We are home!

The fogginess caused by jet lag is starting to wane, but it is still very weird to be back home. I mean, everything looks famliar, but different too. It is great to see our family and friends and get caught up, of course. But we also feel a tug that occasionally means we have no idea which world we belong in.

The first clue to this was when we stopped in Amsterdam for 7 hours en route home. We went into the city and a look at the huge stone buildings, orderly streets and grey-clad citizens on neat bicycles was jarring to say the least. Says I to the doctor: "How can two such places exist in the same world?"

It's the same here - the rows and rows of Halloween candy in our local drugstore, the conversations about which restaurant is best of the zillion that have sprung up in our neighborhood (entrees $24 please), the empty streets and sidewalks. Okay, so there are some cars and occasionally people walking their dogs or pushing a baby stroller - a stroller, not a cloth attaching the baby to the mom's back like velcro - but it's quiet. No boda-bodas, no matatus honking their little horns like mosquitos, no stream of people walking, walking, walking.

The other thing we have noticed that is new since we left: There is a very evident and loud disgust with the political situation here. It's not just the war in Iraq, though we hear plenty about that, but it's a kind of inability of the citizens to hold their heads high. From our friends to the local media to the New York Times, there is a feeling in the air that things are beyond repair. Disgust is the only word we can think of to describe it. In Uganda, the people look at us as having everything we want, being fat and free (and rich). They have so little, but one thing they have is pride in their country, corruption and history aside. Hmm.

This blog is just about done. But first, I promise to post our pictures and provide a link to them. And maybe later on write just a short something on what reverse culture shock really is, and if we figure out how to keep the red dirt of Kampala under our fingernails at the same time as being our clean American selves. And mainly, how we can keep our experience from feeling like a dream rather than the reality it is.

Well done!

Yes, Theresa, I mean you. It is just about time to leave here but before we do, you need to stand up and take a bow. Not for your role as (by far) the primary blogger, although that deserves a standing ovation itself. No, this is about the OTHER stuff you have done during our little Ugandan adventure. As our British friends said to us after we walked the Cotswold Way: “Well done!”

I was lucky. I came here with a very organized purpose and structure. I knew what I supposed to do, generally speaking, and my host was a well-established newspaper with all sorts of built-in organizational and support structures. Theresa came knowing she would do something, but with NO idea what that would be. Ha. No problem. It’s been so great to see how much she accomplished, how many connections she made, and what a difference she made for so many people in Uganda. It’s a gigantic part of the reason why we had such a rich time here -- and why we are as sad to leave so many people and things as we are excited to be returning home to so many others.

I can’t and won’t catalog everything, although “catalog” itself isn’t a bad choice of words because one of her legacies will be in the realm of libraries – the organizing of books at the orphanage, but especially, the fact that those children are finally starting to READ the books, or have other read to them. This is huge.

Speaking of the children: They are everywhere in our photos, and often swarming around Theresa. I chose the photo here, taken at dinner at Prossy's house, because who would have thought one of the things she would accomplish would be teaching a gang of kids to do the hokey-pokey? (They were very quick studies, especially the girls!)

The women: She became part of the Bead for Life family, and a personal part, at that, with her close – sometimes emotional – relationships with the women who make the beads, and who are finally finding a life of stability after some of the most unimaginable experiences possible. These women are clinging to Theresa and telling her she cannot leave, and that is a wonderful tribute. She worked hard on this project, bringing both her management skills and her human skills to it. She touched many people; she was touched by them.

The support for me: We knew that I couldn’t do this enormous undertaking without drawing on Theresa’s journalistic and leadership background, and I couldn’t have! Having her help lead all the upcountry training sessions, the management retreat, and critique and contribute ideas to pretty much all of my other programs made the work not only more successful, but a LOT more fun.


Yesterday at her goodbye party at Bead for Life (see photo at top, with her wonderful friend Mary), along with all they said about the work she did for the organization, many of the beaders and staff talked about what Theresa brought them with her wonderful sense of humor. "Thank you for making us laugh," Maureen said. "You have been good medicine for our hearts."


Well done.

Dr. Journalism's Big Day

Last Friday night the New Vision gave a big party to say goodbye to "Dr. Journalism," as Bill is known at the paper. It was a great event, lots of speeches (of which the Ugandans are very fond), gifts, and a presentation of a kanzu (traditional white tunic) to Bill and a butusi (traditional dress; yes, with the pointy sleeves) to me. While mine has yet to be tailored, Bill was able to don his immediately. He handed out certificates to those who had completed his training sessions and shook hands with everyone - all in the kanzu.

I must admit that I kept expecting him to bless someone, since he looked just like a priest. The other picture is of him, pre-kanzu, with the managing editor, Els De Temmerman, and one of the top editors.

The folks at the New Vision have been amazing to us all along, but the thing that struck me at this event was how much they value Bill and how much they like him. Of course, I am biased, but it is so obvious - they hang on his every word. He got the title "Dr." because of a weekly newsletter he writes critiquing the paper. (This morning I was at the paper for a meeting and someone called him over by saying, "Doctor! I need to ask you something.")

Many of the speakers at the dinner said they now think "what would Dr. Journalism say" before they write. There was a theme to the comments beyond that: they learned to pay attention to readers, and to interview the affected parties instead of reinterpreting press releases. (Bill hammered home two questions they were to ask with every article: Who Cares?, and So What?) When Bill got up to speak, I was so proud of him -- of what he has done, the friends he has made in the journalism community here, and how important he has been to journalism in Uganda.

So now we are really wrapping it up: Our car, little topapa, has been sold and we are on foot again, the bank account is closed, our last mail at Matthias's PO box has been collected, there has been a farewell party, and we have been graced with traditional garb. More about goodbyes in the coming days ...

Getting from here to there

There are many ways to get from here to there in Uganda. None of them involves multilane highways, smooth roads or trains, but all of them are interesting in their own way. There is walking, of course: even on the major roads between cities we never drive far without seeing at least a couple people walking along the side of the road, and when it is market day in the nearby village there is a stream of people.

There are the dangerous buses, which rocket down those highways without regard to potholes or, for that matter, little Topapa with me gripping the wheel and Theresa trying not to look as they speed by with perhaps an inch or two to spare. There are boda-bodas -- bicycles and motorcycles both -- that are one of the most popular forms of mass transit. (Yes, they are mass transit, because sometimes there may be as many as four passengers on a single motorbike.)

And then there are the ubiquitous matatus -- the "taxis," as they call them, really little minibuses with a stated capacity of 14 that is often exceeded. You see them EVERYWHERE in the city, darting in and out, and on every road around the country.

And the place they all come from is this....the Old Taxi Park in Kampala.

Well, they don't all come from here. There's a New Taxi Park too, and naturally there are smaller taxi parks in towns and villages all around Uganda. But this is the grandfather taxi park. Taxis from here go to destinations east of Kampala, and as you can perhaps see, it is a large challenge just to find the right one. There are little red signs marking destinations, which helps a little. There is a small marketplace. There are people with luggage they have to cram inside, pile on the top or tie on the back. (Can you see a small mattress tied to the back of one of the taxis in the right foreground? You see those everywhere, apparently as people move from one home to another.)

All aboard!

A Ugandan wedding

Thanks for all the emails about Fatuma. Yes, she is an inspiration. Now for some more Ugandan culture:

A few weeks ago our friend Jennifer invited us to her sister’s wedding reception (actually, one of her many half-sisters from her father’s co-wives). Eric was still here and we all went to experience the Ugandan event.

The setting was a lovely green field stretching down to Lake Victoria. The field was decorated like a wedding cake: white pillars with large orange bows and flowers everywhere, even a huge wedding cake rotating high on a platform. In the middle was a “castle for the bride,” as it was translated for us. This was a kind of raised room with a canopy, all covered in white and orange, with tiny white lights and candles illuminating the table for the wedding party.

The reception included music from some of the best bands and pop stars in Kampala, good music with lots of drums. The wedding party arrived in a car tied with huge ribbons. This is customary – we see them every weekend all over the city, cars with ribbons stretching over the roof and in front of the radiator, sometimes decorated with a huge bow, sometimes other things, like a big straw hat.

Everything was similar to an American wedding except for one thing. When it was time, the bride and groom cut the cake and then the groom sat in a chair and the bride knelt in front of him to feed him a piece of cake. Okay, so there is little women’s liberation here, but still! (Girls and women often kneel here. If I -- a white, older woman -- meet a young girl, sometimes she will fall to her knees with her hands folded, mumbling some welcome very quietly. Even our housegirl, Prossy, will kind of genuflect if you do something for her. It makes me very uncomfortable. Usually I tell them to stand up please!)

After speeches and lots of music, everyone got into a line to deliver the gifts. Eric very bravely took ours up (we didn’t know the bride or groom, and we were the only mzungus there – it was slightly embarrassing). And there was dinner – traditional Ugandan food eaten with the fingers, no silverware. We are getting pretty good at picking up rice with our fingers.

And then the dancing started. Again, Eric represented us ably. And that was it for our wedding experience – we went home much earlier than the native partiers. It was nice of Jennifer to include us in her family event; maybe someday the groom will kneel in front of the bride at a Ugandan wedding, but I won’t hold my breath!

Living with demons

Yesterday I was at the BeadforLife office interviewing some women with an audio recorder. I have written many biographies of these women, but the US office wants some recordings so people can hear their voices. Thanks to the cute little recorder that Eric donated and Anna brought, I can capture the soft, lilting cadence (and high ululations!) of these ladies.

But I’ve had some problems. I recorded one woman, Fatuma, a new beader, two weeks ago, only to discover that she is so soft spoken that the recorder (on voice activation setting) kept cutting out. She was eloquent – she was abducted when she was 13 years old by the rebels in the north, then released, then discovered she was pregnant. A British woman took her and her son to Kampala but abandoned her here. Then she married and had three more kids – one born with disfigured limbs. When she was pregnant again, her husband died. As is normal when this happens, his family took everything she had – except the kids. Fatuma had no money, no prospects, so she moved to a slum in Kampala. The source of water is runoff from beside the railroad tracks. There is illness, violence, stench - the stuff of poverty.

So yesterday I asked, with apologies, if Fatuma could tell me her story again, painful as it is. We talked about how people in the US can read about something and still not feel it, but when they hear it from the person herself, they begin to understand. And she was willing.

But this time the telling was different. We sat in a little spare room at the office, me in a wooden chair holding the little recorder, and Fatuma sitting tall in a wicker chair. Wearing a blue headcloth, she was extremely pretty -- very black as Ugandans go, startling white teeth, young (about 30) and strong-looking (that is her picture above). This time Fatuma skimmed over the part about being abducted and went on to talk about how she has bought a popcorn machine and moved out of the slum, thanks to BeadforLife. That was fine, but then I asked her to please tell about what happened to her. So she started, now in more detail.

It was precisely 10 in the morning, she said, almost whispering. She was in school and the students were starting to go for their morning break. Suddenly the teachers realized the school was surrounded by rebels. “They let the ones in P1, P2 and some of P3 go,” Fatuma said. “Everyone else had to go out the door in a line.” Some, like her, they took. Others had a different fate. If they tried to resist or to help someone else, they were killed. “And the way they were killed was not good,” Fatuma said, looking at me with eyes that truly were pleading. “They took pangas (machetes) …” Suddenly she stopped. Her hands just lay in her lap. She was no longer looking at me – her eyes were not seeing anything in the little room, they were just seeing something that has never been erased from her memory. We sat that way for awhile, she was breathing hard, then started gulping as she tried to talk. I turned off the recorder (I am no Mike Wallace!), and told her to stop. I put my arms around her, held her stiff hands in mine and she finally started crying. I tried to talk to her about her children, how they had a future, how she did too now, how it was time to look ahead and not back. How strong she had been, things like that. But what can you say, really?

She said she tells her children that such things can happen in life and you need to be prepared for them. And she told me she was lucky. She was released by the rebels and some soldiers found her along the road, first thinking she was a rebel too. When she convinced them she was not, they took her home. The luckiest thing: she did not get AIDS. And she raised the son she bore from this experience. He is now 16.

Later, a bunch of us from BeadforLife were having lunch. I told Fatuma’s story, and one of the young women on the staff said, “Did she commit atrocities?” I knew where this was going. Bill and I have both read “The Aboke Girls,” a book about abduction in the north. The girls who were taken were sometimes forced to kill each other and people they met accidentally. And when they returned (those that did) others were quick to condemn them. I said I didn’t know if Fatuma had done this, and what difference did it make anyway. “What would you do?” I asked this young woman. She didn’t answer, but I could see what she was thinking: she is a Buganda and Fatuma is Acholi – tribal differences run deep.

Later in the day I interviewed a young man whose parents were burned in a cult murder in 2003. He wants to be a nurse. And a woman who ran from the north when soldiers were cooking people in pots – I asked her if she saw them and she said, “Of course, it was right in the road.” She is raising five kids, and her two sisters.

These things are not distant history, they are alive in people’s minds and in their hearts -- and in today’s reality. Man’s inhumanity to man can take the shape of pangas and rebels, or of judgment and bias. Or of war close-up or in a far-off country full of people different from you.

I was sorry to have made Fatuma remember it all again. But her story is important for a thousand reasons. Hearing it in her voice, seeing it in her face ... it's something I will never forget. I wish I knew what to do about it.

Blog pressure

Okay, okay. All of you who have been emailing us saying we haven't updated the blog, we know. We are one month away from coming home, and things are getting a little frantic. Our car, little Topapa ("be patient"), has a For Sale sign on it, sadly enough. We have had such fun in that car! Our friend Fr. Matthias returned from the USA and was kidnapped by the archibishop to be a vice chancellor, whatever that is. He now wears a collar all the time; we had never seen him in one before. Bead sales continue, beaders tell sad stories, and success stories too. Mostly, Eric tacked on a week to his visit and has been making himself useful. He experienced an African stomach bug (about half our visitors have had this memorable experience), and then chronic hiccups cured only by his mother's advice: drink water upside down. Despite trips to the bathroom he has written an entire library program for Sister Schools - the orphanage in Kajjansi is the first beneficiary, but not the last.

So life for us goes on. We will try to be better correspondents in the next few weeks.

Per those questions about how we will feel leaving: both things are true. We will miss Uganda horribly: our friends here and their open faces, the little parafin lamps at night on the walk to Pavement Tandoori, the "jams," the color, the dust - the difference! We are on a round of dinner with Ugandan friends.

But we will be so happy to see our family, those growing grandkids with missing teeth and new inches, Sarah's new house, Anna about to be married, Kate the teacher - oh, we are anxious to see all. And to see the Northwest and friends: the mountain hikes, a hug for the kayaks, dinners at Fred and Robin's and Taz's, rush tickets at the Rep.

But not yet. We are very much still here, soaking it up, eating matoke and savoring each adventure as it comes. Even if it doesn't appear in the blog.

Signs and sayings

We have been upcountry again, taking Eric to Murchison Falls, our last safari here most likely. We never tire of the beautiful landscape and creatures there. Okay, so Eric has not become an avid birdwatcher, but he did get into the lions and elephants. We got into a huge rainstorm on the little boat up the river and he turned into Cap’n Eric tying canvas down to try to keep us all dry. (It might have been the cute Italian girls onboard that turned him into a savior …) And, yes, we had a “small problem” with the car on the return – the starter wouldn’t work so we had to leave the motor on until we reached a garage with a wrench (“a spanner”) in Masindi. What is it with this road???

As we dodged potholes on the journey I was reminded about the signs we have seen. We always write down the oddest ones so I have a little collection (see Steve? I’m getting to this finally!). And we try to write down the odd or endearing things that people say too. So here’s a list:

Signs we’ve seen

• Termite Construction Company


• “Suffer now, enjoy tomorrow” (slogan outside a primary school!)


• “Love many, trust few” (slogan outside a boutique called Friends)


• “The rich also cry” (outside a trading center stand)


• Talk and Work Motor Shop


• Be Patient Painters


• Hope in Jesus & Mom Mary (name of a shop)


• Galileo Surveying Company (Adam, we think this is a good name for a survey co.!)
  
  Sayings we’ve heard
  
  


• “It is finished” (nothing on the menu actually available, so this is a common comment when dining, as in “The chips are finished.”)


• “It will not rain until 4” (every Ugandan knows what will happen with the weather and they will tell you without any hesitation what will happen. Unfortunately, they are often wrong.)


• “Nice time” (just an expression, kind of like “ciao”)


• “You are very welcome” (whenever you enter a place, this is what you hear. They mean it!)


• “Are you born again?” (lots of shopkeepers will ask you this. Not sure if the price goes up if you say no)


• “I’m sorry” (They say this whenever you talk about something bad. So if you say, “I was walking and got caught in a huge storm,” they say, “I’m sorry.” We now resist arguing that it is not their fault; the truth is, they are genuinely sorry you had that experience.)


• “Deep in the village” (this is one of our favorites. I always picture a village way, way out in a dark placewhere no one goes. In reality, it refers to some practice that only happens away from the population centers, but it can just be in any village. I mean, we have been “deep in the village!”)


• “Here in Uganda we have a small problem” (Preface to something that is really a BIG problem, like war)


• "When did you produce?" ("Produce" means give birth)


• "First let me laugh at you." (The parking attendant downtown said this when I handed her two parking slips, when I needed to give her 14. After she had her laugh, she ran to a booth, where we should have gone, to get them for us.)
  
  There are many more, and we will start another list. The Ugandan people are very sweet and soft-spoken. Our friend Jon jokes that instead of worrying about pickpockets you are more likely to have someone running after you to return your wallet if you drop it. Of course, as anywhere, we do hear stories about theft and violence, but we choose to focus on the better aspects of life here!

Check it out!

Our blog friends will certainly want to check out Theresa's wonderful article about Murchison Falls, which will be published in the print edition of the Seattle Times Travel section on Sunday, and has now been posted online. Here's the link to the story, and be sure to go to the photo gallery for the gorgeous photos by our friend "Dr. Charles," Charles Steinberg:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2003829144_uganda120.html

More later, we are heading for downtown with Eric to buy a guitar so he can compose a little African music while he is here!

"Isn't it like being at the zoo?"

That's what people wonder sometimes about these national parks, where you can get so close to the animals and they seem, at first, so tame. Last weekend for example when Theresa and I visited Kidepo National Park -- Uganda's most remote, on the border of Sudan -- we took this picture of zebras from our porch, and there were also buffalos, hartbeest, oribi, water bucks, jackals, and the amusing warthogs grazing in the same grassland a short stone's throw from us.

There are constant reminders that these animals are still very wild, and still very much in a threatening environment. When the jackals wandered through the field, the water bucks -- who easily could kick the little animals across the savannah -- still watched them warily. When two male zebras got into a territorial dispute, they didn't care that they were in the shadow of a human resort: they galloped wildly after each other, biting and screaming; the pursued crashed into a tree and fell to the ground and the pursuer pounced on him. The buffalos snort at you meaningfully, and sometimes take a few steps in your direction, and whenever you walk up to the main lodge at night someone comes to accompany you. And most of all -- at night you are awakened by the sound of the deep, long, loud roars of the lions, sounding so very close you are glad you do have walls around you. That sound must send chills through all the rest of the animals.

The vultures overhead, the bones on the ground, the scars on the big male lion's forehead -- these animals are on their own, and nobody will be there at feeding time with a nice dependable meal. This isn't the Africa of 100 years ago, before the Great White Hunters and local poachers decimated the animal population. But it's not a peaceful little Queen Anne neighborhood, either. That's what makes it so wonderful.

What decade is this?

There are lots of contrasts between life here and at home, but one of the biggest is the use of ledger books (okay, carbon paper too).

• Bill’s New Vision driver picks him up in the morning and takes him to the paper. At the gate the driver has to sign a ledger book.


• When we set up a bank account, the entire transaction was done via a ledger book.


• The other day we went to a movie (The Simpson’s – the Ugandans did not laugh, but we did), and the ticket taker made a note of the ticket in a ledger book.


• We went to the post office to pick up some books Kate thoughtfully sent and our errand was noted in not one, but two ledger books, each at different tables in the same room. (The picture is of a post office ledger book.)


• At our neighborhood grocery you pay a deposit on beer and coke bottles, then when you return them the clerk carefully writes down that you did so in a ledger book, what kind of beverage you returned, and how much you should get back (or have deducted from your new purchase). Then he fills out a receipt in a little book and gives it to you with a carbon copy.


• At the entrance to every national park, you have to sign a ledger book.
  

I am doing some work helping set up a library at an orphanage. Eric is coming so we thought it would be great to have him build a little database to record the books. But the woman helping me, a British professor who teaches in New York and who has lots of experience in Uganda, suggested -- well, you know, using a ledger book.

Thumbs up for stickers!

Sarah sent a zillion stickers to us awhile back to spread around to kids, and we’ve been doing it. You wouldn’t think they’d be so exciting, but they are – the kids gather ‘round to get them. In fact, in Mbale outside a slum I gave some to a few kids, and suddenly there was a whole gang surrounding us, all with their hands out. When I ran out of stickers, we had to kind of pry them away from our car so we could leave.

The kids here are like that – they are the cutest, but they are there in swarms at the sign of anything exciting. Here are some pictures of some of the kids enjoying our stickers – they love not only the stickers themselves, but the background paper too – you can see it on a couple of them here. And they seem to like putting stickers all over their heads, for some reason.

Anyway, they have fun, and we have half a zillion still remaining so more fun is on the way.

Outside our window...

Of course there are the monkeys, one of which came into the living room one day while Theresa was working away at the computer (did we mention that?), and then another one just came in the bathroom window and was satisfied with admiring himself in the mirror before I shooed him out.

And of course also outside our window are the Hadada Ibises, which may have a nice-sounding name but their actual sounds, well, the demure bird book describes it as "very, very loud," and Anna, who slept the closest to their early morning hangout spot, will agree with that, since they were her jarring wakeup call ever day.

The latest wildlife outside our window, though, is much much cuter. This is (we're pretty sure) a Pearl-Spotted Owlet. Anna figures in this one, too, because she discovered it outside the guest bedroom window the night we took this photo. Since then there have been multiple sightings. One night an Owlet woke Theresa up in the middle of the night when it crashed against our window, and freaked her out slightly when she went over to investigate and found it pressed against the screen looking in at her. And we have now seen a whole family of them, four or five together. What good company! My New Vision driver said if you hear an owl cry, it means someone is dying, but other than the obvious (someone is ALWAYS dying), we choose not to believe that, since we have heard these critters crying quite a lot.

That, plus the turtle (and whole monkey family) at the pool, and many other much more attractive sorts of birds right here at Salama Springs -- who needs a game park!

A Visitor's Post

A visitor's post has been requested, since by now Bill and Theresa blend in and go about daily life as if they were Ugandan. (You might call them uh-oh Oreos because they are Mzungu on the outside and Ugandan inside, especially with Theresa's clothes and Bill's brave driving). They have kept me busy seeing and doing as much as possible in my short stay.

My cousin Eric sent me off to pave the way for us to save the world and this developing nation, but I must admit I ran out of time and barely made a dent. Now I leave it in his more capable hands.

It is a BIG job to affect change in the world and I note all of the BIG things for him to prepare for:
Town and street names, fruit, traffic jams, garbage piles, flowers and trees, termite mounds, women's rear-ends, distances between one place and another, long-drops (well, these have a small hole, but great depth), women's traditional dresses, potholes, speed bumps, people's hearts and faith, the amount of respect for authority, huge animals, the breadth of poverty, the amount of children, money amounts (1,000 shillings is nothing), vans for taxis crammed with passengers, and wide smiles.

The only things that are smaller than we are used to are the spaces between cars on the road, the ants, mosquitos, and Bill and Theresa. For those of you who are worried, they look very healthy and are beautiful despite the red dust on their shoes. I am grateful for their hospitality and to have an inside glimpse into a piece of life in Uganda.

Anna of Africa!

There have been many adventures for our niece Anna, who arrived on July 6. We promised her parents we would take care of her, but it's hard! First of all, her bag did not arrive with her. After many, many incantations of "NIE" (Nothing Is Easy), she finally got it on July 10. Adventure number 1.

Then, just after she got here I took her for a walk in the neighborhood. We walked up the road by fancy houses, then into a slum area, then I saw out of the corner of my eye something I thought she would find culturally interesting. I whispered to her to look in a small mud hut to see some men drinking this weird drink made of dried millet called marua (sp?) out of a pot with long straws made of weeds. The drink looks like mud, honestly. We were spotted, and some guys pulled us into the hut (literally - I thought my arm would come off). The lead guy then pulled a straw out of another guy's mouth and offered it to me. Uh, no thanks. I mean, the marua would have been interesting to drink, but not quite out of that straw! (I had just that day read how people contract TB from those straws.) We backed out of the hut, apologizing for our bad manners, and walked on back home. Hmm. Adventure number 2.

Then on Sunday we went to the Kampala Pentecostal Church. This church is famous for 45 minutes of singing before a fire and brimstone sermon, so we thought it would be another cultural experience, which it was. She held hands with some other women and they all prayed for each other, and the minister talked, complete with big-screen graphics copyrighted by Encarta and Microsoft, about "standing your ground" against Satan. All well and good. And then he talked about the dangers that homosexuals pose for Kampala when the Commonwealth Heads of Government meet here in November. We aren't sure how the two are related, but whatever. After two hours we felt very ready to stand our ground with our shield of faith and sword of truth, etc. Adventure number 3. Good thing she was still jet-lagged.

I had scheduled Anna to coach some basketball with a friend's group, Sports Outreach Ministry. So on Monday evening we went to a boarding school called "Never Again," where some high school-aged former street kids were awaiting her. They were big - but she just dove in and started them doing drills. She was great, and they listened. Soon she had them waving their hands in unison and moving in lines. Until they decided it was just more fun to shoot baskets, and then it was sort of chaotic, but they loved having her. And afterwards I asked one of them how the coaching was, and he thought for a few minutes and said very seriously, "She is good." They didn't want her to leave, though it was dark and no one could even see the basket. We had a little trouble getting out of there.

I'm not sure if it's part of Adventure number 4 or a new adventure, but it took us an hour to get to the other side of town where we live because of the usual Kampala traffic. At one point, I think I heard Anna yelp, but otherwise she was brave in the midst of boda-bodas, taxis and crazy drivers. Even Bill, the driver, looked kind of nervous in that jam!

There have been more adventures, like having Goretti the tailor make Anna an outfit (I mean, she didn't have any clothes except mine and her travel ones for four days!). The women at the tailor shop worked hard on a head cloth for her, and her new outfit looks great. And then the Murchison Falls van breakdown - but she can tell that story for herself, we've already had a similar one in the blog. And at the BeadforLife village she was "blessed" by the women with blue beads.

It's so much fun to have Anna, and we are TRYING to take care of her, but this is Africa, after all.

Under the mango tree

So last week we (mainly Bill) were training reporters in Jinja. At a break, one of them pulled us to the side of the building to show us a loaded mango tree. They were knocking at the hanging mangoes with a long stick - the mangoes would fall to the ground and they'd scoop them up, bite into them and pull the sticky mango meat off the skin, then spit out the peel. And ... ah ... they were in heaven. And they handed us fresh mangoes off the tree, we peeled them a bit with our fingernails, and ate, cutting big bites with our teeth up against the pit. Our faces were smeared with orange mango, our fingers dripping, and it was wonderful! For the rest of the day our hands smelled of wonderful mango. And now all our Ugandan friends say, "You ate mango off the tree?" and they get all mushy because that's how they grew up in the villages.

Later, Bill answered questions under yet another mango tree, surrounded by reporters and editors. One of the reporters asked about whether he should have asked to have his name withheld from a story during the war in the north. He said he wrote about dogs eating the remains of the 300 villagers massacred and was afraid the rebels or the army would come after him. Bill said, it depends, but it's best to use your name, everyone knew it was you anyway. He agreed. Another editor told a recent story of two reporters who went to a town in the Karamajong area, where they were reporting on something unpopular with the locals. The people saw their notebooks and threatened to lynch them (a serious threat, since lynchings are common, as are stonings). So one reporter took his notes into the latrine and photographed them with a small camera, then hid the camera. He figured maybe the notes would be recovered somehow. They didn't lynch the reporters - but they took their notes, and he later wrote a story from the photographed notes.

So we looked at each other. We don't have this kind of journalistic experience - at all! Who are we to tell them to be accurate, write interesting leads, organize their stories so they are readable? We feel like mangoes hanging on the tree - a little sweet, inadvertent, and mainly innocent.

Especially for Sarah...

And she knows why. But we thought the rest of you would enjoy this as well. We went hiking down into the steep Chambura Gorge in western Uganda in search of chimpanzees, and look who we found instead! Quite a spectacular (and large!) critter.

The gorge is beautiful -- very rain-forest/junglelike with thick tall ferns everywhere, towering trees reaching high high up trying to find the sun, sounds of loud birds all around. Most of them were invisible in the foliage but we did catch a sight of a couple huge casqued hornbills.

We were walking in elephant footsteps and hippo footsteps, gulp, but they mostly are just there at night, right? Our ranger guide also found plenty of sign of chimps, including their own footprints and places where the grass was bent down indicating they had gone by not that long ago. But they were proving to be true wild things, and we never saw them. At one place the ranger pointed to a clump of bushes. There's a certain kind of fruit the chimps like that makes them intoxicated, apparently, and after stumbling around drunkenly and playing pranks on each other, they go sleep it off in the bushes. Sometimes they disappear for weeks at a time, he said, as he tried to make the mzungus feel better about not seeing this latest type of wildlife.

It was OK with us. The place was amazing even without the chimps, and like Theresa said once before, we actually like it that the animals aren't all perfectly cooperative about presenting themselves on cue.

And heck, this spider was nothing to sneeze at! Enjoy it, Sarah.

What they hear and what we say and vice versa

We often get communications wrong, it’s just hard to understand two kinds of English.

Just now Bill went down to check on the guys who are washing little Topapa, our car (it’s been raining and the car is now red-mud, not blue). One of them said there was a wire in the tire, and it was leaking. “This one,” as they refer to each other, said he could fix it and Bill figured he’d patch it. Then Bill went down later, and the guy had put the spare on. That’s what he meant by fix it. Bill came back, shaking his head about how we get about 80 percent of what we hear.

Here’s another example. On the way home from the airport after dropping off Steve and Bobbie, our driver/friend Elias was talking as usual about the wonders of the USA, how the streets are paved with gold, etc. It was about 10 p.m. and we were driving through downtown Kampala. The bustling businesses on Kampala Road were quiet, their doorways empty. I had a sudden vision of downtown Seattle doorways after hours, and in my usual attempt at reality, I told Elias, “In the US, the homeless would be sleeping in all these doorways.” Whereupon he paused, and then replied, “People here really don’t like homos for some reason …” It took a good five minutes for me to realize he thought I had said “homos,” not “homeless.” Somewhere he had learned (or learnt, as they say) that term for homosexuals. What kind of vision of US city doorways at night must my statement have created for Elias???

Actually, homosexuality is a crime here, and it is taken very seriously. There is a lot of mob justice for things like stealing and adultery: lynchings, beatings and stonings are common, especially outside the city. I don’t know about homosexuality, but I suspect it prompts the same reaction. The American gay friends we have met here are careful. Probably a good idea. Elias has driven some of them, and he wants to be accepting of his mzungu clients!

Anyway, we continue to stumble along. Mpole mpole (slowly by slowly).

Where we've been

I know, I know. We haven't posted since that Game of All Games. The main reason can be seen in this picture of Bill's brother Steve and his wife Bobbie. They braved 40 hours of travel (a missed connection catapulted them into an international airport endurance test) to come see us, and just after they arrived we took off on safari to Lake Bunyonyi (green, terraced hills), Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (gorillas), and Queen Elizabeth National Park (elephants, etc.). Then they learned about how to dodge boda-bodas in Kampala. And how to have some African clothes made for them right in the Bugolobi Market. That's why they look so, uh, Ugandan in the picture!

We had a great time together, gawking at birds and animals, drinking wine in assorted tented camps, bandas and safari resorts. And we laughed. For some reason we laughed alot. They now know what a short call is, and a long drop. And lots more. Now they are gone and our little flat is back to being boringly organized and quiet.

Before S&B came, we spent five days in Soroti in eastern Uganda doing journalism training. Really charming little town with crumbling colonial buildings and fringed bicycles. More on that later.

Okay, hungry blog-readers. I will attempt to catch up with the writer's trick of bullet points. Later I will try to post the pix on Flickr, though that takes HOURS with our connection.

Highlights from the safari trip:

• 10 gorillas! We hiked only about 15 minutes to find a giant silverback and his entourage right on the trail.



• One hour with the gorillas; the family played together more peacefully than most human families. One baby almost ran over my feet.



• Disappointing gorilla pictures - hey, they don't call it the Impenetrable Forest for nothing!



• Two leopards at Queen Elizabeth. Well, it might have been the same one, but we saw it twice. They are the most beautiful animals in the world.



• Great Blue Turaco at Bwindi; big beautiful bird glimpsed from the car.



• Roads! Twisting, turning, gulp-inducing, slurping roads. Ezra (let's give him a plug: Impala Car Hire) kept us from getting stuck or worse.



• Friendly people, but oddly enough something we have seldom seen here: children with their hands outstretched in Bwindi. Some asked for pens, since that's obviously what they have been given. So different from the usual cheerful greetings that follow us. Tourists have a lot to answer for.



• Dead hippo in Kazinga Channel being eaten by a crocodile. Ah, nature ...



• No chimpanzees even though we tracked them for a couple of hours. Ah, nature ... no guarantees.



• Six days of non-stop stimulation, thanks to a beautiful country that we are just beginning to understand.

Uganda Oyee!

Saturday we went to the football (soccer to us) Big Game: Uganda Cranes vs. Nigeria Super Eagles. Here’s the deal about the game: in March, the same two teams played and Uganda was behind 1-0 until nearly the final second when it scored the tying goal, but the referee claimed it was invalid. The whole country went nuts, and still was until Saturday’s rematch. The last time Uganda beat Nigeria was in 1978.

This is a pretty laid-back place, but beginning early in the morning you could feel the energy in the air. Horns were honking, and matatus, bodas and assorted trucks sported Ugandan flags – and frantic fans.

We had been warned that we needed to go to the stadium about mid-day, though the game didn’t start until 4. The traffic would be in what they always call “a jam” though this time it would be worse than usual (and usual is totally unmanageable). We could take a boda, or wait in traffic forever – or walk. (Actually, there was also a train, newly refurbished for the event, the first time in 14 years the train actually worked! But it wasn’t practical for us since it left from downtown.) We decided to walk because it wasn’t that hot a day, and it was about 4 miles, easy-peasy for us Northwest hikers.

It became a mzungu parade when our young friends Anna and Jon, and their three friends who are working in Rwanda joined us. We walked through neighborhoods of mud houses and little vegetable stands, and then onto the main road toward the modern Mandela Stadium. Kids waved and people gave the victory sign along the way – Bill and I were wearing our new Uganda jerseys, and some of the others had paper hats made out of New Vision newspapers (sound familiar, Seahawks fans?). As we got closer, the crowds grew, until we finally squeezed our way in and found seats.

It was noisy. Uganda fans blew long yellow horns and whistles, had painted their bodies yellow and red -- which, along with the black of their skin, are the national colors - and cheered just like at home. A couple of things were different, though: no beer or alcohol is allowed in the stadium, a good idea since a year or so ago several people were killed in riots as they left the stadium. And the president came into the stadium with no fanfare, just an entourage of guards. “He should sit in the cheap seats,” I told Bill, but of course no dice (I guess that isn’t different after all!)

Nigeria made the first goal, and there was depressed silence. Then in the second half, after two penalty kicks, Uganda won! We were wondering what would happen next -- riot police in flack jackets guarded the door to the locker rooms, and the crowd flooded onto the field, people turning summersaults and rolling around on the grass in euphoria. Jon said, “We should get the hell out of here.” But we didn’t want to miss the action – Those still in the stands (like us) yelled “Uganda oyee!,” which is like “Yay Uganda,” only more fun to say. People bumped knuckles in triumph, jumped on each other, waved flags – you know. We finally made our way out of the stadium, and then we could see what was happening in the city!

Crowds lined the roads, yelling and cheering as the stadium-goers paraded by. People, matatus, bodas, bicycles – everyone was on the move through the people lining the streets. Eventually the walkers had to move to the side, single-file along the crumbling shoulders, but the parade continued, all the way back to Bugolobi and, I’m sure, everywhere else. But the seven mzungus walking, some of us in our Ugandan sports gear, got special attention. I was in front in my yellow, red and black, Bill behind me in his Cranes shirt and then the others, all trying to navigate the potholes and deep pits along the road, at the same time as yelling like true fans. Some people laughed out loud when they saw us, and then cheered. (Thomas from Boston thought they were making fun of us, but they weren’t – they love mzungus. As our housegirl said this morning, “They weren’t expecting mzungus to be walking like everyone else.”)

Little kids ran out to high-five us, women and men gave the victory sign, or ran to bump knuckles with us. Everybody cheered at us, from the roadside and from trucks and cars, with some yelling “Weebele!” (Thank you.) We had no idea why they were thanking us, but lots of people also yelled in English, “Thank you for supporting Uganda!” It got darker, but still the people lined the road – there were some bonfires of celebration, which we veered around. Little oil lamps lit the tiny shops and houses. There were so many kids the roadside looked like an orphanage. “Uganda Oyee!,” “Yay, mzungus!,” “Hey Mama mzungu" (that was to me), “Marry me" (that was to Anna).

We finally got close to home and settled into a beer garden to recover. We touched so many hands as we walked along, it was like we were royalty – or, as Anna said, “It was like Beatlemania.”

We will never forget the Big Game, but mostly we will never forget our walk home, where we felt firsthand the pride of the Ugandans in their country. Oyee!

Why did the lion cross the road?

The other night we were having dinner with Ezra, the guide who took us to Murchison and whose car broke down (see earlier post), leaving my brother and me standing along the road while they tried to fix it. It was hot out there, and we even wandered a little down a trail until Philip said, wisely, "I wonder what made this trail?" and we high-tailed it back to the road.

Well, at dinner Ezra said he stayed with his car for 5+ hours after we got a ride, waiting for a mechanic to come. I asked him why he didn't walk back to the head of the falls where there was some shade, and some rangers who maybe could have helped. He said, "Because once I saw a lion cross the road right there where we were ... I wasn't going to walk out there."

Hmm, I guess we know who made the trail. We have heard stories about lions; for example, the old ranger George who guided us at MF told about coming upon a lion close by and talking to him about not eating the poor old ranger. The lion finally walked on where he met 8 people, and killed and ate all of them. I asked Ezra if he believed that story and he said he did NOT believe the one about George talking to the lion, but he DID believe the lion ate the people. The locals here are very terrified of lions, and when you see them in person, how muscular and serious they are, you can tell why.

This post gives me an excuse to publish yet one more lion picture, from the last Murch trip. This lion was crossing the road to see if he could get some kob for dinner.

Art and soup

It's a cloudy afternoon for a change, which does not mean it is cool out. It's more like the temp of the conservatory at Volunteer Park. But it means staying inside isn't so bad, so I can tell you about some of the little things that make our lives here better.

Ever since we got here we have been hoping to find an arts community, with little luck. We know there are great artists here, but where to find them? Then one day a neighbor started talking about how she used to buy art for corporations in Uganda (she is a Ugandan who lived in Sammamish for a few years, small world). She promised to give me a list of galleries and shows. Then one evening last week she showed up with an artist, Jjuuko, and we had an impromptu art show in our living room (which is also our dining room, entry hall, and hallway to bedrooms and bathrooms). Jjuuko propped his paintings everywhere, and his unframed barkcloth work spread on the floor. The place looked great! Transformed from "we are going home sometime" to "now we live here."

When Bill returned from Lira, we went to see Jjuuko's studio, a bungalow where he lives, and works in the garage. He welded his own furniture and the place is full of color and intresting artifacts from Tanzania and Uganda. He has stories about it all; and his art is mostly about Ugandan culture: "timekeepers" (roosters), women carrying old-fashioned jugs for water, etc.

We bought a barkcloth painting of some women at the hairdresser's, and here's why we got the one you see here. The women here spend hours - I mean half a day or more - in beauty saloons (not salons, "saloons"). They come away with plaited hair, some dyed in orange or red stripes, or with shockingly straight hair that stands straight up on their head. Sometimes their hair looks like a feathered hat, other times it is long and dreadlocky. Even women who have little money seem to save enough to get their hair done. There are saloons everywhere, sometimes four of five in the same little "block." So when we saw this painting, we knew it would remind us of the Ugandan women's hair.

We also have four tropical plants in our flat. They soften it up a bit and it's fun to watch them grow, though I think occasionally I hear them asking why they can't go outside with their friends. I might add one more, a red, green and white yam. But not sure where to put it! Things are filling up.

Then we have a gourd like the ones they drink beer from, and a weaver-bird nest with a porcupine needle in it and also a guinea hen feather sticking out from it. Oh, and a little three-legged stool.

And, because the mangos are positively falling from the trees right now, we had cream of mango soup this week - cold soup that tastes like ice cream. Yum.

All those things, plus the fact that a tailor in the market made me a skirt last week, and we actually bought hangers -- you can see that we have a home away from home.

The envelope please...

During the orientation for my fellowship last year, in a section about ethics, they told us we should expect to encounter "brown-envelope journalism" at some point -- that is, stories being written (or not written) in exchange for bribes.

I didn't think much about it, and honestly, didn't really expect to find it, not in any visible way. Wrong! While it's true that any form of ethical impropriety at this level is a fireable offence at New Vision -- and someone was in fact fired last week -- that certainly hasn't wiped it out. When I do the ethics portion of my training out at the rural newspapers, and include a scenario for them to work out in which an official of an NGO (Non-governmental organization, or nonprofit) gives the journalist one of these envelopes "in appreciation for past coverage," they all recognize it, laugh a bit self-consciously, and acknowledge that it is still very much part of the journalism scene.

There are reasons for this. One is that many of the journalists (all of them in the rural papers) are freelancers who make nearly nothing for what they write, and still have to pay for airtime on their mobile phones. One is that the NGOs -- a good number of them anyway -- badly need publicity as a way of showing "impact," and so they are not shy about trying to buy that publicity. We talk to the reporters in very clear terms about this: you have to make a choice, between working for the readers and selling yourself and your reputation. (We also acknowledge the media companies share some of the responsibility for the low pay scales.) But we know -- and they are honest about this as well -- that many of them will keep doing it, given the opportunity.

The government and politicians do it, too. A guy I know who worked with radio stations remembers that after the last election, an official of one of the parties approached a reporter who had covered the campaign and gave him an envelope with a good sum of money in it. He took it.

I don't know how pervasive it is. I don't think it is hugely pervasive. But it is there, enough so to be recognized by all (editors at the main office get calls occasionally from NGOs asking why their story wasn't published, after they paid good money for it), and it's one of the the things that needs to disappear entirely before this "free press" thing is fully realized here.

Rescued!

My friend Nancy on San Juan Island always used to say that when your plans go awry on a trip, there’s opportunity for adventure. I thought of Nancy during a trip to Murchison Falls with my brother Philip last week. Everything was great, we had a fantastic time talking to giraffes et al, and got to catch up with each other at Paraa Lodge, where we looked off the balcony of the dining room at dinner and saw an elephant munching the garden beneath us. (He meandered slowly past the swimming pool and I think I saw him glance at my room, but he didn’t go in.)

We enjoyed the gorgeous scenery – I love the incongruity of the palm trees on the grasslands. On a game drive we had a big Land Rover full of what looked like Germans ahead of us and I made some slightly snide remark about passing the big, pink Germans (I’m German ancestry, so can be forgiven, but when you travel, well, Germans are everywhere), and our Ugandan driver Ezra passed them with a laugh. Otherwise, we were about the only ones in the park.

On the way home we went to the top of the falls and Philip waxed eloquent about the African Queen (filmed here); Ezra had no idea what we were talking about. We ate mangos straight off the trees, and then set off for the six hour trip back to Kampala. The top of the falls is down a long dirt track, far from the main dirt road and about two hours from the nearest town. Suddenly smoke poured out from the dashboard and we all jumped out. Some wires had crossed where they shouldn’t have and burnt through. Ezra climbed under the hood, wrapping a plastic bag around the wires for insulation, which looked suspect to me, so I dove into the first aid kit and he used the adhesive tape instead. But nothing worked and the car wouldn’t start. Sweat ran down Ezra’s face, and the sun beat down on us all.

Phil stood under a tree mumbling, “This is not good” and slapping the very aggressive tsetse flies that were looking for baboons. But I have been in Uganda for almost four months, and to me it was just another event, no worries. And, honestly, I thought, “This means an adventure!”

Just then we heard the Land Rover with the pink people in it roaring down the road – they had been at the top of the falls too. They jolted to a stop and Hans (who was actually Austrian) jumped out with his driver and they joined Ezra under the hood. After much mechanic-speak, they gave up. We threw ourselves on the Austrians' mercy and they agreed to take us to the next town. We left Ezra calling a mechanic, and also a car to come from Kampala to pick us up in Masindi.

That meant a three-hour wait in dusty Masindi. In the Rover, I looked at the sweet Germanic-types and thought, “No way are we waiting. We are going all the way to Kampala with them. this calls for charm.” Pictures of Maggie and Cameron came out, as did pictures of Gerta’s grandson. America became a fascinating place they need to visit. Oh so many adventures were shared. It turns out they had been in Africa numerous times, met in Libya, driven across the Sahara with their two-year-old son, seen Timbuktu. Why Africa, I asked. “For the adventure,” Hans said gleefully. At Masindi I shamelessly (and be humble, Philip begged me) asked for a ride the rest of the way and of course they agreed. We called Ezra (without cell phones, Uganda would not work) and he cancelled the other ride. We bought beers all around (not for the driver), at least three each for them (they are big people) – I lost count, and then we got back in the car.

“This car runs on beer and whiskey,” Hans said cheerfully as he pulled out a flask of “Austrian spring water” (schnaps) and they all took a swig, after which Franz (yes, Franz) in the front seat, fell soundly asleep, his big head bobbing off the headrest almost onto the driver’s shoulder.

And then … and then that Ugandan driver, Ishmael (yes, Ishmael), drove like a fruit bat out of hell, hitting very single pothole from Masindi to Kampala, roaring down the middle of the road around petrol trucks, in front of flying buses, yelling, “You want pineapple?” as markets blurred past. We bounced so hard our teeth hurt, we flew off our Rover-esque hard seats, Gerta’s neck twitched in a funny way, and at one point Philip pulled my Expedia baseball hat over his eyes so he couldn’t watch. We were terrified, but the Austrians were jolly, yelling who knows what in German, laughing and yucking all the way. Hans confessed he was “itching to drive” but it was too dangerous. No kidding.

So we reached home dirty and safe, with new friends and a story to tell. And never again will I say anything even slightly negative about such energetic and cheery people who rescued two stray Americans and made the whole thing fun. I have learned my lesson.

A Ugandan art form

And – surprise! – it is a quirky art form. The artists are called VJs, as in “Video Jockeys,” and they have an annual competition called the VJ Slam as part of the Amakula Kampala International Film Festival, which is winding up this weekend.

Here’s the deal. There are lots of movies available on DVD (yes, many of them pirated) in English or with English subtitles. But even though English is the “official” language of Uganda, there are many people who don’t speak it well or at all. But they still want to see movies!

Enter the VJ. These guys – and they seem to all be guys – work in places called Video Halls. While the movie is playing up on the screen, the VJ is doing a simultaneous translation into Luganda, the local language in the Kampala area. Or, rather, a simultaneous interpretation – because they don’t translate word for word, they embellish, dramatize, spice things up. The good ones end up recording their special versions on DVDs and selling them for home consumption.

At the VJ Slam, they have a preliminary round with the crowd voting to narrow the field down, then there’s a final round at the National Theatre, which I attended while Theresa and Phil of Africa were off having dinner with elephants. Like everything else here, there were technical glitches, and it was nearly two hours late starting, but at least I got to see it first-hand. The VJ sits on a chair watching the screen (all VJs have previewed the film extensively to work up their act). There’s a small camera aimed at the VJ, and they project an image of him at work up in a little window on the large screen showing the movie, so you get his expressions as well as sound.

It is definitely a competitive business, with lots of creative flair. The guys throw themselves energetically into the translation, doing dramatic, rapid-fire, fluidly musical-sounding Luganda. The audience shrieks and hollers. All of this under a star-filled tropical sky on a dark night in an open field outside the National Theatre. Who needs elephants? THIS is a unique bit of Africa, too.

What we'll remember...

We’ll remember SO many things, of course. But one of the things we’ll remember the most is the babies and little children we’ve met in Uganda. They are so cute and beautiful, and so eager, and their future is anything but certain.

We have had wonderful chances to meet many of them, and since Theresa is away on a safari, I thought I should share one of her little friends with you. This was at the ceremony to open the wonderful new Bead for Life village a week or so ago, and this baby, daughter of one of the beaders, is appropriately clutching one of the Bead for Life necklaces in her hand. She seems quite happy to be with jjaja (grandmother) Theresa, perhaps, uh, because the skin tones are so similar!

As for that safari, Theresa is back at Murchison Falls, this time with Brother Phil, and when I talked to her on the phone today she said they saw seven lions. I am jealous!!!

But I went to the VJ Slam. More on that later.

Hmmm, I think she's almost done...

We have been saying that we FEEL Ugandan sometimes, that is, we don't really notice when anyone is late, and actually we turn out to be late a lot, and we mostly don't notice the diesel fumes and dust (well, not quite), and the pace is seeming very comfortable.

But we've always known that we don't exactly, you know, blend in. Except suddenly I realized that Theresa is getting there -- and then someone at Bead for Life said the same thing! It's especially true of her feet, which are starting to look particularly Ugandan: dark on the top, lighter underneath. (And it's not JUST the dirt, as she claims.)

So today she took a picture of her feet next to Stella's at Bead for Life. I know, you can still definitely tell the difference -- but honestly, in a couple months, I'm not sure you will be able to. Not that this is a goal or anything, it's just one more curious thing on a wonderful curious adventure.

Guess who's coming for dinner?

Yesterday morning the phone rang and when I answered I heard the voice of my brother Philip. "I'm in downtown Kampala," he said. I didn't believe him except there was a ton of noise behind him, which convinced me. No, I had no idea he was coming. Yes, it's great to have him.

He had taken a 12-hour bus ride from Kenya after spending a week exploring the Massai Mara and Nairobi. He just kind of took off for two months in Africa, claiming the need for adventure. We are calling him Massai Phil, though he doesn't look like it in this picture. But give him a break, he did just spend all those hours on a bus. He says he's heading for Ethiopia to see some camels come in through morning fog from Somalia. Or some such thing.

I was really surprised to hear from him, but when he walked in the door it didn't feel at all odd. Somehow I have been expecting him. He is in love with Africa, and ever since we said we were coming we've joked he would just call from the airport.

We have been having lots of conversations about which family members will really come visit when suddenly one just shows up out of nowhere. I guess the Kloeck family spirit is alive and well!

Adventures in the little blue car

Last weekend we set off to drive to the other side of town to pick up our friend Michael Fardella who was here with the Sister School group from Seattle. We have been driving a fair amount and feeling pretty smug about it, but we haven’t spent much time in the part of town where the group was staying. So I propped the map book on my lap to direct Bill; the map is kind of a joke, there are NO road signs in Kamapla (or very few), and often the roads on the map don't really exist. Everything was fine until we got to a very congested roundabout and I couldn’t tell which road we should turn on. (As always, the word “road” doesn’t really apply – more like dirt track.)

We turned on a dirt track and found ourselves smack in the center of Owino Market. Now, Owino Market has a reputation for black market operations, pickpockets, unsavory characters -- no mzungus, in other words. We have been planning to go there with our money hidden in all our REI "secret" pockets, just to see it. But not this way!

There was no room to turn around. We were instantly plunged into a crowd with kiosk-style shops on all sides, hawkers and shoppers pressed up against our car. Men carried huge sacks of something inches from the bumper. Boda-bodas flew by, even though there was no room on either side of us. Trucks came lumbering toward us, swerving to avoid the potholes. (Let me repeat – there was no room.) Bicycles squeezed between the trucks and us. Bill inched us along, miraculously keeping the side mirrors intact, begging me to find a way out on the map. There was supposed to be a road at the opposite end of the market, but we couldn’t see anything except chaos. We had no choice but to be pushed along with the crowd regardless. At one point, Bill said, “Is your window rolled up?” Yes, my window was definitely up.

We have seldom felt unsafe in Kampala, more on our guard sometimes. But here we felt like interlopers – two pink and pale white people in a little blue car, one of those people with a map on her lap, obviously lost. When we thought about how we looked to the people in the market, the only thing we could do was laugh, which I imagine they were doing too.

Eventually we turned onto a side dirt track, drove into and out of a pothole the size of Crater Lake, and saw a big billboard that could only be on a big road. It was like a lighthouse indicating a haven, no matter how rocky the shore. We found the bigger road, and eventually (totally by accident) found the place we were supposed to be.

Later, Bill saw Elias, who has driven us often and still does when we need him. He told him about Owino Market, and Elias said slyly, “Owino Market! Mr. Bill, you need a compass in your car.”

Hard to be on a first-name basis

It's not that people aren't friendly -- they're wonderfully friendly, that's one of the things we love about Uganda. It's just a little tricky to be on a first-name basis because, well, how do you know what the first name IS?

Today I met a young woman who introduced herself as Pheona. But when she gave me her business card, I saw it read "Nabasa Pheona Gladys." Ummmm...if she hadn't told me her name, how would I have guessed at addressing her?

Names here are different. There's a family or tribal name, which often is written first but not always; and there's usually a "Christian" name; and there may be one or two other names. Here are some names exactly as they appeared on a sign-in list at the workshop Theresa and I conducted last week:

Bwogi Buyera John
Fred Turyakira
Kakuruga Fred
Ebenezer Bifubyeka

In other words, it's inconsistent. And it's not just how they write their names. Once a New Vision reporter whose byline reads "John Eremu" called me on the phone and greeted me by saying "This is Eremu John."

Many people here have addressed me as "Mr. Bill" -- because the fact that "Bill" comes first must signify it is the family name. And this explains our favorite driver Elias's little joke. One day he asked me: Are you related to the president? I blanked for a second and then realized: Bill Clinton -- Bill Ristow. We must be in the same family, or at least the same tribe. Very amusing, Elias!

There's quite a bit more on this name business, but I'll leave that to Theresa. Oops -- I mean Ter-ay-za.

Life (and death) on the savannah

One thing that makes Lake Mburo unusual -- yes, we're returning there briefly -- is that you can go for a walk out in the wilds. You must do it with a ranger, and the ranger carries a rifle, but there you are -- out in what's called an "acacia savannah," following trails that are animal trails, not human ones, and with no other people around.

We did not see a lot of wildlife, either. A relatively rare eland off in the distance; a buffalo staring at us from far away that made Moses, the ranger, decide to take a different route; the sounds of a hippopotamus snurfling behind the papyrus; and of course many many birds.

But with Moses's help, we did see the signs of where the animals had been. He stopped at one tree, spotting something he hadn't noticed before: up above us, on a large branch, the carcass of a male impala draped over the limb, hooves and skull and antler still distinguishable but not much else left. A leopard took it up there, to keep it away from hyenas.

"Imagine what it took to carry that deer up into the tree," Moses said. Indeed: the carcass was 15 feet up in the tree, and the leopard had nothing but its jaws to carry it in.

A little later, we tried to see those hyenas, but they weren't home. So we wandered through the dirt area that is their den -- littered with the skulls of animals they had brought there for the young hyenas to feed on.

It was an enlightening walk. No, no sightings of the famous predators everybody wants to see on a safari. But we were still seeing them -- through the signs of their activities -- close up, and personal. It was a peaceful morning's walk in a place that often is anything but peaceful. And it is all part of the amazing natural world here.

Of cattle-keepers and the queen

"If you squint a little so you can't see the banana plantations, it looks just like Italy, " I said as we drove early this week to Mbarara in western Uganda. Mbarara has lovely rolling hills, with little houses tucked into the folds, cultivated fields, green trees and plants dotting the hillsides. It is a far cry from Bugolobi with its chaotic market and mud-hut settlements. Mbarara is in what they call "cattle-keeper" country, and the cattle-keepers are relatively well off.

We were there for two days of training of the rural reporters for the New Vision. They were an eager bunch, wanting to learn. "Mr. Bill" and "Ter-ay-za," as they call us, presented in between tea time (they have two teas per day, one in the a.m. and one in the afternoon) and lunch. It seemed as soon as we started talking, bam! It was tea time again!

After the second day we decided to treat ourselves to a dinner that was not the traditional food we had been eating non-stop since we got there Sunday night. Matoke is okay, but our American stomachs can get tired of it. So we wandered along (we weren't driving this time ) and found a driver named Enoch to take us to a "fancy" hotel on the outskirts of town. Enoch owns 12 cows which he milks in the mornings, and someone helping him milks them in the evening when he is driving. The milk from the morning goes to market, the evening milk goes to his family. He says he knows a place in the district where one man owns 5000 cows!

We arrived at the hotel to find it was under construction for when the queen comes in November of this year for a Commonwealth meeting. (Everything in Uganda is under construction for the queen - can she possibly know what she's in for?) Enoch said he would stand in the middle of the road to see the queen when she goes by. We picture her covered in red dust, but of course they will close the roads when she is traveling; we didn't tell Enoch, but we have also heard she might fly to Queen Elizabeth National Park, in which case there will be lots of disappointed cattle-keepers.

One thing we've learned here is that nothing is like what you expect. The dining room was under construction, so we ate dinner with the sound and smell of a Skilsaw by our shoulders. And it was buffet night: matoke and other traditional foods. This time that included ox liver, so we did have some variety!

Who's in the zoo now?

We had a black-and-white weekend at Lake Mburo National Park where we spent hours examining the stripes on the zebras, those gentle and shy creatures who hid in the trees and slowly peeked out to see who was in the blue Rav4. And who was? The two of us and Matthias, eyes glued to binoculars to see if the stripes were real. They looked as if someone had taken a big paint brush dipped in black and very carefully painted them on. They galloped across fields, foals following mom, the black-and-white stripes forming incongruous patterns against the green acacias. (Why black and white stripes? What possible relation could that have to camouflage?) Even their tales are striped, so that they look like they are braided. Their manes stick straight up as if they've had an electric shock. Other than that, they look just like horses - and extremely healthy, sleek ones at that.

And then there were the impalas, graceful deer made for speed -- they leap straight up into the air. They have markings on the rear legs that look like they are wearing high heels. And very striking antlers on the males. (There are whole herds of bachelor impalas, all waiting for a chance to wipe out a male leading a herd of females.)

Warthogs too, wallowing in mudholes to escape the bugs. Topis, a strange kind of deer related to hartebeests. They have very short back legs, almost like a smaller version of a giraffe (without the long neck). Birds of all kinds: crested cranes, go-away birds, rare barbets. We now have an impressive list of birds, thanks to Moses, our ranger/guide at the park. And waterbucks, buffaloes, oribis, crocodiles - even an eland (look it up). We sought the leopard until after dark, but he eluded us. As did the hyenas, though we found their den (which didn't exactly smell like roses).

On an early morning walk with Moses, we met a dangerous solitary, black male water buffalo. He was staring at us and not like a friend. Moses changed course so we could make our way around him at a safe distance, but we could still see him watching us ominously. Moses had his little rifle, but it didn't seem a match for the buffalo - those things are evil.

On the boat trip on the lake, a hippo charged us - three times -- hurling its huge body out of the water toward the boat, yawning its pink mouth at us (which I later read is a threat), and creating his own bow wake. Moses laughed, but he again changed course, and pretty quickly we noticed. (I think Matthias was praying, which was a good thing.) Ditto the gun vs. the hippo.

We stayed in a tent on stilts (so the hippos can't climb in, hmm). All night we could hear snuffling, harrumphing, chewing, barking (hyenas!) and an occasional bellow. In the morning there was a zebra right outside our tent, just beneath a tree with a huge owl in the top branch. And we heard there had been a hippo too, though we didn't see him (fortunately - talk about nightmares.) The warthogs were all over the camp, huge waterbucks too. A year or so ago a water buffalo killed a guide on the little road to the restaurant that is on the lake, so now you have to have an armed guard escort wherever you go, unless you are in a car.

So it occurred to us that in Africa the roles are reversed. There we were encased in our car, or in a boat, or in a tent -- cages, really -- while the animals were roaming free, and free to do to us as they pleased. A little like we are when we go to the zoo. It feels that this is as it should be. But then, nothing is black and white. Except the zebras.