775 or so days into this great northern Uganda adventure I decide to start writing about it. Awesome.
I was inspired after all of this time (in Gulu 775 days is the equivalent of about 775 years...to be discussed later) by two people.
On Thursday, my friend Steffi called me to ask if one of her students could walk my dog because she was homesick. I immediately said yes. As impatient a person as I am, I seem to have all the time in the world for the pesky "research" students that come to Gulu in the busloads and even more time for the homesick ones. Sure enough Heather calls and we set up a dog walking date. While I'm pretty sure I would trust anyone with my dog, Otim Derek Jeter, Jeter for short, I nonetheless felt I should accompany the two on the walk. Surprisingly Heather didn't say much about her homesickness, only showing brief emotion when she thanked me for spending time with Jeter. Unsurprisingly Jeter jumped on her profusely and then proceeded to pull her around the neighborhood in search of the great sniff. Anyway, she made a very side comment about blogging about her Gulu experience and I got so so jealous. "What damn Gulu experience?! You just got here." Yeah, so that got me writing.
The other person who inspired me was this FANTASTIC French woman named Marie. I ran into Marie at our reluctant regulars hangout, Fugly's (ok, critics of humanitarians: go for it). Yes, Fugly's. She is 66 years old and fabulously beautiful and passionate about the work. She's doing a short stint for Columbia University on child protection. Her tales of trapsing the world and shaking down humanitarian and development buraucracy in the name of helping children (a theme I will be returning to on a regular basis) was so inspiring. Feeling so burnt out and well, ineffective, it's nice to know that you can retain passion in this world.
I just had an idea about this space before closing. Since my other passion is cooking, I think I'm going to use this space to talk about food in addition to Uganda. Bare with me as I work out the kinks. But last night I served a really fun meal for 6 people. We used my new bbq - Hayden grilled for the first time: sausages, eggplant and peppers that were marinated in pomegranate molasses from lebanon and beer (Hayden insisted on the beer). Letha made guacamole with 3 sprigs of corriander that SHE planted in my garden. I made a salad of arugala, cucumbers, mango, feta and pine nuts in a dill dressing. I also made corn muffins and oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies. In case you're wondering, this is not a typical Gulu meal. But in the past two years I have been able to shop well in Kampala and around the world and grow a lot (eggplant, peppers, lemons, corriander, dill, arugala all came from my garden.) ah food.
And first blog ever now complete!
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