Gardening and Frienship

There are various aspects of the culture here that I find frustrating, either simply because they’re foreign to me or because I just don’t like the way that certain things work. Yesterday, however, I experienced a truly beautiful part of Babwisi culture. Since the rains have returned, for a time at least, and softened the soil, I decided to spend my Saturday starting work on building a garden. Throughout my life many a spring and summer weekend has been spent in the garden with my dad, or out in the fields, since we moved to a farm, so it felt like a good way to spend my day. I borrowed a hoe, the only tool for working the soil that I’ve seen in Bundibugyo, and set about trying to dig up the grass in a part of my yard without losing all the topsoil with it. I’d know exactly how to do this with a good shovel, but with this particular tool I was a little lost and was trying several different techniques, none of which were working terribly well. This was especially troubling since I was in clear view of my neighbor’s house and anyone else who might be walking around, and looking like an incompetent American wasn’t very high on my to-do list. When my neighbors saw me, they first called out, “Nathany, webale kukora!” which means “thank you for digging.” That’s one interesting aspect of the culture here – you thank people for everything. I was doing nothing that benefits them at all (unless they also harvest out of my garden, which is a real possibility) but they still thanked me for the work I was doing. This phrase was repeated by everyone who dropped in while I was working yesterday. But the truly remarkable things happened next. After only a couple of minutes, my two little neighbor boys, Gonja and Charity, who must be about 9-10 and 7-8 years old, respectively, came running over into my yard, hoes in hand, and started swinging them, pulling up sod and tossing it aside. Apart from just helping me, they instructed me on the proper way to use the tool for that purpose (often with laughs as I tried, and generally failed, to copy exactly their technique). But it didn’t stop there. Next, two girls who are in some way related to them and are both a bit older came over, hoes in hand, and joined in. Now we were really making progress. But it got better. In another few minutes, Charity and Gonja’s mother, and another woman who lives next door (probably the mother of the two girls, but family relations are very ambiguous here so I’m not sure), walked over to the growing patch of dirt and started working as well. Women here know how to work the ground, let me tell you. The two of them put all of the rest of us to shame in both speed and quality of work, as they pulled up sod, removed roots, and loosened the soil. Here in Bundibugyo the women do most of the gardening and cultivation, while men clear land and grow cash crops like cocoa and coffee, and it showed. In only a few hours, we (mostly they) had cleared the grass from the patch of ground that I had designated garden (which, as I found out halfway through, is right on top of one of the only underground water lines in the entire district. But we didn’t break it. Not yet anyway). By the time we were about halfway done I was getting the hang of it and kids were saying, “Nathany is a farmer!” and even paying me what I considered the extremely high compliment of calling me an American Mubwisi (a Mubwisi being one of the Babwisi people).

At one point early in the process I was thanking little Gonja for helping me, telling him that I was grateful and hadn’t expected his help. He looked at me with a look that seemed to combine confusion, impatience, and pity, and said, “No. I am your friend.” You help your friends when they need help, you work with them when they work. That’s just what friendship is here. Now, before I idealize this, friendship also often means that I am probably expected to give money to anyone who would be a friend whenever they need it, so it’s not all fun and games and easy decisions. But there was something beautiful about the way that, when they saw a friend and neighbor who could use some help, there never seemed to be any question of what the appropriate response was. There’s the chance that this will also mean that they will be entitled to a certain amount of whatever I grow – that might be a reciprocal aspect of the friendship. In the evening, after finishing work for the day, I took a bag of beans over to their house as a gift for two reasons: one, because I’m in the habit of giving them gifts from time to time as gifts are very important here; and two, as a way to help say thank you. Gonja translated between his mother and me, but he scolded me when I said something that must have made it seem like payment. Giving a gift was fine, but paying was not. He again insisted, “You are our neighbor.”

Two other things I experienced while working the garden were open blisters on the palms of both hands. They started early in the day, brought on by an unfamiliar tool and hands that haven’t been farming recently, and I knew that I should stop working before they got bad, but my pride wouldn’t let me. So I toiled on, eventually putting bandaids on my hands when they got bad enough, but stubbornly and stupidly continuing to work. Now, my hands are bandaged and just about every simple little task involved some amount of pain. I think this isn’t the first story I’ve told about stupid things I’ve done just because I have that typical tough-guy syndrome. But as of today, though it’s not finished, I also have the beginnings of a good garden, with soil that is dark and deep (significantly deeper than my blisters).

A big day

The Myhre's recently, after over 15 years, invested in satellite TV for their house, giving us the chance to watch the occasional football match. But today, after getting back from our team planning retreat, it allowed all of us to gather to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama. Whatever your political views or your thoughts about him as a politician, I felt that today's ceremony was a truly historic moment for our nation, and one that I was very glad to be able to witness on TV. I'm not one to enjoy being constantly told by a hundred reporters that I'm witnessing history, but I also felt that it was really true. We were gathered at the Myhre's, crowded around the TV, watching the inane coverage of the run-up (I have memorized the entire menu for the inaugural luncheon) to the ceremony, and it occurred to me that people like us were a part of the reason that this inauguration was the most highly viewed event in the history of television (they said the previous program to hold that title was the final episode of M.A.S.H. - yikes). I'm sure that some of you are excited for Obama's presidency and some of you are not, but I hope that all of you can join me in celebrating not only a politician or a political party, but rather a victory in our nation for justice and a further step away from some of the darkest times in our history.

Here in Uganda, everyone is very excited and somewhat in disbelief that someone even remotely like them could become President of the US, which was really a theme of the ceremony and even of Obama's address. As a final note on the inauguration, it struck me is highly ironic that at the inauguration of a man who is so gifted an orator there would be a mix up in the actual taking of the oath (my reading is that it was probably Roberts' fault, but it must have been pretty embarrassing for both of them). My first thought that they just handed Saturday Night Live weeks of good material.

Skipped a beat...

is what my heart just did. I walked back from team pizza dinner at the Myhre's through a beautiful star-lit night, but with my eye on the ground since the Myhre's goat died of a snakebite last week. I unlocked my door by the light of my cell phone (what can I say, I'm a child of my times) and stepped inside. With the light switch on the far side of the house and having forgotten a flashlight (as I usually do), I walked (as I usually do), through my house in the dark. And that's when the skipping-a-beat happened. Just before I put my bare foot down on the concrete floor, I jumped forward to avoid stepping on something that could have simply been a funny shadow, but was vaugely snake-shaped. And sure enough, it slithered slowly under the couch. I ran to get a flashlight and a large stone, and promptly dropped the stone on the head of a black snake about a foot and a half long. The small size is encouraging because it likely indicates that it was neither a cobra nor a black mamba, but I am nonetheless a little flustered at having nearly stepped on a snake in my living room in a place where both of those species live. And this all happened within the last five minutes. So now I have a dead snake outside and snake blood on my floor inside, which will have to wait until morning to be cleaned up because I just don't feel like doing it now. I'm guessing that this doesn't make any of you more likely to come visit me, and I'd want to ensure you that this is a real rarity (hey, it's only happened once in almost three months), but then again I did just have a snake on my floor. I don't know if I'll ever be able to identify it, since I pretty much destroyed its head with the rock, but perhaps it's better that way. In the very most literal sense possible, life here is certainly keeping me on my toes.

Home from the big city

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that 2009 is treating you all well so far. After much traveling, I'm now back home in Bundibugyo. I spent a week in Nairobi visiting other World Harvest people there with Ashley and Heidi, and had a very fun and relaxing time. Nairobi is a real contrast to Bundibugyo - it's dry and brown and urban and breezy and beautifully cool. At one point I was outside in the shade in the middle of the day when I stopped and turned to the girls and said "Hey! I'm not sweating!," which is seldom the case in Bundibugyo. As a special treat, we even got to go ice skating on New Year's Eve at an indoor rink in Nairobi. I never expected to skate here, and I was able to skate and swim in the same week. On Jan 1st we drove through Nairobi National Park, a park teeming with animals and within sight of the high-rises of Nairobi. We saw giraffes within a few feet of the car, zebras, cape buffalo, impala, eland, a rhino, and, after much searching, we found a pride of lions relaxing in the shade of a tree. (Some of my favorite photos from the park are above). It was my first game drive and I had a great time, as well as baking in the equatorial sun. Throughout the week in Kenya we enjoyed a lot of rest - waking up late, sitting around drinking coffee, relaxing and talking, reading, watching movies - general down-time activities. While this might seem like a lame thing to do on vacation in a new country (at first glance it does to me, too), there is really no down time in Bundibugyo, there's always someone at the door, some request or need, some work to be done. As an example, in the course of writing this post up to this point, I've been interupted about 5 times by kids at my door asking for water, and even now I have two of my young friends walking around the room and looking at my computer. So, just having the time to relax was a real blessing. We also got to see Kibera, the second largest slum in the world and probably the most densely populated place on earth. We had a Kenyan walk us through the slum for about 45 minutes. This was the place where the ethnic post-election violence started last year that caused such great suffering - we talked with several children in our time there who had lost one or both parents. It was an interesting place - the houses are mostly of mud and corrugated steel and are right on top of each other, leading to sanitation problems that are hard to comprehend. At the same time, there is electricity there and we saw many people who were quite well dressed and out shopping or coming back from work in the city. It was interesting to see a place of urban poverty when I live in a place of rural poverty, and it's hard to say if one is better or worse than the other.

An interesting aspect to the trip was the gender ratio - it was me, Ashley, Heidi, and the three girls from the Nairobi team hanging out most of the time. How lucky for me, you might say. However, every guy knows that a guy needs guy time, which there wasn't much of to be had. I did meet a couple guys in Nairobi and was able to throw a football around, but then again, I also watched Pride and Prejudice. I countered that by following it with the first hour of Gladiator after the girls went to bed. The girls have been very kind and sensitive to the fact that I'm the only guy around when it comes to movie choices and the like, but there's only so much one can do when I'm outnumbered that badly :) So, when I got home yesterday evening, it was nice to stand around the grill with Scott and another doctor who is visiting for a week, sip on a beer, and cook steak.

I drove over the mountains on the way back, my first long drive on a stick shift with the wheel on the right side of the car. My only previous drive had been taking a kid to the hospital for an appendectomy, so it's been trial by fire. I only stalled twice which, given the condition of the Bundibugyo road, I didn't consider too bad. I also never was asked for a driving permit at any of the police checkpoints, which was nice considering that I don't have one. Bumpy doesn't quite describe the road - it's like a driving on a combination of speed bumps, rumble strips, and craters for three hours. And it's much more stressful to drive than to ride, because it's like being locked in combat with the road, me trying to find the least jarring way home, and the road trying to shake the vehicle into pieces.

So, now I'm safely back in Bundibugyo (mention safely, because I'm returning from a city that is less-than-lovingly nicknamed Nai-robbery). I'm glad to be back and I really enjoyed being greeted by all the neighborhood children - I found that I'd missed seeing them. But I'm also back to a place of little rest, of constant requests and interupptions, and of my usual 24 hour coating of sweat. It was great to be away but it's nice to be back in the place that I'm more and more calling home.

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!