uganda

The flight was almost two hours late and no one seemed to notice. I stood in the hot, baking sun of a northern Ugandan afternoon, behind my sunglasses my eyes rested closed while my arms and face soaked up the surprisingly comforting rays. The fatigue of almost three weeks of travel was catching up with me and I honestly couldn’t get out of there soon enough. But at the local airstrip (not an airport), I had no more control over my life and destiny than the people I had just spent the past few days visiting with in the refugee camps. My only choice was to stand beside that dirt runway and wait for whenever the tiny plane decided to show up… to wait for my own sort of deliverance.

Uganda was (and is) a complex place. Not that I’m an authority on any kind of history, but I am an observer of people, and cultures, and whatever evirons Life seems to find me in, and since I’m always more of a “documentarian” than an “intervener,” I try to at least learn from what I see (the sights, sounds, smells, conversations) and share it and grow from it.

So, this is what I saw = Kampala, the capital, was immensely accessible (aside from the hellacious traffic that haunts any capital city) and is renowned as one of Africa’s safest major cities. It was big, but not too big like Dar es Salaam or Nairobi, and people were quite friendly. English is the country’s official language so it was spoken everywhere, which makes everything just a heck of a lot easier. I stayed at a normal hotel, had lots of meetings with people in their normal offices, talked about normal work issues and what not. I might as well have been in Milwaukee.

Throughout those conversations, though, I learned that most organizations were doing work “in the north” which didn’t mean very much to me until later, when I was actually there, and experienced the radically different environment for myself. I didn’t know much about Ugandan history (and am far from a scholar now), but I did know a little about Idi Amin’s reign of terror in the 1970’s (as depicted in the movie The Last King of Scotland). What I wasn’t aware of was that other terrifying leaders followed, along with fierce clashes among people groups that continued into the late 1990’s, primarily “in the north.”

Even though the “peace process” has brought calmer times here in the 21^st century, an estimated one million Ugandans are still living as refugees from decades of civil conflict. They’re known to relief agencies as IDP's, or internally displaced persons, and are clustered together in “camps” by the thousands, many within only a few miles of their original homes. But even now, because of continuing “security restrictions,” they are stuck – forbidden to venture outside the camp perimeters to farm or have their own livelihoods. They depend largely on UN rations for food, international organizations for medicine and supplies, and their own government for not much at all. After living like this more well over a decade, many people I talked to have accepted these camps as their fate, saying these cramped communities are now their homes, and especially their children’s homes, since it’s all that the younger generations have ever known.

The living conditions in these camps were truly some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Nothing certainly compares to the aftermath of the tsunami, or even Hurricane Katrina, but as you take in your surroundings in this kind of situation, Something Inside you knows that man’s neglect is an equal or perhaps even greater tragedy than nature’s wrath. As always, though, I moved around an incomprehensible environment as unflinchingly as possible, taking a few photos here and there and asking easy questions about mosquitoes, when I really just wanted to scream “OH MY GOD WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP YOU GET OUT OF HERE?”

The mud-brick huts were built so closely together that the edges of their straw-thatched rooftops often touched, creating shady places for relief from the heat and, in the rainy season, perpetual puddles that were breeding havens for mosquitoes and disease. The people I interviewed were ultra-polite, often shy, but others stared stone-faced, especially the women (the hardest working yet most depreciated group in rural African society), and no English was spoken. There was little grass inside the camps, only dust and dirt or mud, making for dark-skinned children whose hours of outdoor play made them appear gray, even ghostly, the shade of ground. Some giggled when I passed, others shrieked in horror, but everyone, of all ages, turned and watched me closely.

Back in the main town, where the airstrip was, I had seen sign after sign pointing the way to aid agency offices, most of them familiar names of organizations I knew from Indonesia or before. Yet, when I was actually in the refugee camps, I saw little evidence of their presence – children looked extremely unhealthy, their clothes were ragged (if not nonexistent); families had few possessions, except an occasional mosquito net, a cooking pot and a sleeping mat. I just didn’t understand where any real help for these people was…

And then the tiny plane landed on the dirt runway and carried me away from that place that I still can’t believe exists on the same planet that America does, or even the capital city in its own country for that matter. It wasn’t until I was safely home, relishing in the comfort of eating popcorn on my overstuffed red chaise lounge watching The Office season premier, that I physically shuttered at the contrasting worlds I had just experienced. Less than 48 hours before I had been standing amid a manmade catastrophe of poverty and civil war and neglect...

So what was it about me that I was the one that deserved to get on a plane and leave it all behind and return to a life of ease and comfort, of excess and options?

In the quiet hours since then, I have realized that the Ugandan refugees did get on the plane with me, and followed me home, hidden away in my subconscious like stow-aways in the cargo hold. They are here with now as I type, along with my cup of freshly-brewed coffee and air conditioner and closet full of clothes. For years, I think my eyes have taken in more than my heart has ever begun to process. But that’s ok… in a few days, I’ll be back at work, back in the routine, back caring about all the little things that really don’t matter. Breathing deeply again. But for now, while jetlag awakens me into night’s dark hours, I will remember… the people, the sounds, the smells, the conversations in the radically different world that exists just a flight away.


walking into one of the camps - kids everywhere, laundry drying on rooftops, mom's working, a local food like low-quality potatoes lying out on mats waiting to be pounded in mush for porridge

a family portrait - eight of the nine children belonging to this unusually happy mother appeared for a photo

local kids clamored around me at this camp - both boys and girls were usually bald, most likely because of malnutrition

i was amazed with this little boy's toy car because i've so rarely seen children playing with anything like this

To learn more about what's going on in northern Uganda, here is a link to a recent speech on the situation. Or visit the UNHCR or Doctors Without Borders websites to understand the plight of the 33 million refugees in the world. I will eventually write about the good things about Uganda, because there were indeed many unforgettable moments, but these were the impressions I needed to share first, hoping we can all grow and learn a little bit from getting a glimpse of what goes on in parts of our world that really aren't that far away...

tanzania

Ok, so I have about a two hour flight ahead of me from the capital of Tanzania (Dar es Salaam) to the international airport in Uganda (Entebbe, though Kampala is the capital), and surely in that time I can spill something onto paper about the last nine days before I embark onto another phase of this journey, promptly forgetting all I’ve seen and done here.

Tanzania’s in eastern, southern Africa (am sharing this because I didn’t know either) and is home to Lake Victoria and the Serengeti plains in the north (think Lion King) and a gorgeous oceanic coastline in the east. The exotic island of Zanzibar is also just across the water from the lackluster metropolis of Dar.

All that said, it’s also one of the world’s poorest countries (annual household income of less than $300) and they’ve got a pretty terrible malaria problem, thus the reason for my visit. A U.S. government program that’s funded by your tax dollars has put millions into the fight against malaria here, beginning with successful efforts in Zanzibar two years ago. Mainland Tanzania is immensely more complex in size and scope, but they have still made strides against the country’s number one killer, and I’m here to document how.

After working in the malaria field for a few months now and traveling lots already, I have seen NOTHING like I saw in northern Tanzania, one of its most severely-affected areas. Sick people of all ages, packed hospital wards, empty shelves where medicines should be but supplies were completely depleted. It was all a truly shocking situation, because it wasn’t even rainy season yet when infection rates are always highest, so it’s only going to get worse. For perhaps the first time, I personally felt the sheer gravity of the disease and the urgency to do even more to help fight it.

And that message has already spread to others as well. In the relatively small town I worked out of the first four or five days of my time here, I connected (through a series of random, completely unplanned events) with another group of Americans, two of whom you’d likely recognize for winning an Oscar together years back – they went on to star in lots of movies and grace tabloid covers everywhere. Anyway, no names necessary, but suffice it to say, one was very nice and impressive, and the other, not so much. But I’m very thankful they both came to see firsthand what the realities are outside of the Western world, and I was able to end up spending a day with them as their “malaria expert” (ha!). Hopefully, they’ll use their spotlight to raise awareness for the ongoing plight of the suffering and struggling in Africa and beyond.

Almost as interesting to me, was that one of people traveling with them was the inventor of the ONE campaign, which I have loved and supported for years. My life is just so random …

I learned quickly on my travels around the countryside, that Tanzania’s topography is immensely varied. Within an hours drive, I went from the fertile shoreline of Lake Victoria (the world’s second largest inland lake) to one of the most bizarre landscapes I’ve ever seen as I traveled east toward the Serengeti -- rolling hillsides spotted with gigantic, haphazardly-placed rock formations. Many resembled larger versions of Stonehenge, but not quite so systematic, and they perhaps even looked like moon rocks, too (if that even makes sense) but set against the back drop of open fields and traditional huts. It was very, very strange and made me think that people who don’t believe in the Flood should really go to northern Tanzania and see these crazy rocks. I just can’t imagine how else they got there….

Aside from the landscape, I must confess that I wasn’t nearly as enamored with Tanzania as I was with Ethiopia. Some African countries that I’ve visited seem to have a stronger sense (or display) of their own cultural traditions and history than others. For example, there was no clear Tanzanian food that I could find, except for fish from Lake Victoria. They boasted chapattis as their own, but we all know that’s an Indian thing, though there are indeed lots of Indians in Tanzania. The only traditional dress that I could discern was that of the Masaii people, who you may recognize as those whose men wear long red plaid cloaks and are often pictured standing stoically with spears and shields. But the ones I saw were more likely to be holding cell phones. Apparently, lack of rainfall and other environmental factors of recent years have forced the Masaii from their nomadic lifestyle of the past millenniums, and thousands have now flocked to the cities looking for work. But not leaving the red traditional robes at home…

Yesterday was last day in Tanzania and I had returned from the moon rock-laden countryside to the capital to visit (among other things) an urban larvaciding project. Sounds fascinating, I know, but this is indeed my life now. So what they do in this one-of-a-kind-in-the-world project is kill the mosquito larvae before they hatch. No mosquitoes = no malaria. But since Dar is a city of about three million people they have to do this on massive scale, thus making it so unique.

Anyway, I went with the mosquito experts all around town, visiting mostly small swampy areas in densely-populated residential areas. But then we stopped at an area that was reportedly one of their biggest challenges to treat – massive sewage lagoons that are no longer in use, but can still collect rain water where mosquitoes breed. So, we get out of the car and are walking across a muddy, open area toward the large, mostly-empty man-made ponds, when one of the guys turns and says something to me. Since accents can often hinder ones understanding, I thought he said something about a field, and innocently called back to him, “What about the field?” He and his colleague chuckled aloud, and the other guy, who spoke perfect English, stopped and said back, “He was telling you to be careful because you are walking on feces.”

Now, what does one say to that, or even do in such a situation? I knew they were partly teasing me and the sewage had been treated and buried, just like any old landfill anywhere. But still! I paused only for a moment, looking down at the over-sized white boots they’ve loaned me (God only knows why they have white boots for such a nasty job), and thinking of the semi-heavy camera bag on one shoulder. I knew the odds were in my favor for a fall any second – either from stumbling in the big rubber boots or the shock of now knowing what I was *really* standing on.

And it was at that moment that I tapped into that part of myself that so often kicks in and overrides my natural inclinations, making me be able to do what I do and go where I’ve gone. And in the best Swahili I could muster, I looked back at them, shrugged my shoulders and said, “Hakuna matata.” No worries. And I kept right on walking…


But here are just a few glimpses into Tanzania before I go...

a child hospitalized with malaria

the Stonehenge/moon rocks jutting from behind a traditional hut

cute smiling faces everywhere, as always

sunset over Lake Victoria