Abram

It’s Monday now, and we have a full day planned. Ashley is leaving on Tuesday and there are errands to run, special order necklaces to pick up, and goodbyes to say. There are also three sick babies to visit. Julie tells me that Rachel, one of the Suubi women, has 10-month old triplets that have been at the local children’s hospital for weeks and that they’re not getting any better. She says she’s not convinced they’re getting the care they need, and wants to pass by later to see if she can get them transferred to a different clinic.

We run the first few errands, drop Ashley at home to pack, then head down the street to the hospital with Betty, whom we’ve asked to serve as our translator (Rachel speaks only limited English), in tow. When we get there, Rachel has one frail and listless baby boy in each of her arms. Her older daughter Beth is holding a third baby, a girl, whose fat cheeks and bright eyes only bring her brothers’ illness into sharper relief (Beth, by the way, is nine, and has been taken out of school to help her mother with the triplets). Rachel lays the boys in a crib so she can change Abram, the littlest and sickest of the three. John, the other one, begins whimpering feebly. I look at Betty.

“Can you ask her if it’s ok if I hold him while she changes the other one?” I ask. Betty translates and Rachel nods. I gently slide my hands under John’s little body and hold him close to my chest. I hum a lullaby, the only one I can remember (“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…”) and soon he is quiet, his small head tucked under my chin, his breathing shallow but steady.

Julie begins, through Betty, to explain to Rachel why we are here and how we want to help. All eyes are on us and soon a small crowd has formed. Two men (social workers, I learn) are there, asking questions about who we are and what organization we are with and where we will take the babies. Julie, who has since scooped up baby Abram, is trying to clarify our relationship with Rachel, when I suddenly realize that they think we want to take them from her.

“No, no,” I say. “We don’t want to take the babies from Rachel. We are just wanting to take them from here, to transfer them to another facility. We are concerned that, after being here so long, they are still so sick. We’d like to move them to another clinic, so they can see another doctor.”

The social workers nod their understanding, but by now the small crowd has grown. Now, there are nurses all around, and a large, sturdy woman descends upon us. I can tell right away that she’s pissed. She is the matron, I’m sure, the nurse-in-charge, and she is scowling with more than just her face – she is scowling with her entire dump-truck of a body. And I know that somehow, despite our best, most well-meaning intentions, we have managed to offend her and her entire staff.

Several people are talking at once: the social workers to the nurses; the nurses to Rachel; Rachel to the social workers; Betty to us; us to each other. We are told that we can’t remove the babies without the mother’s permission. In my meekest, most conciliatory tone, I assure everyone that we don’t intend to do anything without the mother’s permission, and that we are only here to help. We are then told that if we do remove them, it will be against medical advice.

I look at Julie, still holding Abram, with John in my own arms, and stammer something unintelligible. I feel helpless and completely in-over-my-head. We are causing a scene (just by virtue of being there and being white), angering the staff, and I’m concerned that Rachel is feeling pressured to do something she doesn’t really want to do. Julie says she doesn’t trust the medical advice or treatment they are being given here and she just wants to get the babies out, she doesn’t care who we offend in the process. The Mighty Mouse theme thrums a sardonic tune inside my head: “Here I come, to save the dayyy!!”

Suddenly, we are ushered out of the ward and into a small room across the hall, the matron insisting that the babies must be tested. “For what?” we ask. “HIV,” they tell us. We explain that the babies have already been tested and are negative, even show them where it says so in their books. We know that they know this, and that they are just stalling, but we don’t know why – other than to assert their authority. I do my best to smooth ruffled feathers, affecting a soothing, almost obsequious tone when I speak and engaging in lengthy greetings with each new nurse we meet, but it’s getting us nowhere. I want to call my brother; I am certain he’ll know what to do.

There’s more talking in languages I don’t understand and then someone else comes in (actually, I’m pretty sure it’s the matron again), asking us why we are wasting their time having the babies tested for HIV. Julie and I share an exasperated look. Finally, the matron dismisses us with a perfunctory wave.

We hustle out before she changes her mind and clamber up into the Mystery Machine, Rachel holding Abram, Beth holding Eva (who by the way has been sucking on the first two fingers of her right hand the entire time and it is the freaking most adorable thing I have ever seen) and me still holding John; Betty climbs in with Kymbi. Rachel’s husband, whose name I have forgotten (it’s something lyrical and multi-syllabic, like Sulongalonga), stays behind to wait for her mom. We pull out and head for Rippon Medical Center. It’s private, so it costs more money, but Julie’s mom has deposited money in her account to cover whatever medical expenses they incur.

At Rippon, we are seen almost immediately by the doctor. Dr. Christine is large, like Nurse Ratchet, but soft and round where the nurse was hard and square, and she is smiling a kind smile. I feel better already.

Julie leaves to check on her sister so I am left to explain how it is we’ve come to be here. Dr. Christine listens quietly, then examines each baby. She tells me malnutrition is the primary presenting condition, but orders a full blood work-up on all three to be safe.

The lab, however, is closed. And this is where I am reminded that, in Africa, time is not your own. Here, you are at the mercy of God or the Universe or that one lab tech who will take every second of his well-deserved afternoon break, by George, no matter how many desperately ill and hungry babies are waiting for him to stick them, again and again, rooting around for their tiny, atrophied veins in search of the blood that will tell the story of their sickness. And so we wait, on benches in the hot sun. It feels like forever before he returns. I want to scream.

He does return, though, and by then Julie is back with Ashley, so she takes Abram and follows the tech inside while I check messages on my cell. I hear Abram start to cry, and rush in after him. And there is Julie, seated into a corner, holding Abram while the techs (there is a second one now) hover over him and search fruitlessly for a vein. He is wailing – an agonizingly insistent, if faint, howl – and would flail his free arm in protest if he could but he is too weak to do much more than flap. He’s got a stent in his arm already, from the IV drip he was on at the other hospital, and we ask if it’s possible to draw from that one but the techs shake their heads. I watch, crying, my own fists clenched to keep from flailing, until I can’t stand it any longer. I run outside and cry some more.

When I come back, Julie is standing with Abram; the techs have given up. She looks at me. “Do you want to hold – ”

“Yes,” I say, and scoop his tiny, birdlike body into my arms, rocking him gently and cooing in his ear. At ten months, he weighs even less than my niece, herself a preemie, did at five. He has no hair on his head, but his long lashes are tinged with orange, the tell-tale sign of malnutrition. His head fits neatly in the palm of my hand and I can feel each of his vertebrae through his thin onesie, like a row of skittles beneath his skin. I hold him close and hum a lullaby, then a hymn.

I wait in the office with Abram while the techs repeat their torture on John and Eva. Julie sticks her head in and asks if I mind staying. She still has a long list of things to help Ashley with before she leaves and they are running out of time. “Of course,” I assure her.

When they finish with Eva, I stand to leave, but now another doctor is there, and he is saying they must try again with Abram. “We didn’t get enough,” they say. They need more blood to conduct their tests. I sit back down and hold Abram tightly while the doctor ties a rubber glove around his pencil-thin arm; this seems to pain him even more than the needle. I close my eyes and press my lips to his forehead. I don’t think I can watch him endure this again.

The doctor leans over and spies my own veins, swollen from the heat of the sun and pulsing with my anxious heartbeat. “Ah, but yours,” he says, pointing at my arm. I smile wryly. “Yes,” I say, and wish I could offer my own veins instead, a vial of my own blood.

The doctor sticks Abram again and he keens. I pull him closer, and begin humming again. I look at the doctor. “Do you think maybe he could rest?” I ask. “Do you think maybe we could try again tomorrow? He is just so dehydrated and – ”

“Yes,” the doctor says, straightening. “His veins are very tired. I think maybe we will try again tomorrow.”

“But … he can stay here tonight, yes?” I ask, but he is not listening. He is looking outside, at Dr. Christine. They consult through the window and agree that Abram can stay the night. I hurry outside and confirm with Dr. Christine. She tells me that they will keep him overnight so they can re-hydrate him and start him on treatment, then try again to draw blood tomorrow.

“And the others,” I say. “They can stay, too?”

“Yes,” she says. “I think we can manage.” I thank her profusely and ask her if she will explain to Rachel and her husband what is happening. She does, and promises to also explain to her how to prepare a rice porridge that will be better for the babies than milk (milk, it turns out, only exacerbates the diarrhea). Then we follow the other doctor to a private room where a nurse is putting clean sheets on the bed and another is readying the IV drip.

I stay with the family until they are settled. I notice John and Eva’s wet bottoms, and gesture to Rachel. She shakes her head – she has no more diapers. I tell her I am going and ask if there’s anything I can bring her. She asks for milk. I promise to be back soon.

I walk home and pack a bag with new cloth diapers that someone had donated a while back, then set off for the market in town. Back at Rippon, I present Rachel with the milk and clean diapers, then collect the pile of soiled ones she’s wadded in a ball and stuff them in my bag. I will wash them myself. I kiss each of the babies, and Beth, shake Rachel’s hand and head home. I am drained, but I feel lighter. I know that everything will be ok.

At the house, I boil water so I can soak the soiled diapers, only two of which are actual diapers, by the way. The rest: a faded onesie, an old toddler’s t-shirt, a piece of a bed sheet, a threadbare dishtowel that Rachel ties around her children’s tiny middles. They reek of vomit and diarrhea, a sickly sweet, almost yeasty smell. I scrub until my fingers are red, boil more water, and scrub them again.

On Tuesday morning, Julie and I share a piki (a scooter) to Rippon – I straddle the seat behind the driver and Julie perches, sidesaddle in her skirt, behind me. The diapers I’ve washed aren’t dry yet – we’ll have to bring them by later – but we want to get over there first thing. We are anxious to see how the babies are improving.

When we get there, we are met by the two doctors from yesterday, Dr. Christine and Dr. Needle Stick; they inform us that the family is no longer there. They were transported, we are told, back to the children’s hospital from whence we removed them, in the middle of the night. Abram’s treatment was failing, we are told, and the night duty staff thought it best to send him to a facility that had more experience dealing exclusively with children.

“But … they weren’t giving him the right treatment there!” Julie splutters in protest. “We took him out of that place, and brought him here so he could get the treatment he needs!” She shakes her head, exasperated. “I am afraid that if he stays there, he will die,” she says. The doctors have nothing to say to that. Then, after an awkward silence, Christine says she will make a call and inquire after Abram for us.

Julie and I thank her, but we are seething. And though I can’t speak for Julie on this, I am also scared. I know how much we angered the matron and her nurses yesterday and I am worried that Abram will be punished for it. We stand on the corner and debate our next move. She wants to go over and remove him, to transfer him Al Shafa, the last best clinic in Jinja. I am certain that removing him will only make things worse. “For whom?” she asks, and says again she’s not worried about who we might offend. “If he stays there, he’ll die,” she repeats. I know she’s probably right, but I can’t help but think that swooping in again will have other larger and less immediate, but more lasting consequences – for Rachel and her other children, for any other woman we might want to help at that hospital – even if I can’t seem to articulate why I believe that.

I feel, if it’s possible, even more helpless than I did yesterday. In a fit of desperation, I text my brother and ask him to call me. Scarcely a minute has passed when a matatu pulls up to the curb and Rachel and her husband spill out. I am relieved, and greet her warmly, but her face is impassive.

“Where is Abram?” Julie asks.

“He is dead,” she says, and flicks her hand, a vague, faraway gesture, her eyes squinting into the morning sun. I am speechless, and feel very suddenly and very violently ill.

“We are so sorry, Rachel,” we both finally say. “So very, very sorry.”

*****

I walk home from Rippon in stunned silence, weeping. I am irrationally angry – at Rippon, for failing him; at the matron, for being such a bitch; at Rachel, even, for not understanding that milk was only making him worse; at myself for knowing it and being stupid enough to buy her more; at Julie, for thinking we had any right; at myself, again, for not agreeing with her.

And then I am ashamed – ashamed that I could have wasted a millisecond worrying about how I might spare someone offense when a life hung in the balance. Not that it would have made a difference – he was dead already when we had that argument.

I am ashamed, too, for thinking we could fix it in the first place and then ashamed that we didn’t, that we failed. And I wonder if Rachel is angry, if she blames us.

And I think, still, of that fucking nurse.

And then I am just sad, wishing I could have held him one more time, hummed him one more hymn, felt the tiny weight of him.

And then I am gripped, suddenly, with a terrible fear, wondering crazily if the last time I held him, I held him too tight; if in holding him still for that last, fruitless needle prick, I squeezed an indispensable breath from him, a breath that might have made the difference.

And then I am home, and the day must begin. There are Suubi women to visit, and flights to catch, and diapers to press and deliver, and two other babies that still need us.

We pile into the Mystery Machine and head out.

Suubi (or, Hope)

You have got to be kidding me, I think, when I awake Sunday morning at 4am. The muezzin isn’t even up yet! I take half an Ambien and crawl back to bed. Four more blessed hours of sleep and I am feeling much better. I even manage some dry toast for breakfast, and two more slices for lunch.

I am glad to be feeling better, not only because I am a big fat giant baby when I’m sick, but because it’s Sunday and Sundays are Suubi days, when all of the women come together. Today we will be buying the necklaces that they have made with the clasps they were given last week (the women buy their own paper for rolling the beads, and their own varnish, and the plastic thread they string with, but Suubi provides the clasps).

We head out around 2pm, the lumbering Mystery Machine bouncing along the pockmarked roads on the way to Walukuba. We pull up in front of Santa’s house, and a handful of women pile in, wrapped in brightly colored fabrics and mismatched skirts and t-shirts, laughing and chattering excitedly in their native tongue (or tongues, as the case may be – with over 40 tribal languages spoken in Uganda, it is not unusual for one to be multilingual). Most of the Suubi women are Acholi, from the north, refugees of a lengthy civil war. The documentary, Invisible Children, helped to bring international attention to that war’s most innocent victims: children kidnapped and forced into marriage or service as child soldiers.

At the meeting place, I sit beside Gertrude, who teaches me some basic Luo (the language of the Acholi): ningo (hello), kop ango (how are you), kop pe (I am fine), apwoyo (thank you) … Gertrude has five children, aged twelve (er, I think…) to twenty-two; she lost her husband in 1999 and has not remarried. “It is difficult,” she says. To find someone who will help care for children that are not his own, that is. We form a small assembly line: Julie takes the necklaces and pays the women, Ashley inspects them for length and tension, and Gertrude and I re-fasten the clasps.

When business is finished, I help Santa serve water to the women who want it, narrowly avoid giving a speech (although Daisy warns me I should have one prepared for next Sunday), and load the Mystery Machine with the bags of completed necklaces. We pick up a couple more women for the ride home, squeezing fourteen into a vehicle built for seven. There is more laughter and more chattering, and I am struck, for the millionth time, at how these people who have so little seem so much happier than most people I know who have so much.

I think of Gertrude, raising her five children on her own after her husband’s death; and Betty, whose baby’s father took off when he learned of her pregnancy; and Agnes and Mary and Scovia and Margaret and Joyce and Sumini and Pross. I think of their wide smiles, and the light in their eyes, and their laughter like wind chimes.

I think of all these things and hope only that their smiles get bigger, the light in their eyes brighter, and their laughter never ceases.

The First Few Days

Uganda is a predominantly Christian nation, but (especially in towns) there is a sizable Muslim population, and I wake early Thursday morning to the muezzin’s call to prayer, echoing solemnly in the darkness. I think of Zanzibar, and the TAZARA train, and fall back to sleep. When I rise, I shower, straighten my room, and forage through my bag for breakfast – I’ve got an emergency stash of Clif bars that should tide me over until I have a chance to go to market.

I join Ashley and Julie, who are sipping coffee and reading, in the living room. Betty is bustling about, boiling water for drinking, sweeping floors, washing dishes and tidying rooms. I am mid-sentence when I hear her behind me.

“Auntie!” she tsks. “You didn’t have to do that!” I turn to her, confused. She is shaking her head. I turn back to Julie.

“Oh,” Julie says, nodding knowingly. “You made your bed.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Betty admonishes again.

“But…I like to,” I offer feebly. She shakes her head and sighs, then disappears behind the door.

Soon after, Ashley, Julie and I pile into the Mystery Machine (seriously, this thing is straight out of Scooby Doo) and head out to run errands. We get me money and a cell phone charger (I’ve got a phone that I used in Zambia, but it’s dead), and then drive to Walukaba, a nearby village where several of the Suubi women live. We meet Nora, ancient and stooped, her tiny eyes filmy and nearly sightless, and place a special order of necklaces for Ashley. Then it’s to Santa’s, and Scovia’s; after that, Emily’s.

We bounce along a rutted dirt road lined with maize and matooke trees, and pantless children (I don’t know why it’s shirts they wear, and not shorts) chase us, waving dirty hands, their dimpled bottoms caked with mud. “Howahyooou! Howahyooou! Howahyooou!” they shout, gleeful. I wave and smile back.

Santa and Scovia live in what I’ll loosely term an apartment, or tenement, building. It is long and low, and made of cinderblock; maybe four units each, with one or two tiny rooms per unit only. We crowd into one of Santa’s rooms, Scovia joining us, and learn how to roll beads. I can untwine fishing wire for hours, so the fine motor skills and focus required appeal to me. Still, though, my bead is loose, and lopsided. Julie’s is worse.

“Santa,” she says. “Mine is all uneven.”

“Just make it straight!” Santa says, as if saying it will make it so. We laugh and roll our eyes.

Emily’s house is in a different part of the village, but pretty much the same as Santa’s and Scovia’s. She emerges from the tall grass dressed to the nines, in a long red sheath dress, with white-beaded jewelry hanging from her lobes and around her neck; the toes of her bare feet are painted a shimmery pink. We visit for a minute in her small, dark room, place Ashley’s order, then head for the markets: the Indian-run supermarket (which is really more like a corner convenience store) for things like cereal and peanut butter and pasta, and the outdoor market, for tomatoes and onions and carrots and garlic.

After shopping, we head to Bukaya, another village just outside town. There is a sort of girls’ group home there, where Julie had been living until she moved into the LGH house five days ago, and where she still goes twice a week to visit and play with the girls. Seven live there, all under age twelve: Agnes, Mary, Scovia, Margaret, Joyce, Sumini and Pross (said like “rose”, but with a soft “s”). Betty’s sister Christine lives with them, a kind of house mother. The girls are not orphaned, but their families are either unable or unwilling to care for them.

They came to live in the house when a young American volunteer first met three of the girls (sisters Agnes, Mary and Scovia) on a visit last year. Dirty, hungry, and abandoned, one of them injured from the collapse of the hut where they were living, she took them in, got them food and medical attention, then set about finding them a place to stay.

She’d come to volunteer for an education project, but quickly decided to start her own nonprofit. Since Ugandan law requires that all nonprofits have a Ugandan address, she decided to kill two birds with one stone: she rented the house, made it her nonprofit base, and moved them all in. Margaret, Joyce, Sumini and Pross soon followed.

We go there this Thursday bearing supplies for an art project, spend an hour watching them giggle and create, then head home to make dinner. I boil pasta and sauté garlic, onions, tomatoes and carrots for a marinara sauce. It is, I’m afraid to say, a resounding disappointment. Ah, well.

By 8pm, I’m doing the jello-necked head bob. I fight to stay awake until 10pm and then give up.

*****

On Friday, I am up again at 4.30am, the adhan rousing me and the neighborhood dogs, who howl in protest. I feel like howling, too, when George (the night guard who is seated right outside my door) turns on Ugandan talk radio at a volume I am certain you all can hear in America. I toss and turn until 6.30am, then huff out of bed and go for a run.

It’s a dismal, gray day, and there are no Suubi activities scheduled, so we spend much of it curled on the sofa and in arm chairs, talking and reading our books. We plan a little 4th of July celebration and head to the market for burgers and balloons. I bake fresh rolls (like the marinara, kind of a disaster. boo.) and Ashley makes sugary sweet layer bars and Betty fries the potatoes and Julie cuts the pineapple.

We find one of those “Happy Birthday” streamers in the bookcase (except ours says “Happy rthday”), the kind with the shiny red and blue and yellow and green letters hinged together with grommets, and Ashley hangs it on nearby hooks. We were going to add “...America” to it, but we get lazy and forget.

We drink wine and tell stories and laugh about the random text messages I have suddenly started receiving from strangers in foreign languages. By 10pm, we are plumb tuckered, and so call it a day.

*****

It is Saturday, and I am awake early again – only this time I have aches and chills and knifelike cramps in my muscles. By midmorning, I’m battling waves of nausea and I’m starting to worry. I text my brother: How early can malaria present? He tells me it’s unlikely that I would have contracted it while on prophylaxis, but says I should get tested. We call the American doctor in town to schedule the test, but she is in Kampala. She confirms that malaria is unlikely, especially this early, prescribes a course of ciproflaxin (which I happen to have from my last trip, thank you Denver Health Travel Clinic), and tells us to call her in twelve hours.

Several hours and two naps later, I am no better. In addition to the aches and chills, I am now vomiting and – well, anyway. You can figure it out. Julie and Ashley go for dinner at a local Indian restaurant, and bring me back a ginger ale. I sip it slowly, swallow another cipro, and go to bed, praying that I will be better in the morning.

Kulika Yo (Or, Welcome to Uganda)

I arrive in Entebbe at just after 7am on Wednesday, bleary-eyed with exhaustion, move easily through customs and claim my bags. Outside, a stout, square-faced man is holding a brightly-colored sign bearing my name. I smile broadly and wave. “Hi! That’s me! I am Kate!” I say, pointing at the sign, and then at myself. The man smiles back, shakes my hand, and takes one of my bags. We load the car and set off.

Lake Victoria looms before us, flat and sparkling, a giant silver dollar glinting in the hazy morning light. We drive east, through a lush, hilly countryside, a palette of rich, earthy colors – deep terra cottas and dark reds and muddy browns set against velvety greens – shimmering vibrantly beneath an expansive blue sky. We zoom past acres of maize and banana trees and palms and hundreds of other plants and trees for which I have no names. The road is paved, but riddled with potholes, and scored on either side by the familiar, constantly-moving lines of heavy-laden Africans on their ways to and fro.

Abdullah (that’s the driver who met me) is a kind, quiet man, with three children. I’d like to learn more about him, and about this new place, and I try (at first), asking lots of questions, but now I’m fighting to stay awake. “I think you are very tired,” he says, after several minutes of silence. I smile. “A bit,” I tell him.

Just outside Kampala, Abdullah hands me off to William, who will take me the rest of the way to Jinja. We arrive at the LGH volunteer house at just after 10.30am local time. A tall, lithe, bushy-haired African woman opens the heavy blue security gate for us. Her dark skin is stretched over exquisitely high cheekbones, her waist and hips narrow, her limbs impossibly, elegantly long. She pokes her head into the car. “She is the one?” she asks William. He nods.

Julie, the in-country director for LGH, comes out to meet me and introduces me officially to the African woman (her name is Betty and she’s the housekeeper; she is also, I quickly learn, a total freakin’ riot). Inside, I meet Julie’s sister Ashley, who has been visiting for three weeks, and Betty’s seven-month-old son, Kymbi, bouncing happily in a swing.

The house (brick exterior, with a long cement porch) is wide and airy, with spare but comfortable furnishings, brown-tiled floors, and dark woodwork set against white walls. My room is in the back. I deposit my bags and join Julie and Ashley in the living room for a little meet and greet and howdy-do before I (glory hallelujah!) disappear to the bathroom for a shower.

Kneeling in the tub, rinsing soap with a faint trickle of warm-ish water from the handheld showerhead, I don’t notice my swollen legs. Yeah, so … ‘member that one episode of Friends? The One Where Ross Tells Rachel She Has Cankles? It isn’t until I’ve patted myself dry and am smoothing on lotion that I notice I have … thankles. Seriously. My calves and ankles have swollen to – I swear – the same circumference as my thighs, the left one sporting what looks like a giant, slug-like welt on the outside of my shin. I panic. Oh my God, I think. I have a blood clot! From sitting too long on the plane! I am totally gonna DIE! I dress quickly. If I’m going to collapse at any moment, I don’t want to be found sprawled naked. I’ve only just met these people.

We consult Julie’s medical book and determine that my death is not, in fact, imminent, and that some ibuprofen and elevation should restore me to normalcy. Betty has made matooke (a thick porridge made from what looks like bananas but what tastes like potatoes, and a staple of the Ugandan diet) with peanut sauce. It’s not my favorite, but it kicks the crap out of nshima.

Showered and sated, I pop a couple ibuprofen and stretch out on my bed “just for a minute.” Three hours later, I wake to an empty house. Julie and Ashley have gone to meet some of the Suubi women who will be adding t-shirt bags to their creative repertoire, and then to teach the weekly English class. I am bummed to have missed it, but grateful for the rest. When they return, we go to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant and chat until it’s time for bed.

London

So I left Denver at 8.15pm on Monday, June 30. My itinerary, which ends with my arrival in Entebbe, Uganda on Wednesday morning, includes a lengthy layover in London – nine hours, to be exact. I’ve heard conflicting reports about whether nine hours is enough time to scoot out and see a bit of the city, but I’d rather eat glass than be stuck in Heathrow all bleedin’ day, so I decide to chance it.

I follow a motley crew of rock-climbing teenagers (they’re headed to France to climb – how cool is that!) and their fearless leaders – one of whom looks astonishingly like my new boyfriend, Michael Stipe – to customs, get my stamp, ask a few directions, and head for the Tube.

I’m without a guidebook, but all I really want is some good Indian food which, for all its rap about bad domestic cuisine, London has in spades. I hop the Piccadilly line towards Leicester Square and Covent Garden (the theatre district! wee!) – a good 50-60 minute ride from Heathrow – and notice a slight, withered woman to my left, talking to herself. I think that whatever the subject is, it must be grave, for she is sagging under some great, invisible weight. Her thin, papery skin hangs in loose jowls; her long aquiline nose slopes downward and her hunched shoulders curve around her breasts, which hang from her bony frame like two small but heavy sandbags. I hope she works it out before she sinks into the floor beneath her.

Dappled sunlight dances across the faces of the other passengers and warms my skin. The wind and the wheels roar in my ears. I close my eyes and smell the sweet, spicy scent of men’s aftershave. Two young Polish guys have boarded and sit across from me, one bony and angular, the other sporting an oxford whose buttons stretch optimistically across what I am certain is his recently-amassed, still-unacknowledged new girth. I think perhaps the shirt fit at the start of the school year, but that the end has brought with it the proverbial Freshman Fifteen and he’s just not ready to admit it, despite the evidence. They are earnest in conversation, sharing a laugh at something in the magazine they read together. Each shift in position, each full-body chortle, sends a cloud of their clean, masculine scent my way. Neither is particularly handsome, but they sure do smell good. I bite the inside of my cheek; I think I feel a tingle.

At Leicester Square, I hoist my backpack on my shoulder and head out to enjoy the few hours of my London nano-vacation. I spy Maharaja Restaurant and know immediately where I’ll have lunch. It’s too early yet, so I poke my head in and inquire about the hours. Alom tells me they will be serving until 11pm. I thank him and say I’ll be back at 4pm.

I wander to Trafalgar Square, where hundreds bedecked in red and white mill about celebrating Canada Day, and park my tired ass on the lawn in front of the National Portrait Gallery. I try to nap, but the sun is too hot; I try to read, but I’m too tired. I decide instead that I will just sit and simply enjoy the fact that I’m lucky enough to be lounging on the grass in front of the National Portrait Gallery in London on a glorious Tuesday afternoon. With nothing else to do but catch a flight to Africa (Africa! where I’ll be for five weeks!) in six hours. Awww yeah!

It’s nearing 4pm, so I make my way back to Covent Garden and duck into a gourmet Italian cheese shop. I reminisce for a moment about my week in Bore last summer before I stumble into a narrow alleyway lined with tiny used and rare book shops. I see a bright yellow, circus-like sign: David Drummond – Theatrical Bookseller & Ephemerist. Are you kidding me? It’s a square, stuffy, musty-smelling old shop lined floor to ceiling with books about magic, opera, dance, and the theatre, and old playbills and marquee one-sheets (and post-card-sized replicas of said one-sheets) from long-since-shuttered West End Theatres. It’s fabulous. Mr. Drummond obliges my questions politely but grudgingly. He’s doing his books, see. By hand. As he has for the last 41 years (that’s how long he’s been open), I’m sure. He needs to concentrate.

I leave Mr. Drummond to his bookkeeping and head for Maharaja. Alom grins sheepishly, surprised to see me. He didn’t think I meant it when I said I’d be back and, well, the chef has gone on break. But after a brief conversation (with the manager? the owner? the maitre d’?) in what I later learn is Bangli, I am ushered to a seat and handed a menu. “It’s ok,” Alom says, so I order chicken curry and pilau rice (with saffron and butter and cardamom, oh my!) and chat with Abdul while I wait. I savor each bite when it comes. It’s not quite Muskaan (my most favorite Indian restaurant in the world, where I’m hoping we’ll go at least once when I get to Lusaka, Chris and Amy, hint hint), but it hits the spot.

The customs official told me to be back two hours before my scheduled flight departure, so I pay my bill and start off for the Tube. I get back to Heathrow with more than enough time to spare. In fact, I’m so early, they haven’t even posted my gate information yet. I find a corner table in a Food Court and read, fatigue buzzing in slow-moving waves through my body. Soon, I think. Soon I will sleep.

At my gate, I strike a few yoga poses to loosen my stiffening limbs … and spot a pigeon waddling under the seats.

Yep. I’m on my way to Africa.

Here I Go Again

Of all the people I have ever met who have been to Africa – who have spent any significant amount of time there, anyway – I have never met one who hasn’t wanted to go back. Maybe it’s because Africa is a mysterious, almost mythical, place; the stuff of legends. It is, after all, the Dark Continent, The Dark Star, The Place Where Time Began (or, at least, Man). Or maybe it’s because the whole place is such a surprising and unsettling paradox, like some exotic, black-eyed beauty that bears the jagged, angry scars of a scorned lover’s knife – you see her glory and her heartbreak both.

I imagine the reasons are as varied and as numerous as the visitors. For me, Africa is, quite simply, a place where I lived for seven months in 2007; a place to which I ran when my oft-broken heart, broken once more, could not (I believed) mend itself again.

I am asked frequently what the impetus was for my trip last year. And my answer, which some of you have heard me give a time or two, is roughly this: I needed Africa. I had struggled for some years with an often paralyzing depression and the attendant self-loathing that came when I couldn’t “snap out of it.” When I looked at my life objectively (er, as objectively as one can look at one’s own life), I felt that a person with a life as richly blessed as mine had no business feeling as sorry for herself as I did. Yet I couldn’t dispel the sorrow that had tamped its way into my chest; I couldn’t seem to move beyond my own self-indulgent misery – or maybe I just didn’t know how to. I don’t know. I just knew that I was stuck and I didn’t want to be anymore. So I ran. I thought that maybe if I went someplace where there was real need and real heartbreak, I wouldn’t focus so much on my own. I had grand expectations for how Africa would fix me, heal me, change me – and a very narrow idea of the ways in which I wanted it to.

For those of you that have kept up with this blog, you know that my trip last year was pretty much nothing like I expected it would be but that – in the end – it was exactly what it was supposed to be. And it did change me. I couldn’t say how different I was when I first came back, if at all, but I know that I am different now. But maybe that’s how change happens. Maybe the most significant and enduring shifts happen at the cellular level, unseen to the naked eye, and measured only by comparing the point at which you began to the point at which you are now. Whatever the case, I believe I am seeing the world with new eyes now and that I have Africa, at least in part, to thank (and Europe a little bit, too). So I want to go back. And, thanks to a fortuitous confluence of events, I am.

I’m going to Uganda first, to volunteer with an organization called Light Gives Heat (www.lightgivesheat.org). They run a project in Jinja, Uganda (about two and a half hours east of Kampala, the capital city) called Suubi. Suubi is a beading project, one of several in Uganda (you may have heard of Bead for Life or Thread of Life). Suubi women roll beads from long, thin slices of paper (posters, magazines, brochures), which they then varnish and string into necklaces. The LGH folks buy the necklaces from the women, sell them in the West, then use the proceeds to buy more necklaces. I’ll be doing, well, I don’t know, exactly. For sure I will help with the buying. But I’m told I should also expect to do anything from assisting with the weekly English and literacy classes LGH holds to boiling water for the women to playing with the children while the women roll the beads – in other words, whatever the need is. I’ll be in Uganda for just over two weeks. Then it’s off to Zambia to visit the fam.

I’ve been asked if I’m nervous this time. If I think about that bungee jump I plan on repeating when I get to Zambia, the answer is, um, YES (since, y’know, I actually know what there is to fear now). But mostly, I’m just excited. To see my niece, of course. And my brother and my sister-in-law. And to work with the Suubi and LGH folks. But to go, too, without the burden of my own need, without the weight of my impossibly narrow expectations, and just see what happens.

I’m not bringing my computer this time, so I don’t know how much I’ll get to blog. But if I do, it’ll be posted here. I hope you’ll check it out. And leave a comment, if you like. Those are nice. :-)