Sciurus carolinensis

america.

i ate pretzels and apple pie. it was store bought, but so what. i'm prepping my palate for the home made version next week. tonight its my job to make lasagna. should i consult a cookbook or just go freestyle?

sending away for a 6 month multi-entry visa. maybe i won't have to play up the tourist card so much. a tourist visa only lasts 90 days and then you have to get a new one. ugandan visas are only single entry, so when you have to get a new one if you leave the country. this means that the best times for me to leave uganda are each time my visa expires.

this is me at border 4 times per year. its usually the middle of the night after 6 hours of bumpy road on a bus or a few transfers on small planes. i've got my crisp $50 bill and yellow fever card in hand:

immigration officer: i see you've been in uganda for some time.

me: i love uganda so much!

io: what are you doing in uganda?

me: rafting, traveling around. meeting people. ugandans are so friendly!

io: where do you stay in uganda?

me: oh here and there. i really like jinja. the river is awesome!

io: you've got $50? ok. (stamp, stamp)

i'm in.

counting necklaces. so many necklaces. they're hung airing in the garage. they're on the futon in the basement. they like to fall out of their velcro groupings, so i'll be counting them all again. we count them when we buy them at the meeting. twice, actually. first what we receive from each suubi lady. then, again into bundles of 10 or 25. at epoh, they're washed and counted again before being put into fedex boxes or fiber bags to be taken back to magwa. the ones that come to magwa are counted again when they're packed into suitcases to come to america. if we're lucky, the bags only have to be packed once. if things get confusing, we'll take the necklaces out and do it all over again. now i have the bags in america. i took them out to air. i'll count them again and pack them again to take to the Holiday Booth in NYC.

FICTION

A day in the life of three Suubi women…

With a single shot from a single drop on the tin roof, Christine wakes up. It’s still dark. She sits up on the foam mat she shares with the baby. A strong gust rattles the windows’ wooden shutters. The rain sounds like war on her roof. She reaches for the matchbox and lights the paraffin lamp on the floor. The baby moves behind her. She turns around. His mouth is open and she can see his small sharp teeth. The combat on the roof increases and noise fills the room around her. Its so loud she can’t hear him cry.

Florence tightens the kitenge around her waist and feels for the coins and notes tied in the corner of the top skirt. She hopes she has left for the market early enough to make it back with time to cook for and feed her children lunch at mid-day. She waves and calls out Good Morning to the neighbor unlocking the door of the shop. She reminds herself to stop here on the way home to buy an onion, three tomatoes, and two peppers to mix with the beans that are already on the charcoal stove. She hurries and turns the corner onto the main road. She steps off the curb to avoid the grass flung by the slasher cutting the grass in the drainage ditch. She steps back up as a boda carrying two men and a driver swerves toward her around a pothole. The motorcycle follows the same path worn smooth by every two-wheeled vehicle that has come before. At the market she buys three packets of gold seed beads and one bundle of lightweight fishing line. If she hurries she’ll make it back home in time.

Elizabeth sits on a fiber mat under the jackfruit tree. She can hear her grandchildren playing on the other side of the house. She picks up a string of varnished beads and cuts them with a razor. She pushes the beads from the line into a plastic container. She calls to her youngest daughter to bring the rest of her supplies from inside the house. The oldest child runs toward her with a knob of sugar cane in each hand. The next born runs close behind and shoves the older child. She calls both of their names and scolds them for fighting. She picks up another string of beads, cuts the line, and pushes them into the container. She calls for her daughter again to bring her supplies.

Bakunzi, Anneti Group A Number 1

Anneti is tall and thin. Her hands are soft when she offers you a gentle handshake. She is older with a quiet, dignified presence. Anneti usually has a serious expression on her face, but is quick to smile when greeted. She cares for three of her children and one grandchild.

Anneti in her own words:

"When I was in P5 (fifth grade) my mother passed away, that’s when my problems began. When I reached P7 (seventh grade) my father told me to drop out of school to give chance for the others to study. I got married when I was 22. We stayed together for some time until my husband impregnated a girl who was under my care and whose family was friends with my husband. We became two wives but we were not getting enough love. We stayed until 2005 and then I moved to JInja. I moved to Jinja because I needed medical treatment (I have some complications with my head) and my husband was not taking enough care of me, so I decided to come to my sister who was supporting me well. Since I joined Suubi I can afford my medication, send some money to my child in Secondary school and even try to save some. Suubi has encouraged us to save in the bank which is very helpful to us."

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."

yesterday i officially made water boil using the sun. i built a solar oven out of cardboard and aluminum foil. i put a dark wine bottle full of water in a clear plastic bag (that originally held 36 rolls of toilet paper) and set it on the solar cooker. Within an hour, the water boiled! So today I'm going to try rice. I want to build solar cookers with all of the suubi ladies and tailors so they can save money (and time and the atmosphere and their health) by sterilizing their water and cooking food without using charcoal or wood. there are a million reasons why solar cookers are great, but this is my number one. hopefully, we can get these going soon. I'm going to acquire some WAPIs so we know when the water has reached a high enough temperature to kill most of the bacteria and viruses.

We've had a bunch of visitors recently, more are coming today. I find it challenging to take people out for a day and give them the right amount of information. In a day, people want to hear what we do, details about the past, present and future regarding: who we work with, what products we make, how we sell them in america, what we hope to actually accomplish. I am working on summarizing and figuring out how to tailor my spiel to the audience. Its hard to not just start spewing about every detail of everything. I want to be intentional about telling the truth in a way that people can get a realistic picture of who we are, not just get stuck in the details of what we're doing right now. I guess I need to take my own advice and focus more on the big picture and not just get stuck in the details of right now.

Well, off to solar cooking, tours, breakfast club, english class, and fun!

i'm reading an article at cnn about "voluntourism," the idea that people want to do good works in a foreign place in addition to traditional holiday activities. they say that women take volunteer holidays more than men because they want cultural immersion in a safe place, camaraderie with fellow travelers, and want to reduce the "guilt" of vacationing. mom and dad and family are visiting in October for a little bit of voluntouring. mom and the aunties are going to do some sort of "clinic." (or at least look all the suubi ladies in the eye while they take their blood pressure and heart rate) We're going to install dad in the Suubi building with beading and macrame and tie-dye.

right now i'm drinking ugandan wine. its made here in jinja from hibiscus flowers and sold commercially from the winery where it is made across the river in njeru. the bottle says it has an "elegant taste" which my untrained palate finds as intensely sweet at the first followed by astringent then ending on something like old, leather boat shoes. i've almost finished my first glass.

its 7:30 pm and its officially dark. i have to get up and turn ... never mind, the power is out. Good night.