ruminating

There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

---

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

---

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

---

A COMMUNITY OF THE SPIRIT

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

a newly minted dharma bum

Dharma Mittra is a magical little man. My current proximity to Manhattan meant that I got to spend Wednesday evening in Dharma's classes - a Sadhana practice followed by a course in "psychic development." I felt very much like the cliche'd kid on Christmas morning, racing up the metal steps to his studio with my heart pounding hard. Over the past two years of my practice, Dharma-inspired crescent moons and lizard pose in Graglia's intense yoga classes in DC took me infinitely deeper into asana. After my best friend dove head first into yoga this past year and emerged from Dharma's teacher training all tatted up with rainbow-Sanskrit forearms, I knew I had to go and see what type of teaching bred such intensity.

And it was clear. Dharma exudes such a calm, quiet sense of something. I immediately wanted to emulate it, channel it, whatever. 10 days of that and I would tat myself up as well.

I have a hell of a time meditating. I close my eyes and my mind races out of control. I usually need an intensely physical practice to get my mind to a quiet place. I feel at peace after svasana, but then the racing picks back up. It's in the post-svasana moments that I usually get a rush of creativity, often so much so that I have a hard time balancing the thoughts and the joy. In DC I would go straight from Flow into Whole Foods and somehow looking at the shiny produce would calm me down.

After Dharma's asana practice, he led a "psychic development" component - a combination of pranayama, chanting and some practical advice on life (if you want a bicycle, think of one and it will come!). I've always focused on intensifying my physical practice (6 hours straight of yoga, anyone?), but this was different. I sat up post-svasana and started chanting mantras with Dharma, plugging my ears, closing my eyes and humming like an angry female bee - bzzzzZZZZZ! I shut off my senses - plugging my ears, pressing my fingers into my eyes, plugging my nose and shutting my mouth. The result:

Infinity.

Or maybe not, but it was still incredible. When he brought us around to extended alternate nostril breathing, I could feel the exhale rushing out of every pore - or wherever else I focused.

I understood the difference - that intensity and strength of visualization that, channeled correctly, can do incredible things. Dharma managed to sneak out during the kirtan, while I was all wrapped up in harmonium and Hare Krishna, so I gave a little wink of thanks to Ganesh on my way out.

winding down...or winding up?

Looking out on Lake Michigan. It made me think of this photo I took in 2007:

Papyrus on Lake Bunyonyi.

I'm so relaxed I can barely blog.

The past six weeks have been a bit of a blur. I've flagged much of the United States (DC, Florida, Colorado, California, Illinois, Wisconsin, New York...), experienced vast shifts in climate (it was -30 in Milwaukee last week with the wind chill and in the 80s in LA's heat wave), and reveled in the joys of travel - train, planes, automobile, snowshoe.

Milwaukee was a surprising shot of culture (ie. the Calatrava-designed Milwaukee Art Museum) and a non-surprising shot of frigidity (the freezing freezing temps that would prevent me from ever living in the Great Lakes again).

I'm now residing in Beacon, NY, an adorable outpost on the Hudson River - a 1.5 hour train ride north of Manhattan. The spare bedroom at Venessa's place gets the majority of the heat in the house, and her house is so damn cozy that it's near impossible to leave...

Yep, that's all I'm going to write.

a space/time warp and yinka shonibare

Sometime in the wee hours of Thursday morning, I was plucked from a warm bed in Evergreen, CO, and traveled for an hour through damp, dark, foggy nothingness to Denver International Airport. I woke up in LA.

The idyllic days in Beaver Creek have come to a close, and I'm here in LA focusing on selling One Mango Tree products to west coast retailers. This involved some logistics, like procuring one [fancy] black PT Cruiser, spending 1.5 hours at the LAX Office Depot making copies, and then gridlock traffic into downtown LA to set up the trade show booth. The gridlock gave me plenty of time to enjoy Morning Becomes Eclectic, as well as the 80 degree California heat. ...And to soak up that yellow blanket that lays on LA. Smog. I'd forgotten about smog.

Trade shows are an odd by-product of industry. Thousands and thousands of buyers and sellers spend thousands and thousands of dollars on setting up a booth to peddle their wares. The LA Convention Center is cavernous - not unlike any other convention center I've had the pleasure of visiting. The One Mango Tree booth is nestled in the "World Style" section of the show, between a Virgin of Guadalupe light switch designer and a Peace/Love/Hippie purse purveyor. The only sounds are the whizzing of suitcases on wheels (more later) and a Peruvian flautist that played 80s tunes all afternoon.

I'm not really sure what the buyers put in their suitcases...but none of the wheely-suitcase-toters seem to stop at my booth. After 9 hours of sitting absolutely still, I did manage to snag three new wholesale accounts. The highlight of the afternoon, however, was when a happy West African woman came rattling down the aisle with $10 veggie lunches - jollof rice, cabbage and plantains.

One sale from today is really worth mentioning. I sold quite a few bags and neckties to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. In March they are featuring an exhibit by Yinka Shonibare, a Brit/Nigerian whose work I stumbled upon when I started researching the history of wax-print. His work explores race and class issues - my favorites are his sculptures that mock the concept of achieving status through "cultural authenticity." So, in visiting SBMA, you'll see this:

which is quite a departure from this:

And once you're done checking out Shonibare, you can head to the museum gift shop, pick up a One Mango Tree necktie and secretly mock your boss (!). Happy Friday.

haiku

-
oh, trade show LA
buyers race, fake cold air
wheely suitcases
-

on eating

"Organic Oreos are not a health food." oops.

I spent much of the 2007 Christmas season engulfed in The Omnivore's Dilemma, talking to everyone who would listen about the great corn conspiracy and waxing poetic about how I was going to plant organic veggies in the old bathtub out on my patio in Washington, DC (utter failure). In September of this year I followed up with Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver's look at eating local. After a failed attempt at a Thanksgiving meal supporting local farmers (people were way too freaked out about the size, recent aliveness and exorbitant cost of the turkey I bought from Blue Egg Farm), I decided the only changes I could really make were in my own diet.

After reading In Defense of Food, MP once again took me on a trip into eats-land, exposing nutritionism for what it is - a reductionist science that truly knows very little about how what we eat affects our health. We (myself included) all latch on to "food claims," and the Western diet is little more than a mix of government-led efforts to create jobs in the food processing industry by making us eat more crap. But really, isn't it obvious that Americans are a fat lot of people with high incidences of heart disease and cancer?

Here are some of my favorite bullets:

• Shop the peripheries of the supermarket - stay away from the middle aisles, where all the processed foods tend to live, or better,
  
• Stay away from supermarkets altogether - shop farmers markets or CSAs
• Eat mostly plants, especially leaves (vegetarians live longer, and so do flexitarians - think like good old Thomas Jefferson - meat as a condiment)
• You are what you eat eats too - this is where all that organic/grass-fed stuff comes in too - if you're going to eat meat, then your eating high up on the food chain, so consider the effects of what that animal ingested - all the antibiotics, toxins, garbage - that's all going to get into your system too if you eat crappy, cheap meat.
• Be the kind of person who take supplements - aka be healthy and make educated choice, then ditch the supplements unless you're over fifty - get all the good stuff from your food instead.
• Have a glass of wine with dinner - YES YES YES...needs no further explanation.
• Eat meals - getting even more common sense with this one, but it means sitting down at a table for a shared meal (not alone, if you can help it) - eating more slowly and mindfully, and
• Cook, and if you can, grow a garden - the closer we get to the production of our food...well Pollan says it best:

"The cook in the kitchen preparing a meal from plants and animals at the end of this shortest of food chains has a great many things to worry about, but "health" is simply not one of them, because it is given."

At first this book made me optimistic about the coming move to Uganda, and all the whole foods I'll be eating there. Sadly, this is really not the case, even in the more remote and traditionally agricultural places in the country. Take, for instance, Gulu. The tailors-in-training this past September wanted to have a mid-day snack, so first we sent Lucy and Prisca off with this sticky-sweet HFCS orange drink and sugary biscuits. It certainly sent the ladies at Unyama Camp into giggle fits from the sudden burst of glucose - followed by a late afternoon lull. We switched immediately to spending more money but buying a meal instead - having the ladies take turns cooking a meal of rice or beans and vegetables. Notice I said spending more money. Even in Gulu, fast and cheap (and nutritionally worthless) food has pervaded the market, making me wonder how long it will take for Western diseases to creep up - obesity in the lead, followed by heart disease and cancers. Luckily the tailors all still seem to prefer rice, beans and g-nut sauce and tea instead of sweets.

The more I go on this tangent of cheap food in Uganda, the more I wonder how much this it has to do with the twenty years of conflict that have unraveled that part of the country. If the war had not forced people from their land, and food aid had not become the norm (not to mention the influx of Western aid workers), would this cheap processed food be so readily available?

MP: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

thank you, andrew bird, for rocking my world

I love to snow shoe.

On an unrelated musical note -- back in July 2007, I sat at Crocodile Cafe and stole 30 precious minutes of super fast Ugandan internet to download Armchair Apocrypha on iTunes. Since that night, Scythian Empires has been the soundtrack for my life. It reminds me of interminable bus rides across northern Uganda, giraffes, Red Stripe and my big fat tears at Bird's show in Baltimore last year. I'd never been emotionally moved by music before, and haven't been since...


...perhaps until tonight, when I found out that Andrew Bird has a new CD streaming on NPR this week - it comes out January 20th. So Andrew and I had a few glasses of wine while I giggled with joy over new turns of whistles and violins, and his lyrical genius. For example:

Tenuous at best was all he had to say
when pressed about the rest of it, the world that is
from proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans
Greek Cypriots and and harbor-sorts who hang around in quotes a lot

Here's where things start getting weird
while chinless men will scratch their beards
and to their minds a sharpened axe
is brushed upon the Uralic syntaxes

Love of hate acts as an axis
Love of hate acts as an axis
First it wanes and then it waxes
So procreate and pay your taxes

2009 has a new soundtrack, and it's called Noble Beast.

where'd you come from?

When I was small, people would ask me "Where did you come from?" My Dad reminded me this week of my unwavering, confident and non-sensical response - "Colorado." It feels quite appropriate - returning to a place I've never been - to this land of my imaginary birth. It's quiet and cold and peaceful. The mountains loom and the trees seem to whisper "welcome back" as I snowshoe past. I'm here for 10 days to do, well, not a whole lot. Snowshoe, sit by the fire, catch up on work, read. So here I am. In Colorado, with baby eyes soaking it all in.

iowa, nebraska, corn, cattle and flatness

Katie and I drove 18 hours across the heartland - from Minneapolis, MN to Beaver Creek, CO. Enjoy.

Manly Forest City. Somewhere in Iowa. We almost decided to live here forever, but decided instead to keep on truckin.

We admired some scenic alternative energy in the heartland.

And fueled up with cheap gas. They serve ethanol here. Shocker.

Nebraska...the good life (and the ice storm).

sivah namah omg

Place: Sivananda Ashram, Paradise Island, Bahamas

Early in 2008, I had one of those remarkably crisp and clear dreams that stays with you for days after waking. Many of the details maintain the weird and surreal quality of dreamland-ish-ness. It was dusk in a hushed public park, with twilight of the sort that emphasizes shadows. I was walking along and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my left wrist. Looking down, I saw that an arrow had pierced it. I looked around the park, but the guilty archer was nowhere to be found. Minutes later I was in the greenish empty light of a hospital room, feeling impatient and acutely aware of the life seeping out of the wound. I reached down, broke off the protruding tip and the feathered end, and pulled out the arrow. I reached for a roll of duct tape on the metal stand next to the hospital bed, and wrapped it twice around my wrist, biting the tape to rip it. And then I walked out of the hospital, alone.

My four quick vacation days in the ashram were all bliss, from the warm air and salty ocean to the winding paths from bay to beach. I slept in and never made it to morning satsang, instead playing on the yoga platforms in the inbetween-hours. Lots of laughing, lots of reading. I quickly dropped the heavy history of Eritrea in favor of Untethered Soul, reading aloud on the beach and on the bay platform between inversions. The bits were so obvious that we found them laughable: "there is a very simple method for staying open. you never close."

Somewhere between unblocking my heart and listening to Justin's stories of Hindu deities, I thought of an archer - blue-skinned in a jungle pulling back with all his might to release a storm of arrows. That nameless, faceless archer from the dusky park in dreamland resurfaced and drowned out what the yoga and satsang at the ashram could not. I left the Bahamas on the first day of 2009, wide wide open, with the echo of another obvious quote from Untethered Soul:

"If you love life, nothing is worth closing over. Nothing, ever, is worth closing your heart over."

I tried to do handstands for you...

Handstands normally make me cry. No, seriously.

In yoga class, the second a teacher mentions a handstand practice, my chest tightens up and I feel 8 years old - the lone person who absolutely cannot kick up into a handstand. I lurk in the corner and do headstands, envious and sad as I watch everyone else gracefully enjoying handstands all over the room.

With a friend's solid advice (just kick HARDER) and some serious dedication, I kicked up into handstand today. Over and over and over again, just to be sure it was real.

Feet, over hips, over shoulders, over hands. Followed by fist pumps, shrieking and JOY.

Now I have to re-assess my 2009 goals, as kicking up into handstand was pretty high up on that list. WooHOO!

magical christmas eve

I watched 3-year-old Ella dance around tonight, bouncing in her little pink pajamas, with a glittery ribbon in her hair, clutching Chaucer [soft new teddy bear] to her chest and hopping from one person to the next, wrinkling up her nose as she smiled and shrieked. The “adults” played Pictionary; shared versions of “flipping the bird” among generations; laughed until our faces were all red and our silly (and sometimes obscene) drawings covered the table. I’m quite sure there was cheating on the boys team, with the game board, the timer, all of it. We, the Butvins, piled into Dad’s SUV and drove back home – Dad barely keeping his eyes open, the new Coldplay EP softly whispering. The clouds looked purple out the car window, matching the hue of the fizzy Arbor Mist wine I drank all night. They billowed and bunched like theater curtains around the horizon, revealing a deep, wide, black sky with glittering stars.

Christmas Eve has always seemed a magical night, starting with a shared memory of lying awake listening for hooves on the roof and ceaseless anticipation. Now, at 27, with an ear long since tuned out to rooftop intruders, this night is one of reflection. For me it’s a few moments I’ve been meaning to take for myself since Thanksgiving. A few moments of gratitude; for the cup to flow over a bit. I rented a car to drive home for Thanksgiving. Shortly after getting on the road, a small rainbow appeared right in the middle of the sky, right in the middle of my windshield - and hung out like the north star. The sky melted to a soft pink, reflecting on icy farm fields. I remember spending those hours overcome with gratitude.

Last week, as I finished up my last yoga class in DC, my teacher said something a bit out of the ordinary. It was a fantastic class, one with many moments of the simultaneous joy and serenity that one sometimes achieves in yoga. As we sat in the dark, sweaty and cross-legged, she said “someone once gave me a box of darkness. It took me a long time to recognize that it, too, was a gift.”

I was the recipient this year – one box of darkness addressed to me. At first I was confused. I opened it up and tried to scrub away the deep black contents. I put on rubber gloves and went to work. But as soon as I had a clean spot, the dark seeped back in. Knowing that I couldn’t change it, I instead tried to wear it. I put the dark box on my head and wore it as a hat, insisting it was stylish. But it kept falling down over my eyes, and I felt annoyed that I couldn't see. It was too big and weighed too much, and it made me hunch as I walked. Finally I set it down on the sidewalk and didn’t know what to do. So I tried to climb into it. It took some contortion, but I managed to fit inside. I closed the lid. But as I settled in and tried to get comfortable, I took a good look around. It didn’t take long to see that this wasn’t my place. This box wasn’t my vessel – or at least, it wasn’t going to transport me to anywhere I wanted to go. So I climbed back out, a little thinner for all the effort, my insides bruised up from the folding and twisting and trying. I climbed out and sat down and took a long hard look at the box. It looked no worse for wear, and sat on the table, beckoning me to make use of it in some way – to do something with it.

The box is still sitting there on the table. I look at it every day. Sometimes I do a little circle around it, and then stand over it - hover a toe with the thought of climbing back in. But it keeps shrinking, day-by-day. Knowing that I could never again bend myself to fit inside, instead I put my toe back onto the solid earth and go for a walk. I breathe, and I feel better, little by little. I walk, I breathe and I dream. I dream that I’m waist-deep in warm, salty water, holding the box in front of me, setting it down in the surf. Sending it off, lovingly, as the sea catches on and sweeps it far from my reach. And then I whisper a little prayer. Namaste.

I’m thankful for so many things, little and big. A floppy Henry belly-up on my lap while I finish the last pages of Deep Survival. Re-learning to ride a bike. Spontaneous and uncontrollable laughter with so many incredible friends. The prospect of one day enjoying long weekend mornings in bed. Couch surfers that end up staying and sharing so much. Finally going upside-down. The joy that’s bubbling up as the year closes and the road opens up. Lucy. Uganda. Even the dark box. The feeling of gratitude for all of what I already have experienced, plus what I know I will someday enjoy, is almost too much to bear.

This life is so rich.

There are moments, like driving home for Thanksgiving with the rainbow and pink ice, where I scream to the divine:

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

And there are moments, like the purple clouds rolling back to reveal the glittering black sky, where I close my eyes and whisper it

(thank you thank you thank you).

Merry Christmas.

holiday presence

Someone once gave me a box of darkness.
It took a while for me to realize that it, too, was a gift.

Departure Date: December 20, 2008

It's been a while, no doubt about that. Many months passed, two seasons even - as proven by the twirling snowflakes out my office window earlier this afternoon. The snow itself almost seemed to apologize for its premature visit, greeted by gasps of Washingtonians in denial about the coming winter months. My fingers are freezing and feel pretty stiff. I'll blame that on the teensy bit of anxiety I'm feeling about re-entering the blogosphere after such a long absence. Please bear with me; there is a purpose for this writing.

In about one month I'll be heading out on the road for a different kind of journey. A prolonged one, at that. I'm packing up my house and office, keeping half of my work responsibility, sending little Henry Ford to his doting grandparents, and jumping ship. As Dad always advises, I've got an outline.

My friend Kevin wrote me last week regarding one piece of my journey, where I'll teach yoga to a growing group of new yogis in Uganda. He told me "Kampala is so ready for you."

And I am so ready for this.

Leptoptilos crumeniferus

I moved into Kampala's central business district yesterday (for the last five nights), which is nice for a number of reasons - one of which being that I can walk more places. However, whether it's the early morning gray-ness or the scorching mid-day heat or the purple-y quiet twilight, I feel like I'm being watched. Perched atop Parliament, National Theater, the Serena, and street trees caving under their unusual birdy weight, the Marabou Storks are the sentries of this town. They peer down at you and pace the tops of buildings, their folded wings hunching behind them, giving the appearance of a sinister old man with a determined walk, hands clutched behind his back, long skinny legs with wobbly knees. When they come in for a landing, one can't help but pause to see if those long filament-like legs will support the girth of their black bodies and long, fleshy pink gullets. As I type this blog in the unusually boiling morning sunshine, I can count 18 of these grouchy, watchful, bumbly old men congregating atop the MTN building, probably handing out their surveillance posts for the day.

We're in business baby

Forever and for always

I slept in on Wednesday, waking up only to the sound of Paul's text message at 5:36 am - he was waiting for me with the car outside Kabira Country Club. I stumbled out of bed and realized that I hadn't packed a single thing the night before, blew threw the hotel room throwing things into bags and twenty minutes later we were on the road, with my bad breath and knotty hair. I slept all the way to Kafu and woke up to Paul buying goat muchomo and roasted bananas at a trading center. Ah---breakfast! He only brought one CD, and this time it was a varied playlist: It Must Have Been Love (Roxette), Do Me (PSquare ), Forever and For Always (Shania Twain), Another Day in Paradise (Phil Collins), etc. etc. mixed with local reggae. We made it to Gulu in record time - 5.5 hours. I think he flew over the Luwero bumps (see photo) while I was passed out and drooling in the passenger seat...plus the diversion at Nakasangola is finally cleared, cutting a half hour detour out of the trip.

Despite Paul's requests for me to rest after checking into Bomah, after dumping out my several bags o' crap, I took a quick shower and hit the ground running. The 36 hours in Gulu were a complete blur - smiling Ugandan faces in smart interview suits, meetings with local organizations, briefing by the UN Security Officer for northern Uganda, shopping for office space. My good friend Howard came to see me on Thursday morning, taking a bus in from Lira. After having lunch at Bambu (waiting 1.5 hours for banana fritters that weren't THAT good), we set off on a ridiculous office space hunt through the wilds of Gulu's outskirts. On a tip from the finance manager at Refugee Law Project, we set off looking for Obia Road - a four bedroom house on a plot adjacent to ACDI/VOCA's food security compound. "It needs renovation, but can be made ready with a fence in two months." After trying unsuccessfully to walk there in the scorching mid-day heat (I'd already taken off my button down shirt and felt lost in the desert, tripping around in my tank top and sweat pouring down my face, hand shielding the sun from my eyes and gazing into the heat waves rising from the earth, hoping to spot a suitable piece of real estate. Just kidding, it wasn't that hot.)...Howard and I found ourselves in front of what had to be the place. I dialed up my contact and listened to the description - just needs some renovation and a fence, four bedrooms...while I stood in front of a never-finished or once-burnt shell of a house with no roof and a full-fledged mini-forest taking root in the living space (see photo). But he was right that there was no fence. After another half hour of searching the country-side for the correct property, we finally found the place, tucked away behind a bamboo fence. If only house-hunting in the US were this adventurous, I might actually be up for buying a home!

The trip to Gulu was a success, including a stop off Thursday evening at the sign shop - a local sign-maker (yes he's the one making the millions of NGO signs littering the streets of Gulu, pointing to-and-fro) painted a One Mango Tree sign for Lucy. It's still being finished, but I managed to snap a couple pictures of the artist and his masterpiece (photos coming soon). Paul and I met Lucy by candlelight in the market to pick up the latest order, and she had everything packed neatly into the red plastic bags - one with London Bridge and the other with African wildlife - with an envelope on top that read "Halle's Mummy and Dad. U.K." - a letter to my parents from Lucy, which tugged at my heart and curiousity, but it's still unopened in my bag for the trip home to Ohio.

After a loooong day of running around, I finally passed out at Bomah and woke up on time, even packing my bags before falling asleep (AND taking a hot shower before bed!). Paul and I got on the road at 6 am, with the Gululian red-fire sunrise blazing on the eastern horizon out my window, palm trees blackened in silhouette. I promptly passed out and drooled. In true road trip style, Paul woke me up at our food stop. We were too early for the lady with the yummy roasted bananas (she was just arriving with the brown bananas in a green plastic tub perched upon her head, and waved a greeting when she saw us), but we spotted a guy making chapattis and both lit up at the thought of a roll-ex for the road. Chapattis are like a greasier version of naan, and a roll-ex is a chapatti rolled with fried egg. We also bought an avocado, sliced and salted, and for the next hour I sat with a smile on my face, mushy green avocado in my left hand, and salty delicious and hot roll-ex in my right, as we sang through full mouths to Shania Twain:

And there ain't no way
I'm lettin' you go now
And there ain't no way
And there ain't no how
I'll never see that day....

'Cause I'm keeping you
Forever and for always
We will be together all of our days
Wanna wake up every
Morning to your sweet face--always

Life is good.

Elusive peace and a visit to St. Mauritz

It's Sunday morning, and I'm fueling (and recovering from a visit from Mr. Honourable) with a mocha and an egg and tomato sandwich at Cafe Pap. Another silent Sunday in Kampala, preceding what promises to be a completely crazy week (and following one that was equally nuts). I returned from Gulu on Friday, to a louder, meaner version of Kampala. Paul [driver] and I were listening to the news as we approached town, and heard the broadcast about riots occuring on the streets of the city. Last week, police in Kampala set up road blocks and started ticketing, arresting and impounding vehicles and drivers that were not up to code (boda drivers without helmets, taxis without seatbelts, etc.). The crackdown created a slow swell of anger from the city's thousands of drivers, which erupted Friday in a city-wide taxi strike. Drivers took to the streets burning tires and breaking windscreens of matatus and buses that weren't striking. The boda drivers joined in, throwing stones at any bodas that were transporting passengers. Kawempe, on the north side of Kampala, was one of the worst spots, and Paul and I were pulling up to the area when we saw a crowd of people throwing bricks at a bus that was passing by - there was glass from broken windows all over the road. A truck filled with police in riot gear pulled up and we eventually passed without a problem, but as we drove into the city, the only other traffic was the stream of empty taxis driving in the opposite direction. Smoldering remains of tires littered the road.

As if a premonition, Friday's violence was quickly followed by headlines that Kony had failed to sign the peace accord. My initial reaction was disappointment and fear, partially invoked by the Daily Monitor's reportage - that the signing of the peace agreement was "put off indefinitely" and that with the Cessation of Hostilities Act due to expire on Tuesday and the government showing no intention to extend it, "war could easily resume." My week in Gulu had been filled with optimism from all sides - stories of people returning to their villages (Lucy returned to her family's land in Awac for the first time just last week) and discussions on the way forward and new economic opportunities. The absence of conflict in Uganda has helped raise hopes, but as one man described to me - "the people of northern Uganda have one foot in transition camps and one foot in their villages, with a hand cupping their ear to the north, waiting to hear the news from Juba." The importance of Kony's signature on that final document in this process cannot be overestimated and neither can the disappointment and frustration that everyone in northern Uganda is feeling.

After a week of running all over Gulu to meetings and scanning hundreds of Ugandan CVs to look for quality job candidates, I had an opportunity to visit Lucy's home. She's asked me to go before, but this was the first time that the trip actually worked out - and I had an evening free [and Paul offered to drive] to make the 2-mile trip to St. Mauritz parish, where Lucy lives with her aging parents, 12 orphaned nieces and nephews, and her own two daughters. She is a single woman supporting 16 people - 14 of whom need their school fees paid. As soon as we arrived, Lucy bounced out of the car with a smile and led us through the compound - an impeccably swept dirt yard with a clipped circle of turf, surrounded by tukuls - the round clay huts with grass rooftops - resembling the ones seen in IDP camps, but with much more space between them - the way Acholi families lived before the war.

Lucy's family was somewhat lucky in that her brother had purchased this plot of land outside of Gulu just as the conflict was worsening. Instead of moving into a camp like so many others, Lucy and her family moved to this land, and were able to maintain (to some extent) a bit of the life they had in the village. The first tukul belongs to Lucy's father, a very tall and thin man whose face broke into a million wrinkles as he gave us a welcoming smile and leaned on one of his crutches to shake our hands and greet us in Luo.

The next tukul is Lucy's own, which she shares with the four nephews who are in primary school nearby and Catherine, one of her brother's eldest daughter. The inside is spotless and cool, with plastic chairs surrounding a small table with a lace table cloth and pictures of Jesus (several versions), Lucy sewing, a photo from a European friend, and a framed photo of one of the two brothers she lost during the war (one to a rebel attack, the other to AIDS). Her father came inside and spoke to us in his soft and scratchy Luo, as Catherine translated stories of his life, his land, and the war that ravaged his family. He spoke with resignation, a man who prayed that peace would come for his grandchildren, as he admitted that he'd never see his family land in the village again - due to his failing health he couldn't make the journey. Such is the consequence of a conflict lasting as long as this one.

Lucy opened up to us in her home and told stories about moving from the village and hiding from rebel attacks in Gulu. Catherine poured cold water over hands and served us beef stew, rice, cabbage, and bananas. Shortly after our arrival, the sky opened up and poured one of those heavy opaque rains for half an hour, chilling the air. Lucy insisted it was a blessing. After the meal we followed her to the kitchen tukul, where her mother has been staying since her stroke two years ago. She spends her days on a mattress, a small white cat by her side, the walls and grass roof smelling of cooked food and streaked with oily black soot, tendrils of smoke still wafting up the clay-black walls from our recently eaten beef stew. She can see out a small window cut into the wall of the tukul, with a little shutter. I looked out briefly and saw the grave of one of Lucy's brothers, with a small neighbor girl perched atop it biting into half an orange, the pulp and juice dripping down the front of her gray school uniform. She saw me watching and smiled and darted away, scattering some chickens clucking in her wake.

Back on the map

I started to get a combination of emails wondering when I got home and emails saying "where the f* are you and what are you doing?" I'm still in Uganda, and I'm working and living. I think I'm now in week 4 or so (maybe week 5? I lost count), and that's the point where being over here starts to feel normal. Normal = I forget what it's like to be in an office, to wear anything beside wife beaters/t-shirt skirts/flipflops, and I've stopped brushing my hair. Wait, I'm portraying this all wrong...I promise you I don't look like a crazed vagrant hippie!

In the past week or so since my last email/post, lots of things have been going on over here. In addition to working on AIR stuff and getting started on my consulting assignment (lots of reading and some logistics so far), here's the run down of some of the highlights of what the f* I've been up to for those who asked - and the rest of you.

Local news:

Kony's delayed signing the peace accord (due to illness or something) - now scheduled to take place mid-April.

Weather:

It definitely bears mentioning that it's back to hot and sunny in these parts, lots of blue sky and occasional passing clouds. Where'd rainy season go? (and...um...who cares?)

Housing:

I'm still staying at La Fontaine, moving back and forth between my own room and Steve's room (he's traveling again, so I'm back to camping out amidst his stuff). I cleared a spot on a table in the corner for my books and the newest addition to my home - a two-foot tall blue-bodied, yellow-mohawked, wire-legged carved wooden crested crane who seems to say "hey ladies...." (a la Demetri Martin) with his sideways glance.

The balcony at La Fontaine is admittedly one of my favorite places in the world, especially after spending a late afternoon swimming at Kabira, showering and reading, my skin all shiny and stretched from the chlorine and sunshine. Everything looks golden and breezy and eventually the sun goes down and leaves wide brushstrokes of pink across the darkening blue sky.

Food:

Colin welcomed me to the "inner circle" on Thursday, over dinner at Mama Ashanti's - a West African restaurant on Bombo Road, just down from the ginormous Kampala Pentecostal Church (KPC). Having read some Nigerian authors on this trip (Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun), I was thrilled to try the spiced tea, jollof rice, a plate of plantains, chicken stew, and beef stew. All of it was delicious, and I went home with quite a fat Nigerian food baby in my belly. I'm still not clear on Colin's insistence that the dinner was my induction into the "inner circle," and his quick scribbling an illustration on a napkin didn't help (a circle with a dot in the middle of it). It looked like a boob. But I guess I'm "in."

Additional food item worth mentioning - yellow curry and mango sticky rice at Krua Thai - you MUST try it if you're ever hungry in Kampala.

Cultural Activity:

The Bookend - On Wednesday afternoon, following a suburban moment at Garden City (where I broke the scanner at the internet cafe and purchased the aforementioned creepy crane at Banana Boat), Steve and decided to walk back to La Fontaine, stopping off at The Surgery, which is my go-to medical clinic (I've only ever taken students there, knock-on-wood I've never had to go myself). The reason for stopping had nothing to do with health, but with a blog post I'd read back in the states before I left - about a little used book store that opened up on The Surgery compound.

The Bookend - a mini wooden house on stilts, with a large porch and a tanned, tiny woman sitting in a hand-tooled leather chair – blue apron, several masai beaded bracelets and glasses perched in her short blondish hair. She held a cigarette, said hello, and continued reading her book How to Quit Smoking. We walked inside and set down our bags, marveling at the simplicity of it all. The salvaged hardwood floors begged me to take off my shoes. Breezes blew in through the side windows and wind chimes tinkled on the porch where Karen (the owner) sat reading and smoking. Two armchairs angled into the room, facing the hand-carved bookshelves. All books are only 6,000 shillings, and if you bring them back, Karen gives you 3,000 and puts them back on the shelves. She'll also buy your used books for 3,000 shillings each. I immediately wanted to live there in the tiny book house on stilts, where the porch is bigger than the house, all wood and windows - and spend the rest of my days reading, retiring at almost-27. I chose a Pico Iyer book about Cuba, Out of Africa, and a verse translation of The Bhagavad Gita (free from Karen). It was one of those moments that puts a smile on your face for the rest of the day.

Nagenda International Academy of Art and Design (NIAAD)- On Thursday afternoon, I hitched a ride with Ed and Katy - two people I spent some time with this week that are starting a social investment fund that will link wealthy donors directly with innovative local organizations - out to visit Kizito's school on the way to Entebbe. This was my fourth visit to NIAAD, yet every time the setting leaves me speechless. The buildings are nearly complete (Kizito and his very-pregnant-wife Ruth have moved onto a small compound on Makerere's main campus) and white-washed. The grounds (photo, left) overflow with bougainvillea, ficus, pawpaw, a row of huge and cartoonish cacti, and scattered bits of Kizirto's sculpture. From the main studios you can see the long blue fingers of Lake Victoria stretching into the marshy coast, reaching up to the reflective pale green plasticity of Expressions Flowers' greenhouses.

I paid another visit to Kizito yesterday morning - this time to his studio at Makerere, where we drank cup after cup of the loose tea that always reminds me of Kizito. We talked about his visions for NIAAD, his process in accrediting the school through the Ugandan Ministry of Education, and the 80 million shillings he needs to finish it up. I'm still floored by the fact that the entire project has been funded through the sale of his paintings (many of you have seen the painting I bought - it's in my bedroom at home - which paid for a large pile of bricks that are now somewhere in the studio walls out at NIAAD). In between visits from Kizito's 2 year-old daughter (she kept bringing me her teddy bear, which is larger than she is), Kizito and I discussed possibilities for a partnership through One Mango Tree. On the table for the next year is an exhibit and auction in DC, to correspond with having a set of his paintings made into prints so that they can be mass-produced and screen-printed on American Apparel shirts and sold via One Mango Tree - to pay for scholarships and supplies for NIAAD. I'm also talking to his wife (a textile designer) about a line of baby/kids t-shirts with her unique print designs.

On the agenda:

I'm heading up to Gulu on Monday morning (at 6 am), and with a driver this time (woohooooooooooo!). I'll be there all week, staying at Bomah, eating salty spaghetti bolognaise and banana muffins... and working my butt off. I'll try not to be so distant (and then my emails won't be so damn long. Sorry.)

Periods of sun and clouds...and exhaust

Let me first summarize the pros and cons of working at a petrol station coffee shop all day:

PRO: Delicious and rich café mochas, ice cream sundaes, good bread
CON: Licking your lips as your aforementioned delicious food arrives and finding a gritty layer of dirt has settled over them

PRO: Infocom wireless hotspot (comparatively cheap at 3,000 ush/hour)
CON: White Sony Vaio now has a gross reddish tinge, no matter how often I towel it off

PRO: Cute patio outdoor seating with green umbrellas
CON: Pretty hedges and palm trees do a crap job of blocking out the black fog of diesel exhaust and constant settling of red dust from Bombo Road (see above reddish tinge)

As some of you already know, I’m staying in Uganda. You all predicted it. No, no, no. Not forever. The planned three weeks has now morphed into seven weeks, as I move on to some new and exciting work in the north.

Speaking of, the Juba Peace Talks formally ended yesterday. The trusty Daily Monitor printed a full front-page montage with a huge headline reading “Peace Talks End,” leading most people (or me and Kate) to think that they had failed. In reality, the parties in Juba just signed the monitoring and implementation agreement – a final step before the formal signing of the accord, which is scheduled to take place on April 5. The Monitor also included a bulleted list of important stages in the peace process (courtesy of source: wikipedia), which began in July 2006. Since then, the LRA and GOU have signed agreements on cessation of hostilities; comprehensive solutions; accountability and reconciliation; permanent ceasefire; and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR). While the signing of the peace accord will be a historic moment and a huge step forward for northern Uganda, there is still a massive amount of work to be done to ensure that the peace is actually sustainable. I’m excited to be heading back up north immediately following the upcoming signing, where I’m sure many people will be talking about what’s next.