The Fountain [again] and Lucy comes to Kla

It’s gray again, like Easter. I went to sleep last night to the sound of Ugandan-lilted accents arguing over a game of Scrabble – late night customers at La Fontaine. Sometime in the middle of the night, the curtains that one of the staff had closed over the front window billowed out into the room, and I awoke to claps of thunder and a constant, gushing sound of rain. The world outside was being churned into a thick slop of red mud. On Easter, when we went to La Fontaine for brunch, Richard arrived in his Bob Marley t-shirt again, shivering, squealing and hopping about, avoiding the drops and behaving as though a massive cold front had blown through – winter in Uganda. He eventually opened La Fontaine to the public at 2 pm, but no matter, because according to Richard, his fellow countrymen stay in bed when the weather is so terribly cold. Remembering this, I felt a little more Ugandan today, seeing the white-gray sky out the window and snuggling up a little longer under the mosquito net and comforter.

I temporarily moved off of Kate’s couch in Kasubi on Tuesday, bringing a small bag of things over to La Fontaine to crash in Steve’s room while he’s climbing Kili. It smelled like boy when I got here, and I’m either used to it now (and I probably smell like boy) or open windows and my coconut lotion have done the job of airing out the boy smell. My days since returning from Gulu have been a mishmash of busy-ness and same-ness. Daily life in Kampala. This was the week I was supposed to be in Zanzibar, relaxing on the beaches and reading. Instead, I’m hopping bodas from hotspot to hotspot (Café Pap, Crocodile Café, Kabira Country Club), attempting to complete enough AIR work to prove my worth. I get up and work for a few hours in the morning, try and get to the pool to swim and read and relax during the hot hours of the afternoon, and then work again late into the evening. In lieu of a social life, it’s not bad way to live.

Lucy rode the bus down to Kampala on Monday, arriving in Bombo to stay with her sister for the night. After a couple hours of confusion Tuesday morning – getting lost at Mukwano Arcade, and sweating bullets in the punishing mid-day sun – Kate and I trudged up from Mukwano, through the taxi park, and arrived at Kiwempe, where Lucy and her foster son, Cyprian, were waiting for us. Lucy is an active and fervent member of the picturesque Catholic Church in Gulu (recall: her participation in a “Crusade” during Easter Week). A few years ago, Cyprian left Kampala to study at seminary in Gulu. The Church tasked Lucy with being his “mom” while he was in Gulu – he lived with her for three years while completing his courses. In return, Lucy called on him to meet her in Old Kampala to help her purchase the materials she needed to complete our order. Since the post-election violence in Kenya, Gulu’s markets have been sparse, and the cost of transport greatly increased. Things are cheaper and readily available in Kampala. Cyprian also speaks Luganda – the major Bantu language spoken by Ugandans in the south. Lucy speaks Luo – a Nilotic language from northern Uganda. Even though she speaks quite a bit of English, most market transactions are completed in Luganda, leaving her to feel like a foreigner in her own country. After an exchange of a big stack of shillings in a shadowy corner in the market, Kate and I helped Lucy and Cyprian to lug 3 foot long cylinders of sponge, stiff fabric, and rolls of Velcro through the winding, hot and crowded market streets, into the chaos of the bus park.

The bus park is essentially a medium-sized parking lot, flanked on both sides by balconied buildings and one-man vending shows – selling chapattis, matooke, roasted corn, roasted bananas to travelers, who line up on small benches to have lunch as they wait for the buses to fill up. As you enter through the gates, throngs of informal bus guides descend upon you shouting “Arua? Kitgum? Gulu?” and then grabbing whatever luggage you’re carrying (this is totally scary until you realize that 9.99 times out of 10, they are actually putting your things into the proper bus, and not robbing you blind), millions of palms and elbows pushing you through the crowd to board the bus – a human funnel to Gulu. No one seemed to understand that we were merely accompanying Lucy and her things, not actually riding to Gulu with her. I’m surprised the mass of people didn’t lift us up and crowd surf us right through the bus windows. After a few well-wishes and quick hugs, Kate and I darted back out of the gates and spent the next half an hour elbowing our way uphill and out of Old Kampala, onto bodas, and out of the madness.

Hanging out while mom sews

A good Friday

Lucy asked for a sign for her stall on Friday. I love her smile. Good Friday in Gulu. I felt a slowness enter my bones when I woke up. Breakfast was slow. I walked slowly. We got to Lucy’s stall and I sat down and watched her work. She was starting to cut fabric for the reversible bag my mom bought as a sample at Wal-Mart. She was teaching Kevin how to cut oven mitts, watching with a discerning eye over her shoulder, remarking quietly in Luo while she held the pattern (pineapple explosion) and cut oven mitts into the large swath of blue guinea fowl. I wanted to sit there all day on the reed mat and just exist as a fly on the wall – to try and understand/feel what a day is like there. Eventually the three of us (Lucy, Kate and I) left the stall behind and went to Pamela’s office to talk about the grant. Lucy walked us through Oweno’s food market, passing by row after row of smoked fish from Lake Albert – stinking and dry and covered in flies. Lucy patted backs and exchanged greetings throughout the market until we emerged on the other side, adjacent to Pamela’s office.

At our last meeting, I’d asked Pamela to explain our project and the grant to Lucy in Luo so that nothing would be lost in translation. I was worried that she wouldn’t want to go out to the camps. We sat there in Pamela’s office, listening to the Luo conversation between two women, unable to glean anything from their tone or dialogue, until Lucy smiled her big smile and Pamela explained that Lucy was really excited about the project. She asked for a sign for her stall to show that she, too, is One Mango Tree.

After the meeting and a round of fabric shopping, I sat again on the reed mat, propping myself up against the rough wooden post holding up the porch roof. Lucy sat next to me as she finished cutting the pieces for ten reversible bags in cherry blossom print. Holding and cutting and eyeing and cutting and pausing and cutting. Every now and then an Acholi would stop by and greet her, occasionally pulling up the small wooden bench I’d been resting my elbow on and having a conversation while Lucy continued to cut.

A church mother came by and taunted the girls about their singing in choir, urging them to be prompt at practice that evening. From inside the stall I heard one of them singing.

Prisca moved her sewing machine onto the porch and hunched over it, sewing aprons and apron strings.

I sat partially in the setting sun, as it filtered in between the small break in the rooftops, shining gold on the red dirt and reed mat. Threads and scraps of fsabric covered everything. Whirring sewing machines, Lucy’s quick and quiet Luo. The sound of Kevin’s scissors on the kitchen fabrics. Francis sewing on Lucy’s machine, assembling the remaining lunch bags. Cutting sponge for the oven mitts. A couple of hours passed without my even realizing it, and I gathered the completed items and said goodnight and a Happy Easter, with the huge blue plastic London bag thrown over my shoulder.

Behold, a novel awaits you...

The Gulu tape worm reared its fugly head. Or maybe I shouldn't have eaten pepper steak and honey pancakes last night for dinner. Eh.

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I really love taking you on this circular journey of my days, so thanks for reading these missives. It's truly a cathartic exercise for me – an outlet for the tumult of emotion that goes along with these trips – the constant up-and-down and up-and-down (sea-sick and slap-happy).

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Speaking of circular, we are back to Thursday. I woke up feeling fugly (see above) and tried my best to shake it off. Kate and I had a 10 am meeting with IYEP (Information for Youth Empowerment Program). After stuffing my face with Patrick's lovely banana muffin x2, Kate and I hopped on bodas and headed out to the new IYEP office (see photo above) – adjacent to the GUSCO Resource Center.

In the split second it took to pass by GUSCO (Gulu Support the Children Organization), I couldn't help but think back to that day in June 2006, when something small came unhinged inside of me, triggering the landslide that has been my constant involvement with Northern Uganda. It goes back to an 11-year-old boy that had just arrived at GUSCO, which is a child soldier rehabilitation center – the first stop on a painful journey towards regaining his place in society. I'd made eye contact with the boy earlier as the Director explained their programs, noticing a vacancy in his eyes. As we sat together in silence, one of the nurses casually explained that he had escaped captivity the day before I arrived. Instead of words, we exchanged brief glances. I drew Bert the Jolly Mail-Bee and smiling flowers and suns. Gave him a pack of gum. Reached out, rubbed his back, and saw a smile sneak onto his face. A nice, wide smile, and a small glitter where all that emptiness had been. And so it goes. I offered him nothing, and I knew it. His smile set loose a tremor in my mind that would grow and torment me into returning and returning, trying to understand why I keep coming back to Uganda.

We paid our boda drivers and Moses stepped into the road to meet us, wearing metal-tipped cowboy boots. Big, huge hugs all around. It's not without meaning that we are working with IYEP and that its new office is adjacent to GUSCO. Moses is a formerly-abducted child soldier that, with a group of others in similar situations, started an organization targeted at restoring Acholi culture and breaking down the stigmas that the formerly-abducted and child mothers face upon returning to their communities. Kate and I sat down with the group in their office and explained our ideas for partnership.

IYEP is playing an increasingly large role in restoring peace and stability in the region, and they've expanded their reach to groups that have returned to their villages. These returnees (as they're called here in dev-talk) face a host of challenges (see this awesome BBC map/article for reference) as they leave the squalor of IDP camps and try to reclaim the rural lives they'd lived prior to this conflict. IYEP is easing the transition by providing agricultural assistance to returnees – namely livestock, pigs, goats and chickens.

So, in addition to buying recycled paper beads from IYEP's child mother groups and working with them to develop a line of Peace on Earth holiday cards, we'll be running a unique holiday campaign, similar to Heifer International and with the guarantee that every single penny gets to the ground – you'll be able to directly support returnees in Northern Uganda by purchasing the animals they need to jump-start their livelihoods. That's right, give a goat for Christmas this year…coming soon. Dear Santa….

Following our uplifting meeting with IYEP (and round three of group photos, which we do every time I visit their office), Kate and I headed to the market to see Lucy and take her to open a bank account at Barclay's. We've grown increasingly nervous about her moving about town when we pay her the large sums for each order, so the logical solution is to legitimize things a bit and open an account. Unlike many people in the north, Lucy does have a photo ID. We stopped off at the photo shop (specializing in passport photos, light bulbs, PVC tubing, and cell phone gadgets) and perpetually smiling Lucy put on her best solemn stare for the photographer. With one more step of getting the LC5's signature for a letter of recommendation, Lucy will have a bank account.

We parted ways in town and Kate and I headed to see Angwech Pamela at GWED-G (Gulu Women's Economic Development & Globalization) – our NGO partner for the Davis Project for Peace. We were both admittedly exhausted from the morning's activities, but seeing Pamela (more giant HUGS!) took our happiness to new heights. Pamela, like us, was beyond thrilled to hear about the grant, and immediately told us her plan for mobilizing GWED-G in the camps to get things started. We set up a meeting to introduce her to Lucy and align all of the important pieces. Pamela, after an amazing monologue about our partnership (and ever the teacher), sent Kate and I packing with the instructions to draft a study design – we're going to conduct research in line with the peace project this summer, surveying households before and after the project to better understand the grassroots impact of One Mango Tree's work.

A few hours later I ate some Chicken a la Cream Sauce and chips at Bomah and enjoyed an hour-long massage, a milky twilight-y sky, and a cup of African tea – and you, my friends, are now up-to-date.

P.S. Gulu loves you

Indeed, Gulu seems to love me very much (except for the tendency for digestive disorders that I pick up here - malakwang, ground nut paste…cabbage). Today closed with one of those milky, quiet evenings, the sky fading from blue to lavender and then to darkness filled with invisible crickets. Staving off a much-needed nap and realizing we'd only eaten Maq Foods banana muffins all day, Kate and I headed to Bomah for an early dinner and some reflection. (read: I'm fresh from enjoying my favorite Gulu massage - oily, relaxed and clean, and drinking a cup of African tea.)

Things instantly improved following the rainy bus ride from Kampala. The clouds cleared and I moved up in the world, dreaming anti-malarial dreams on a twin bed at Hotel Kakanyero instead of Kate's pygmy African couch.

Immediately following breakfast on Wednesday morning, we walked the short distance to Lucy's market stall. After lots of uncontrollable laughter, smiles and hugs, Lucy and the girls cleared out a seat for us on a bench in the stall, which now seems unbelievably crowded. The stall itself is part of a larger, permanent structure – a sort of mini-shopping center with 10 ft. by 10 ft. stalls. It has two huge metal doors that open up onto a small concrete pad and a bit of a porch constructed with wood, woven mats and corrugated metal sheets. The path into the market and between the stalls also serves as a sort of drainage ditch – an uneven red riverbed winding through the market and collecting cast off fabric scraps, remnants of lunch and dirty dishwater.

Inside Lucy's stall, tons of un-labeled lunch bags hang in bunches from the ceiling. The walls are covered with fabrics for sale and stock posters of traditional African clothing. There are so many sewing machines that we can barely move around. Every surface is covered with fabrics, scissors, scraps, thread and scraps of paper with designs and measurements.

We sat down and met the new girls working with Lucy (there are two, Sarah and Monica), and unpacked our bag of samples and goodies: bananas (during a bus window transaction, we accidentally bought two full bunches instead of two single bananas), several One Mango Tree t-shirts (photos all around – thanks Mom!), and lots of samples for new products (an over-sized tote, a reversible sling shoulder bag, a headband, a mini-tissue holder, and tiny stuffed animals). After making orders with the fabrics I purchased at Mukwano Arcade in Kampala, Kate and I ventured out into the market to see what Gulu's tailors had to offer (no details here, you'll have to wait to see the new patterns – except I will say that there are Swahili Virgin Mary aprons and oven mitts coming your way).

After another hour of haggling and buying rainbows (and miles) of liner fabric from Mr. A. O. Latigo, Textiles, I headed to the internet café to catch the wave of morning emails from the other side of the Earth.

My gmail loaded like a sea slug…basic HTML version? Yes…and then there it was – the announcement that "Growing One Mango Tree in Northern Uganda" had won the Davis Project for Peace grant. And that kind of day is why I am convinced that Gulu loves me (and man do I love the sh** out of Gulu).

The mystery of my reduction

Greetings from the Ostrich Suite at Hotel Kakanyero, Gulu, Uganda. Kate and I splurged for a self-contained room, which means it has a cold shower and a real honest-to-God sit-down toilet (instead of a pit latrine and outdoor cold shower). Breakfast included (African tea, fried eggs, toast, pineapple on little checkered tables – Gulu food). We're tucked into the far corner of the first floor courtyard, with a 2-chair balcony overlooking our ostrich mural and several UN Land Cruisers with scuba tubes.

We got a bit of a late start to Gulu and ended up on the 11:30 am bus,which was a luxury liner – plastic-covered seats (sliding and sweating the whole way) and a TV and sound system blasting a variety of greatest hits – Lucky Doobie reggae-thon, Swahili rump-shaking videos, several boy bands and a really bad Nigerian flick where all the actors seemed to scream. 6 hours, lots of rain and one dead goat later, we arrived in Gulu unscathed, devoured dinner at Bambu and escaped the evening rains back at our "suite."

A re-cap of the past few days.

Sunday mornings in Kampala always seem freshly-scrubbed; the week's grit rinsed clean with the Saturday night rain showers. Traffic jams dissolve and the boda rides (palm leaves tucked in mirrors and matatu windshields) are fast and chilled in clean sunlight. Kate and Ibrunched at La Fontaine – fresh yogurt, fruit and honey,fresh-squeezed OJ, African milk tea (non-spiced), fried eggs, French toast, and Scottish pancakes. Daily Monitor and a new character –Kate's friend Steve.

Enter Steve, stage left, fresh from bagels at I Love New York Kitchen. He is working at Refugee Law Project and hasn't cut his hair or shaved in three months. Ugandan children commonly mistake him for Jesus.

Our extended brunch was served by a Marley-shirted Richard and background music courtesy of the CD player – a Peruvian flautist version of Dust in the Wind. I was excited to see Richard again (this being my first visit back to La Fontaine since returning), and he greeted me with a hug and a high-pitched "ah! You have been reduced?!" To clarify he rounded out his arms to motion the shape of a football player, puffed out his cheeks and repeated his question. He refused to believe that I had not lost a great deal of weight since the last time I saw him. The mystery of my reduction remains unsolved.

Tonight is a rest night, letting our backs recuperate from the 110 speed bumps in Luwero District and preparing for a long day in the market tomorrow…when we get to see Lucy!

Stocking up at Mukwano and lunch at a gas station

Sorry. I'm at the pool again. I'd been happily baking and reading The God of Small Things when a storm cloud rumbled in, half the pool bright and sunny and the other half ominous. That's how I found myself at the dark bar eating another damn good fat bad fat salad and writing to you all.

Kate is back at home on the other side of town, sick with stomach problems - she thinks it's giardia (I'm knocking on wood every chance I get, since we've eaten exactly the same food since I arrived). When she wandered out of her bedroom yesterday morning with that look on her face, I suddenly felt a little bit lost. Poor planning on our part - not taking the possibility of sudden stomach problems into consideration...

Instead I called Frances (our most reliable boda driver, who Kate insists does not charge us the mzungu prices), and rode out to Makerere U. main campus to pick up Colin - who agreed to make the overwhelming trip to Old Kampala with me.

Mukwano Arcade is labyrinth of multi-story market stalls adjacent to the old taxi park. It's in one of Kampala's many valleys, which collects the humid heat in thick pools, and combined with the bursts of exhaust, it can be hard to breathe as you navigate among people (shoulder to shoulder), bodas (whizzing in and around) and matatus (bumper to bumper "hey mzungu I love you have a seat here"). Ever thankful for Colin's guidance and Luganda language skills, we popped in and out of the stalls, searching for the right fabrics for One Mango Tree's spring/summer line (we're going for lighter and brighter colors this time around). Passing up the wax print with high-heeled roller skates, we opted for some kitchen prints with apples and bananas, as well as several florals - I'm finding them to be decidedly un-African, but I know customers back home will love them. The next stop was thicker foam for oven mitts (Gulu is clean out of foam), and it was a blast trying to haggle for products when you have absolutely NO idea of their true value. Ignorance is bliss, because then everything is a good deal.

A couple of hours and two bright red shoulders later, we hopped back on bodas with all of our purchases and headed to Javas for lunch. Javas is the newest hot spot in Kampala - on Bomba Road just outside of Wandegaya (I think my spelling is atrocious). It also happens to be part of a gas station and Colin just will NOT stop talking about it. I promise you, this was the classiest gas station I've ever lunched in. We hashed out some ideas for the youth summit with Central Buganda University (the next project I'm taking on), and it was inspiring to get our wheels turning about content and structure. Colin packed me up solo for the ride home, and I clutched the 3 foot tall by 2 foot thick cyclinder of foam and six bags of new fabrics for the long ride.

In an effort to keep out of the sick house and give Kate some time to rest, I spent my Friday night at Crocodile Cafe at Kisementi, writing and chatting with Joey about the new journey - Kili in 09. The power went out several times, leaving me as the eerie customer in the corner whose face reflected bluish gmail light. I'm creepy.

Back to the mother ship

My new Sony Vaio has a reflective screen, which I've discovered is good for one thing and one thing only - seeing the wrinkle I'm getting in between my eyebrows. I can actually see what I look like when I'm cussing out the slow/unavailable/corrupted internet here in Uganda, and my brows are most definitely furrowed in anger/frustration.

On the other hand, it's about 80 degrees and gorgeous in Kampala, and I made it here at what seemed like warp speed - only 15 hours in the air and two hours on the ground in dreary Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, where I enjoyed a $10 shot of espresso and made a new friend.

The warm Ugandan air felt like a big hug when I got off the plane and walked across the tarmac to the shiny new arrivals hall (marble floors and velvet ropes - remnants of CHOGM improvements from this past November), and a smiling Kate was there to greet me at the front door. We went back to her adorable new place ($100/month anyone?) near Kasubi Tombs and spent the evening catching up, drinking tea made by a domesticated Colin ("can I make some tea for you ladies? green tea with jasmine?") and finally fell asleep on the new and STIFF velour African couch (made for a pygmy).

So if you're looking for evidence of my having made any great One Mango Tree achievements, you will want to stop reading this post now.

We spent the day yesterday at Kabira Country Club, after trying [unsuccessfully] to sneak in. I only got a minor sunburn in weird spots. Kate and I spent most of the afternoon giggling at the laughing crows in the trees and eating goodfat/badfat salad - avocados and bacon. I love Uganda! We also got a chance to catch up with our friend Abramz (of Breakdance Uganda fame) who happened to be there as well. Hotel Africana hosted a dance contest a few weeks ago to celebrate the new flavor of Mirinda soda (pineapple) and Breakdance Uganda took first place! Watch out world - this man is on the verge of something great.

As for real OMT work, that started today and will continue as we venture to the markets of Old Kampala tomorrow afternoon to scout out fabrics and other materials Lucy will need for her new products. With the help of an NGO in Gulu, we're finding some women in the camps that will be weaving handles of banana leaves for purses. Lots to do - we're taking the bus up to Gulu on Monday morning. We talked on the phone to Lucy yesterday and she shared her excitement about participating in a "real Catholic crusade." We didn't ask questions, but will surely get some details when we arrive in Gulu.

So yes, I'm back to the mother ship. I used to refer to the US as that...but I've come to realize that my Ugandan-ness makes me a little more alien in my true home country. I enjoy being the weirdo.

schiphol schiphol schiphol

I'm finally on my way. The view from here is caffeine-charged (post-coffee and chocolate muffin) and gray. Quick post, but things are about to get much more interesting.

In the meantime, read these two on the way over thus far:
A New Earth (Eckhart Tolle of The Power of Now and Oprah book club fame) and Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, African literary master) - both worth reading and for very different reasons.

PS I totally ripped this pic from a flickr stream...credits to be added later.

[almost] on the road again

I know, it's been months. And the 24-hour loss of my green hat really wasn't keeping you entertained. It's DC and everyone here seems to be constantly busy, but the last 5 months have been a literal blur.

Things are about to get even more interesting - trip #4 is in place (!), March 10-31, 2008. I'm heading to Uganda on my own this time (read: no youth leaders to meet at the airport, no bedbugs at MUBS dorms, no showering in 33 degree water with grasshoppers spying on me). This is a One Mango Tree trip - the one I've been dreaming about since 2006 when I first arrived in Uganda.

I'm heading back to stay at La Fontaine with Kate and spend lots of time in Gulu with Lucy and the ladies (looking forward to paying many banana-muffin-filled visits to Patrick at Maq Foods) - expanding the product line and coming back with new stories, new photos and lots of new products to share. My list of things-to-do and people-to-see is growing exponentially, enough that it's looking like a second 2008 trip in the late summer will be in order. Look out world, One Mango Tree is really branching out.

With a little luck I'm going to spend some time in Rwanda (I know, I know, I was all talk last time). Some close friends will be there working on their own projects (Anahata International and Gardens for Health), and so it seems the perfect time to go. And maybe I'll pay the gorillas an overdue visit.

And as per usual, I'll be posting regularly while I'm there, and a little more frequently leading up to the trip.

Life is güt.

Found my green hat. Mom hid it in the wardrobe. She confessed over email today. Still don't understand Pakistan.

Cycling trivialities

2 months, 3 days, 23 hours and 5 minutes since I touched down in DC from Uganda. Feels like a few lifetimes and accordingly, the world hasn't stopped moving on its dizzying path.

The global [steamy] warmth of climate change (yay Al Gore!) just gave out for a cold front, which, after many fickle weeks, finally seems to have settled in across this city. I'm living in the midst of it now, and my newly acquired fall coat with an obligatory stand up collar is just not cutting it. The cold is already penetrating. The trees are all still full and green, but starting to rustle and brown a bit at the edges, like the macadamia-nut-crusted tilapia I left in the oven too long tonight (note to self - edamame only tastes good raw, salted and preferably at a trendy Cafe Asia). I also lost my favorite green knit hat this week and felt my heart break in two.

Anyhow, I'm now walking to and from work, walking pretty much everywhere. My car is lazily resting in a dark corner of the parking garage, occasionally taken out for a spin to the suburban grocery stores. I shrunk my carbon footprint and in exchange am laying human footprints all over the map of DC's letters, numbers and states.

As I sit directly in front of the space heater in my new-ish apartment with fingers poised at the keyboard, I can't help but feel a little windswept and overwhelmed. There's so much to say and I've been sort of, well, quiet lately. So for now I'm going to keep it simple. Who knows if you'll hear from me tomorrow or months from now. Some fresh things to ponder.

News from Uganda, Vincent Otti is dead. Either that or suffering from cholera, which means he's dead. What next?

I went to see Andrew Bird. His rendition of Scythian Empires made me think of giraffes and elephants and bus rides. It also made me cry big fat public tears.

Pakistan is in turmoil. I am trying to read the news and understand, but it the complexity is surpassing my ability to finish articles, therefore eliminating the possibility that I will one day get it.

Since it's too late to see My Children! My Africa! at Studio Theater, you should read the Fugard's play (like right now), stopping often to pause and reflect.

Shameless self-promotion: www.onemangotree.com. I guess you can say that among the cycling trivialities, yoga, self pity and family visits, that's what I've been up to.

good eats in ngo surreal life

Two fried eggs, a cappuccino with raw sugar, a homemade banana muffin and a copy of the Daily Monitor – all served up under a royal blue umbrella on a quiet little patio opposite a huge bougainvillea. This is the new food of Gulu. Maq Foods opened here in May of this year, to the collective and frenzied delight of the multitude of foreign NGO workers in the town.

Ugandan entrepreneur Patrick Menya saw how rapidly Gulu was changing and decided to “think outside the box” about his latest business venture. Menya spent six months working at a catering center in London in 2001, learning about western tastes in bakery and coffee. He returned to Europe again in 2005, attending an international pastry exhibition in Germany and visiting a bakery ingredients supplier in Brussels. The product of his travels and experience in food service was a comprehensive business plan for Maq Foods – a unique European-style eatery catering to western tastes.

It must be mentioned, however, that Gulu is no ordinary town. Lying at the epicenter of northern Uganda’s twenty-plus-year conflict, Gulu is the home to more than 200 NGOs attempting to serve the needs of a conflict-ridden, impoverished society. The town itself was considered a conflict zone until the signing of a cease fire agreement just last July. The boda boda drivers in Gulu know the location of every NGO. Massive clusters of signs point the way to Catholic Relief Services, Northern Uganda Social Action Fund, World Health Organization, UNHCHR, UNOCHA, UNHCR, Invisible Children, etc. It is a bubble of foreign aid allocations, which means lots of dollars and euros hoping to achieve peace in the region.

A year after the cease fire signing, Gulu is a burgeoning hub of economic activity, but sustainability poses a larger question. As peace approaches, will these NGOs still play a role? More specifically, will there be a market for Maq Foods? Menya thinks so. After all, some of Gulu’s explosive growth has come from an ever-expanding trade network with southern Sudan. Gulu is changing, but are those banana muffins a fleeting extravagance in a town that will eventually be littered with little more than dusty NGO signs?

I will retain my sense of cautious optimism. There is much to do in northern Uganda even once peace is achieved. Perhaps the NGOs will shift from relief to reconstruction, and in that case, someone will have to feed all the hungry mzungus. Maq Foods will be well-suited to do the job – with frothy cappuccinos, chocolate croissants, hamburgers, chips and ice cream (heads up NGO workers - ice cream coming to Gulu this October).

those amber waves of grain

The U.S.'s obstinate efforts to maintain its image as a breadbasket
(endless fields of glimmering corn in the soft glow of summer twilight)

The agony and suffering of African famine victims
(starving child, flies in eyes, ribs poking through stretched, dry skin)

The combination of these two competing issues has become a charged topic in the media lately, as the 2007 Farm Bill is up for its five-year renewal in Congress this summer. The resulting changes could have major impacts in the developing world, as the Bush Administration is looking for a shift in policy, “calling for an approach to U.S. food aid that doesn’t undermine regional food systems in the global South.”

They actually want to buy food in local markets.

The concept of U.S. food aid came about in the early 1950s, when the government was buying excess products from U.S. farmers and sitting on surpluses of commodity foods. In 1954, Eisenhower signed the Agricultural Trade Development Assistance Act (Public Law 480), also known as Food for Peace. Title II allows for the donation of U.S. agricultural products to meet Humanitarian Food Needs around the world. A simple solution to avoid the costly storing of surplus food and at the same time feed the world’s hungry.

The downfall – Public Law 480 mandates the food aid be grown by U.S. farmers. As time passed, the purchase of food aid settled out to lucrative arrangements with large agribusinesses – not U.S. farmers suffering from falling commodity prices. In short, circumstances changed and the policy stayed the same.

In April, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report revealing the current system to be rife with inefficiencies: rising logistical costs, dropping shipment levels – only a third of today’s food aid money is actually buying food. There are still over 850 million hungry people in the world, and U.S. food aid is feeding less and less of that population.

One proposed solution is a pilot program to purchase food aid in local markets. Benefits of local purchase are two-fold: it simultaneously eliminates the high costs of shipping food from the U.S. and provides a stimulus for local agricultural markets. As a result, more money will be available to ensure that food aid gets to those who need it most.

In Gulu, the UN World Food Program has a facility just on the outskirts of town – an enormous campus that seems to mock the thousands of individuals living in squalor at IDP camps just a few miles away. As northern Uganda approaches peace, IDPs are resettling to their farmland and villages; returning to an agricultural lifestyle. It’s disturbing to see malnourished children living in camps surrounded by what could be fertile agricultural land. One can’t help but wonder how local purchase could have helped in this situation. As the region stabilizes, purchase from local farmers could have provided a stronger economic base to which IDPs can return, easing the drastic shift from living on WFP handouts to subsistence farming. At the very least, it could have strengthened the surrounding region’s economy while it fed the hungry in the north.

U.S. agribusiness and shipping interests are lobbying hard in Washington to keep the status quo. A NYTimes interview with an Ohio farmer summarized the issue well – an observation that could be usefully applied across other forms of humanitarian and development assistance:

"Vernon Sloan, 81, used to donate and ship corn he grew on his 200- acre farm in Ohio to Haiti, Liberia and Angola to feed the hungry. But after years of working with the Foods Resource Bank, he said in an interview, he concluded that it was more practical to sell the crops here, avoid the huge shipping expense and use the proceeds to help farmers in Africa support themselves.

'It's what's needed there," he said, "rather than what we think they need.'"

the african queen

Just before 2 p.m. on Friday, I was wandering around in the scorching afternoon sunlight after finishing A Thousand Splendid Suns. With nothing else to do, I decided to walk down to the boat launch to see if I could talk my way onto one of the river cruise rides up the Nile to the base of Murchison Falls. The guide was being pretty firm about not letting me on - so I started inching my way over to a ranger boat and chatting in my extremely limited Acholi - "Copango? Cope" "how are you? fine" with him. Turns out he was from Gulu, and I started gushing about the time I've spent there...next thing you know he declared me his co-captain and I accompanied him on his river cruise up the Nile (and learned a lot about animals and very little about driving a boat). I Bogart-ed a boat ride up the Nile! Literally!


We crossed the river to pick up a group of eight very loud Floridians (from Boca Raton), and I fit in just fine. They kept taking photos with the Boca Beacon newspaper (with crocs, hippos and the waterfall in the background). I took a ton of pictures of hippos, Nile crocs, king fishers, darter birds, elephants, buffaloes, etc. The ride was incredible and we stopped at the pool below the falls to take photos as well. It was a perfect boat ride. I walked Nelson, my new ranger friend, back to his village and he helped me make arrangements for a ride to Gulu the next morning.

Robert (Nelson's friend) picked us up at Red Chilli at 6:45 AM and we boarded the ferry to the north side of the river to begin the drive to Gulu. In previous years you couldn't take this route because it was occupied by LRA rebels - one of the most dangerous areas during the height of the conflict. Since last year's cease fire the area has been completely tame. The drive to Pakwach (a small town north of the park) was gorgeous - it actually followed most of the game drive we did the previous morning, and we saw more kob and buffaloes along the way.

We arrived in Pakwach around 9 AM and joined the women with makeshift "restaurants" along the bus park (small charcoal stoves, swirling smoke, boiling eggs, grilling chapattis, little benches). We asked for African tea. A young woman promptly brought over three chipped mugs, poured English tea (tea made with boiled water) into them, and then started shaking in a packet of coffee...which turned out to be non-instant coffee. We smiled, added sugar, and drank down the grainy mixture... We ate a roll-ex (chapatti topped with fried egg and salt and rolled up like a burrito) and boarded the last few seats in the Nile Coach to Karuma - our next stop on the journey.

The ticket sellers for the Nile Coach ensured us "good seats" for the hour long ride - and promptly showed us to the back row. The seats in front of us were permanently reclined and I basically had a boy's head in my lap for the entirety of the hour. I listened to Andrew Bird (I'm obsessed) and zoned out looking at the scenery.

We finally arrived in Karuma, which is a haven for street food vendors - they bum rush the buses passing through, selling ground nuts (g-nuts), a very weird looking orange drink in used Rwenzori water bottles, bananas, chapatti, and gristly goat meat wound onto long wooden sticks. We piled into a matatu and thought it was full and ready to go with the legal limit of 14 passengers. The conductor managed to pack in 9 MORE PEOPLE AND A CHICKEN before we finally left for Gulu an hour later. I put my head down on my backpack and tried to sleep. We finally made it to Gulu around 12:30 PM and checked into Hotel Kakanyero, exhausted, dirty and hungry.

matatu safari

Upon returning to Red Chilli for dinner on Thursday, we were told that a group of four Spaniards were looking for four more tourists to fill up their open-top vehicle for the game drive the next morning. We accepted and met them promptly at 6:30 the next morning....and then our vehicle didn't show up...long story short, we ended up talking a matatu driver into taking us. Yes, we took a matatu on a game drive. We all piled up top on a mattress like the Beverly Hillbillies and had the most amazing experience (albeit ridiculous looking) driving through the park. The landscape is just as you'd imagine (or as you'd see on Discovery Channel Planet Earth or Planet Carnivore or one of those shows)...wide open expanse with yellow grasses swaying in the wind, dotted with acacia and date palms and scrub, the Nile River ambling along its slow, smooth curves in the distance. Every time we saw an animal (and we saw elephants, lions, giraffes, kobs, Jackson's hartebeest, warthogs, buffaloes, and shoebills) I stamped my foot on the roof of the matatu to get the driver to stop. Millions of "oohs," "aahs," and camera clicking ensued. My photos will do much better to explain the experience than my words can - check them out here.

to the top of the falls

...and were promptly told that all game drives, boat rides and rides to the top of the falls were completely sold out. A group of 40 tourists had arrived in the area the day before and booked everything solid. We spent fruitless hours on the telephone and were feeling pretty cranky and irritable at the turn of events (or lack thereof). After a failed attempt at an afternoon game drive (we arrived at the ferry that takes vehicles to the animal-laden north side of the Nile only to see it floating happily halfway across the river)...we ended up hitching a ride with some adventure-junkies from Jinja on their way to the falls. It was an hour-long ride but took us directly to the top - where you can teeter over the edge.

The experience caused an immediate sense of vertigo - and also a strange desire to jump in...

Murchison Falls is the place where the Victoria Nile and all its famous volume bursts forth through a 7 meter crack in the bedrock, gushing 43 meters to the pool below. Words cannot describe the force of the water as it churns, drops down and swells back up in a frothing, swirling fury, emitting a constant spray of cool Nile water into the air. I instantly had goose bumps all over - it's one of the most amazing natural phenomena I've ever seen. If you still don't get the force of it - fish that go over the falls are temporarily stunned and unconscious when they hit the pool at the bottom - making it an easy and notorious feasting ground for the lazy but enormous Nile crocodiles waitng at the bottom.

road trip: kla - masindi - murchison

Murchison Falls is the sole must-see location in Uganda in my "1,000-places-to-see-before-you-die" book. We tried our best to set up accommodations from Kampala, but everyone we called kept saying "just go up to Murchison, you will be able to set up accommodations from there." We took their advice and hopped on the 6 AM bus from Kampala to Gulu, which dropped us at a random juncture in the road with little more than a few shops and some street food. We found a matatu driver and started the haggling - they wanted 400,000 shillings to take us to Masindi - we talked them down to 150,000 and began the bumpy journey through the bush to Murchison Falls National Park and Red Chilli Rest Camp.

We arrived at Red Chilli - on the south bank of the Nile River - at 2 PM on Thursday afternoon. After what could have been a disaster, the surprisingly easy bus ride and matatu trip left us quite pleased with ourselves. We plopped our things down in the safari tents (basically a regular tent with an actual bed inside...luxury camping with no electricity, if you will). We heard scratching on the outside of our tent and discovered a family of warthogs rubbing their little tusks against the side. Apparently they reside at the camp - we saw them everywhere - eating, napping, copulating, you name it. We ordered some lunch and began the negotiations for activities...

dispatch from the land of the little birds - part II

Ah-Gandhi? As promised, here is the second installment from our journey to southwestern Uganda.

Before I get started, I should mention that we were a bit ambitious when planning the trip. Initially I had the girls convinced to go to Kigali to visit genocide memorials and Virunga to see the gorillas. In the interest of time and money (visas get a bit pricey), they opted to return to Kampala after our time at Bunyonyi and then attempt a safari at Murchison Falls before heading to Gulu later this week. I was disappointed (especially being so close to the Rwanda border - only 60 km or so), but I know I'll be back. I'll have to push Rwanda off for another trip add-on. I'm set on seeing the gorillas, so while spelunking is off, gorilla-tracking has been added to the life list.

Saturday at Bunyonyi was very similar to Friday. We set off from the market launch early in the morning in a dugout and paddled on the glassy water for about 45 minutes, disembarking and walking back on the meandering road that lines the lakefront - about a two hour walk. After the ride and walk, Bosco invited us to see traditional dancing at the orphanage he runs with his Grandmother. We climbed up to their plot and sat on the grass as eleven adorable kids danced and shook their hips to the beat of a single drum. A tiny little baby bounced around to the beat and stole the show. The kids pulled us up and we danced with them, feeling like awkward giants. Afterwards we stopped down at their shop - they make and sell papyrus baskets to tourists to raise money. We nearly cleaned them out of their stock, and of course my mind was reeling trying to figure out how I could ship baskets from Bunyonyi to sell in the US. I don't know if One Mango Tree will ever happen, but moments like that inspire me just enough to keep the dream alive. Plus the baskets are beautiful.

We went back to Overland Camp and I spent the rest of the drizzly day obsessively photographing little birds from the porch of the restaurant and reading my book, The Power of One, which is a story about coming of age and boxing in the early years of apartheid in South Africa. Alexander works as staff at Overland and made it his personal mission to ensure we had a great trip. He's on an apprenticeship for a hospitality management certificate. I've never had better service (he came to our porch to take our food orders and even offered to build a charcoal fire on our porch when we were too cold and lazy to walk the 500 feet to the main restaurant area) and he even took us to the bus park in Kabale Sunday morning to see that we got back to Kampala without any problems.

We were lucky enough to get seats in the middle of the bus for the ride back (significantly less bumpy), but we still did a lot of head bobbing and iPod listening. We also ate a ton of street food (little banana pancakes, biscuits, samosas, etc.). About an hour outside of Kampala we could smell the pollution and see the effects of the heavy rains that had been pounding the city since we left. It truly was a dreary way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but it makes you feel a little better about wasting a whole day on transport. After getting settled in back at La Fontaine and ordering take away (I had a pepper steak from the restaurant downstairs and veggie spring rolls from the Chinese place across the street), our power went out and we sat chatting in the dark for a few hours, sipping red wine our of our chipped coffee mugs.

It's a gorgeous and sunny day out today and Kampala looks freshly scrubbed from all the rain. Sophia (my housemate) and I took a glorious boda ride into town and have been sitting at Cafe Pap enjoying the afternoon. Now on to the next plans - setting up Murchison for the girls...and for me, deciding on an itinerary for the Kenya trip and beyond. Should I be thinking about what happens when I come home? Nah...I'll put that off for a bit. Time to get down to business, drink lots of cappuccino, and piss away lots of time on the internet, just like I love to do.

Click here to see photos to accompany the Bunyonyi trip.

dispatch from the land of the little birds - part I

A lesson in Rukiga, the very philosophical-sounding language of the Bakiga tribe of southwestern Uganda (Kabale District). I never received correct spelling for the phrases, so here's my own pronunciation guide:

Ah-Gandhi - How are you?
Nietzche - I'm fine.

As you might expect, my dorky side came out and I said Ah-Gandhi to nearly every passerby, just to hear them say Nietzche in response.

My friends Keiranne and Brenda arrived safely from the US last Tuesday evening and we set off for our first adventure in the pre-dawn darkness on Thursday. After purchasing Roll-ex (a fried chapatti topped with fried egg and then salted and rolled) from a street vendor, we claimed our seats on the bus - the very last row. Not surprisingly the ride was miserable and bumpy. We did a lot of head bobbing. I listened to a lot of iPod (new favorite for the road trip: Scythian Empires, Andrew Bird off Armchair Apocrypha) and looked out at the passing scenery, which changed from hilly to flat to hilly (soft, bare, golden hills that look like enormous piles of harvested wheat) to terraced cliffs (every inch cultivated with matooke, sweet potato, sorghum, beans). It was pretty peaceful, until a little boy in our row decided to relieve himself on the floor during the first hour of the 7 hour ride, so we had to put up with full wind from the window (just so we didn't pass out from the odor). Ick.

Disembarking in Kabale was overwhelming - being the only mzungus people on the bus (and in the town), we were swarmed with taxi drivers offering to take us to our camp on the lake. A bad choice left us with a driver that snatched my purse and hid it under his seat as soon as we got in the car. Luckily I was tired and cranky and not up for getting a new passport (not to mention losing lots of cash and my debit card). I forced him to stop and found the purse. As you can imagine, I was in full-on bitch mode for the rest of the ride. We were ecstatic to finally get to Lake Bunyonyi Overland Camp in one piece and with all of our belongings intact.

Overland Camp is nestled into a wooded hillside on the lake, with covered eating area, treehouses, tents and cabins. Our room looked out over the lake and had its own balcony. The first thing that strikes you about this part of Uganda is how cool it is. The temperature averaged somewhere around the mid 60s and dropped significantly at night. Our first day we went for a run (my run was about 25 minutes, while hard core Keiranne and Brenda continued on for another 40 minutes). The crisp, pollutant-free mountain air was making me nostalgic for fall in Ohio, so I sat on the porch, read my book and journaled.

Friday morning started at 6:45 a.m., with matte-gray, misty sunrise and breakfast of fried eggs, toast and milk tea before we set off on our hike. Bosco, a 16-year-old local boy orphaned by AIDS, was our guide for the hike. After a brief walk on the main road, we set off into the terraced fields, following a steep dirt path. The first hour of hiking was almost entirely uphill, leaving me completely winded and wondering how on earth I thought I was going to climb Kili this summer. We wound through farmland and villages, at one point inadvertantly interrupting a primary school class - students saw our strange white faces and the entire class (teachers included) ran outside to see what we were doing walking about in the hills. Some of the little ones were chattering on in Rukiga about how we were going to eat them. The turnaround point for our hike was a cave in the hillside, but after climbing in on hands and knees and seeing nothing but a long, very small passageway, I climbed right back out. Apparently I'm a bit claustrophobic (probably from when my brother trapped me in the secret hiding spot in his room so many years ago...). I'll have to cross spelunking off my list of life goals.

Lake Bunyonyi is known in the guidebooks not only for its idyllic setting, but also for its lack of water predators (crocodiles for one, but most notably the lack of bilharzia - a small snail that gets inside your system and eats up your insides...not pretty). Ugandans in this part of the country all know how to swim. Fisherman set nets for crayfish, which is the main source of food from the lake. We spent the rest of the afternoon on Friday renting a dugout canoe (which is made from a carved out trunk of a mature Eucalyptus tree) and paddling out to Bushara Island Camp - one of 29 islands on Lake Bunyonyi. We saw an otter on the way and crested cranes teetering along on a hillside. The national bird is monogamous and rarely seen without its partner. Kind of romantic, no? After docking and hiking up through a forest of enormous Eucalyptus trees, we had lunch at the camp and relaxed (I had crayfish masala with rice - I feared it would be little hardened creatures with claws in a bloody tomato paste, but not so, it was delicious).

Friday night was cold and drizzly, so we had dinner by the fire at the camp and I drank several mugs of hot cocoa and ate "glucose snackies," which are little biscuits that taste a bit like vanilla wafers. I can't go to bed without an adequate sugar intake. I eat so much here I'm starting to think I have a very happy tapeworm living inside of me. I slept like a rock and woke up to day two - another day of canoeing and hiking.