andrea's birthday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-OV16ZOkOg

watch the video here

it happens

looking at the last date of my blog and feeling a little ashamed. i'm immediately filled with excuses...the internet is so slow, i don't know what to say, no one reads this anyway. but that's not right.

i'm looking for a good metaphor of how i feel about blogging. i feel the same way about mediating disagreements between workers, about standing on line at the bank for an hour and my music player dies 5 minutes into it and the man behind me is touching me and i inch forward and the bag that the lady is holding is touching my leg and the man behind me moves forward again and now i'm touching both of them. i feel the same way about picking the nasties out of the drain on sunday because they haven't been picked since friday and they're full of fruit flies and ants. i feel the same way when i'm sleeping and wake up hearing someone outside the neighbor's gate calling someone's name for hours and hours.

what can i say about life in africa now?

its cool here and cloudy. its hot in the morning and the clouds build in the afternoon. it thunders and thunders and BOOM it rains. the wind blows and dust flies before it gets down to mud. then its over and its cool and the clouds are splattery (dotty? smeared?) like clouds in autumn in new jersey. like the clouds in pennsylvania when we camped out in the mountains in a small tent. it rained that night and we were cold. in the morning we were damp and our tent was covered in heavy red, yellow, orange, brown wet leaves. the car was warm. we drove back to jersey. the clouds were streaked, some dark and heavy, others light, feathered, airy. the air was cold and the wet leaves sparkled in the low-angled sunlight.

it looked just like that the other day. i was on a boda from here to there. it was cool. the breeze was even cool. the clouds were light and dark; fluffy and streaky and spotty. i looked up and went back to that weekend in pennsylvania. driving in a volkswagen. drinking coffee out of a wax-coated paper cup with a plastic lid. listening to cds around sharp curves and talking about the future, what we would do after and after and after.

then i looked down. we were behind a truck filled with sugar cane spewing diesel fumes and dust. we swerved around it, passed the posho factory, the bread factory, the muslim school. in the afternoon men walk with baskets on their heads filled with small plastic bags of nuts and seeds. they're selling afterschool snacks. every afternoon, i'm driving in, they're walking out. we pass, each on our way to work. we pass goats and chickens, small children holding machetes cut chunks of sugar cane. the boda men cleaning their motorcycles in the pools of water that collect next to the road between gardens. up over bumps and humps. slowing just enough to make it over then gun the engine to make it up the hill. children in school uniforms with only one or two functional buttons. all ugandans wear black sensible shoes to work. men dismount heavy black bicycles and walk the rest of the way up the hill. the pavement ends, the dirt road is marked by a smooth boda path.

when i arrive in danida at the suubi building i'm disoriented. what a long ride from pennsylvania. dust and diesel on my face. i've taken to listening to music while on the boda. drawn back to other places and times. do you remember when we sang that song in the fire pit dug out of the snow? we made snow benches that got softer and wetter as the fire grew. we sang that song and we were drumming on buckets. i was beating a metal shovel because it sounded like a steel drum. we sat in the snow. wet asses, dreaming of tropical places.

i pay the boda man. carry the bag of bananas and popcorn into the building. children call my name. it sounds like ambo or lambo. i sit on an orange bench. another orange bench is broken. at this rate we'll all be sitting on the floor by christmas. i greet them all.

"how are you?"

"how is the day?"

"irimaber?"

"ber"

"gang?"

"ber"

i sit again and think of what to do and think of what to say.

"it is cold."

"yes, we are cold"

"it is rainy season"

"yes it will rain"

"kot obicwe is how you say it, right?"

"aya, kot obicwe, it will rain."