A constant tension

There are always terrible reminders to bring one crashing back down to earth after a nice holiday or an encouraging day of work or a fun afternoon of soccer. Those good times are constantly juxtaposed with stories and experiences of suffering. The last two days have been a true study in that tension.

Yesterday afternoon (my birthday), I flew with Heidi and Ashley in a little cessna over the mountains an to Kampala. I got to fly co-pilot, had some great views of the mountains and the crater lakes around Fort Portal, and just had fun flying. It was a nice birthday present, and that was before dinner. I was lucky enough to be in Kampala for my birthday dinner, which we spent at a nice Belgian restaurant where I ordered a good, rare steak, a nice bottle of wine, and a deep dish of ice cream (the girls even got the waiter for put a candle on it). Splurging? Probably. It was a great birthday meal.

But earlier that day I had delayed the plane, because I was driving a 12 year old boy from the health center to the hospital a half hour away for an emergency appendectomy. Luckily, he came through his surgery (none too soon) and is recovering. At the health center we also had a young boy with sickle-cell disease who had just had a stroke, and died this morning, with no one able to do anything to prevent it. But as if those difficulties of the morning weren't enough, arriving in Kampala we found this headline on the web "Ugandan rebels massacre hundreds at church in Congo." In the last few weeks, after Joseph Kony (leader of the LRA) failed for the third time to show up to peace talks, the Ugandan, Congolese, and Southern-Sudanese armies launched a joint offensive against the LRA in the territory they control, where these countries meet. While it's hard to know what reports to believe, it was seeming to be rather effective, but now it is clear that it has also stirred the LRA back into its brutal, savage, child-enslaving life. The day after Christmas, rebels attacked a church service in a village in eastern Congo and slaughtered almost around 150 people, mostly women and children, with machetes and clubs. The horror and brutality of it is almost incomprehensible. It was difficult even to read about it, realizing that this is not a movie or a book, but something happening in real time. It's a terrible reminder of the brokenness and horror of the world we live in.

(As a note of assurance, this is not anywhere near Bundibugyo, but much farther north. The LRA exists in north-western Uganda, southern Sudan, and north-eastern Congo, a long way from where I live in south-western Uganda.)

So, sometimes I feel like I exist between extremes, never knowing where to find reality. Between stories of recovery and health, and those of slowly wasting away to death. Between big, happy smiles on the neighborhood kids faces when we're playing and the fact that they often don't have enough to eat. Between great meals in Kampala and inhuman brutality. It makes life confusing, it makes me ashamed of my ability to enjoy those nice meals or good medical care, and it leaves me clueless as to how I am supposed to respond to a world full of both beauty and ugliness, love and hate, rejoicing and suffering.

A Christmas to remember

Quick description of Christmas:

Waking up early to the hustle and bustle of neighbors getting ready for Christmas and the drums and singing of celebration. Receiving a morning phone call from my family, who stayed up late to call and sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" to me. Making omelets for Pat, Heidi, Ashley, and myself, and eating about half of the kringle (a scrumptious combination of butter and sugar and probably a few other token ingredients) that Ashley made. Exchanging gifts and opening stockings with them after breakfast. Three hours of church, full of dancing, singing, and general joyfulness. A dance party in my house for a bunch of the local kids. A great steak dinner at the Myhre's with the whole team, followed by an all-team soccer game and delicious desserts. Another dance party, this time with the Myhre and Pierce kids. Watching the Grinch and Cinderella Man (not exactly a Christmas classic but one of my favorite movies), and talking to family again at night. A great day.

One thing in particular stuck out - I really enjoyed the church service. Oftentimes, I find myself struggling through church, either because I barely understand what's going on or because I find the preaching... less than encouraging. But the Christmas service was beautiful. I especially loved the group children that got up to sing and dance, partly because I'm friends with many of them. Their smiles and joy were contagious, and  I've decided that my (roughly 7-8 year old) neighbor Charity is in fact the cutest boy I've ever seen, a conclusion that was reinforced by his dancing and his role as a shepherd in a little Christmas skit. The thing that struck me most was the preaching, though. While it often, depending on who is preaching, can become a rant against alcohol and smoking or something like that, this message was a great telling of the coming Kingdom which we await. I especially liked one illustration that I found put very eloquently. The pastor said that, today we would feast on chicken and beef and rice (all of which are rather expensive), but that it would only satisfy us for today. However, one day, when the Kindgom of God is here, we will have a feast which is satisfy forever: "That chicken is forever! That beef is forever!" Eternal chicken... an unusual concept, but here, where hunger is a reality and meat is a luxury, I though it was a great description of what the Kingdom of God will mean to people here.

Merry Christmas!

I want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas, even if it is a day early. This season I've been thinking a lot about Christmas and home, and all of the people who are a part of both of them for me. So I want to tell you how much I appreciate and miss all of you, my family and friends.

Amid the preparations, the pre-Christmas celebrations, the Christmas carols with the team, the buying of my Christmas shirt, and the general anticipation that fills the air in Bundibugyo (Christmas is a big deal here, if you hadn't figured that out), the tragic and difficult realities remain. Just yesterday, a soda truck collided with a pickup truck laden with far too many passengers. Both of them rolled, and this morning I learned that 12 people have died, including a mother and her two young children, all of them leaving friends and family mourning and weeping at a time when almost everyone is celebrating and making merry. This has been a poignant reminder that, while we celebrate the birth of Jesus, come into the world for our salvation, the consummation of his work is yet to come - we still live in a world of suffering and tragedy. So, I plan to celebrate and feast and to enjoy new family, new friends, good food, and good wine, but to also remember that I live in a world of needs and pain, as well as joy and celebration. 

So, I don't want to make your Christmas sad with these stories (I could keep going), but the complexity and nuance of this season have struck me, and I think it's good to dwell on it for a time. I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas (or Chanukah, or just a good December), and that you are able to enjoy it with friends and family. Merry Christmas from the heat and dust of Bundibugyo!

sorry, snakes

Here’s a snapshot of life here in Bundibugyo. Yesterday, I was playing football (soccer) with about 20 neighborhood kids in front of my house, as has become my custom most afternoons, especially now that school is out. One of my favorite boys, Richard, was dribbling the ball near the bushes when suddenly he jumped back and a snake slithered away from right under his feet toward the bushes. Within moments, all 20 of the kids were shouting and surrounding the bushes, launching rocks into them to try to scare the snake out. The snake was soon chased up to the top of the bush, about 15 feet, and the kids kept throwing rocks up into the air, which clattered onto my roof on the other side (and I was amazed that none of the kids hit each other, since they were surrounding the bush). Soon, adults were running toward my house, sticks in hand, ready to take over in place of the kids. After throwing a few sticks into the bush, the snake was knocked down and quickly beaten to death by my friend Richard. It was then pulled out into the path, where about 10 kids beat its lifeless body with sticks for several minutes, as if to make sure that it was actually dead. And that was the third snake that was killed within a few feet of my house yesterday.

Now, many of you probably know that I am an animal lover who hates to kill things (exception: rats), and that I really like snakes and have always tried to convince people that they’re not dangerous and should be left alone. Here, however, things are a little different, since almost all snakes are poisonous, and there are kids running around my yard all the time. Luckily, this very common species is only “mildly poisonous,” causing swelling and nausea but never death. When I said to someone “I’m not sure if this kind is dangerous,” my neighbor replied, “We don’t have non-dangerous snakes here.” So, I’ve had to decide that snakes in my yard must be killed, especially since these three appeared to be living in a hole in the concrete of my house, where I saw another one today. So there will probably be another snake-killing posse in action soon.

A very sorry Christmas tree

So that's my Christmas tree. It's a bunch of boughs tied to a metal post and set in a bucket, wider at the top than at the bottom, leaning into the corner so that it doesn't fall. I'm not sure that there's ever been one like it. It probably bears more resemblance to some sort of palm tree than a pine tree. Still, it's more that I thought I'd have, so I'm glad for that. And see the lights! The Myhre's had leftover LED lights they weren't using, as well as some tinsel, so I have a little bit of Christmas cheer in my house. Now, I don't have much electricity so I don't run them much, but it's a nice touch. It makes that Charlie Brown tree look great, but it was fun to put together. Just thought I'd share a funny picture with you. 

More Rwenzori pictures

I will try to a get a Flickr page going soon, but this is how I'm posting pictures until then.

Home

While I've been getting more and more settled here in Bundibugyo, I've been wondering when it's going to feel like home. When I can down from the Rwenzori mountains about a week ago, I had the feeling that I had been on vacation and that it was now time to go home - a home that was distinctly in Andover, NJ. That felt like the place that I should go after being away. It was hard for me to think about going to Kampala and then back to an empty house in Bundibugyo. However, after spending one day in Kampala, I found myself really wishing to get back home to Bundibugyo. It's a place that I know somewhat, and I was excited to see a lot of people from the community, especially the kids who I've been playing with and swimming with most afternoons. That was the first time when I felt like Bundibugyo was home. (Of course, when I got home I found that rats had wreaked havoc in my unoccupied kitchen. The battle continues.)

The Christmas season is a hard time to be away from home because Christmas and family are nearly synonymous to me. Decorating the tree, putting candles in the windows, singing Christmas carols - these are the heralds of the Christmas season for me, and I have always done them with my family. It's hard to think about waking up on Christmas morning alone. However, I'm very grateful for those moments like the other day when I'm starting to feel at home here.

Unspeakable Beauty

One of the problems with my time trekking in the mountains was that I’m having trouble putting the experience into words. It was truly spectacular – an experience that was powerful and majestic and difficult and incredibly rewarding. It’s hard to explain what was so amazing about it, but I’ll try.

 

First of all, there was a great diversity of natural beauty. Even on the drive out of Bundibugyo I saw baboons by the road and surveyed an archetypal African plain. The trek itself started in dense jungle, passed through montane forests, bamboo forest, heather forest, alpine bogs, bare rock, glacier, and back through all of them again. There is something magical about the Rwenzoris. They feel ancient and wild. In most places, the lightly worn trail is the only evidence that humans have ever been there. The first day was spent in jungle – monkeys jumping overhead, giant tree ferns, and chimpanzees calling in the valley below us (an especially eerie sound at night). Day two was spent gaining a lot of elevation and moving into the heather forest. This is a truly otherworldly landscape, where gnarled old heather trees are draped with Old Man’s Beard and covered in masses of moss that reach up to three feet across. These hanging moss gardens are so unusual that they instantly struck me as something that could have come from a Dr. Seuss book. Day three was spent traversing two alpine bogs, places of incredible beauty and strange plant life, but that were clearly never meant to have people cross them. Luckily, we had experienced guides to lead us through them, and pretty much all of the Rwenzoris from that point on was more or less bog. Jumping from one tussock of grass to the next was fun and challenging, and carried with it significant risk as well, since the mud could be waist deep if one were to fall. I had a good time trying to land on wobbly, slippery tussocks, and by the end of the day I was well worn out from all of the jumping. Next we picked up a lot more elevation as we passed through a seemingly prehistoric alpine forest – I remarked at the time that a dinosaur stepping out into the path wouldn’t particularly surprise me there. Every day we were getting better and better views of the snow-capped high peaks of the Rwenzoris: Mt. Speke, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Stanely, whose Margherita Peak is the highest point in Uganda and was our destination. The majesty of these mountains is impossible for me to overstate, and I wish I could convey to you the feelings of wonder and awe that held me when the clouds would lift early in the morning, letting me bask in the splendor of those mountains.  By this time we were at significant elevation and the air was getting thin, making every foot gained a little more difficult than the last. By then end of day four we were scrambling over wet rocks and in sight of the snow, reaching the hut that sits about 200 yards from the edge of the glacier. Even before this, the temperature would plummet in the evening, but now it was cold all of the time. Still, Luke and I decided that this was our only chance to bathe in a glacial pool, so up we climbed to a pool above the hut and bathed ourselves is the icy water (literally) that sat just below the glacier. It occurred to me at the time that guys often do very stupid things and that this was likely one of them, but it was a fun to be there that close to the glacier, and afterwords the air felt much warmer by comparison, leaving us feeling refreshed. At this elevation, any activity, even walking to the latrine, was tiring and caused me to lose my breath. There just wasn’t enough oxygen in the air. We were all on medication for altitude sickness (two men died up there this summer from it), so no one had serious problems, but we all suffered from nausea and general weakness. The next morning started at 4:30 as we set out for the summit (all of us except Jack and Julia), scrambling by headlamp for an hour through a steep boulder field to the edge of the glacier, where we put on our crampons and harnesses and roped ourselves together. I was on a short rope with Luke and a guide, meaning that we were free to move at our own pace, but also meaning that, if someone fell, there were only two others to catch him. The glacier was fun and frightening, as we passed right over and around various openings to crevices that could have been 10 or 200 feet deep and I would have never known the difference. At one point, in a particularly steep section, there was an opening about a foot across into an ice cave, through which I could see icicles hanging down into the blackness. And we used that opening as a foothold for climbing! In the movie, it would collapse every time. But it didn’t, and I passed over it with heart racing and ice-axe at the ready to try to catch myself if it gave. After scaling a 20 foot rock face (completely exhausting at almost 17,000 feet – I couldn’t move my arms for a while afterword. However, I was roped in and being held by a guide), we scrambled for a few more minutes to the summit – all 16,763 feet of it. It was amazing looking down at the clouds, watching the wind whip them up onto the peak, and seeing how the sky looks strangely dark overhead at high elevation. Every now and again the clouds would part and we would have a stunning view of Alexandra peak, just a few hundred yards away. I would whip out my camera, but in seconds the clouds would close back in and it would be gone. I never did get a clear picture of it (my best try is the second picture above). While waiting for the second group to reach the summit, Luke and I snacked, tried to keep warm, and sang Go Tell it On the Mountain (that was the only place where it feels like the Christmas season!). Despite getting caught in a snowstorm on the way down, we made it back safely (though the snowy rocks made us use ropes to get down and it took an hour longer than it should have) and quickly made up a bunch of hot chocolate. We were all very tired but several more days of spectacular hiking awaited. One place from the descent sticks out in particular – a bamboo forest that I was alone when I entered. There was a stillness about it that felt almost sacred, broken only by the intermittent hushed rustle of the bamboo in the breeze. I was trying to catch up to the rest of the group, but I walked slowly through the bamboo. It felt like a place where one shouldn’t hurry.

 

All in all, the trek was cold, muddy, and exhausting, but incredibly fun, fascinating, and awe-inspiring. The difficultly and discomfort are a big part of what made it such a great experience for me and brought a lot of fun and adventure to it. On a climb like that, it’s usually best not to dwell on all of the times where one wrong step could send you tumbling to a rocky death, but those times were exhilarating and exciting too. Most of you probably know how much I enjoy the natural world and how much natural beauty speaks to me, and this trip gave me a huge dose of that. I saw many stunning birds, several of which are found only in the Rwenzoris. It was a place of great power. It reminded me of how Tolkien speaks of mountains having power or having a will of their own. It was like I could feel the mountains in addition to seeing them. I’ll certainly never forget it.

 

That’s a very long way of telling you that I’m back in Bundibugyo safely after an amazing time in the mountains. It is back to the real world tomorrow, as I’m headed down to the health center again in the morning. But I’m incredibly grateful for the chance to experience the Rwenzoris, and the beauty and majesty that I was lucky enough to revel in there. (I’ll try to get some more pictures up).

Mountains of the Moon

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving with the Myhres and Ashley for a week of trekking in the Rwenzoris. These are the same mountains that I see every day and that supply my water, but they get much bigger a few hours south of here. The ancient Greeks, upon seeing the Nile flowing so steadily out of an massive desert, guessed that somewhere in equatorial Africa there must lie a high mountain range - the Mountains of the Moon. They were right, of course, and the snows of the Rwenzori mountains are the only permanent source of that ancient river which formed a culture of it's own. That's right, snow on the equator. Pretty hard to believe, and not something I packed particularly well for. Many Europeans doubted that there could be snow in such a place (I've been telling you about the heat here), but these mountains are higher than the Alps and contain some spectacular ice formations. At over 16,700 feet, Mount Stanely is the 3rd highest peak in Africa, next to Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, but is a harder climb than either of them. Climbing on glaciers is always tricky, and there's a large glacier to cross to reach the summit (As with  almost all of the world's glaciers, it has lost about 1/3 of its mass in the last 50 years as the climate warms). We'll be renting gear like harnesses, crampons, and ice picks for this part (not exactly everyday gear here). Probably only a smaller group of us will go up on the glacier and attempt the summit, and even this will depend on the weather and altitude sickness.

I hear that the plant an animal life in the mountains is spectacular and unusual, and most of you know how much I enjoy both plants an animals. It's certain to be a grand adventure and a long one - 7 nights on the mountain. While it will be challenging and physically taxing, I'm excited about the chance to just be out in nature and enjoy the beauty of it. I think it will be a relaxing and restoring time, and one which will make me appreciate my cold shower. Clearly, I'll be out of touch for a little more than week. As for now, I'm trying to figure out what to pack (I picked up a great used fleece and some used wool socks in the market) and what food to bring. When I get back, I'll be sure to post pictures of the climb. I'm sure there will be some great ones. I think the hardest thing will be decided which spectacular things to photograph, since if I took pictures of them all I'd probably be stopping every few feet.

Today is the memorial service for the one year anniversary of the death of Dr. Jonah Kule in the ebola epidemic. I'm sure it will be a difficult time, as I can tell how much he is missed, especially as he was such a committed and hard-working doctor, not to mention that he was the shining star of the community, living proof that a local man could go on to receive a good education, attain a position of real influence, and do great things for his people. There are currently several young men in medical school being sponsored by the fund set up last year in Dr. Jonah's memory, so while it will be some time before they are doctors, there is hope that they will return to serve in the community here just as Dr. Jonah did.