Moonlight I can read by. Playing soccer with my young neighbors. Homemade, brick-oven pizza. Community. The stunning view of the mountains. Falling asleep to rain on my tin roof.

Things I don’t like: Cockroaches. Thieves. Women getting harassed everywhere they go, while I’m left alone. People I’ve never met asking me for money. Dust. Rotten eggs. The incessant calls of “Mujungu!” that follow me everywhere. Manchester United. 110-degree heat.

weight gain

2009-05-14T21:29:00.001-07:00

It's amazing how quickly emotions can change and I can swing from sobriety to giddiness. On Wednesday, only days after the experience which led to my previous blog entry, I went to one of the BBB outpatient nutrition programs, as I do almost every Wednesday. This was the 10th week of the program, meaning that the 17 children who enrolled on the first day had finished their cycle and were getting their last food. At these distributions I usually have a mix of emotions as some kids gain weight and some lose weight, and seldom does anyone show a perfect upward trajectory. Gain some weight one week, lose some the next; sometimes I've wondered if the food we're giving is really doing any good.

So this week, I looked back over the data for the kids who had finished the program. As I posted previously, the primary criteria for enrollment is that the kids are between 70-85% weight-for-height, so I rechecked their weight for length at the end of the 10 weeks. I was thrilled to see that all but one of them was over their target of 85% weight-for-height, even those who showed relatively modest weight gains. Even more exciting, though, was the proportion of them that were over 100% weight-for-height! 100%! That means that these malnourished kids are at a healthy weight, which, seeing them at the start of the program, is a lot more than I could have hope for, or guessed might happen. While I haven't compiled all the numbers, it was around 5 of them who broke the 100% line, and probably another 4 who were close.

I was overjoyed. As I went through the weights with Heidi, I was almost giddy, laughing as I recorded their current weight-for-heights in their medical records books. Seldom have I felt better about the world than when I saw that these children were gaining weight and no longer met malnutrition criteria. When I got home and people asked me how Busaru was, I replied "It was awesome!" (let's just say this was a surprising response). The world looked beautiful. That's the breadth of emotions I can experience in a span of three days, and they are always in tension. The deep feeling that the world is fundamentally wrong, and the giddy rejoicing at the beauty of life. Of course I treasure and strive for the later, but I'm becoming convinced that both are fundamentally true, that both reflect the nature of the world. We live in a place of brokenness and beauty.

Brokenness

2009-05-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

I watched a child die today. A baby boy of nine months. I’ve seen children in their last minutes of life, and I’ve seen them minutes after death, but this was different. I watched, my eyes locked on his tiny, sickly frame, as his breathing and his heart stopped. I watched him go from living baby to corpse. Malnourished, anemic, and infected with malaria, he was barely alive when I arrived at the health center; it was simply too late. As Jennifer tried to get an IV in him, I noticed a subtle change in his appearance which I can’t really describe, and I suddenly I couldn’t see his chest moving any more. A cold, tight feeling settled in my stomach as I realized that I was an eyewitness of his transition from life to death.

His mother collapsed on the floor in almost melodic wailing, as women here mourn death, and the crowd that had been forming around the bed continued to grow. I wondered what the other mothers there on the crowded ward with their kids must have felt. But these women are no strangers to suffering. Watching this death, I was struck very powerfully by what a broken world we live in. Everything about it was just wrong – this is not how the world is supposed to be, this is now how lives are supposed to go.

Seeing the horror of death firsthand and being confronted with the brokenness of the world brought to mind something I’d just read.

“Who then are the mourners? ... They are the ones who realize that in God’s realm of peace there is neither death nor tears and who ache whenever they see someone crying tears over death. The mourners are aching visionaries.” ~ Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

That’s the hardest part of it, this feeling that everything about it is wrong. It’s not simply sad, it’s not just terrible; but every fiber groans with the inescapable feeling that, with this boy’s death, the fabric of the world is wrenched further apart. I realize that must sound pretty melodramatic, or sound like it should incapacitate me for days, but neither is the case. The feeling of brokenness is very real and deep, yet I was able to go about the rest of the day’s work (the ease of it is frightening sometimes). The feeling of wrong-ness has not left. I'm guessing it isn’t meant to.

Recovery

2009-05-05T11:06:00.001-07:00

The boy in this picture is Kagadisa, a wonderful little guy about whom I've blogged before. I saw him today when he back to the health center to continue his treatment for TB, and as part of his follow-up as a nutrition inpatient. He's also the emaciated boy in the picture from a few posts back. With treatment for his TB and intensive nutrition support as an inpatient, he's gone from a boy who just about dead, to a healthy, smiling, curious, friendly boy. His recovery is a transformation that never ceases to amaze and that I thought was worth sharing, in picture form. His story is the kind that make the stresses and difficulties of working here seem insignificant; the kind that not all children are lucky enough to have; and the kind that make me see the world as sublimly beautiful.

Law and Order

2009-05-03T11:05:00.001-07:00

This week one of the mission houses broken into while its occupants were at someone else's house for dinner. The rebar grating over a window was cut, and some money, two flashlights, bagel chips, eggs, flour, sugar, a key, and nail polish were stolen (the bagel chips being probably the biggest loss). The nice thing is that, in general, people here don't have use for a computer, so the laptop was left undistrubed on the table. We talked with a few community members and reported to the police (whose response was... "sorry"). We quickly had a posse of people examining the window, ooh-ing and ahh-ing, very upset that someone would do this. With the Myhres and Pierces away, I became the de facto point man (read: man) for the whole process. The next day, I set about trying to get a new lock (to replace the one to which the key was stolen) and secure the window, and no one felt that there was ever a chance that those responsible would be caught.

But yesterday evening, as I was preparing dinner with a Ugandan friend, I heard a voice at my door shout, with great urgency and seriousness, "Nathan! Come!" I ran to my door, to find a crowd of people leading a boy up to my house with his hands tied. After seeing a group of teenage boys distributing money among themselves, one of my neighbors had run to tell someone, and they apprehended one of them, who in turn confessed to taking part in the break-in. Various members of the crowd were shouting about what we should do with him, and I felt entirely out of my element, as not only could I not understand what we being said, but I also have no idea how these things would be handled in this culture, and how my actions will be viewed by the community. In the end, we decided to delay taking him to the police, first meeting with the parents, registering the case with the village chairman (who wasn't around, of course), and trying to gather the other two boys.

Of course, by the time today rolled around, the two other boys had fled to Congo, putting a significant hole in our plan. It's been a struggle to try to figure out how to handle the situation. I find myself trying to walk the line between ensuring that there are real consequences and showing grace. I don't want to be too harsh, especially because I think that we Americans are already seen that way sometimes, but of course I also want justice, I want these boys to know that their actions are unacceptable, and I want the community to know that this isn't something that people can get away with. Being a newcomer in the culture makes it really hard for me to know how to handle it. It does make me think about how justice should be doled out (both here and in general), and how to gauge what is truly best for the community, the mission, the ones who were robbed, and the boys who took from them. Is it taking a hard line or being lenient? Sometimes I feel like these are a few teenage punks who probably just need to get beat up a few times to learn a lesson. But then I think about the lives they have lived, that we all make mistakes, and I try think about what doesn't just let me get revenge, but what teaches them and might change them. Does treating them as harshly as possible change them? It might. And it might also help deter theft in the community at large. But then again, it could just harden them, and it's possible that being more gentle is what will really impact them. Then I realize that, as a cultural outsider, I probably have no idea what I'm talking about.

Several things made this whole experience classic:
The response of the police. The police will not even leave their headquarters without getting some money out of it.
A 10,000 shilling note was taken from the boy as evidence, and it was said that we needed to present the evidence to the chairman and the police. However, two of the men who actually caught the boy and brought him to me told someone that they felt they should be paid for their services, so a community member who was holding the money (which is, remember, important evidence), has someone make change for him, and gives them 5,000. Today, he presents me with the 5,000 note (which the boy was never in possesion of) as the evidence. I almost burst out laughing when I heard him tell me the story.
The other two boys fled to Congo. I'm picturing an action movie with criminals taking refuge in a volatile country, and an elaborate scheme (undoubtedly involving Jason Bourne) to extradite them across a national border. I don't think it will be nearly that exciting (nor such a kickstart to my career as an action hero), and we'll probably just wait for them to return eventually.

we've got milk

2009-04-26T04:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve written about the BBB outpatient nutrition program for children with moderate acute malnutrition, but those children who have severe acute malnutrition (less than 70% of the weight they should be, given their height, or edema due to protein deficiency) get admitted to the health center for an inpatient nutrition program. Watching these kids recover is like seeing a miracle. Some of them are little more than skeletons when they come in, unable to stand or even lift their heads, and in a few weeks time, they can be smiling, energetic kids again. It’s beautiful. The picture above is of a boy named Kagadisa, who came in looking significantly worse than the picture shows, unable to sit up, barely able to keep his eyes open - on the brink of death. Discharged about a month ago, he's now almost unrecognizable, a relatively healthy looking little boy with a big smile and a swagger in his step. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way, but no where else have I seen such radical changes and recoveries.

This program is run in partnership with UNICEF, who provide the powdered therapeutic milk that we give to these children. A couple of months ago we renewed our contract with UNICEF, and our milk supply began to dwindle. UNICEF seemed to be dragging their feet, never getting us the milk for the program, and we broke into the very last box of it last week. After months delays and expectant waiting, I was starting to think that the milk wasn’t going to come, and we weren’t going to be able to feed these kids. That was a sobering prospect, but it’s a reality in a world of scare resources – I can’t feed everyone I’d like to. There will be people who starve, those who can’t be reached for one reason or another, be it location, corruption, lack of manpower, or lack of finances. This was saddening and infuriating, especially since we had a signed contract for the milk. UNICEF eventually said that they had shipped all of the milk to other parts of Uganda and had none to give us.

When the Myhres were in Kampala this week, Jennifer went to the UNICEF office to plead for the milk. I think she manages to pull off both indignation and emotional supplication simultaneously. Two days ago I heard that the milk was on the way. And this morning, I got a call saying that the truck was at the health center, so I made my way down to help unload and store the 70 boxes of powdered milk – 2100 packets of milk in total. The truly amazing part of the story is that we had only 3 packets remaining for all of the nutrition patients on the ward. As we were unloading, a boy came in with Kwashiorkor (a syndrome resulting very severe malnutrition), and it was great to know that we now had the ability to treat him. Praise God that the food arrived just in time.

A funny side note is that, somewhere in the bowels of the UNICEF system, someone decided that 60 scooping spoons was the appropriate number to accompany 2100 packages of milk. Those aspects of working with big organizations make me laugh, but I guess I shouldn’t complain. So, we’ve been really blessed by this all working out with UNICEF, but it does highlight the tenuous nature of a lot of the work that goes on here, and in much of Africa. Delays, misplaced paperwork, confusion, miscommunication - those things can be very costly, especially to a small organization like ours. Sadly, we’ll never be able to care for everyone we want to or to feed everyone who needs it, but as of today, we’re able to offer good food to a lot of kids teetering on the very edge of life.

King Leopold's Ghost

2009-04-24T22:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a long overdue review of the book King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschild. I think I’ve been reluctant to post this review because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to adequately convey the power and importance of the book, but I suppose that any review is better than none, so here it is, only a month after I finished reading it.

King Leopold’s Ghost is a seminal piece of history writing, combining objective statistics with emotional, passionate storytelling in relaying the history of the impact of Europeans in the Congo. The depth of Hochschild’s research is remarkable, giving the book instant real-world power and impact. The story is chilling, depressing, inspiring, and simply frightening. It is certainly not a light, easy read, but I don’t believe that any story about such a time and place could be. It is not, however, simply an historical work, as it chronicles the sad history of colonialism and horror in the Congo into the present day. Following a fascinating cast of characters – explorers, monarchs, missionaries, businessmen, and, importantly, Africans – this book unfolds a captivating and horrible story with remarkable depth of insight. Perhaps some of the worst terror of the book is that is exposes the things that normal people can do to each other, if enough money is at stake and other humans can be sufficiently dehumanized. Once of the greatest accomplishments of the work is that Hochschild manages to reveal the unspeakable brutality of the European colonists and the lasting devastation that it has caused, while avoiding falling into the trap of the “noble savage” myth. It’s the sort of book that makes one ashamed to be from a wealthy and powerful country, but that shame is not the point – rather, the point is the lessons that we can draw from seeing the exploitation of the weak by the powerful. I consider this book to be extremely important reading for anyone interested in Africa, human rights, history, or current events – in short, I’d say that this is an important read for everyone. As the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to fall to pieces today, one of Hochschild’s most insightful and timely lines comes near the end of the book: “The major legacy that Europe left to Africa was not democracy as it is practiced today in countries like England, France, and Belgium; it was authoritarian rule and plunder.”

Over the mountains

2009-04-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

This week I made the climb over the mountains to Fort Portal with various team members and visitors from the Sudan team. Fort Portal is the nearest sizeable town, but it takes over three hours by car over the winding roads around the mountains. Walking in a roughly straight line over the mountains, however, it’s only about 15 km from Bundibugyo – the trick is that, over that 15 km hike, you gain 5000 feet of elevation on the Bundibugyo side and then drop about 2000 feet on the Fort Portal size, making for a very steep scramble both up and down. Walking past Bakonjo houses and fields perched improbably on the slopes, we were serenaded by the endless calls of “Mujungu! How are you?” from children who would often start yelling at us when we were a hundred feet below them, and continue until we were well above them. We passed into the park that runs along the top of the mountains, walking through a serene bamboo forest and finding a 2 foot long earthworm. No joke. I guess that in this climate everything grows better, including worms. When we got down the other side, a 15 minute ride on motorcycle taxis had us in Fort Portal town, sweaty and dirty, ready for a big meal at our favorite restaurant and a warm shower at the hostel (Fort Portal has enough elevation that it gets cool in the evenings, something that is worth the trip by itself).

While talking to a store owner in Fort who I know, he asked how I came, and I told him that I came on foot over the mountains. Instantly, multiple shoppers looked at me in disbelief, commenting on how difficult that hike must be. It was one of the first times I’ve ever felt tough here, since usually, it’s we Bajungu who drive places in our typical hurried state, while Ugandans walk. This, of course, is all relative, and any feeling of toughness is quickly expelled while sucking wind, hands on knees on the steep trails, while 60 year old Bakonjo women with loads of firewood that must weigh 50 pounds strapped over their foreheads plod steadily up past me. It makes me think – here I am, doing this largely for fun, and here’s a woman, face wrinkled with the sun, back bent with heavy loads, feet flattened with untold miles of carrying firewood, who’s been doing this since she was a child, because that’s what needs to be done to survive. What different realities we have known in our lives. I’ve realized that here, life is largely spent doing the things that need to be done to live. Hours and hours a day walking to the fields, gathering firewood, hauling water, slowly cooking matooke – those are the things that seem to make up much of life. And those sort of things are the ones for which I don’t feel I have time. It’s hard for me, coming from my background, to put myself into the position of someone who has always know that reality.

Anyway, Luke and I headed back over the mountains the next day, making the climb twice in 24 hours. We made it in record time, just over four hours, literally running down the last half mile of steep trail into Bundibugyo (I’m amazed I didn’t sprain an ankle), and I’m still paying the price in the form of sore legs and aching shoulders. It was good to get out in the mountains, enjoying the scenery and glimpsing the lives of the people who make their homes on the slopes.

A tough end

2009-04-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, my CSB boys football team played in the district final against Semiliki, to determine who would continue to the national tournament. In front of a huge, but rather well behaved, crowd, we got off to a great start, with several clear chances narrowly missed or denied by the goalkeeper. Semiliki were a bigger, faster team, and their average player was probably better than our average player, but we were the stronger team and outplayed them, especially in the first half. In the end, however, despite having more and better scoring opportunities, we didn't have an answer for their two very talented forwards, and although we twice came from behind, we ended up losing 3-2.

The boys were understandably crushed -ti clearly showed how important this is to them. Several players were sobbing - boys for whom this was their last chance, and who may never have been involved in something so successful. It reminded me of the end of my own seasons in college, and it was emotional for me just to see the boys disappointment. But it didn't end there. The whole school appeared to be in morning, and the wails, shreiks, and sobs coming from the girls dorms sounded just like the way that women mourn a death in this culture.

After the match, my words to the boys were simple. I'm proud of you. After watching the first game, it was hard to imagine that they would improve as much as they did. They were a coach's dream, as they responded quickly and deciscively to the things I was trying to teach them. They learned to play a controlled style of football that no one else in the district plays, and they became strong not by leaning on an individual superstar, but by supporting each other and playing as a team. When one of their top players got malaria, they rallied as a team and played wonderfully. When another top player got suspended, they pulled together and had one of their best matches.

So, with the season now over, of course I'm disappointed, but I'm more proud. I'm proud of what the boys accomplished and the progress they made. I'm proud of the obstacles they overcame. And I'm excited to get back out there and keep working with them the rest of the year.

Hooligans

2009-04-06T21:25:00.000-07:00

If I thought the fans were poorly behaved last game, I hadn't seen anything yet. In the first of the two district semi-finals (in which we were not playing), there was a disputed call as time wound down, and a group of severely inebriated fans ran onto to pitch to protest. The mob grew until about 100 fans were running around on the field, and had taken the ball, threatened the refree, assaulted a policeman, and stopped the game in its tracks. I've seen bad fan behavior before, but this took the cake. My self-righteous indignation grew and my desire to try to control the situation got the best of me, and I ran onto the field to try to recover the ball, in the hope that if I did that, things would begin to settle down. I quickly learned that I'm completely powerless in the face of a mob. While nothing dangerous happened, I found myself in the middle of a screaming mob and I came close to getting into a fight - it was pointed out to me that mobs can be pretty dangerous, something which I'll do well to remember if that happens again. We couldn't even play our game, which was supposed to happen next, because the mob wouldn't leave the pitch and the referees wouldn't continue due to safety concerns.

I was, of course, extremely frustrated with the disorderly, dangerous behavior of fans, and disappointed that there is no system in place to punish them. There were only three policemen there, and one of them was himself involved in yelling at the referee. But I was also struck by my own self-righteousness and my need to try to control and fix every situation, even an angry mob, where I am clearly powerless. Never a dull moment..

A great win

2009-04-05T04:51:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday afternoon, my boys from Christ School pulled off a great 3-1 victory over the other undefeated team in our group. This school is just down the road, so the rivalry was hot (including among the fans), and our opponents were bigger and probably faster than we are. It’s been a pretty amazing transformation that’s happened in the team this year. After watching our first game, where we kicked the ball wildly this way and that, held it too long yet never had control, it felt like coaching a different team, as we produced a convincing victory by controlling possession and building relatively organized attacks. It’s been great to see the boys respond to the things that I’ve been trying to instill in them, and there have been a number of cases where I pulled aside specific players, with whom I’m particularly frustrated, and seen them respond in great form the next day. Players who seemed incurable suddenly changing their ways, to the benefit of the whole team. I’ve had several community members approach me to thank me for coaching and say things like: “They are playing such good football!” “We never expected to see them play like this!”

Tempers ran high, as they do in most rivalry games, which included a number a yellow cards, a red card to one of my top players, and dozens of drunk opposing fans standing on the pitch, screaming at the referee and taunting my players, the head coach I work under, and me. And by the way, they were mostly standing within 20 feet of me, to trying to bother me as much as possible. Despite my many attempts to restrain myself, in the end I wasn’t entirely successful, and when a particularly drunk and obnoxious fan stepped on to the field, approaching my player who had just received a red card, and began taunting and harassing him, I couldn’t hold myself back any more. I stepped onto the field myself, grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him back toward the sideline. Needless to say, neither he nor his fellow rowdy opposing fans were very happy about that, but then again, I didn’t care so much about their happiness at the moment. I probably should have stayed above all of the fray, but I often feel obligated to try to maintain some semblance of order (definitely a losing battle), and at the time I was trying to stand up for my player.

So what’s the point of my work with the football team? Sometimes I stop and try to think about the reason that I’m doing things, the value in them. However, it occurs to me that in a lot of ways, what I’m doing is just living out my life among the people here. Not everything I do needs to have a noble or heroic reason behind it. Coaching youth football is the sort of thing that I’d do anywhere because it’s a part of who I am, so I’m doing it here. I’m also a firm believer in education being more than just academics, and I personally developed through playing football in ways that I couldn’t have in the classroom, so I’m hoping that the boys will benefit in that way. I’ve had some interesting conversations recently with some team members that have pointed out something else. Most of these boys have had very hard lives. Some are orphans, many come from broken, abusive families, and almost all of them have had very little success at any point in their lives. Things just don’t go well for a lot of kids here: their fathers beat them, they’re often sick, they do poorly in school because the education system is just bad. There are very few positive experiences and little positive reinforcement. Maybe just believing in them, when not many people do, is significant enough to affect their lives. It’s been pointed out to me that the simple act of scoring a goal, making a good pass, or winning a game could be one of the best and most significant things that’s ever happened to some of these boys. I’m hoping that this year they’re having fun, learning about hard work and dedication, being challenged, and having positive experiences that they might not have in other areas of their lives.

water, water, everywhere...

2009-04-01T03:12:00.000-07:00

Rain. It’s something that doesn’t disturb us very much in our largely indoor, enclosed, motorized American society, but it’s something that drastically changes the rhythm of life here in Bundibugyo. Much of life grinds to a halt during rainstorms, as people stay in the shelter of their homes, not venturing out in the driving rains and the mud they produce. At first it seems easy to frown upon this and say things like “But we still work in America when it’s raining. Why can’t they work hard too?” When you think about, however, it’s clear that it’s a different situation entirely. People here walk almost everywhere. To get to work, someone might walk for an hour on a dirt road, and even a few minutes of walking in a tropical downpour can’t be a very unpleasant and dirty experience. Most people own very few clothes, and very few people own more than one pair of shoes (if any), so the cost of soiling or ruining them in the rain is extremely high. No dry cleaners here, nor is there a reserve of money that people can tap into if they ruin their shoes.

I’ve begun to realize what a challenge weather can pose to medical care – it’s something I never would have thought of before. Yesterday, it rained almost all day and was almost cold, so many people were greatly delayed in getting to the health center for the nutrition clinic. This provided me with no end of frustration, and every time I would think I was finished and lock up the store room, someone else would arrive, and I’d drag back out all the registers and distribute more food (of course, it was good that people were coming, it was simply the timing that was frustrating).

Then I drove through the now lightening rain in the afternoon to an outpatient satellite BBB nutrition clinic, arriving to find only 5 out of 25 mothers and children present. Additionally, none of the staff who had the keys that I needed to access the scale and record books had come to work either. That was when I really began to see the difficulties that face these types of programs here, since they are at the mercy of weather that can prevent people from traveling to reach the centers. So, due simply to weather, the majority of patients enrolling in this nutrition program didn’t get food this week, and I can only hope that that isn’t reflected in the children’s weight next week.

As I left the clinic in the late afternoon, a real adventure began. To reach that clinic, I have to drive across a river that’s usually about 8-12 inches deep at the crossing. I was a bit nervous about this, but on the way out it was high, but easily handled by the truck, and the rain was lightening. On the way back, however, as soon as we came within sight of the river, I stopped and both Baguma and I let out a short “Ah…” of dismay. In the course of the afternoon, the river has been transformed into a torrent of brown water and white foam, probably about 4 times deeper than I had ever seen it. The mother from the clinic to whom we were giving a ride instantly asked to get out of the car, too terrified to try such a crossing in a vehicle. After thinking about it, I realized that I didn’t have many options and that it almost certainly couldn’t be fatal (to us anyway, but maybe for the truck). So down the bank I drove, into the rushing waters, which soon covered the tires and tried to push the vehicle downstream. I was just praying that it didn’t reach the air intake in the engine, ruining the engine and leaving us stranded. When I was almost across, I hit something under the water (which hadn’t been there when I drove across) and found myself pretty well stuck. In addition to the tension and frustration of being stuck in the middle of a raging river, I also had a number of very drunk men yelling things like “You’re stuck!” and laughing at me, which did nothing to settle my mind. After a few minutes of trying to reverse, I got up enough speed to pop over the top of whatever I was lodged on (which turned out to be a huge stump that had washed downstream) and get up the bank on the other side. Somewhat humorously, the mother who opted out of driving across easily beat us to the other side, being supported and carried, baby strapped to her back, by a few men who make a business of carrying people across the river. Unfortunately, we didn’t escape quite unscathed, as in the next couple of minutes I realized that I had probably damaged the drive shaft and the steering bar, so now vehicle doesn’t really turn to the left (we have now dubbed the truck “the Zoolander”). That presents another interesting problem, as there are no trained mechanics or parts available anywhere this side of the mountains. I guess that off-roading is fun and exciting until it leads to real consequences.

In any event, the last 24 hours have shown me some of the difficult barriers to medical care and health programs in a place where weather affects daily life in ways that it’s hard to imagine as one coming from American culture.

God Save the Queen

2009-03-20T05:14:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was my first trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park, a huge park on the other side of the mountains, about a 6 hour drive away. We spent the weekend there to say goodbye to the Chedester family, who have been working with World Harvest in Fort Portal for the last 12 years, and are leaving Uganda in May. It was nice to get to spend some down time with them, and Queen Elizabeth is a spectacularly beautiful place. We stayed in a lodge built right on the edge of the escarpment overlooking the park - the little porch of my banda was just on the edge of a 200 foot drop to the plain below. Add to this the fact that it's actually quite affordable, and the Kingfisher Lodge becomes a perfect getaway (and 6 hours is about as close as anything else).

Saturday was an amazing day, partly because I got to watch Liverpool thrash Manchester United 4-1, and partly because I had a rare day of relaxation (in a truly beautiful place, none the less). On the way in, we kept our eyes out for satellite dishes in the villages near the park, and at game time I drove from the lodge with the Myhres and the girls to a building with walls of rough hewn boards and cardboard, a dirt floor, a corrugated steel roof, wobbly benches of split logs, a satellite dish on the roof, and a generator puffing away outside. I almost had a heart attack numerous times, but Liverpool pulled away in the second half and I celebrated with a bunch of Ugandan men. Serious fun.

Sunday morning we went for a game drive, starting before sunrise, with 11 of us in and on (mostly on) the Myhre's Land Rover. Despite my eyes becoming better trained at spotting a variety of animals, we saw little other than kob, cape buffalo, and waterbuck for most of the morning (all beautiful in their own right, but none of them rare or unusual). Soon, however, the other team called us to tell us they had spotted lions, and we soon found them and the lions. We then headed to a favorite place in the park (where I hope to do some camping sometime), and while driving through the brush, we stumbled practically right into the middle of a herd of elephants. It was amazing and powerful, and a little scary, being in the back of a truck. On our way out, we skidded to a halt as, Ashley had spotted something to the side of the road. For a few moments, I had the rare privlige of seeing a reclusive leopard, only about 50 feet away, sublimely beautiful and shimmering as it moved through the grass, slowly melting into the brush. To give you an idea of how rare this sighting was, that was the 4th leopard that the Myhres have seen in their 15 years living in Uganda. That I saw one after less than five months makes me unbelievably lucky.

The weekend was short, and the ride back was long and bumpy (with a stop for pictures as we crossed over the equator). By the time we got back to Bundibugyo, my hands were tingling from holding the steering wheel and my shoulders were tense from the stress of driving the Bundibugyo road. But it was a beautiful, meaningful, and relaxing weekend, where we had the chance to honor the Chedesters and wish them farewell. I might never again be lucky enough to see a leopard in the wild, and I consider myself blessed to have had the chance to see something that rare and beautiful once. Within 15 minutes of getting back, I was down at Christ School to train with the team, getting ready for our first game. And that's how the pace of life has been for me - from one thing to the next, some fun and some difficult, some relaxing and some stressful, some maddening and some refreshing, but never a dull moment.

Season opener

2009-03-19T02:47:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, the Christ School boys football team kicked off their season in... something less than style. While a 2-1 come from behind win is a positive result, the game was ugly and we played terribly. The interesting part is that, in training on Saturday, the boys looked good and were playing pretty nice football. Perhaps it was the pressure from the hundreds and hundreds of people lining the field, screaming and beating drums, that caused them to lose composure, but whatever it is I'm hoping to be able to fix it before the next match on Saturday.

The atmosphere was electric, with so many fans, and I've never seen so many people gathered in one place here in Bundibugyo. It was great to have an event that drew so much of the community together (even if they were often poorly behaved).

I spent much of the game slowly and quietly pacing the sideline, punctuated with frequent violent outbursts of screaming and gesticulation (partly out of frustration, and partly just to be heard above the roar of the crowd). My throat is killing me today. This must be retribution for all of the frustration and yelling directed at me by my various coaches over the years.

Even with the season only days old, there are already accusation of schools bringing in "mercenary" players - boys who aren't students but are good footballers, or who are too old, being issued IDs and playing in the tournament. From what I can tell, this happens every year but at least now it's beginning to be caught and punished. The team we played yesterday even had a man who I would place at about 45 years old! I started cracking jokes that Alex (the head coach whom I work with) and I should go get our jerseys too. But, by some loophole, because he passed his primary school exam in the last few years, he's still eligible to play. Don't ask me how that makes sense, but apparently it does to whoever wrote the rules.

So the season is off to a positive, but frustrating, start.

Good Food

2009-03-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week we started up the latest cycle of the BBB nutrition program, an outpatient program designed to provide nutritional support to children with moderate acute malnutrition. I’ve just taken over managing the program (don’t ask me if I’m remotely qualified for this), so this was my first real experience with it beyond the planning stages. The program is based at two small health centers, about 10 minute drives in either direction, where we stage weekly food distributions. Previously, World Harvest had started community based production teams to produce the food we distribute, a g-nut paste similar to peanut butter and a type of soy flour, which we then buy from them and distribute to malnourished children. The idea is to use locally available foods, ones that mothers themselves can make, and to perhaps help create a market locally for the g-nut/soy food (if anyone other than us decides to buy it from the production teams).

In any event, this week was screening and enrollment, so I, along with Baguma, an extremely competent young Ugandan man who works on nutrition with us and has become a friend of mine, spent hours weighing kids and measuring their height and MUAC (mid upper arm circumference), which we use as enrollment criteria. Moderate acute malnutrition is defined as being between 70-85% weight for length – that is, children between 70-85% of the weight of a healthy, normally developing child of the same height. Of course, the children who are brought to this distribution are going to be smaller and thinner than average for the population, but it was depressing that, in two days, I saw only one child who was at 100% weight-for-length, and several below 70% (it’s hard to survive for long below that point). Screening the children and deciding who to enroll was both interesting and emotionally taxing work. In a room of 50 kids, all of whom are malnourished to one degree or another, it’s hard to decide who will get the food and who won’t, but lines have to be drawn somewhere, especially when working with limited resources (both financial and manpower). The cutoffs, while not arbitrary, have to be defined, so I was several times faced with kids who met none of the criteria but were clearly malnourished, while other kids qualified but looked pretty healthy. Those situations were difficult, as I felt torn between the need for some sort of system and the desire to help everyone who might need help. Of course, I must remember that my ability to help anyone here is dwarfed by the size of the need, but those hard judgment calls were both stressful and fascinating. I found myself really enjoying the clinical aspect – there I was, evaluating kids and making judgments based on a number of factors, including my own opinion of what sort of shape they were in (pretty scary since I’m not medically trained). That process was an exciting challenge, but was also very heavy, since wrong judgments on my part could have very serious consequences.

I was excited to be out in the community doing this screening work, especially when I discovered several kids who were in very bad shape (Kwashiorkor), who I instantly referred to Jennifer at the health center. It felt like very real, hands on work. Toward the end of each session, Baguma gave a demonstration of how to prepare this food we were distributing, followed by a taste test for all of the enrolled kids and their mothers (a few fathers even showed up!). There was something sublimely beautiful, peaceful, and just right about a room full of malnourished kids with their hands and faces covered in food. It felt like the world was a little more the way that it should be, a little more in order. Children who just need to eat, getting the chance to eat some good food – it made my day, both days.

It’s easy to romanticize this work and trumpet its importance, when in reality some of these kids won’t improve, some will likely die in the next year, and it can be hard to know what impact it’s really having. Those are the difficult realities of work and life here. However, there is real joy in the simple act of lending any sort of helping hand to someone in need, and while I can strive to achieve certain outcomes, I only have so much control over them.

These enrollments were long days, ending around 7PM both times, and I found myself by turns stressed, excited, exhausted, frustrated, happy, brimming with anger, and laughing both days. But at the end of each day, tired and weary, I was able to look back and see good things happening – kids getting food, mothers learning about nutrition, and, I hope, families getting on a track to a healthier future.

A rant, updated

2009-03-02T20:29:00.000-08:00

The day after I posted my angry indictment of the Ugandan health system, we got word that the shipment of ARVs, for which we had been waiting for months, had arrived at Bundibugyo hospital and that some of them would be brought down to Nyahuka for the ART clinic the next day. It was a huge relief to everyone, and I can only imagine how much more it means to the people who are benefitting from these drugs. Only one small problem remained – Wednesday, the day of the ART clinic and the promised delivery date for the drugs, we got a phone call that no one would be bringing them. “This person is busy…” “I’ve just been called to a meeting…” “He can’t come today…” The drugs had made it all the way from Kampala and were then sitting a scant eight miles from the health center, and no one felt it worth their while to do their job and transport them that last stretch. I was livid; I could have hit someone. It was simply infuriating that a medical system could be that broken. It’s fascinating to me that people being paid for this work can simply ignore it to that degree, especially when not doing it can directly cost people their lives. So, into the 4x4 I hopped and drove up to Bundibugyo town to pick up the drugs, a very simple task for which I’m no more qualified than anyone else, only that I was willing to do it.

That made me think. Was my quickness to jump in the truck and go collect them one of the reasons that no one would bring them? If there were absolutely no other way, would someone from the hospital have brought the drugs? I wonder if some of these behaviors prevail because some people know that, when it comes right down to it, the bazungu (white people) will do it anyway. There’s no doubt that everyone, including me, feels less responsibility for work that will get done without them. I wonder if my eagerness to help may in fact help perpetuate the brokenness of the system. I wonder where the line is between helping where help is needed, and permitting people to shrug off responsibility, allowing the system to remain broken. We have sometimes talked about the principle “First, do no harm” – creating dependency is definitely harmful in the long term, but how do I try to meet people’s needs in a way that doesn’t create some level of dependency? It’s hard to know. And then a part of me always says, “forget all that theory, just see if you can do something to improve someone’s life.” I think that it’s good to have that attitude as well, but then you can quickly come back to the problem that what’s good in the short term can create long term problems. So, stepping back, my reasoning has taken me nowhere. I’m still at a place where systems are broken and I can’t do anything about it. A place where I don’t really know how to balance meeting needs against creating dependency.

I suppose that, if this were easy, I’d have already read the answers in a book.

Book Review: The Shack

2009-03-01T10:38:00.000-08:00

I may, from time to time, post reviews of books that I've read. Here's one try.

The Shack, By William P. Young

This is a book that’s created quite a stir in both Christian and non-Christian circles, and in both positive and negative ways in each, so I felt that it would be worthwhile to read it and see what it had to say. For a New York Times bestseller, I was quite surprised at how overtly Christian this book is. The story of a grieving man’s struggle with and very literal encounter with God, this book begins an interesting discussion of God’s role in earthly events, his relationship to humans, his nature, and people’s general understanding of who God is, in a way that is distinctly post-modern rather than modern. The writing itself is rather pedestrian and sounds a bit stilted at times, but it is accessible while retaining an ability to communicate deep thoughts, even if it lacks a certain elegance. Probably the best thing about this book is that it presents a depiction of God that differs significantly from both religious and non-religious mainstream American understandings, which, to my mind, is a welcome perspective. While perhaps I haven’t thought in depth through all of the theological implications, I think that it provides an important challenge to traditional American cultural understandings of God. If I were a critic, I’d give it three out of five stars – interesting and worth reading, but not, in my mind, a stellar piece of literature.

Kwejuna food distribution

2009-02-27T04:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we had our quarterly food distribution for HIV infected women, the second of my time here, and it was a wonderful day. It was amazing to see almost 250 women show up, since there remains a lot of stigma associated with HIV, and these women are among the most marginalized people in this society. It’s even more remarkable that there is so much laughter and so many smiles among the women, even when they’re waiting in line at the community center for hours as we record their information. It seems to me that there is a real sense of community and camaraderie among the women, as they can sympathize with each others' sufferings (physical, social, and emotional) in a way that no one outside of that group really can.

I was in charge of weighing all the women and their children and measuring their height, and my day started off on the wrong foot. As I was weighing the baby of the very first women through the line – the very first – he peed all over me. This was no little trickle, this kid was hydrated. Not the way to start what was already going to be a long day. Jennifer said that I was now baptized. Luckily, that was the only time that happened all day, although throughout the day a puddle grew ever larger underneath the scale we use for the babies.

The other funniest part of the day was when two women, one after the other in line, set their cards on the table, and one of them also had a child health card. I had a rather simple method for keeping track of whose card was whose, but I got pretty seriously confused when I looked at these ones – both women were named Mbambu Grace. Both had daughters named Thungu Gloria, born a month apart. One card listed a husband named Muhindo, so I asked which woman was married to Muhindo – both claimed to be married to a Muhindo. At various points, we were certain that we had it figured out – each time a different way. After about 5 minutes of confusion, questions, women yelling and laughing, we figured it out based on where they lived – or rather, I handed them each a card with what I thought was the correct information, and I’ll never know if I actually go it right. But in a place with no social security numbers, where names can change from year to year (and some people struggle to remember the names of their children), and where birthdays are often not recorded, that’s just the way that record keeping goes.

It was special to see so many women, who are living with a fatal disease, just enjoying being together, and to have the chance to give them some food, some care, a smile, some encouragement. My attempts to speak Lubwisi provided a lot of comic relief to the women who attended (perhaps my most valuable contribution). It was wonderful to find a child’s negative HIV test results and give the good news to the mother, and it was heartbreaking to see the positive results. On some of the cards I saw the names of children whom I knew from the health center or nutrition work, only to see that they had recently died. There was a mixture of heartbreak and happiness that is hard to describe or understand.

Time for a rant...

2009-02-23T20:42:00.000-08:00

Against corrupt government health systems. Not all government health systems are corrupt, I’m sure that some work quite well, but here, working with the government health system provides absolutely endless frustrations, and I can only imagine how hard it is for the Myhre’s, actual doctors who have been working in this system for 15 years. And I’m not talking about annoyances, though those are also plentiful; I’m talking about “people-are-dying-because-we-have-no-drugs” level of frustrations. For instance, there continue to be no gloves in the government health system in the entire district. Those little latex gloves that are used for absolutely everything – drawing blood, inserting IVs, running labs – there are none of them in the district health system, and there haven’t been for about two months. Take a second to think about what that does to health care. Very understandably, lab staff and nurses refuse to draw blood without gloves (HIV is common, and Ebola is still fresh in people’s minds).The gloves we use at the health center come from the Myhre’s personal supply, and we give them to patients who need lab work done. Otherwise, the lab tells them that they need to buy them at a pharmacy, something that is prohibitively expensive for some, difficult for others, and just seems wrong to me. It’s like saying “here’s a government sponsored health center, but you can’t access almost any care without paying.”

Next, there are no ARVs either. ARVs (antiretrovirals) are the drugs that are used to treat AIDS patients and can be very effective, extending life expectancy for years and drastically increasing quality of life. Every Wednesday we have a clinic where we distribute ARVs to hundreds of people living with AIDS. The only problem is that, for weeks, there have been essentially no ARVs in the district – not at the health center, not at the hospital. The money for them got siphoned off somewhere along the line, and despite constant promises that the drugs are “on their way,” they seem to remain on their way without ever arriving.

Next we have health worker accountability. Since health workers are government employees they are assured their salary, and they receive it whether or not they actually do any of the work they are being paid for. So, naturally, they often don’t show up for work. Sometimes not a single person in the lab comes to work, so no one can get malaria smears, TB tests, hemoglobin counts, or HIV tests, all of which are quite important in deciding how to treat a patient. Sometimes not a single nurse shows up in the paediatric ward. And some people don’t show up for weeks on end. Weeks. But they continued to get paid. Someone at the health center was talking to Heidi about the problem of health workers missing shifts and ways that the issue could be addressed, to which Heidi replied that she didn’t know the answer, because in the hospitals she worked at in the States, they would simply lose their jobs. The response was muffled laughter, saying that that is impossible here. It’s a very different paradigm.

Of course, the issues are more complicated than just that. One reason that there are no gloves is that a large shipment was rejected by the Ministry of Health because they didn’t meet quality standards. Quality standards are good, and I’m sure it’s necessary for the health system to improve, but in the meantime there’s no backup plan and it leaves us with no gloves at all, not even ones of low quality, so patients can’t get the tests or procedures that they need. The health worker situation is also complex. It’s very possible for a co-worker or superior to report these absences to the district health office, who could presumably take action, but this essentially never happens. The reason, so far as I can tell, is that people are afraid that, if they report someone, that person will place a curse on their family. Witchcraft is a big deal here, and this fear prevents people from holding each other accountable or exposing corruption. And when I think about it, the logic makes perfect sense. If I felt that a very real curse could be placed on my family, would I report someone for missing work? How would that be worth it? And so the cycle continues.

"Why are they killing us?"

2009-02-20T22:02:00.000-08:00

I've posted about it before and you've probably seen mention of it on the news (at least I hope that American media gives it some time) - the situation in Congo is dire, with various rebel groups slaughtering and terrorizing civilians in the eastern part of the country. Thousands of people this year alone, with many more killed by diseases such as cholera that occur when people are displaced. As I was reading a couple of articles on the BBC website, I was struck by a particularly tragic aspect of this violence: most of these rebels are foreigners. The LRA is a Ugandan rebel group and the FDLR is Rwandan (comprised of some of the militias responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide). with only Nkunda's rebels being Congolese. These foreign groups take refuge their because there is so little governmental control in eastern Congo that it becomes a safe haven where they can hide from the armies of their respective countries. Recently, both the Ugandan and Rwandan armies have engaged in joint offensives with the Congolese army against the LRA and FDLR, respectively, a step which is almost certainly necessary if these hideous rebel groups are to eventually be defeated. But the consequences for ordinary Congolese civilians have been almost unspeakable. Since the rebel groups are in Congo, they are carrying out their vicious responses to these attacks against Congolese villagers. Various Congolese caught in the midst of the violence are quoted as saying, with disbelief, things like: "Why are they even here? Why are they killing us? They're not even fighting for our land."

Of course, the brutal murder of civilians is evil and heartbreaking in any country, and it would be every bit as terrible if they were Ugandan, Sudanese, Rwandan, or American. But it seems expecially tragic to me that these Congolese, inhabitants of a country that already has a terrible past, are caught in the middle of other people's wars and are the chief sufferers in someone else's fight.

It had to happen sometime

2009-02-17T10:08:00.000-08:00

I’ve been remarkably healthy since getting here; In fact I hadn’t been sick in my three and a half months (pretty amazing in a place with germs I’m not used to and where everything is dirtier). Until 3AM last night, that is, when I was woken up by the rumbling of my stomach. Being sick is no fun any way you slice it, but having an outdoor pit latrine (cho) complicates things significantly. For instance, my legs are still sore from squatting, and the circulation to my feet was largely cut off. Between 3-5AM I probably made 4 trips out to the cho, but I was in such a daze that I can’t exactly remember. Add in a couple bouts of wretching and being startled by monkeys crashing through the trees in the dark, and the night was a real adventure. I am really blessed that Scott Ickes is visiting and staying with me – it was incredibly comforting to know that someone else was in the house, it just soothes the mind. But it’s hard being sick when you’re in a (relatively) new place. I realized that there were three things I really wanted last night – my mom, a toilet, and Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, none of which were to be found. It definitely has made me miss home all the more. But both Heidi and Jennifer have been taking good care of me, and I turned over a new leaf when I, against my instincts, actually listened to medical advice and stayed home to rest for the day, rather than running off to help train nutrition volunteers and playing soccer at Christ School (Mom must be proud). It was nice to get to sit around and just read and watch movies, since I seldom get a chance to do that, but I was still, of course, bombarded with people at my door. It was wonderful, however, to see some people’s very caring responses to my being sick – it made me feel appreciated and cared for in a pretty special way. So now, I’m just hoping for a night that doesn’t involve running to my cho through the dark.

Dinner conversations

2009-02-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

Last night I had dinner at the home of some Ugandan friends, eating with probably about 10-12 family members and friends. Their hospitality was beautiful and I really enjoyed sharing food and an evening with them. When talking to one middle aged man, he introduced me to two of his young children, both of whom seemed thin and looked sickly. He explained that both of them have sickle-cell disease, a condition that we see quite frequently here and that kills many children (having one copy of the sickle-cell gene is good here, since it helps protect you from malaria, but getting two copies of it gives you sickle-cell disease). My heart instantly went out to these kids who have already lived very difficult lives and whose prospects aren't good, and to their family. It occurred to me - what are the chances of having two kids with sickle cell? If both the mom and dad have one copy of the gene, then each kid should have a 1/4 chance of having sickle cell (remember good ol' Gregor Mendel from high school biology?), so I thought it was certainly unlikely to have two kids with the disease. Then I asked him how many children he had, and he responded that he had 10 kids - it suddenly occurred to me that, with 10 children, two of them having sickle-cell is about what you'd expect. I'm not out to rail against big families - they're certainly considered a good thing here, and I'm not judging that - but in a place of great poverty and little access to health care they do often present problems and make each child's life harder. For one thing, there are more mouths to feed, more health care to pay for, and more school fees to pay - I know one guy who is the 10th of 10 children and his father could only put the first 2 through school, so now he's in his twenties and trying to pull together the money to finish high school so that his prospects might look up just a bit. Another problem we see often is that a breastfeeding mother gets pregnant right away again, stopping her breastmilk from coming in and leading to malnutrition and chronic sickness for her child. Oftentimes, a family could provide for 4 children well, but when they have 7 they can't feed any of them adequately. Now, at the same time, I've seen it work the other way. Sometimes, when one or both parents die, and the older siblings will step into that gap and care for their younger siblings, or care for cousins or something like that. This large network of potential support is potentially life-saving and is one of the very valuable aspects of large families and generally communal living, and it seems to me that that is probably one of the reasons behind the great cultural value placed on children. So, as with most swords, this one cuts both ways.

After dinner, we sat around telling riddles by latern light, and I was fascinated to hear African riddles since they tend to come from a very different way of thinking. I couldn't answer any of them, revolving as they did around specific cultural understandings of goats, leopards, rats, and the ways that life functions around here. Similarly, the responses I got to the one riddle I told (we don't tell as many riddles in the States, it seems) revealed how distinctly American it was and the differences in the ways of thinking about things in different cultures. So, my evening ws filled with good cultural interaction which stretched me, as it has the habit of doing, good Ugandan food, and good laughter. And to top it off, they invited me to spend the night with them, so I shared a single mattress in a dark mud house with a friend, in order to get both of us under the mosquito net and because that's how guests usually stay here. Suffice it to say that it wasn't quite the Waldorf.

Football Time

2009-02-12T01:34:00.001-08:00

This week, I started training with the Christ School football (soccer) team. Working with the team had long been one of my plans, both because it will allow me to work with youth and to stay involved with the game, and now that school is back in session I’ll be down there 4 afternoons a week. While I don’t have an official title yet, it will be something like assistant coach or trainer, and I’ll be working with the head coach, a young Ugandan man named Alex, who is a lot of fun and is a wonderful player.

The guys on the team are mostly in their 3rd-6th year of secondary school, but some of them are about as old as me, since here in Bundibugyo people often don’t finish high school until 20 or 22. There’s a lot of football talent here, as guys grow up kicking a ball around from the time they’re very young (or a bundle of plastic bags bags, banana fibres, etc). And the level of toughness is incredible – a hard life makes for tough kids. However, I realize that a lot of the guys have never played a formal, 11 vs. 11 game of football, and I’m guessing that maybe that’s part of where I fit in, in helping them tactically as well as technically. Anyway, I’ve had a great time kicking a ball around with these guys this week, and I think it will be a really good way to get to know some of the students and interact with them in a more personal, meaningful way. Football is often called “the universal language,” since it is played all over the world and can be shared by people who share no language at all, and, as hokey as that sounds, I’m finding that there’s truth in it. When I’m playing football with someone, our shared ability and goal gives us an instant connection and understanding that can be hard to cultivate outside of the game. It's a way to interact that crosses cultures and language barriers remarkably well. This is not to say that it’s a sure-fire way to establish a good relationship, but it provides an instant connection that is quite significant, especially in a place like this, where I am so clearly “different” and so obviously an outsider, and where being those things is clearly considered a bad thing. I’ve also learned that I’m in absolutely miserable shape – Coach Russo would be terribly disappointed. I’ve been sucking wind out there, with the weakness of my lungs overcome only by my pride and my desire to play well. At least I know that my fitness will only get better as the season goes on.

So, now my afternoons are filled with two hours of football in the blazing sun and high humidity, with grass that is far too long, and with people whom I struggle to understand; but also with the game I love, a stunning view from the pitch of the snow-capped peaks of Mts. Emin and Gessi, camaraderie, crossing cultures, hard work, and a chance to share common ground with people with whom it might otherwise be hard to find.

A rash of theft

2009-02-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

In the course of the past week, unoccupied houses or buildings owned by the mission have been broken into three times. The first was Sunday night, when an empty house had the lock cut and some mattresses, bedsheets, and spoons were stolen. There was more stuff by the door, but it seems as though the commotion of us getting up to watch the superbowl next-door frightened off the thieves. Then next time it was a storehouse. Then, two nights ago, there was a seemingly well-coordinated attack that involved breaking into no less than 6 storehouses and offices and the community center and houses. These places included a school for the deaf, a literacy office that is working to record Lubwisi in writing and teach people to read and write in their own tounge, and the BundiNutrition office. Somehow, the soldiers who are always hanging around didn't see or hear anything. Among the things stolen, a motorcylce used for nutrition outreach programs (the one I was going to be using a lot) stands out in valuve, although we're trying to assess what was taken from the literacy and translation offices, since computers or other work from those that were destroyed could represent years of work. It's a discouraging time, to say the least. We'd appreciate your prayers.

At first, I could convince myself that this was just desperation. School fees are due, food prices are 80% higher than this time last year, and someone was simply resorting to theft to provide. But after seeing how persistant and coordinated these are, it seems like more than just desperation, it seems like malice. This turn of events is hard for me for a number of reasons. First and most obvious, crime is scary and it makes me feel less safe. While I'm reassured by the fact that no one is trying to break in to occupied houses, this spate of theft makes everyone a little more nervous. Next, it's discouraging. The things that were stolen were all being used for good purposes, all being used to help people in various ways - nutrition outreach for malnourished kids and their families, teaching people to reach the own language, educating deaf children, etc. It's hard because it makes me feel like our work is being rejected by the community. It makes me feel not wanted here. Now, I understand that there are legitimately people here who don't like us just because we're outsiders, but I also know that these are a small minority. In any event, it's discouraging. And third, it makes me think a lot about how we relate to the community. I like the idea of not separating myself from the community (this is probably largely because I'm new here and haven't yet been driven to the edge by the constant flow of people at my door) - I don't like the idea of guards and soldiers and barbed wire, which seem hostile and could be an impediment to relating to the community. But, when things like this happen, it's hard to think of what else we can do. It's as though our hand is being forced, requiring us to take those measures just to preserve the work we're doing and enable us to be here. So, all of this theft is difficult not just because stuff is being taken, but because it has wider implications for the way that we live here and relate to the community.

Pass the remote...

2009-02-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

While I don't usually post about sporting events, this time I will. Today was Liverpool vs. Chelsea in the English Premier League, recently a great rivalry, with Liverpool needing the victory to stay in the hunt for the title. If you know how much I love to watch soccer, you'll know how excited I was to watch this game. You'll also know how disappointed I was that as of yesterday, the TV provider that carries all English Premier League soccer in all of Uganda was liquidated, leaving the entire country unable to watch the game. Typical. In fact, almost predicatable, since the Myhre's only got that TV provider three days ago and hadn't yet watched two minutes on it. So, BBC radio came to the rescue. I listened in tense agony as the minutes ticked by, until Fernando Torres scored twice for Liverpool in the last 5 minutes to snatch a 2-0 victory. It was in many ways a small thing, but it was an incredibly exciting one, and the Myhre's will attest to the fact that I was holding my breath, pulling my hair, and pacing around their kitchen, full of nervous energy.

And the next sporting event will be tonight, at 2:15 AM, when we gather at Myhre's for a super bowl party. That's right, even here in Bundibugyo Uganda, the super bowl lives. Having grown up in Pittsburgh, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Steelers, so I have my team in the big game. That being said, I don't particularly like American football. But somehow, I think that it reminds me of home, reminds me of the familiar, reminds me of what I've known in the past, and I think that the rest of the team feels that, so we're hoping it will be almost therapeutic. If only I'd thought to pack my Terrible Towel...

My sport watching plans and excitement are probably of little interest, but watching soccer, especially Liverpool, just makes me tick, and that's what's on my mind today.

Gardening and Frienship

2009-01-25T03:53:00.000-08:00

There are various aspects of the culture here that I find frustrating, either simply because they’re foreign to me or because I just don’t like the way that certain things work. Yesterday, however, I experienced a truly beautiful part of Babwisi culture. Since the rains have returned, for a time at least, and softened the soil, I decided to spend my Saturday starting work on building a garden. Throughout my life many a spring and summer weekend has been spent in the garden with my dad, or out in the fields, since we moved to a farm, so it felt like a good way to spend my day. I borrowed a hoe, the only tool for working the soil that I’ve seen in Bundibugyo, and set about trying to dig up the grass in a part of my yard without losing all the topsoil with it. I’d know exactly how to do this with a good shovel, but with this particular tool I was a little lost and was trying several different techniques, none of which were working terribly well. This was especially troubling since I was in clear view of my neighbor’s house and anyone else who might be walking around, and looking like an incompetent American wasn’t very high on my to-do list. When my neighbors saw me, they first called out, “Nathany, webale kukora!” which means “thank you for digging.” That’s one interesting aspect of the culture here – you thank people for everything. I was doing nothing that benefits them at all (unless they also harvest out of my garden, which is a real possibility) but they still thanked me for the work I was doing. This phrase was repeated by everyone who dropped in while I was working yesterday. But the truly remarkable things happened next. After only a couple of minutes, my two little neighbor boys, Gonja and Charity, who must be about 9-10 and 7-8 years old, respectively, came running over into my yard, hoes in hand, and started swinging them, pulling up sod and tossing it aside. Apart from just helping me, they instructed me on the proper way to use the tool for that purpose (often with laughs as I tried, and generally failed, to copy exactly their technique). But it didn’t stop there. Next, two girls who are in some way related to them and are both a bit older came over, hoes in hand, and joined in. Now we were really making progress. But it got better. In another few minutes, Charity and Gonja’s mother, and another woman who lives next door (probably the mother of the two girls, but family relations are very ambiguous here so I’m not sure), walked over to the growing patch of dirt and started working as well. Women here know how to work the ground, let me tell you. The two of them put all of the rest of us to shame in both speed and quality of work, as they pulled up sod, removed roots, and loosened the soil. Here in Bundibugyo the women do most of the gardening and cultivation, while men clear land and grow cash crops like cocoa and coffee, and it showed. In only a few hours, we (mostly they) had cleared the grass from the patch of ground that I had designated garden (which, as I found out halfway through, is right on top of one of the only underground water lines in the entire district. But we didn’t break it. Not yet anyway). By the time we were about halfway done I was getting the hang of it and kids were saying, “Nathany is a farmer!” and even paying me what I considered the extremely high compliment of calling me an American Mubwisi (a Mubwisi being one of the Babwisi people).

At one point early in the process I was thanking little Gonja for helping me, telling him that I was grateful and hadn’t expected his help. He looked at me with a look that seemed to combine confusion, impatience, and pity, and said, “No. I am your friend.” You help your friends when they need help, you work with them when they work. That’s just what friendship is here. Now, before I idealize this, friendship also often means that I am probably expected to give money to anyone who would be a friend whenever they need it, so it’s not all fun and games and easy decisions. But there was something beautiful about the way that, when they saw a friend and neighbor who could use some help, there never seemed to be any question of what the appropriate response was. There’s the chance that this will also mean that they will be entitled to a certain amount of whatever I grow – that might be a reciprocal aspect of the friendship. In the evening, after finishing work for the day, I took a bag of beans over to their house as a gift for two reasons: one, because I’m in the habit of giving them gifts from time to time as gifts are very important here; and two, as a way to help say thank you. Gonja translated between his mother and me, but he scolded me when I said something that must have made it seem like payment. Giving a gift was fine, but paying was not. He again insisted, “You are our neighbor.”

Two other things I experienced while working the garden were open blisters on the palms of both hands. They started early in the day, brought on by an unfamiliar tool and hands that haven’t been farming recently, and I knew that I should stop working before they got bad, but my pride wouldn’t let me. So I toiled on, eventually putting bandaids on my hands when they got bad enough, but stubbornly and stupidly continuing to work. Now, my hands are bandaged and just about every simple little task involved some amount of pain. I think this isn’t the first story I’ve told about stupid things I’ve done just because I have that typical tough-guy syndrome. But as of today, though it’s not finished, I also have the beginnings of a good garden, with soil that is dark and deep (significantly deeper than my blisters).

A big day

2009-01-20T20:39:00.000-08:00

The Myhre's recently, after over 15 years, invested in satellite TV for their house, giving us the chance to watch the occasional football match. But today, after getting back from our team planning retreat, it allowed all of us to gather to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama. Whatever your political views or your thoughts about him as a politician, I felt that today's ceremony was a truly historic moment for our nation, and one that I was very glad to be able to witness on TV. I'm not one to enjoy being constantly told by a hundred reporters that I'm witnessing history, but I also felt that it was really true. We were gathered at the Myhre's, crowded around the TV, watching the inane coverage of the run-up (I have memorized the entire menu for the inaugural luncheon) to the ceremony, and it occurred to me that people like us were a part of the reason that this inauguration was the most highly viewed event in the history of television (they said the previous program to hold that title was the final episode of M.A.S.H. - yikes). I'm sure that some of you are excited for Obama's presidency and some of you are not, but I hope that all of you can join me in celebrating not only a politician or a political party, but rather a victory in our nation for justice and a further step away from some of the darkest times in our history.

Here in Uganda, everyone is very excited and somewhat in disbelief that someone even remotely like them could become President of the US, which was really a theme of the ceremony and even of Obama's address. As a final note on the inauguration, it struck me is highly ironic that at the inauguration of a man who is so gifted an orator there would be a mix up in the actual taking of the oath (my reading is that it was probably Roberts' fault, but it must have been pretty embarrassing for both of them). My first thought that they just handed Saturday Night Live weeks of good material.

Skipped a beat...

2009-01-13T10:25:00.000-08:00

is what my heart just did. I walked back from team pizza dinner at the Myhre's through a beautiful star-lit night, but with my eye on the ground since the Myhre's goat died of a snakebite last week. I unlocked my door by the light of my cell phone (what can I say, I'm a child of my times) and stepped inside. With the light switch on the far side of the house and having forgotten a flashlight (as I usually do), I walked (as I usually do), through my house in the dark. And that's when the skipping-a-beat happened. Just before I put my bare foot down on the concrete floor, I jumped forward to avoid stepping on something that could have simply been a funny shadow, but was vaugely snake-shaped. And sure enough, it slithered slowly under the couch. I ran to get a flashlight and a large stone, and promptly dropped the stone on the head of a black snake about a foot and a half long. The small size is encouraging because it likely indicates that it was neither a cobra nor a black mamba, but I am nonetheless a little flustered at having nearly stepped on a snake in my living room in a place where both of those species live. And this all happened within the last five minutes. So now I have a dead snake outside and snake blood on my floor inside, which will have to wait until morning to be cleaned up because I just don't feel like doing it now. I'm guessing that this doesn't make any of you more likely to come visit me, and I'd want to ensure you that this is a real rarity (hey, it's only happened once in almost three months), but then again I did just have a snake on my floor. I don't know if I'll ever be able to identify it, since I pretty much destroyed its head with the rock, but perhaps it's better that way. In the very most literal sense possible, life here is certainly keeping me on my toes.

Home from the big city

2009-01-11T03:43:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that 2009 is treating you all well so far. After much traveling, I'm now back home in Bundibugyo. I spent a week in Nairobi visiting other World Harvest people there with Ashley and Heidi, and had a very fun and relaxing time. Nairobi is a real contrast to Bundibugyo - it's dry and brown and urban and breezy and beautifully cool. At one point I was outside in the shade in the middle of the day when I stopped and turned to the girls and said "Hey! I'm not sweating!," which is seldom the case in Bundibugyo. As a special treat, we even got to go ice skating on New Year's Eve at an indoor rink in Nairobi. I never expected to skate here, and I was able to skate and swim in the same week. On Jan 1st we drove through Nairobi National Park, a park teeming with animals and within sight of the high-rises of Nairobi. We saw giraffes within a few feet of the car, zebras, cape buffalo, impala, eland, a rhino, and, after much searching, we found a pride of lions relaxing in the shade of a tree. (Some of my favorite photos from the park are above). It was my first game drive and I had a great time, as well as baking in the equatorial sun. Throughout the week in Kenya we enjoyed a lot of rest - waking up late, sitting around drinking coffee, relaxing and talking, reading, watching movies - general down-time activities. While this might seem like a lame thing to do on vacation in a new country (at first glance it does to me, too), there is really no down time in Bundibugyo, there's always someone at the door, some request or need, some work to be done. As an example, in the course of writing this post up to this point, I've been interupted about 5 times by kids at my door asking for water, and even now I have two of my young friends walking around the room and looking at my computer. So, just having the time to relax was a real blessing. We also got to see Kibera, the second largest slum in the world and probably the most densely populated place on earth. We had a Kenyan walk us through the slum for about 45 minutes. This was the place where the ethnic post-election violence started last year that caused such great suffering - we talked with several children in our time there who had lost one or both parents. It was an interesting place - the houses are mostly of mud and corrugated steel and are right on top of each other, leading to sanitation problems that are hard to comprehend. At the same time, there is electricity there and we saw many people who were quite well dressed and out shopping or coming back from work in the city. It was interesting to see a place of urban poverty when I live in a place of rural poverty, and it's hard to say if one is better or worse than the other.

An interesting aspect to the trip was the gender ratio - it was me, Ashley, Heidi, and the three girls from the Nairobi team hanging out most of the time. How lucky for me, you might say. However, every guy knows that a guy needs guy time, which there wasn't much of to be had. I did meet a couple guys in Nairobi and was able to throw a football around, but then again, I also watched Pride and Prejudice. I countered that by following it with the first hour of Gladiator after the girls went to bed. The girls have been very kind and sensitive to the fact that I'm the only guy around when it comes to movie choices and the like, but there's only so much one can do when I'm outnumbered that badly :) So, when I got home yesterday evening, it was nice to stand around the grill with Scott and another doctor who is visiting for a week, sip on a beer, and cook steak.

I drove over the mountains on the way back, my first long drive on a stick shift with the wheel on the right side of the car. My only previous drive had been taking a kid to the hospital for an appendectomy, so it's been trial by fire. I only stalled twice which, given the condition of the Bundibugyo road, I didn't consider too bad. I also never was asked for a driving permit at any of the police checkpoints, which was nice considering that I don't have one. Bumpy doesn't quite describe the road - it's like a driving on a combination of speed bumps, rumble strips, and craters for three hours. And it's much more stressful to drive than to ride, because it's like being locked in combat with the road, me trying to find the least jarring way home, and the road trying to shake the vehicle into pieces.

So, now I'm safely back in Bundibugyo (mention safely, because I'm returning from a city that is less-than-lovingly nicknamed Nai-robbery). I'm glad to be back and I really enjoyed being greeted by all the neighborhood children - I found that I'd missed seeing them. But I'm also back to a place of little rest, of constant requests and interupptions, and of my usual 24 hour coating of sweat. It was great to be away but it's nice to be back in the place that I'm more and more calling home.

A constant tension

2008-12-30T00:57:00.000-08:00

There are always terrible reminders to bring one crashing back down to earth after a nice holiday or an encouraging day of work or a fun afternoon of soccer. Those good times are constantly juxtaposed with stories and experiences of suffering. The last two days have been a true study in that tension.

Yesterday afternoon (my birthday), I flew with Heidi and Ashley in a little cessna over the mountains an to Kampala. I got to fly co-pilot, had some great views of the mountains and the crater lakes around Fort Portal, and just had fun flying. It was a nice birthday present, and that was before dinner. I was lucky enough to be in Kampala for my birthday dinner, which we spent at a nice Belgian restaurant where I ordered a good, rare steak, a nice bottle of wine, and a deep dish of ice cream (the girls even got the waiter for put a candle on it). Splurging? Probably. It was a great birthday meal.

But earlier that day I had delayed the plane, because I was driving a 12 year old boy from the health center to the hospital a half hour away for an emergency appendectomy. Luckily, he came through his surgery (none too soon) and is recovering. At the health center we also had a young boy with sickle-cell disease who had just had a stroke, and died this morning, with no one able to do anything to prevent it. But as if those difficulties of the morning weren't enough, arriving in Kampala we found this headline on the web "Ugandan rebels massacre hundreds at church in Congo." In the last few weeks, after Joseph Kony (leader of the LRA) failed for the third time to show up to peace talks, the Ugandan, Congolese, and Southern-Sudanese armies launched a joint offensive against the LRA in the territory they control, where these countries meet. While it's hard to know what reports to believe, it was seeming to be rather effective, but now it is clear that it has also stirred the LRA back into its brutal, savage, child-enslaving life. The day after Christmas, rebels attacked a church service in a village in eastern Congo and slaughtered almost around 150 people, mostly women and children, with machetes and clubs. The horror and brutality of it is almost incomprehensible. It was difficult even to read about it, realizing that this is not a movie or a book, but something happening in real time. It's a terrible reminder of the brokenness and horror of the world we live in.

(As a note of assurance, this is not anywhere near Bundibugyo, but much farther north. The LRA exists in north-western Uganda, southern Sudan, and north-eastern Congo, a long way from where I live in south-western Uganda.)

So, sometimes I feel like I exist between extremes, never knowing where to find reality. Between stories of recovery and health, and those of slowly wasting away to death. Between big, happy smiles on the neighborhood kids faces when we're playing and the fact that they often don't have enough to eat. Between great meals in Kampala and inhuman brutality. It makes life confusing, it makes me ashamed of my ability to enjoy those nice meals or good medical care, and it leaves me clueless as to how I am supposed to respond to a world full of both beauty and ugliness, love and hate, rejoicing and suffering.

A Christmas to remember

2008-12-26T22:05:00.000-08:00

Quick description of Christmas:

Waking up early to the hustle and bustle of neighbors getting ready for Christmas and the drums and singing of celebration. Receiving a morning phone call from my family, who stayed up late to call and sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" to me. Making omelets for Pat, Heidi, Ashley, and myself, and eating about half of the kringle (a scrumptious combination of butter and sugar and probably a few other token ingredients) that Ashley made. Exchanging gifts and opening stockings with them after breakfast. Three hours of church, full of dancing, singing, and general joyfulness. A dance party in my house for a bunch of the local kids. A great steak dinner at the Myhre's with the whole team, followed by an all-team soccer game and delicious desserts. Another dance party, this time with the Myhre and Pierce kids. Watching the Grinch and Cinderella Man (not exactly a Christmas classic but one of my favorite movies), and talking to family again at night. A great day.

One thing in particular stuck out - I really enjoyed the church service. Oftentimes, I find myself struggling through church, either because I barely understand what's going on or because I find the preaching... less than encouraging. But the Christmas service was beautiful. I especially loved the group children that got up to sing and dance, partly because I'm friends with many of them. Their smiles and joy were contagious, and I've decided that my (roughly 7-8 year old) neighbor Charity is in fact the cutest boy I've ever seen, a conclusion that was reinforced by his dancing and his role as a shepherd in a little Christmas skit. The thing that struck me most was the preaching, though. While it often, depending on who is preaching, can become a rant against alcohol and smoking or something like that, this message was a great telling of the coming Kingdom which we await. I especially liked one illustration that I found put very eloquently. The pastor said that, today we would feast on chicken and beef and rice (all of which are rather expensive), but that it would only satisfy us for today. However, one day, when the Kindgom of God is here, we will have a feast which is satisfy forever: "That chicken is forever! That beef is forever!" Eternal chicken... an unusual concept, but here, where hunger is a reality and meat is a luxury, I though it was a great description of what the Kingdom of God will mean to people here.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T04:11:00.000-08:00

I want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas, even if it is a day early. This season I've been thinking a lot about Christmas and home, and all of the people who are a part of both of them for me. So I want to tell you how much I appreciate and miss all of you, my family and friends.

Amid the preparations, the pre-Christmas celebrations, the Christmas carols with the team, the buying of my Christmas shirt, and the general anticipation that fills the air in Bundibugyo (Christmas is a big deal here, if you hadn't figured that out), the tragic and difficult realities remain. Just yesterday, a soda truck collided with a pickup truck laden with far too many passengers. Both of them rolled, and this morning I learned that 12 people have died, including a mother and her two young children, all of them leaving friends and family mourning and weeping at a time when almost everyone is celebrating and making merry. This has been a poignant reminder that, while we celebrate the birth of Jesus, come into the world for our salvation, the consummation of his work is yet to come - we still live in a world of suffering and tragedy. So, I plan to celebrate and feast and to enjoy new family, new friends, good food, and good wine, but to also remember that I live in a world of needs and pain, as well as joy and celebration.

So, I don't want to make your Christmas sad with these stories (I could keep going), but the complexity and nuance of this season have struck me, and I think it's good to dwell on it for a time. I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas (or Chanukah, or just a good December), and that you are able to enjoy it with friends and family. Merry Christmas from the heat and dust of Bundibugyo!

sorry, snakes

2008-12-23T10:47:00.001-08:00

Here’s a snapshot of life here in Bundibugyo. Yesterday, I was playing football (soccer) with about 20 neighborhood kids in front of my house, as has become my custom most afternoons, especially now that school is out. One of my favorite boys, Richard, was dribbling the ball near the bushes when suddenly he jumped back and a snake slithered away from right under his feet toward the bushes. Within moments, all 20 of the kids were shouting and surrounding the bushes, launching rocks into them to try to scare the snake out. The snake was soon chased up to the top of the bush, about 15 feet, and the kids kept throwing rocks up into the air, which clattered onto my roof on the other side (and I was amazed that none of the kids hit each other, since they were surrounding the bush). Soon, adults were running toward my house, sticks in hand, ready to take over in place of the kids. After throwing a few sticks into the bush, the snake was knocked down and quickly beaten to death by my friend Richard. It was then pulled out into the path, where about 10 kids beat its lifeless body with sticks for several minutes, as if to make sure that it was actually dead. And that was the third snake that was killed within a few feet of my house yesterday.

Now, many of you probably know that I am an animal lover who hates to kill things (exception: rats), and that I really like snakes and have always tried to convince people that they’re not dangerous and should be left alone. Here, however, things are a little different, since almost all snakes are poisonous, and there are kids running around my yard all the time. Luckily, this very common species is only “mildly poisonous,” causing swelling and nausea but never death. When I said to someone “I’m not sure if this kind is dangerous,” my neighbor replied, “We don’t have non-dangerous snakes here.” So, I’ve had to decide that snakes in my yard must be killed, especially since these three appeared to be living in a hole in the concrete of my house, where I saw another one today. So there will probably be another snake-killing posse in action soon.

A very sorry Christmas tree

2008-12-22T01:34:00.000-08:00

So that's my Christmas tree. It's a bunch of boughs tied to a metal post and set in a bucket, wider at the top than at the bottom, leaning into the corner so that it doesn't fall. I'm not sure that there's ever been one like it. It probably bears more resemblance to some sort of palm tree than a pine tree. Still, it's more that I thought I'd have, so I'm glad for that. And see the lights! The Myhre's had leftover LED lights they weren't using, as well as some tinsel, so I have a little bit of Christmas cheer in my house. Now, I don't have much electricity so I don't run them much, but it's a nice touch. It makes that Charlie Brown tree look great, but it was fun to put together. Just thought I'd share a funny picture with you.

More Rwenzori pictures

2008-12-19T21:37:00.000-08:00

I will try to a get a Flickr page going soon, but this is how I'm posting pictures until then.

Home

2008-12-19T04:44:00.000-08:00

While I've been getting more and more settled here in Bundibugyo, I've been wondering when it's going to feel like home. When I can down from the Rwenzori mountains about a week ago, I had the feeling that I had been on vacation and that it was now time to go home - a home that was distinctly in Andover, NJ. That felt like the place that I should go after being away. It was hard for me to think about going to Kampala and then back to an empty house in Bundibugyo. However, after spending one day in Kampala, I found myself really wishing to get back home to Bundibugyo. It's a place that I know somewhat, and I was excited to see a lot of people from the community, especially the kids who I've been playing with and swimming with most afternoons. That was the first time when I felt like Bundibugyo was home. (Of course, when I got home I found that rats had wreaked havoc in my unoccupied kitchen. The battle continues.)

The Christmas season is a hard time to be away from home because Christmas and family are nearly synonymous to me. Decorating the tree, putting candles in the windows, singing Christmas carols - these are the heralds of the Christmas season for me, and I have always done them with my family. It's hard to think about waking up on Christmas morning alone. However, I'm very grateful for those moments like the other day when I'm starting to feel at home here.

Unspeakable Beauty

2008-12-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

One of the problems with my time trekking in the mountains was that I’m having trouble putting the experience into words. It was truly spectacular – an experience that was powerful and majestic and difficult and incredibly rewarding. It’s hard to explain what was so amazing about it, but I’ll try.

First of all, there was a great diversity of natural beauty. Even on the drive out of Bundibugyo I saw baboons by the road and surveyed an archetypal African plain. The trek itself started in dense jungle, passed through montane forests, bamboo forest, heather forest, alpine bogs, bare rock, glacier, and back through all of them again. There is something magical about the Rwenzoris. They feel ancient and wild. In most places, the lightly worn trail is the only evidence that humans have ever been there. The first day was spent in jungle – monkeys jumping overhead, giant tree ferns, and chimpanzees calling in the valley below us (an especially eerie sound at night). Day two was spent gaining a lot of elevation and moving into the heather forest. This is a truly otherworldly landscape, where gnarled old heather trees are draped with Old Man’s Beard and covered in masses of moss that reach up to three feet across. These hanging moss gardens are so unusual that they instantly struck me as something that could have come from a Dr. Seuss book. Day three was spent traversing two alpine bogs, places of incredible beauty and strange plant life, but that were clearly never meant to have people cross them. Luckily, we had experienced guides to lead us through them, and pretty much all of the Rwenzoris from that point on was more or less bog. Jumping from one tussock of grass to the next was fun and challenging, and carried with it significant risk as well, since the mud could be waist deep if one were to fall. I had a good time trying to land on wobbly, slippery tussocks, and by the end of the day I was well worn out from all of the jumping. Next we picked up a lot more elevation as we passed through a seemingly prehistoric alpine forest – I remarked at the time that a dinosaur stepping out into the path wouldn’t particularly surprise me there. Every day we were getting better and better views of the snow-capped high peaks of the Rwenzoris: Mt. Speke, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Stanely, whose Margherita Peak is the highest point in Uganda and was our destination. The majesty of these mountains is impossible for me to overstate, and I wish I could convey to you the feelings of wonder and awe that held me when the clouds would lift early in the morning, letting me bask in the splendor of those mountains. By this time we were at significant elevation and the air was getting thin, making every foot gained a little more difficult than the last. By then end of day four we were scrambling over wet rocks and in sight of the snow, reaching the hut that sits about 200 yards from the edge of the glacier. Even before this, the temperature would plummet in the evening, but now it was cold all of the time. Still, Luke and I decided that this was our only chance to bathe in a glacial pool, so up we climbed to a pool above the hut and bathed ourselves is the icy water (literally) that sat just below the glacier. It occurred to me at the time that guys often do very stupid things and that this was likely one of them, but it was a fun to be there that close to the glacier, and afterwords the air felt much warmer by comparison, leaving us feeling refreshed. At this elevation, any activity, even walking to the latrine, was tiring and caused me to lose my breath. There just wasn’t enough oxygen in the air. We were all on medication for altitude sickness (two men died up there this summer from it), so no one had serious problems, but we all suffered from nausea and general weakness. The next morning started at 4:30 as we set out for the summit (all of us except Jack and Julia), scrambling by headlamp for an hour through a steep boulder field to the edge of the glacier, where we put on our crampons and harnesses and roped ourselves together. I was on a short rope with Luke and a guide, meaning that we were free to move at our own pace, but also meaning that, if someone fell, there were only two others to catch him. The glacier was fun and frightening, as we passed right over and around various openings to crevices that could have been 10 or 200 feet deep and I would have never known the difference. At one point, in a particularly steep section, there was an opening about a foot across into an ice cave, through which I could see icicles hanging down into the blackness. And we used that opening as a foothold for climbing! In the movie, it would collapse every time. But it didn’t, and I passed over it with heart racing and ice-axe at the ready to try to catch myself if it gave. After scaling a 20 foot rock face (completely exhausting at almost 17,000 feet – I couldn’t move my arms for a while afterword. However, I was roped in and being held by a guide), we scrambled for a few more minutes to the summit – all 16,763 feet of it. It was amazing looking down at the clouds, watching the wind whip them up onto the peak, and seeing how the sky looks strangely dark overhead at high elevation. Every now and again the clouds would part and we would have a stunning view of Alexandra peak, just a few hundred yards away. I would whip out my camera, but in seconds the clouds would close back in and it would be gone. I never did get a clear picture of it (my best try is the second picture above). While waiting for the second group to reach the summit, Luke and I snacked, tried to keep warm, and sang Go Tell it On the Mountain (that was the only place where it feels like the Christmas season!). Despite getting caught in a snowstorm on the way down, we made it back safely (though the snowy rocks made us use ropes to get down and it took an hour longer than it should have) and quickly made up a bunch of hot chocolate. We were all very tired but several more days of spectacular hiking awaited. One place from the descent sticks out in particular – a bamboo forest that I was alone when I entered. There was a stillness about it that felt almost sacred, broken only by the intermittent hushed rustle of the bamboo in the breeze. I was trying to catch up to the rest of the group, but I walked slowly through the bamboo. It felt like a place where one shouldn’t hurry.

All in all, the trek was cold, muddy, and exhausting, but incredibly fun, fascinating, and awe-inspiring. The difficultly and discomfort are a big part of what made it such a great experience for me and brought a lot of fun and adventure to it. On a climb like that, it’s usually best not to dwell on all of the times where one wrong step could send you tumbling to a rocky death, but those times were exhilarating and exciting too. Most of you probably know how much I enjoy the natural world and how much natural beauty speaks to me, and this trip gave me a huge dose of that. I saw many stunning birds, several of which are found only in the Rwenzoris. It was a place of great power. It reminded me of how Tolkien speaks of mountains having power or having a will of their own. It was like I could feel the mountains in addition to seeing them. I’ll certainly never forget it.

That’s a very long way of telling you that I’m back in Bundibugyo safely after an amazing time in the mountains. It is back to the real world tomorrow, as I’m headed down to the health center again in the morning. But I’m incredibly grateful for the chance to experience the Rwenzoris, and the beauty and majesty that I was lucky enough to revel in there. (I’ll try to get some more pictures up).

Mountains of the Moon

2008-12-03T20:21:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving with the Myhres and Ashley for a week of trekking in the Rwenzoris. These are the same mountains that I see every day and that supply my water, but they get much bigger a few hours south of here. The ancient Greeks, upon seeing the Nile flowing so steadily out of an massive desert, guessed that somewhere in equatorial Africa there must lie a high mountain range - the Mountains of the Moon. They were right, of course, and the snows of the Rwenzori mountains are the only permanent source of that ancient river which formed a culture of it's own. That's right, snow on the equator. Pretty hard to believe, and not something I packed particularly well for. Many Europeans doubted that there could be snow in such a place (I've been telling you about the heat here), but these mountains are higher than the Alps and contain some spectacular ice formations. At over 16,700 feet, Mount Stanely is the 3rd highest peak in Africa, next to Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, but is a harder climb than either of them. Climbing on glaciers is always tricky, and there's a large glacier to cross to reach the summit (As with almost all of the world's glaciers, it has lost about 1/3 of its mass in the last 50 years as the climate warms). We'll be renting gear like harnesses, crampons, and ice picks for this part (not exactly everyday gear here). Probably only a smaller group of us will go up on the glacier and attempt the summit, and even this will depend on the weather and altitude sickness.

I hear that the plant an animal life in the mountains is spectacular and unusual, and most of you know how much I enjoy both plants an animals. It's certain to be a grand adventure and a long one - 7 nights on the mountain. While it will be challenging and physically taxing, I'm excited about the chance to just be out in nature and enjoy the beauty of it. I think it will be a relaxing and restoring time, and one which will make me appreciate my cold shower. Clearly, I'll be out of touch for a little more than week. As for now, I'm trying to figure out what to pack (I picked up a great used fleece and some used wool socks in the market) and what food to bring. When I get back, I'll be sure to post pictures of the climb. I'm sure there will be some great ones. I think the hardest thing will be decided which spectacular things to photograph, since if I took pictures of them all I'd probably be stopping every few feet.

Today is the memorial service for the one year anniversary of the death of Dr. Jonah Kule in the ebola epidemic. I'm sure it will be a difficult time, as I can tell how much he is missed, especially as he was such a committed and hard-working doctor, not to mention that he was the shining star of the community, living proof that a local man could go on to receive a good education, attain a position of real influence, and do great things for his people. There are currently several young men in medical school being sponsored by the fund set up last year in Dr. Jonah's memory, so while it will be some time before they are doctors, there is hope that they will return to serve in the community here just as Dr. Jonah did.

Christmas goats

2008-11-28T04:38:00.000-08:00

With Thanksgiving over, some team members are already playing Christmas music and getting out the Christmas movies (actually, some started before Thanksgiving). While the dusty, searing, 95+ degree heat makes it hard for me to think of this as the holiday season, it’s coming up fast. So, I’m going to plug a World Harvest holiday program called Give-a-Goat. Basically, you can supply a high-quality dairy goat to a family in need – usually motherless babies or mothers with HIV/AIDS for whom breastfeeding carries the risk of infecting their child. You would receive a goat Christmas ornament (which I haven’t seen but have heard are nice). Below I’ve posted a more official description of the program. Please give it a read and a thought.

Once again this year we are offering the Give-a-Goat opportunity. For $130 we can purchase and transport a specially bred dairy goat here in Uganda, train a family in its care, give them a few tools for constructing a simple shed, and then allow them to take the goat home. Thanks to this project, many children who otherwise would have starved, can thrive—drinking the calories and protein they need. Most of our recipients are babies whose mothers have died, or whose mothers are infected with HIV/AIDS and therefore need to wean them from potentially infectious breast milk.

Your donation is a gift to a family which is living on a slim margin of survival. The first 100 donors will receive a hand-made African Christmas tree ornament which symbolizes the real gift of the goat. Please put it on your tree to remind you that Christmas is all about incarnation: love in bodily form, God becoming human and needing milk, your generosity translating into a real live animal and its milk.

The mechanics:

1. Use the "Give-a-Goat" button on our sidebar (or at www.whm.org) to donate by credit card. This is the simplest and fastest method, and allows our colleague Ginny Barnette in the Sending Center to quickly confirm your donation and address and mail you the ornament. Here is the direct link : http://whm.org/project/details?ID=12375

2. Send a check to WHM Donation Processing Center, P.O. Box 1244, Albert Lea, MN 56007-1244, writing "Goat Fund 12375" on the memo line. Since the processing and return of the information to Ginny could take a couple of weeks, you may want to email her (GBarnettte@whm.org) in order to be sure you receive the ornament before Christmas.

3. If you would like the ornament mailed to a DIFFERENT address than the one on your credit card or check, you must also communicate this to Ginny. A card will be included with each goat describing the program.

Gifts, begging, and generosity

2008-11-28T04:14:00.000-08:00

People come to my door many times every day, usually children but also adults, sometimes just to talk but often to ask for a loan, food, employment, school supplies, or a drink of water. This is extremely uncomfortable for me, but it seems to be part of the territory of living here as a Westerner. The fact that I could afford to travel all the way to Uganda is evidence enough of the wealth disparity between myself and most of the community. For me, a chronic people-pleaser, saying no to these requests is hard but necessary (though I never say no to water – it’s too easy and important). A few days ago, a couple of young children, one of whom is a friend of mine, knocked at my door and we talked for a few minutes. My friend then asked for band-aids for the other child’s skinned knees. My first instinct is to be cautious about giving handouts (because they can set a dangerous precedent), but hey, I’m a health worker after all, so this was an easy decision. I had a thought: if it were me, I’d bandage it, so how could I say no to this kid? That seemed like a great way to think about these difficult issues – treating my neighbor as myself, giving of my resources, serving those around me. I thought I had my philosophy figured out. Then I had another thought. There’s no way I can possibly do that for everyone who will come to my door, there’s no chance that I can give everyone the level of care or help that I would want for myself. If it were me, of course I’d pay my own school fees. Of course I’d buy myself food. Of course I’d pay for a hospital visit. But I can’t do those things here. I’d be broke in a week and everyone in the community would know that I was an ATM (this illustration is for your benefit – almost no one here has a bank account or would know what an ATM is). So what does this mean for me? How should I handle these situations? When should I be generous and where I should draw the line? And is giving handouts a good idea? Unfortunately, simple answers to these questions are pretty elusive.

I’m going about handling this by trying to give gifts to people with whom I have a relationship, and to give them when they’re not asked for. I think this makes it less of a paternalistic relationship and seems to be in tune with Ugandan notions of friendship and material involvement. (For us, lack of material involvement is what makes true friendship. Here, material involvement is a defining aspect of friendships. These cultural differences are tough). So I try to give gifts of food or school supplies to my neighbors, while maintaining plenty of other interactions that involve no material goods. We’ll see how that goes and how my thoughts develop in this area. (The Myhres – 15 year veterans of Bundibugyo – ensure me that it doesn’t get much easier). Yikes.

Seriously funny

2008-11-26T20:19:00.000-08:00

Please click on the link to Heidi's blog and read the post entitled "To my lovely one," for a letter that not one, but two of the women on the team received. When they showed this to me, I laughed harder than I have in months. Just try reading it out loud.

Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving! We're having a team feast and soon I'll be heading to the Myhre's to help with the turkey (currently running around their yard). I managed to avoid the responsibility of cooking any of the main dishes, but I'm doing a few sides which will keep me busy for much of the afternoon and promise to be a real adventure since my oven neither closes fully nor has temperature readings. I hope that you all have a wonderful day and that you are able to spend it with people for whom you are truly thankful.

2008-11-23T04:23:00.000-08:00

A few more pictures. First, a couple of my neighbors, Gloria and Charity, who I play with a lot. Then some pictures of Ngite, a waterfall about 150 feet high that we hiked to. It felt like being in Planet Earth.

Of long trips and flat tires

2008-11-21T04:35:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, I made my first trip to the big city, Kampala, capital of Uganda, where one can buy almost anything (especially compared with the modest goods one can get in Bundibugyo). It’s amazing that, after only about three weeks here, the conveniences of a modern city were a marvel to me. The fact that my hotel room had both hot water and a toilet was almost too good to be true, and I walked around stores in the city with an almost giddy demeanor as I surveyed all of the goods that were available. The grocery store made me realize both how much I was starting to miss many of the foods I’m used to, and also how expensive my tastes are. I had to put off buying nice cheeses until I’m really desperate (give it a couple of months) and willing to pay the exorbitant prices they charge. I got my first experience riding a boda boda – a motorcycle taxi that is great for getting through traffic quickly but terrible for staying alive. I had to get somewhere quickly during rush hour, and the car was being worked on, so I went to find a boda boda to take me there. A Ugandan quickly warned me that it was not safe, but then went and found a driver with “good behavior” to get me there. It was a fun ride, and only once was I certain that I was going to die. But before I left Kampala I’d taken a couple more rides to get around quickly. It’s a pretty efficient form of transportation, especially during rush hour (which seems to me like most of the day), and there’s a certain thrill to it. Even since getting back to Bundibugyo on Wednesday, I’ve taken bodas into town and back twice, and there’s talk of me learning to drive them soon.

On Wednesday, Pat and I were up at 6, furiously trying to get our errands done and got on the road in time to reach Bundibugyo before dark. There’s a general rule that one shouldn’t drive after dark, for two reasons – first, any stretch of road that might be home to highway thieves becomes a bad idea after dark, but the bigger concern is that it’s just no fun to break down after dark in a place where there are no tow trucks, no AAA, and possible no town for another hour of driving. We were very delayed leaving Kampala, since we had to wait for the mechanic to finish working on the car, but we hit the road around 12:30, just about the latest we could leave and still hope to make it before dark. We reached Fort Portal, just on the other side of the mountains for Bundibugyo and about 2.5 hours from it, and decided to go for it, figuring we’d get back just after dark. We knew that Scott and Jennifer were also traveling back to Bundibugyo with the Ryans (it's been awesome having them here), after a couple of days of retreat and relaxation, but figured they were well ahead of us and furthermore, might not be thrilled about us racing the sun to get back, so I didn’t mind when I couldn’t reach them by phone – I figured that meant that the decision then fell to us. We just made it over the mountain top – still more than an hour from Bundibugyo, when we came upon Jennifer, Skip, and Barb, sitting by their truck with a flat tire. As it turns out, both of the spares they were carrying were also flat, so Scott had jumped on the back of a truck with both spares to get them repaired at the nearest town, about a half hour away. I hopped out to stay with Skip and the truck and wait for Scott, while Pat took Jennifer and Barb home. It was great to just sit on the hood of the truck in the middle of the African jungle and have a good conversation with Skip as the sun set. As it got dark, I heard all sorts of interesting birds and other animals that I can’t remotely identify, and they all seemed to be about 10 feet away in the thick vegetation. It was a pretty cool feeling, but I’ll admit to being glad that I wasn’t alone. After about 45 minutes (it’s now almost pitch black) Scott came back on one motorcycle with a patched tire on the other. By this time, the jack underneath the truck was damaged and wouldn’t lift high enough to get the new tire on, so we began trying to rig up a contraption to hold the truck up while we lowered the jack, and then prop the jack up on some rocks to get some more height. As I was digging big rocks out of the forest in the dark for this purpose, we were fortunate enough to have another truck pull up and lend us their jack. Never underestimate the value of the kindness of strangers. We got the new tire on, and drove for about a half hour to the town where the second tire was now patched, picked it up and went on our way, thinking we were in the clear. Not one kilometer later our repaired spare went flat. Luckily, the people who had helped us were kind enough to have stayed behind us in case anything went wrong, which it clearly had. We put the new spare on, and the minute we let the jack down, the sound of air escaping was audible. So here we were, still 45 minutes from home, with a tire going flat, two flat spares, and the prospect of having to sleep in the truck to keep thieves away. However, on of our Ugandan friends managed to rig up the most unlikely contraption to prevent air from escaping from the valve. He bend the valve to the side, stopping the flow of air, a wedged a small rock between it and the wall of the rim, holding it in place. I thought that this would last about 10 feet on this bumpy road. Of course, when we got in the truck, there wasn’t an ounce of power flowing from the battery. I had a distinct sense of “Ok, so what else is about to go wrong?” Somehow, after about 30 seconds, the battery decided to work again and we started on our way. Miraculously, our little rock-in-the-wheel setup held in place for the 30 kilometers back to Bundibugyo, where we arrived sometime after 10, exhausted, stressed, and hungry, 10 hours after I had left Kampala. I felt terrible for Scott and Jennifer, as this was the culmination of their time of relaxation, but I was glad that our worry and delay leaving Kampala turned into a huge blessing for them. Some team members had prepared some dinner and had it waiting for us when we got back, so I ate and fell sound asleep almost instantly, a sweaty, dirty, sticky mess. And what wonderful sleep it was.

Next morning I was up early for a long, hot day of work at the food distribution, but this post is too long as it is, and that’s a story for another time.

2008-11-20T20:46:00.001-08:00

I apologize for the lack of communication over the past week - I spent about half of it in Kampala for a conference on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (with the foremost doctor on the subject in the world), and didn’t have my computer with me, and I’ve been very busy since getting back. That being said, I’m in a rush now and this will be short!

Yesterday was the Kwejuna Project food distribution, which takes place every three months, and 230 HIV+ women gathered, along with their babies and relatives. We weighed the women and their children, gathered medical history information, talked to them about coming to the clinic for treatment, and Skip, Barb, and Kisembo (the local pastor) prayed for and lent a listening ear to women who are struggling with rejection, blame, and fear. It was a fascinating, depressing, long, fun, and challenging day. Just like everything I write about, the emotions I feel don’t fall neatly into any one category. At the end of the day we distributed beans, oil, and salt to the women who had come - all in all, we gave out over 5 tons of beans. It was good to experience, as I had been working on planning and preparing for this event, and I slept very well last night after carrying dozen of bags of beans.

I have a lot of stories to share, but no time right now. Will update soon.

2008-11-14T04:50:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to share a couple of stories from the pediatric ward. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to see the children that come in malnourished, suffering from malaria, HIV+, with Kwashiorkor, or any number of ailments that an American like myself has never seen. But it’s wonderful to see them smile as they improve.

There are three little girls who were almost dead a couple of days ago (one of them pictured above). They had all been losing weight rapidly, and one has no mother. While they seemed hopeless, we treated them as best we could and prayed for them as a team. Yesterday, Jennifer reported that all three of them were still clinging to life, which was better news than she had expected. Today, as I was doing rounds with Jennifer, we found that two of the girls are putting on weight, and they even smiled at us! (Jennifer says that, when a malnourished baby smiles, it usually means that they are on the road to recovery. Starving children don’t waste energy smiling or laughing). It was truly beautiful to see these tiny girls, still frighteningly thin, looking happy and seemingly on the road to survival. After the seeing the first two, we hoped for a hat-trick of smiles, but it wasn’t to be. The third girl, while still alive, remains at an extremely low weight and can’t survive long like this. The mother maintains that she tested negative for HIV, but says she can’t find the card (many people never disclose their HIV status, or never get tested, for fear of social ostracization), leading Jennifer to think that the child is likely HIV+ and already very sick. So, for every recovery story there is one of death, for every ounce of hope there is an ounce of despair. I suppose that these girls represent two stories of hope and only one of despair, but the odds can just as quickly turn in the other direction. This balance is hard to live with – I like happy endings, success stories, and generally good things. But that’s not the reality of life here (or in most of the world); the reality is full of both suffering and joy, and is hard. And I’ve only been here for two weeks of it. These are just preliminary observations that I’m sure will develop as I gain greater perspective on things and a greater understanding of life here, but they are the thoughts that I’m wrestling with at this early stage.

New skills

2008-11-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

During my short time here, I’ve been amazed at the sheer number of things that Scott can do. Construction, plumbing, accounting, bike repair, electrical … it seems pretty endless. I suppose that, just as necessity is the mother of invention, so is it the mother of learning to do anything. I got a taste of that on Saturday when Scott and I, along with several Ugandans, installed a solar hot water system at the teachers’ house. Now, you might ask why anyone would want hot water when living one degree north of the equator, but we’re at enough elevation that, by the time you bathe in the evening the temperature has dropped enough to make a cold shower a little bracing (either that or the hot weather has already made me seriously soft). So the prospect of hot water had the girls very excited (normally the team only gets hot water in Kampala). The system is very similar to the one that my parents have on our house in NJ – the sun heats a glycol mixture to a very high temperature, which then heats water in the reservoir. I’m no plumber, but I figured out what I was doing pretty quickly as we worked. After a full day of work (we’re lucky that it was cloudy – and even so I got sunburned) we had completed the installation and had attached the pipes to the shower inside the house. There were several steps in the directions – yes, even we men managed to look at the directions every now and again – that clearly stated that only licensed professionals were allowed to perform, but, looking around, we didn’t find any of those so it usually fell to Scott or to me. At the end of the day the water was running, but didn’t have time to heat up so we couldn’t judge the effectiveness of our work.

During the course of the day, the teachers expressed their thanks by making me lunch, dinner, and homemade ice cream (the only kind here, and a real rarity). It was perfect payment. I also managed to kill two rats in their house, so I think that the ice cream might have been a bonus for the extermination work. It’s funny how much your behavior changes and how much what is normal changes when you enter a new set of circumstances. Here, where rats are a common problem, there’s nothing odd about me chasing a rat along a wall, hammer in hand – in fact, it’s strongly encouraged. I got one with a hammer (reminds me of the bop-the-gopher game from Chuckee Cheeses) and one with my foot (reminds me of stepping on a rat). Maybe this sounds disgusting to you, and perhaps there is something a little morbid about it, but it seems to be just one of those realities of life here. But, all in all, when added to the hot water installing, it made for a successful day.

The next day, when making a minor repair to the water heater, I found the water to be HOT. So Scott and I are happy to have successfully installed it, and Sarah and Ashley are happy to have hot water. And hey, there’s one new skill I’ve already picked up.

Computers and Names

2008-11-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

I wonder if we Americans realize how much computers are a part of our everyday lives. I’m not talking about e-mails, on-line shopping, or instant news. In a place with almost no computing power, things like medical records and databases present challenges I’ve never considered before. Everyone has their own medical record – it’s contained in a little cardboard-bound book (I believe it’s called a kitabo) that they take with them to a health center to show the doctor, and in which the doctor writes diagnoses and prescriptions. These books are almost unfailingly damp, dirty, and falling apart (the writing in them is also completely illegible to me). There’s no careful, easily accessible record of what treatment people have actually received, though the books do contain valuable information.

The issue of names here complicates things further. While I can’t say for sure that that they don’t exist, I have yet to encounter a family name (last name). Everyone has two names (so I am asked “what are your names?”) but they are both given names. One or both of these names shows up on medical records (for example, who received anti-retroviral drugs on a specific date) but often multiple people have the same names, or a person uses only one name, which may be very common. This, along with a lack of centralized computer database and the difficulty of following up with patients who have no address, makes reliable data collection and patient tracking extremely difficult. Just determining who received what treatment when is very hard. This issue of tracking and determining efficacy of treatment is just one obstacle that never crossed my mind, since I take these things completely for granted in the United States.

And as a quick anecdote about the unusual and impermanent nature of names here: a baby boy named Nixon was treated years ago, and sometime later returned for another ailment. His birth card showed the name Nixon, but his health card now carried the name Clinton, which his mother insisted was his real name. One can only guess that there will be a spike in the number of baby Obamas in the coming year

A few more pictures...

2008-11-07T21:28:00.000-08:00

A view from the mountains out into the Congo - the river is the border. The inpatient and pediatric wards at Nyahuka Health Center. I'm trying to get a good picture of the mountains but none of them can capture their beauty - here's an attempt.

Sadness and rejoicing

2008-11-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a local priest of the Church of Uganda (the Anglican Church) died at the age of 83, and since his daughter works at the health center and he himself was quite involved with the World Harvest team, I was invited to attend the funeral. Scott volunteered to drive the casket to his traditional home in one of the nearby villages, and as soon as it was loaded on, about 10 Ugandans jumped in the back of the truck along with the body. Now with a heavily laded truck, we drove (or slid) through the rain over steep, rutted, dirt roads for about 30 minutes to reach the man’s home. The last couple yards were impassible so we all walked through the deep mud to join probably 100 people gathered for his funeral, the large number indicating the level of respect that he held in the community. Awkwardly, we white people were told to sit in plastic chairs brought out for us, right next to the casket, while most of the Ugandans stood or sat in the mud. It feels horribly superior and colonial to be treated that way, but as honored guests it would be far worse to refuse. The ceremony consisted of multiple people standing up to speak about the late Reverend Sereboyo, some of which was summarized in English for us, and Dr. Scott was also asked to speak, which was translated into Lubwisi. The people gathered sometimes cried and sometimes laughed. The service included much singing, and also readings, teachings, and prayers from other clergy in the Church of Uganda (all of which was done in Lubwisi). This remarkable man was monogamous for his 65 years of marriage, unusual in a society where multiple wives indicate high status. The ceremony was long, though I was told that it could have been much longer. It was an honor to attend so sacred and important an event, especially as a new arrival here.

The other big news here is the result of the American election. Early Wednesday morning the whole team was gathered at the Myhre’s, listening to the radio for the news. When, during Obama’s speech he addressed “people in the forgotten corners of the world, huddled around radios,” we had a good laugh, as that pretty perfectly described us. On my walk to the Health Center, many people cheered “Obama! America!” as I walked by. I think that people here are incredibly encouraged and excited that someone with roots in this part of the world can attain such influence.

A bachelor's legs are his garden...

2008-11-04T10:38:00.001-08:00

This is a Lubwisi proverb that was just told to me by Pat, one of the team members. It means that a bachelor gets his food by walking to other people's houses and being fed there. So far, that's been my experience here, as I've had dinner every night at the houses of other team members. (And Pat told me this when I was eating with she and Heidi). It's been a great way to get to know the other people on the team here.

Today there was more of the reality hitting me, as we did the clinic for motherless babies. These kids were brought by their caretakers - aunts, sisters, grandmothers - to be examined by the doctors, weighed, and have food distributed. The food was mostly for the caretakers who have taken over breast-feeding of the infants. So many of the children were unbelievably small and malnourished. But there were many heroines among their caretakers, women who have taken on children not their own, taken on breast feeding them, have carried them here for miles, and who carry them, along with a heavy load of beans and milk, those many miles back to there homes. Other health workers told me the histories of some of the kids: some are great recovery stories, some apparently hopeless. One thing that struck me was the "child health chart" - a chart with a series of curves, representing a weight to age ratio. One curve was labelled "normal weight child," the next one down "low weight child," and the last "very low weight child." One these charts, all that these caretakers can hope for or aim for is to keep children on the "very low weight child" line, because then they have a chance to survive. There seems to be no thought of the "normal weight line," and many of the babies fell significantly below the "very low weight" line. It was pointed out that, in America, most babies are significantly above the normal weight line. It's hard to deal with such stark contrasts - the realities of life here are simply different (and harder) than in America. What does it mean for me to be a wealthy American in light of that? There are so many things like this flying through my head that I barely know what to do with them.

And with that, the internet is about to be switched back off. Goodnight.

Things get tough

2008-11-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

Reality started to set in today. I spent the morning touring the Nyahuka Health Center, which is a few minutes walk down the road. The intensity of the suffering there is remarkable, and is compounded by the close-packed conditions, lack of ventilation, and darkness of the wards. The new maternity and pediatric wards built by World Harvest are immeasurably better than the old ones (which are still used), but they are still rather shocking to an American.

The reality of the work started to appear to me when I was visiting the female ward, and Dr. Scott was discussing a patient with a lab worker. I saw this woman, who is HIV positive, is suffering from carposi sarcoma, and possibly infected with TB. They can’t administer anti-retrovirals for the HIV until they know if she has TB, but the health center is out of TB tests and the new shipment is late getting here. So there this woman lies, weakening every day, with nothing that anyone can really do about it.

Next, upon entering the crowded pediatric ward, we were informed that a child in the corner was dying. Watching this tiny, frail boy gasp for air, eyes wide with terror, while his family sat helplessly by, simply struck me to the core. It hit me in the stomach and brought tears to my eyes. I then went to see some of the outpatient clinics, and upon re-entering the pediatric ward no more than 20 minutes later, I was told that young Daniel had died. It was heartbreaking and sobering, as this is simply what happens here on a regular basis. Added to this was the doctor’s frustration that even though has had been in the hospital for some time they were unable to save him, since any food given to him was instantly vomited back up, making his recovery impossible.

Together, these events made for a very sobering morning, as I have been confronted by the reality of the suffering here in rural Uganda and the difficulties faced by those trying to address them.

This afternoon, however, I had the wonderful opportunity to play football (real football, or soccer to Americans) with the boys at Christ School. It was a lot of fun and a great way to build relationships with people here – it truly is the universal language. I found myself in terrible shape after not having played much in recent months, but there’s no better way to get it back than to keep playing. The coach invited me to come and play every day, and we started talking about how I might work with the team and do soccer programs for other youth. On my walk back from the school I stopped to talk with several people who I didn’t know, and they asked me how America was. I mentioned that the election was tomorrow, and their faces lit up and crowed gathered almost instantly. Everyone here absolutely loves Obama, as his father was Kenyan (Uganda shares a border with Kenya) and he has talked about East Africa. People are really passionate about him, and they continually expressed to me how much they followed out election and how much they cared about it. I’ve also seen some newspaper articles talking about Uganda is at the top of Obama’s agenda, though they never say in what way. I have no idea how people have gotten this idea, since I have yet to hear Obama utter the word “Uganda, ” and I fear that people will be horribly disappointed should he be elected. But they really do care, and they love him. It’s very interesting to see such intense interest in our election here.

2008-11-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

A couple of pictures of my house and my room.

Arrival in Bundibugyo!

2008-11-02T04:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a brief preliminary post just to get this blog up and running.

After two long flights, a night in Kampala, and an 8 hour drive, I've arrived in Bundibugyo! (That was actually two days ago). The drive out was complicated by a truck lying on its side blocking the road a few miles from Bundibugyo, so we detoured on a remarkable bumpy and steep road, but Heidi's driving was great and we got here with no problem.

I was pleasantly surprised by my house - it's bigger and nicer than I expected. It was built for a family of five, so living in it alone makes it pretty spacious. My toilet is a pit-latrine out back, but it's probably the cleanest one I've ever seen.

Everything has been hectic and getting settled has been tough, but I guess I shouldn't expect anything else. Here are a few highlights:

- On the first day I went with Dr. Scott to Bundibugyo hospital in the morning and "helped" him with ultrasounds for problem pregnancies. I say "helped" because I definitely slowed him down. I was recording data into the hospital log, but I had to ask for help with almost every name that I saw, since I have no idea what names are like here yet. But he showed me how to read and interpret the ultrasounds, which was really interesting. The hospital was not something that would be recognized as such in the States. There's electricity from a generator, but it doesn't run all the time. There are several wards, rather small, concrete buildings. I didn't get a tour of the whole place, but I'm sure I'll be finding my way around soon. We also visited Dr. Jonah's grave, (Ugandan doctor who died during the Ebola outbreak last year), which is there at the hospital. It was a meaningful time, and his loss is clearly still felt very deeply.

-I went to the Saturday market yesterday, which was a great, but wild experience. Fish, meant, vegetables, and hundreds of people crowded together, all in the heat of the equatorial mid-day sun, with no refrigeration. It will be fun to find my way around there.

-I ate my first goat meat, as well as my first matoke (kind of like mashed plantains) and posho, a starchy white root. So, far, Ugandan food seems pretty good, but we'll see what I think in a couple of months.

-Finally, a great story from one of the children of the family that runs Christ School, the secondary school here. As I was walking with 6-year old Quinn, he looked up at me and said, completely out of the blue, "Actually, I don't find you boring to be with at all! I find you fun, and intelligent." It was one of the funniest things I had ever heard.

There will soon be more interesting things to post about, as I get more exposure to the culture and figure out how exactly I'll be fitting in to the team, but I wanted to start relaying a few of my experiences.

Nathan