ON THE ROAD AGAIN...

After one more trip to the dentist with a wandering blade, the swelling in Bose's face has gone down and the infection is clearing. All is well at JIM School, things have actually been somewhat quiet. One of my neighbors died on Saturday from AIDS related illnesses. For personal reasons she refused treatment and didn't seem to accept her disease. For the past few days there have been people camped all around the place and lots of wailing. It's the second time I've experienced the wailing and I still find it rather unsettling. When they are mourning, certain woman in the family are supposed to wail and make loud grieving comments to each other. Sickness and death are such a big part of life here. It doesn't seem like people stop and take alot of time to grieve or nurse their illnesses, maybe because they cannot. I went to visit my neighbor, I call her jajja, to say I was sorry for her loss. We did the traditional greetings, then one of her relatives walked in, they broke into the wailing, then after a few minutes she picked up our conversation again. Later that day they were all watching World Cup football, cooking and laughing. So many Ugandans I have met seem to dwell firmly in the 'now.' There is a time for sadness, etc...but it seems to be compartmentalized. I imagine jajja will grieve the loss of her daughter but not in a way that I understand or am familiar with. When the JIM kids want a laugh, they beg Michelle to do her impressions of Ugandan's crying and then Europeans/Westerners crying. They think the way that we sniff and weep is hysterical.

My volunteering time in Uganda is coming to an end. What's cool is that my projects all naturally finished last week or will be finishing up this week. I have been working with BeadforLife on several different proposals...some I was researching, then giving my info to staff to let them decide whether or not to move forward. Another proposal I created myself. I designed a bag and had hoped that we could set up a tailoring group of HIV+ woman from MUDINET to learn how to make the bags that would eventually be sold in the States. BeadforLife currently has two beaders groups and one tailors group who make products that are sold in the States. The money made is put into a foundation that provides vocational training, etc... to the woman. I'd been working on the project for a little while and had alot of fun doing it. I was totally bummed when BeadforLife decided to not market the bag, felt like a big failure, etc... BeadforLife then contacted me again and said that they would like to work with the HIV+ women's group and train them to make an existing product. So actually, it worked out very well for the women-they will be trained to make a product, will start earning a living wage and absolutely have this opportunity to drastically improve their situations. These are impoverished women, some with many children, some widowed, all positive. My ego was still a bit bruised but I decided to do the home visiting with a girl from BeadforLife anyways (they home visit to ascertain whether or not these woman fit their criteria of impoverishment). It was one of those things that I knew I needed to do because it was the right thing to do, the right way to finish my work with these women but I was a bit sulky in my heart about it because MY idea hadn't worked out. Anywho, I'm so glad I went because I was able to see who these women were, how they lived, meet some of their children, see them excited about this new opportunity. It was so humbling as I realized it didn't matter at all that these women wouldn't be making my product design-it wasn't even about me. If I could just step aside for a second, tell my ego to hush, these women would have this awesome chance to be apart of BeadforLife and all the opportunities that entails. We will finish home visiting on Wednesday, then my time at BeadforLife is finished-what a way to go.

Next Monday I leave for Israel for two weeks to meet up with Sam. It's somehow so perfect that after my time here I will be able to spend some time exploring the Holy Land. I feel like this journey here has been one of growing faith. There were so many moments when I felt either physically isolated or isolated in my mind, thinking that no one could understand what I was experiencing. At those moments, I was forced, over and over, to go to a Higher Source of power to help me see clearly, or behave well, or accept, or forgive, or not respond to hatred with hatred. And every time assistance came my way and my peace was restored. I feel capable in a way that I've never felt before. I'm not ready to define that source yet and that's okay. I just want to enjoy the moments of peace when I believe It is always there for me.

I have struggled with the 'muzungu' shouts from the get-go, I think I complained about them in one of my first Africa blogs. Honestly, after a few thousand people yelled 'muzungu' at me, I started to want to smack people. For awhile I would yell back 'mudugavu' (muzungu means white person, mudugavu means black person) but that never felt good and it certainly never felt right. It even feels uncomfortable admitting it. A little while back, when I was struggling and asking the Universe for help, it came to me that I could yell back 'mukwano' instead. I don't know where the idea came from but 'mukwano' means friend. Now whenever people yell muzungu at me I respond with mukwano (or it's plural form) and a smile and just like that I'm able to respond with love instead of hate. I know it sounds simple and probably a bit dorky but things like this feel like my greatest accomplishments here. Learning to not take everything so personally and finally understanding that it doesn't matter what happens or how people treat me, I still need to behave in a way that I can feel okay about.

I also learned that I love Starbucks Chai and Hot Yoga and that I really am from California. And kind of proud to be.

Of all the journeys I've been on-the most vivid, challenging, exciting and AWESOME adventure is the one that happens every day inside my head and heart. Maybe I should start a blog titled 'On My Way To Lara'... or maybe not.

STILL TEACHABLE

‘Wow,’ ‘Out of my league,’ ‘Thank you God’ and ‘This place is crazy.’ These are the phrases that dance around my head and seem to fit almost every occasion. This morning I had a meeting with the teachers at JIM Centre and outlined a Learning Aid Poster competition for them. My friend Mike sent me a bunch of marker sets, rulers and crayons(erasers, pens, pencils, toothbrushes, a good man) and this is my creative way of giving them to the teachers without actually giving them to them. The teachers will compete, the winner will receive some money but each team who gets 80 out of 120 possible points on their work will be able to keep all of their poster making supplies as well as receive another poster board to make more classroom aids. Anywho, the meeting goes well. Then I head to the boys dorm to pick up Bosa. Bosa is a 17 year old boy who lives at JIM and studies at a local secondary school. Gavah lets him stay in the boys dorm in exchange for help around the property. Bosa had his tooth extracted a few days back and now has extensive swelling in his mouth. It looks painful. We went to the dentist where the doctor (who seemed kind of legit) took a blade to his mouth to drain the pus from the infection. I had to hold Bosa down, he doesn’t like knifes or injections in his mouth-go figure. Imagine hard-core dental work without the painkillers. Then I get in the taxi (minivan with 20 or so other people, I’m not kidding) and head to Kampala for a staff meeting at Bead for Life. I’m on the phone with Sam, telling him how real life is here and how I might kind of miss it when-wham, another taxi rams into ours. Then I went to the office and found out that my proposal had been rejected but then kind of accepted, under different terms. It’s only 1pm now. This place is crazy!

This is almost a normal day here and I can barely keep up with my own life. I love to analyze everything, pontificate about my realizations relating to my experiences-now things are happening so darn frequently I can’t even keep up with that. But I’m going to give it a try...

Stuart is a little boy from Naggalama. He walks with his shoulders hunched up, one of his eyes is deformed, some of his fingernails and toenails are missing, he breathes laboriously and always stares at the ground. I had no idea Stuart would come to play a role in my life but when I saw him walking by Teopista’s one morning, I knew that I had to do something. So I went with Teopista to his jajja’s house (jajja=grandparent) and asked if I could take him to JIM Centre. He was clearly neglected (his little toes are deformed from all the jiggers that have gotten in and not been removed, jiggers are little worms) and I figured that even though JIM Centre is poor and rugged, there’s lots of love and...I don’t know-I didn’t think about it all that much, I just sort of did it. Stuart, or Stube, as Michelle calls him or Stuart-eeee as the kids call him, arrived about a month ago, very sick. We took him to the local hospital, tested him for everything, addressed the obvious illness. But things looked pretty bleak. He didn’t speak at all, some of the kids mocked him...he’s a little boy that has experienced to much hard living already. But I think this Universe has different plans for Stuart and he’s not giving up yet. I found out the other day that he has fabulous teeth because he smiled at me. He has made a friend called Eric (a street kid who arrived last year and is called Eric because that is his sponsor’s name, they don’t actually know his name) and those two pal around together. Bosa has taken him under his wing and helps him out. It turns out that Stuart is kind of funny and has the kids rolling at playtime. He has the gruff voice of a jajja, the look of a lost soul and the body of a malnourished, neglected 8 year old-what’s not to love. I don’t want to make light of Stuart’s situation, he’s sick and we still cannot determine his illness after numerous hospital trips (all of which are separate blog entries in themselves) but I really think that those JIM kids loved Stuart back into this life. These kids give from poverty, what I understand is giving from a place of abundance. They laugh with each other, they beat each other up, they share sugar with each other for morning porridge, they give each other pens, they wash each other’s clothes... They could’ve kept him separate because he is different but they haven’t and now he’s a regular little JIM kid. Stuart gives me hope, he is our Owen Meaney. Next week we go back to another doctor and Stuart is being fitted for glasses. Stuart in spectacles will be unstoppable.

This place is full of contradictions. Hope sometimes, despair sometimes, acceptance every now and then. In early May, Pelagia died. We visited her on Sunday, she was pretty depleted but we were hopeful, she died the next morning. I sat with the body (as is custom) for a short time the next day and all I could think was that her body looked so tiny underneath the sheet. I wonder if she is now a part of Africa’s statistics on AIDS related deaths or do they (whoever they are) not even know that she lived? Life is quite hard to understand sometimes.

I have hated Uganda and I have loved Uganda. And it keeps teaching me. It makes me think that loving something or someone or some place isn’t about liking it in the good times and hating it in the bad time...maybe loving is about accepting it at all times and doing your best to be a good person through it all.

When I left the States, I would’ve said that I left with an open heart...this place showed me how closed my heart was. Now Africa has slowly worked it’s magic and opened me up. I feel raw, often close to tears and understand that my vision of myself, my place in the world and Africa has changed forever. Maybe not for the better or for the worse, it’s just more honest.

Josh Yoters Scheffdog...the boys thank you for the soccer balls, the girls love their net ball and Michelle and I love the rice crispie treats, granola bars and almonds. P.S. the wet wipes were a stroke of genius.