I try again

Sorry for the delay. No electricity, no internet, plenty of frustration. Hike out to internet cafes only to get timed out or no connection. Anyway, after going about 60 hours without sleep (sorry, can’t sleep on a plane), landing in Entebbe, driving to Kampala (there’s a city you don’t need to visit), we finally make it to a hostel. Of course that‘s not to sleep. The director of the operation has determined that both we and the program will be better served if we stay awake until night, an attempt to jump start our sleep rhythms to Gulu time. I struggle to stay awake as we head out to dinner to an Indian restaurant. While at the table I fall out at least 20 times, only for a second or two. I am pretty confident no one catches my short--all too short--catnaps.

We place our order and wait…and wait…and wait…. Even though we are the only table, it takes 2 hours for the food to arrive. When I ask when we might be able to expect it to land on the table, I am told in a phrase I will learn to dread, “Welcome to Africa,” a catch-all for anything that doesn’t work. We don’t finish the meal until 11:00, at which point I am not sure I’ll survive my first day, let alone 7 weeks.
Next day, up at 8:00, and it’s 14 of us piled into a bus off to Gulu-—a 6 hour drive.

Every where I go I am met with the same question, “How do you find Africa.” I have no answer. I fell like I have not been in Africa; I have been traveling. I’ve been in buses, airports, planes, but this thing called Africa is still out there waiting for me. (Check that. There are some things that I’ve noticed: the birds are huge, exotic--not blue jays, the noise-makers in the trees are monkeys and baboons not squirrels.)

One thing I must mention is the traffic. I am convinced that very few NYC cabbies could survive here. The streets, mostly dirt, are populated with boda-bodas, little 100cc motorcycles. The equivalent of taxis, you hop on the back and they take off ignoring lanes, cars, buses, other boda-bodas. They drive up on the edge, into the gutter, the wrong way, they bob and weave like motorized versions of Barry Sanders. I see some of these little vehicles with 4 full grown men on them. Women wearing skirts must, because of modesty, ride side saddle. Forget traffic lights or stop signs: No such animals. The rule of the road is, “The bigger vehicle has the right of way.” So, get off or get dumped. The other difference re traffic, a positive one, is the complete lack of road rage. For some reason this chaos all seems to work. It makes me incredible uneasy, the thought that I will have to ride on the back of one of these every day, to and from school, is unsettling, but I have to admit, it works.

The long ride to Gulu takes us past the Nile, swollen from the recent rains, tumbling rapids—rapids that I will soon try. Along the side of the road are baboons. The males are huge, equipped with long teeth and lion’s manes they are very imposing. As we approach a family, the driver feigns running them over. The male steps out challenging the bus to a game of chicken, the driver laughs and pulls off and the baboon, triumphant, chases us down the road screeching his victory.
There follows the tale from the driver about his most recent trip, in a mutate, a smaller bus, with 8 passengers….he hit a hippo. The hippo walked away. I imagine some metaphor to what has taken place recently here can be drawn, to the ability of these people to survive the every day turmoil that makes up their lives, but I’ll leave that up to you

layover in Londan

12 hours in Heathrow. We got out of the airport for a while, did all the touristy things: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus. I think London, at least what I saw of it, is vying for a new nickname, "City of Cleavage. I am going from a place where the women make it a point of wearing as little as possible to a place where showing a knee is considered blasphemous.

We return, no sleep, virtually on empty, to an, "I can't find my passport" meltdown by one of my fellow travelers. Phone calls to embassy and the subway system to no avail. The only recourse was, "Why don't you chek your bag once more?"
Surprise, surprise--crisis ended.
Their calling our flight. Gotta go.

I'm finally going

I leave today, 9:30 PM from JFK. An eight hour flight will take me to London for a 12 hour stopover, then up in the air for another 8 hours until we reach Entebbe. I've known about the trip since I was accepted by The Invisible Children Teacher Exchange Program December 17th of last year, but, like death, it seemed so distant it wasn't real for me.
Along the way I've gotten shots for meningitis, polio, mumps, tetanus, yellow fever, Hepatitis A & B (a series of 3 each) and typhoid; I've picked up my 60 days of anti-virals to protect against malaria; been issued guidelines on how to behave, "Don't go out alone, but don't go out in groups."; read Ugandan papers, poetry and books; and had the occasional nightmare (snakes in the bed, plane goes down in flames). Luckily, I've also been the recipient of a constant stream of e mails from the teachers who are in the group that preceded us, full of joy, of wonder. They convey a sense of wanting us to be there with them already so we can share in this wonderful experience. But too many weeks of mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, too many birthdays and graduation parties, too much life here in NY for me to allow my mind to go to Uganda.
No, it didn't become real for me until last week-end, Father's day week-end, when I sat with my three step-daughters and my wife for a send-off dinner. There, the three girls handed me a card, a Father's Day card. Unless you've been a step-parent, it may be difficult to grasp how big that is. Although I never tried to supplant their Dad, that doesn't mean it always felt like that to them. I took the card signed by all three, opened it, and saw though blurred vision the three signatures all preceded by the word, "Love." I looked at their mother, my wife, saw her tears--some happy for me, some, no doubt, sad that the girl's father wasn't still alive-- and suddenly I felt the weight of leaving.
So, I leave tonight on my next step in life. I am excited, scared. But as I look at what I am leaving and where I was before, I am confident that no matter what is out there, I will learn from it and come back a richer man.