on the road in south africa

sunset on a walking safari with chris, owner of mosetlha bush camp

Hitesh and I set off early from his B&B in Rivonia, tucked into his little rented Yaris and zipped northwest across the superhighways into the South African bushveld. Tasked with navigating our journey, I wasn't sure if the road signs were pointing to furniture bins at IKEA - Roodesport, Zeerust, Swartruggens - or actual places. My mind started shuffling again outside of Jo'burg, attempting to place the landscape - some mix between Tuscany and northern California - rolling yellow hills dotted with cypress. We stopped off at a gas station. I filled up on Lunch Bars and water. Hitesh dove into his vegan stash of nuts and Green&Black chocolates. We both brought music, but didn't even attempt to turn it on, as two professional bullshitters in a little Yaris on a road trip, we simply chatted for the entirety of the 5 hour ride. We had much to catch up on.

I first met Hitesh back in 2007, after having a few phone calls when a friend put us in touch to talk about conservation issues in Kenya. He'd already started writing his forthcoming book, Authentic Ecolodges, and our paths crossed one evening in Kampala as he was wrapping up visits to an ecolodge in Zanzibar. Hitesh is a Kenyan citizen, and a trained architect and landscape architect, with all the fervor of an avid environmentalist. He's the world's leading expert on ecolodges, and walks the walk more than anyone I've ever met. I've always been interested in ecotourism, more as a tourist than anything else, but this time our crossing paths was more strategic than originally intended.

The Ohio State architecture program kicked off its spring Uganda studio at the same time Hitesh and I were traversing the South African landscape. 14 students began researching building materials, climate issues and culture in northern Uganda, in the attempts to collaborate with One Mango Tree tailors to design a green, off-the-grid production facility. Over our four days in Madikwe, Hitesh and I discussed community ownership models (visiting Buffalo Ridge, an ecolodge in the reserve fully-owned by the local community), ventilation improved pit toilets, water-heating methods, alternative energy models, and site planning. Who knew that an ecolodge, meant for a traveler's enjoyment, could so fully inform the design of a production facility? We stayed at Mosetlha Bush Camp, a fine example of how people can (and do) coexist with ecosystems without destroying them. I can't wait for Hitesh to share his insight and experiences in East Africa with the Ohio State students.

On our way back to Jo'burg we got a bit lost in the yellow hills so close to Botswana, listening to Habib Koite and planning our next journey. At OR Tambo the next morning, Hitesh headed off to a full moon-lit massage at an ecolodge in Namibia, and I back to Kampala. Home.

this should be in a museum!

one of the pillars of the new constitution outside the apartheid museum

I remember the scene from my beloved Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when he's chasing the bandits at an archaeological dig, trying to rescue this big, golden cross. He's breathless running around and pulling his incredible stunts on trains and across the desert, clutching at this cross, trying to protect it. Perhaps ridiculous to link up Apartheid and Indy's golden cross, but I couldn't help but think of that scene, while sitting in the little veld outside the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.

As I was finishing Yunus's Creating a World Without Poverty, I remember him dwelling (for a few pages) on the concept of poverty museums. Museums are for remembering - pieces of our culture, pieces of things that make up the history of man. Just as much as that big, golden cross belongs in a museum, argues Yunus, so do the social ills that plague society. On my recent travels in Africa, I've visited three museums - none of which commemorate culture or art.

Kigali Genocide Memorial Center - Kigali, Rwanda
The Hector Pieterson Museum - Orlando West, Soweto, South Africa
Apartheid Museum - Johannesburg, South Africa

Perhaps in creating a beautiful space to commemorate the horrific things we've done to each other, that violence and hatred can be a thing of the past. After reading through the history and seeing the exhibits about Apartheid's creation and demise, I sat down in the veld and realized that there is a piece of me missing. I cannot fathom hatred. This has been bugging me lately - first when I was in Rwanda, and now in South Africa.

I at first thought Yunus's proposition of a "poverty museum" a bit laughable, but I'm coming around on the concept. Surely the phrase "never again" must have a broader breadth than genocide alone.

where to stay in jo'burg: melville

Ever an urban planner, I'm always drawn to walkable cities, vibrant street life, cafes that induce people-watching. When I heard that I'd definitely need to rent a car to get around in Jo'burg, I was bummed. Then a friend recommended that I stay in Melville - a few blocks of cafes, bookshops, boutiques and bohemia in a suburban area on the outskirts of the city. It did not disappoint, starting with where I stayed. Ginnegaap Guest House is adorable, with wood floors, beige walls, white trim and pressed ceilings, framed black and white photos, simple white down comforters, rain shower head in the bathroom. The dollar is really strong in SA right now, so four nights at Ginnegaap only set me back $150. Upon arriving, I announced that I would not be leaving the confined of the cute guest room and adjoining patio. But then I would have missed:


A visit to Audrey at Bookdealers, a second-hand bookshop on 7th - where I spent over an hour selecting titles, finally settling on four (for a grand total of less than $15):
Siddharta by Herman Hesse
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
Snakepit by Moses Isegawa
A Place of My Own by Micheal Pollan


Dinner at Cafe Picobella, with delicious wine less than $2 per [huge] glass and some amazing things done with butternut, including a butternut and sage lasagna.

Dinner at Cafe Mezzaluna, on their adorable garden patio, with more delicious wine and apricot chicken with couscous.

And when feeling adventurous, call up Maxi Taxi and discover the hideout of all the white South African hippies at the Bryanston Organic Market every Thursday and Sunday. Smells like nag champa, sounds like flautists, and [the best part] tastes like savory crepes with roasted veggies and pumpkin seeds, plus an almond polenta cake. Definitely worth a visit for the crowd and the food.

the psychology of fear

juxtaposition in jo'burg, hot coffee and hot fence

When I decided I'd meet up with Hitesh Mehta in South Africa to help out on a case study for his forthcoming book, Authentic Ecolodges, he suggested I spend a few days on the front end in Jo'burg. I'd been interested in opening up the market for One Mango Tree products in South Africa, so I booked four nights ahead of my trip with Hitesh to meet with owners of boutiques and yoga studios interested in carrying our line.

Jo'burg has somehow become synonymous with violent crime. I'd envisioned a dark, gray, concrete city - something akin to City of God. In complete contrast to this, I arrived in Jo'burg on the first days of autumn, and quickly noticed how green the place is. There are trees everywhere. I met my friend Stephanie at the airport, and we took a cab to Ginnegaap Guest House in Melville, an area recommended by a South African friend. As we drove through the city and surrounding suburbs, everything looked so familiar that my mind kept racing, trying to place the landscape and architecture with places I've been in the United States and Europe.

I was struck by many things in South Africa, but more than anything I was confused by the whole concept of fear. Flying into OR Tambo Airport, the suburbs of Jo'burg looked a bit like Beverly Hills from the sky - huge mansions with pools and rolling acreage - but you can't miss the thin outline of a wall around every residence. The city is filled with gorgeous architecture and landscape, but the majority of it is well-hidden behind tall walls with electrical fencing across the top. Ginnegaap itself is an urban oasis, nestled behind a clay-colored wall. Our key ring had no less than 8 keys, and when we came in at night, we used all 8 to un-lock the gates that lie between the 4th Avenue and our room. On the first night we stayed in past dark, only to realize that the place had been locked down. While we were eager to explore the area, the many gates convinced us that maybe it wasn't the safest thing to do.

On driving through the city center days later, I saw the concrete and gray city that I'd envisioned. The fear in South Africa makes sense when you combine the still-present (though not forced) segregation and xenophobia. The city center houses much of the unemployed population, which looks like a lot of Nigerian men loitering on street corners. Unemployment is at 30% in SA. This, in contrast to the jacaranda-lined streets of Houghton, where Nelson Mandela now resides; the incredibly smooth and modern highways that criss-cross the nation; the beautiful golf courses; the strip malls that line the suburban roads.

We visited Soweto, and even there I was surprised to find such a developed area. The separation was the more appalling piece, and the fact that the race lines are still so clearly drawn in where people live. One night at dinner, Steph and I talked to two South African men. They shared the story of their recent adventure into Soweto. They'd befriended a black South African woman, who invited them to a restaurant in Soweto. The recalled the intense fear they'd felt as they drove into the area, and how they'd so much enjoyed the food and atmosphere in the restaurant. When we asked if they'd ever go back, their response:

"No. No way."

and more cotton

I'm getting used to this 24-hour turnaround in Kampala. After the long journey back from Gulu on Sunday, I had one day in town before my 4:30 am drive to the airport, setting off for Jo'burg.

The one day back in town was broken down into tightly-packed hours and minutes, starting with a morning meeting with Phenix. We toured their factory in Kampala, which looked exactly like UTEXRWA. Phenix gets its 100% organic cotton from farmers in Lira, northern Uganda. The factory was filled with the same big green Swiss machines, spinning the raw cotton into yarn. The difference between the two companies is in the processing. UTEXRWA weaves cotton, while Phenix knits it. What's the difference? With UTEXRWA you get wax-print, woven fabrics. With Phenix you get t-shirts. Turns out Phenix is the supplier of all the organic cotton yarn used for EDUN Live - the clothing company started by Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson. I'll let you use your imagination as to the outcome of our meeting.

On to Jo'burg!

of tsetse flies and brake failure

I spent much of the past week with Tim, the owner of Greater Good, and One Mango Tree's biggest buyer. After two days with the ladies in Gulu, we decided to take an on-the-way-home safari at Murchison with Noela and Medi, our driver. Gulu is about a two-hour drive from the north gate of the park - on a really nice tarmac road that runs from just north of Karuma Falls out to Pakwach. In 2007, I stopped in Pakwach on a reverse trip (heading to Gulu after a safari in the park). The town must see its fair share of tourists, as it's completely packed with men selling handicrafts - little drums and funny carved men with spears balancing on a pedestal. We stopped for breakfast (roll-ex and tea), and proceeded through the north gate, treating ourselves to a self-guided game drive on the only road that goes to Paraa Lodge - where we were meeting park ranger Nelson and his boat.

Elephants road-side during our self-guided game drive

It turned out to be a beautiful Sunday, cruising up the Nile in our long, white boat. I parked myself at the bow, often hanging off the front pretending to fly. It was so relaxing that we all fell asleep at one point or another. The smell of fresh water and the sound of waves lapping against the hull set me dreaming of my family's cottage on Lake Erie. It felt a bit odd to have a wave of nostalgia for home while cruising up the Nile surrounded by hippos and crocodiles.

Me and Medi, our awesome driver, at the base of Murchison

We set off for K'la around 2 pm, hoping to reach Masindi by 3:30 and K'la no later than 6:30 pm. The gods had other plans for us. About 5k into our drive, the tsetse flies launched a full-on offensive, dive-bombing our car by the dozens. We had no A/C, so we had to choose between sweat lodge or angry biting flies. You would think we would have chosen the sweat lodge. Tim embraced his inner zen while Medi, Noela and I shrieked, cussed and swatted with hats, notebooks, hands. There was a tsetse fly massacre in our little sedan, but I'm sure we barely made a dent in the population, which lies in wait for unsuspecting tourists on their way to and fro the safari lodges.

Then, not long after the attack subsided, we lost our brakes. Noela and Tim were blissfully passed out in the back seat, and Medi calmly showed me when he pressed the brakes that nothing at all happened to slow the car. I was mildly freaked out, but Medi illustrated such calm that I decided to roll with it. Literally. We drove brake-less for one hour, until we finally arrived in Masindi (honking at pedestrians as we rolled through town). Medi finally threw the car into reverse in front of a garage and we came to a jolting halt. I must say, only in Uganda can you blow out both brakes, roll to a garage and have them repaired in under an hour on a Sunday, and for only $10. It was barely an annoyance, and gave me time to drink a bag of yogurt, eat some glucose biscuits and read about ritual murder and devil worship on the front page of the New Vision.

acel, aryo, adek, angwen (1, 2, 3, 4!)

Havana Pub celebrated the fourth anniversary of its opening in Gulu on Saturday night. I'm not one for the bar scene in Gulu, but I've definitely had my fair share of Havana experiences. Early in 2007 it was bending bottle caps during happy hour, drinking Bell and falling for a much, much younger guy. Later that year it was hearing gunshots from the balcony of Kakanyero and learning that a UPDF soldier had shot himself in the head just inside the bar.

Now, in 2009, with Club beer apparently buying every piece of advertising space they could get their hands on, Havana celebrated its anniversary by closing off the street for a night of musical debauchery. Between two rigged walls of blue plastic tarpaulin, the Hotel Pearl Afrique Band filled the air with jazzy Antibalas-like tunes. The lead singer announced that they were "going traditional," switching into the familiar beats from all those bus rides from K'la to Acholiland - with live dancing. In black t-shirts, jeans and NY Yankees caps, the guys came out and performed what can only be described as a crotch-thrust, where the upper body stays totally still and the lower body, well....hips thrust, knees wobble. I was smiling and laughing so hard my face hurt.

The MC and DJ gave lots of shout outs to northern Uganda, and as I looked around at the growing mass of smartly-dressed young Ugandans at the show, I couldn't help but think of how much this place has changed since I first came in 2006. I went back to Jojo's after the hotel band wrapped up, but when I left for K'la the next morning at 6 am, the music was still going strong.

friday night hafiz

the small man
builds cages for everyone
he knows.

while the sage
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the
beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.

- hafiz

cotton & cooperatives - digging deeper

One of our One Mango Tree customers is in town visiting the cooperatives he buys from in East Africa, so I ended up spending much of the week going on his site visits with him - first to Gahaya Links (they partner with Fair Winds Trading to supply all those baskets to Macy's - and pretty much any African-made product you see at Starbucks) and then to Partners in Health (PIH) in Rwinkwavu.


In between, I spent yesterday morning at UTEXRWA - a textile factory located in Kigali. The factory is a shining example of Rwandan industry, with a spotless facility and remarkable openness about their processes. I learned about fabric production in its entirety, starting with raw cotton from ginneries in Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi:

-- from cleaning - to spinning - to weaving - to processing - to printing - to packing --


I saw how they make 50/50 poly blend (mixing in equal parts natural cotton and the blindingly white poly made in Korea and imported), and watched women in the weaving department hand-hook the fabric patterns before sending them off to the automated weavers. Into the processing department, where all those chemical baths reside - hopefully we can avoid this room with One Mango Tree's fabrics.

Then on to the printing, where they have thousands of designs etched into huge metal cylinders. I found the ones used for Obamabags (recognize the face in the image below?) - that's right, they too are a production of Fair Winds and UTEXRWA. The Obama print is off-limits.


The whole process is impressive and incredible - and a challenge to explain, particularly the spinning department, where cotton turns from fluff into longer and stronger threads. The end result? We get to choose from thousands of designs and weights, which means One Mango Tree products are about to get that much cooler - we're aiming for 100% organic - and our bags will finally be 100% East African, a combo of Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi - from soil to sale.

Check out some potential new prints here.

omnivorific, or julie carney-copia

Showing off some shiny eggplant at one of the GHI gardens

Our first dinner in Kigali was wheatberry risotto with squash, and salad greens from the garden, topped with beets. I'm visiting Julie Carney, one of my best friends, who lives in Kigali and runs Gardens for Health - an organization that works with HIV/AIDS cooperatives to construct home gardens, in the hopes of improving nutrition (and thus the effectiveness of ARVs) the good old-fashioned way - with nutrient-rich foods. We first met back in 2006, on a GYPA trip in Uganda - both of us visiting Africa for the first time. This trip is our first African reunion - three years later and we now both live here.

Julie is IN it. She lives, breathes, and sleeps (and obviously eats) sustainable agriculture. We visited the GHI model farm, which occupies what used to be the backyard in the compound that houses their office. Julie convinced the landlord to tear up the turf and ornamental trees, and they now have a thriving example of a home garden: eggplant, cabbages, pepper, tomato, amaranth, onions, carrots, spinach, and sweet potatoes, along with a tiny tree farm of tamarillo (tree tomatoes), mango, and moringa. GHI uses lots of innovative gardening techniques, since all of their cooperatives live in a peri-urban area and do not have the space normally required for a garden. My favorite is the sack garden.

So, understandably, the underlying theme of our stay in Kigali has been food. We're eating carrot-zucchini muffins, lots of wheatberry, fruit salad topped with tamarillo, loads of fresh veggies. On our hiking trip to Ruhengeri this weekend, Julie tried out her latest iteration of a power bar - a mix of moringa, honey, peanuts and some left over dried fruit she found in my backpack.

All of this food and farming is probably the reason I wasn't too surprised when I opened the Sunday NYTimes email to read that the Obamas are tearing out a piece of the South Lawn to build an organic garden at the White House, something Michael Pollan suggested in a New York Times op-ed back in 1991. Granted, Pollan offered a garden as one of several alternatives - a symbolic gesture for removing the chemical-loving non-native turf that so often symbolizes domestic American life. Either way, to me this is illustrative of a priority shift. I've been reading a lot about food and farming in the past year, and am elated to see that Michelle Obama is embracing food issues. What impresses me most is that this so-called food revolution crosses the divide. Whether improving nutrition for people living with HIV in Rwanda, or decreasing obesity in the United States, the spotlight is on how we, as humans, eat.

And, thanks to the happy combination of Julie's cooking and Rwanda's fertile soils, I'm eating quite well.

italian african fusion - mango caprese

photo from closetcooking.blogspot.com

slice up a ripe mango
slice up fresh milk mozzarella cheese
layer with fresh basil
drizzle with balsamic vinegar and olive oil

I encountered this awesome variation on the traditional caprese at torero cafe, kigali, rwanda.

tea fjords

image courtesy of farm2's flickr photo stream

10 hours on a bus from Kampala to Kigali, passing through the increasingly rugged terrain that separates the two cities. Oh, Rwanda. I've wanted to travel to Rwanda for the past couple of years, adding it to my itinerary several times, only to inevitably cross it off as the packed weeks fly by. That crazy bus ride always seemed a bit much.

This time I actually made the trip, getting to the Jaguar Bus station a few minutes before the on-time departure. I managed to eat an entire box of NICE coconut biscuits before making it to the border. I listened to music, but rarely nodded off, looking out the window facing east, across matooke plantations covered in red dust.

The border crossing was uncomplicated - there is no visa fee to enter Rwanda if you are American. As I grabbed a bottle of water and a hard-boiled egg from a vendor and re-lugged my pack back onto the bus, the engine rumbled to a start and we were once again on our way.

Just minutes into the ride, Rwanda's landscape became dramatically different. The road hugged the snaking base of the hills, flanked on the east by little bunches of eucalyptus and tea stretching across valley floors to the opposite terraced hillsides. It was a cloudy day, with mist and woodsmoke collecting in pockets; the deep green of tea leaves criss-crossed by footpaths. Up ahead the curves of the hills recede and you see more tea, lapping at the base of the hills, sometimes washing up onto their slopes before the elevation steepens and the terracing starts. I imagined the tea as water, doing a lazy, shimmering, and winding dance between the hills and the road.

I put down my book, turned off my iPod, and spent the next few hours peering through raindrops at the scenery. So, you could say I'm grateful for that ridiculously long bus ride, and surprised by the sheer beauty of Rwanda.

sipi river lodge - heaven on mt. elgon

Alain de Botton conjures Wordsworth in The Art of Travel; something he referred to as "spots of time." There are certain places that stick - owing their sticky-ness to a fortuitous combination of scenery, smell, temperature, and a very specific mental state - that become a motif in life. For me, it's the low-hanging stars in Belize, it's the smell of water in Zanzibar...and currently, it's every little piece of Sipi River Lodge.



wildlife: a cow peering at you while showering, baby pigs and wandering goats
cuisine: carrot and coriander soup, pineapple crumble with vanilla custard, ample Roberts Rock wine
soundtrack: falling asleep to the sound of sipi river flowing by your banda, will's awesome iPod selections during dinner
wake up call: drinking coffee you roasted yourself


ambience: the banana leaf roof in the lodge, especially in the lantern-lit evenings
fun: the hat collection in the bar (and play bites from Captain - see slide show)


If you're visiting East Africa, you owe it to yourself. Set aside 4 or 5 days and a few good books, and go there.

fabric of life - one mango tree press

Check out the latest piece of news on One Mango Tree - thanks to Bob Sberna for an awesome piece, and to Glenna Gordon for the beautiful photos!

aromatherapy adventures

Some of Marion's tea blends sold at local grocers, and the re-designed One Mango Tree eye pillow.

Yoga is getting big here in Kampala. Big in the sense that there is really good ashtanga vinyasa, and there's a nice (and growing) contingent of yogis that show up regularly for classes. Through the network of Kampala yogis, it's not too difficult to find meditation classes, massage therapy, lomilomi massage (and training workshops!), cranialsacral therapy, ayurvedic practice and counseling, etc. etc.

It's getting so big, in fact, that "The Munyonyo Studio" (as I call it) - Kevin and Gavin's beautiful home on Lake Victoria - is hosting Africa Yoga's spring teacher training course. One Mango Tree is providing all of the yogic accoutrement - mat bags, bolsters, eye pillows, meditation cushions, malas, organic cotton t-shirts. The resulting new product development has sent me to some amazing and unusual new places.

Yesterday it was Happy Herbs Ltd. - 100% organic herb farm near the airport in Entebbe. Started as a hobby garden by Marion Boenders (when she's not co-running Wagagai Ltd., a flower export company), Happy Herbs is a small farm that grows a wide range of aromatherapy and medicinal herbs - from tea tree (only grower in Uganda!) to staple cooking herbs like basil, thyme, marjoram. Marion and I spent the afternoon pinching leaves to get ideas for fillers for the One Mango Tree eye pillows. After a stop off at the drying shack (shelves and shelves of harvested herbs drying out and awaiting the chopper or blender - depending on their final destination) - we went into the storage room to start mixing.

The room is lined with rough shelving and neatly organized, colorful plastic buckets - labeled with all sorts of interesting things - including pulverized specimens like plantain, moringa, alfalfa (Marion makes capsule supplements as well). We took out some buckets and started mixing, smooshing the herbs in our hands to combine and release the smells - settling on five scent varieties. My favorite is Lemon Mint - which I imagine will be quite energizing and refreshing (especially when chilled) as an eye pillow. We mixed Lemon Balm, Lemongrass, Spearmint and Peppermint.

I'm currently checking into the export rules for products that include herbs - so you might be seeing Happy Herbs as part of the One Mango Tree line up in the US very soon!

Marion also makes a variety of herbal teas - I sampled a delicious one with lunch, which we shared on her patio overlooking Lake Victoria. Happy Herbs indeed.

classy new establishment in gulu

there will be snacks

Almost finished chicken and chips, quarter avocado peel, top up bottle in a basket.
Empty, thick green bottle of 7UP with a straw.

This is the detritus on my bedside table at Jojo’s Palace. Got stuck at Nile Computers tonight – first the power went. The generator hum kicked in. Fans slowed to a stop and the mosquitoes rushed in, feasting at my ankles while I sat in the blue glow of my gmail screen (mountainscape) and waited out the token dry season storm.

I walked back to Jojo’s in the dark, my flip flops flapping and sucking at the streams of mud from the sudden and heavy rain. It had already passed, yet the wind was still blowing cool and crispy. The moonless night was somehow brightened by the breeze. Silhouettes of royal palms in the Gulu night sky.

Back to K’la on an early bus. Carry-on baggage = optimism.

cooking class: bo ki tongweno or gulu frittata

Just before mid-day, Kevin and I set off for Prisca’s house. I tucked my market tote into the basket on the front of Lucy’s shiny pink Smart Lady bicycle and followed Kevin out of town, off the paved road and onto the dirt track to Prisca’s place. I bit it about halfway, in one of the dips in the road where potholes had been filled in with soft dust. I cannot remember the last time I fell off a bicycle, and I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to brush myself off.

Prisca’s youngest, Abey Goretti, was quick to make silent lion roars at me as soon as we arrived, showing me her teeth, pulling on my hands and giggling. Over chai and chapatti, I spoke to her husband, Charles, about architecture. We pored over the plans he’d had made for a tailoring center. He asked me how people in the US get around when it snows.

This being the second visit out to Prisca’s home, I was pulled into the kitchen tukul after chai to help with the cooking. The mid-day sun outside was already beating down, but somehow the kitchen stayed cool. The walls were darkened from the charcoal stove – a curved bump out from the wall with two divots shaped to hold the coals beneath a pot. The embers burned pinkish/coral/hot through a mini-hearth below. We set to work, with Goretti’s giggly help, removing the leaves from the bo or “green vegetables” and putting them into a winnowing basket. Since the bo comes from the earth, it goes outside in the sun for some minutes to let any earthly creatures escape before the cooking begins.

Oil, onions, garlic – we put handfuls of the washed local rice (Kevin and I picked out stones) into the pot to fry it before cooking. Kevin minced the bo and we cooked it with local salt and oil, adding chopped tomatoes and the hen’s eggs I’d scrambled previously.

Prisca took a moment to give Goretti a bath in a basin outside the doorway. Goretti screamed the entire time, furious to have the dust washed from her skin.

We spent two hours in the kitchen, and then feasted in the sitting room:
Bo ki tongweno ki tongweno ki nyanya ki mucele ki layata
(greens with eggs, fried eggs with tomato and oil; with rice and yams)

Next class: cooking chicken.

After eating, Prisca insisted that I bathe before returning to town. She led me to the borehole to fill a basin, and sent me off to a corner of the as-yet roofless house that Charles is building. There is a concrete edge around the wall, and the middle is still dirt, which makes for a nice place to rinse and dump the used bath water.

After bathing, Prisca then insisted on oiling my skin before sending me off to town on my bicycle. Freshly-greased mzungu on a bike in Gulu during dry season. You can probably easily imagine the red dirt that clung to my skin as every car passed by. I arrived in Gulu looking very much like a happy martian with aviators.

tuesday redemption over tea

Though I barely slept last night, I felt a sea change upon waking. Noela caught an early bus to K'la, and I lingered at Jojo's waiting for Lucy and yet another difficult conversation. She arrived in a peach-colored dress. We talked about the past year; all the things we'd achieved in working together. We talked about truth. I inadvertantly channeled Eckhart Tolle, encouraging Lucy to be hopeful about the year - that the way she thinks is that way that life will be - that's why it's so important to remain positive and confident. Early on in the conversation I noticed that something had also shifted in Lucy. We walked to the market together to start the day on a new foot. Another chance.

hitting all the bumps

Okay, so things aren't always so light and inspirational. I do feel inspired pretty often - when reading the Aid to Artisans magazine about organic cotton production in Senegal last night, dreaming up ideas for turning Uganda's organic cotton into beautiful fabrics with natural dyes. I felt inspired sitting in the market this morning with Kevin, Sarah, Monica and Prisca. Learning Acholi and helping Sarah to finish the aprons while Kevin and Monica worked on yoga bags and Prisca made a dress for a customer. The familiar taste of beans and rice - the tea and chapattis this morning to "make me fat."

But, in all honesty, the past two days in Gulu have thrown me, once again, into the all-too-familiar waters of existential crisis. What on earth am I doing here? I'm lying atop the fuzzy leopard-print blanket (a true Gulu blanket - the only sort you find here), semi-comatose and listening to Bon Iver.

What might've been lost
--
Oh, the crispy realization
--
Your love will be safe with me

I somehow burned my left arm more than my right, and it's still doing this weird mottled two-toned peel effect, with little flakes of skin around the paler patches. I keep thinking "buck up, there's a bike ride tomorrow!" but can't seem to hold onto the joy that the thought of bicycling in Gulu brought a few months ago - even a few weeks ago.

There some mistruths going on up here, and some short-sightedness. I'm being vague. It's a tangled mess and we need to get to the bottom of it all - to see past the current hardships and instead focus on how far we've come. I feel disappointed - I would say betrayed, but betrayal is so 2008. I'm sticking with disappointment.

I can't put myself in Lucy's shoes. She's anxious. She lost her two brothers to war and AIDS. Her parents are both sick and old, and she has no one by her side to help ease the burden. Her husband abandoned both her and her girls. And she has so many people that look to her for support - even more so with all the success from One Mango Tree. She feels afraid that the successes she's built are fragile, and could break away at any moment.

So, really, I should turn off the Bon Iver and the lights, and breathe myself to sleep. And tomorrow give Lucy another chance. Give this whole huge jumping ship experiment another chance and stop being so sad.

inspiration pieces

Looking up through the lens in the backyard morning light.

It's the day-before-big-shipment here in Kampala. My new home is currently awash with wax-print and batik. Today's major task is to photograph the new products (check out the new garden theme, below) and start updating the website. FedEx comes tomorrow to box it all up and send it off on a metal bird - to arrive in Boynton Beach, Florida, just 2 days later (barring any customs issues).

I've only been in Kampala for a week, but since I'm used to shorter trips, I have had a hard time dropping the "hit-the-ground- running" mentality. I wonder how long that will take. Do you wake up one day and "wait a second, I LIVE here" is no longer a thought?

In the meantime, the days have been spent on fabric research (primer coming soon). Many of One Mango Tree's newest customers are wholesalers who will buy in bulk. Combining the need for bulk fabrics with an emphasis on an all-African supply chain means that we need a new understanding of the fabric markets here in East Africa.

The fabrics in these photos are indicative of a subtle change in direction. On the right is The Original bag in a Tanzanian batik. On the left, amongst the musa acuminata is the Lunch Bag in a Congolese wax-print that Noela was able to pick up.

There's been a push lately for us to move into clothing - first from the Global Exchange buyers in LA, and now here in uganda with potential fashion design volunteers and a growing global market for beautiful, fair trade clothes. I find myself dreaming of kanga sundresses and wax-print wrap skirts - would people buy them?

Here is the proof - a couple of great finds related to African fashion and ethical fashion:

NY Times - Revealing New Layers of African Fashion
Blog - AfricaStyl

weaving

<-- my new home.

Old habits die hard. I took a "lunch break" today at Kabira - an hour and a half of pineapple juice, good-fat/bad-fat salad, and straight up equatorial sunshine. With no sun block. I've gone and done it; roasted myself to a tomato-y shade of mzungu stupidity. I may hide inside all day tomorrow so as to avoid the well-deserved snickering of passerby.

Really though, I'm thoroughly grateful to be here. Even this nasty sunburn is charming. As is the constant parade of tiny ants that march resolutely down my bathroom wall and onto my toothbrush (which now resides in the fridge). Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL Uganda. I've been in the country now for approximately 48 hours. I spent my first daylight hours in the country chasing down internet - finally landing at a compact, hot and dusty cafe in downtown Kampala. Colin and I hit up Mama Ashanti's last night for some of Kofi's awesome jollof rice, chicken stew, plantains and coleslaw, finished with spiced tea and philosophizing.

One of my first stops in Uganda is always to visit Kizito the artist, so we had tea at Makerere this morning and daydreamed about partnerships with his art school, NIAAD, and One Mango Tree. Tomorrow he will lead the world's reddest white girl on a quest to find bulk wax-print fabric for new One Mango Tree orders.

And, perhaps the best surprise thus far in my 48 hours - a trip to Kevin and Gavin's home yoga studio in Munyonyo on the shores of Lake Victoria. Their studio opens up into their backyard, with views of Lake Vic in the distance, and an almost finished thatched-roof banda that will fit about 22 students. I couldn't have asked for a better yoga experience, finished with mugs of tea in their kitchen, meeting this Kampala yoga community for the first time.

So here's gratitude again, as I think about the myriad experiences that made this reality into MY reality - and where two solid threads of my existence - Africa and yoga - have finally woven together.

suspended

Northwest/KLM sent me an email the other day to let me know they'd changed my travel plans. They thought I might enjoy a nice little side trip to the Detroit airport - it eliminated 6 hours I would have spent in DC, but I got to experience the magnificent light show tunnel with atmospheric music that connects Terminal C to Terminal A. Most people on the moving walkways were too tripped out by the rainbow lights to actually walk (myself included).

For me it's a strange suspension in the time-less space of travel. I flew backwards to fly forwards - at least that's how my mind is reading it. A DC-Amsterdam flight would have left at 6:30 PM. I took a one hour flight backwards to arrive in Amsterdam at precisely the same time. Such is life.

Nothing really changes, and I arrive in Entebbe at 9 PM local time. I absolutely cannot wait.

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.