Aspiration

After the self-flagellation of my last blog, I’m going back to my sentimental, slightly superficial and silly style of blogging.

I want to write about my Gulu friends, who I adore. On Friday, my good friends Erin and her husband Scott hosted a costume party for her birthday, entitled “Who did you want to be when you grew up?” The only instruction given was that we could not show up as snarky disgruntled aid workers. After much fretting about choices, costume potential and suggestions from others (Princess Leia, Jane Fonda, etc) I settled on Daisy Duke. I should add a sheepish caveat to protect my inner Vassar girl, but I suspect I’m not the only smart, angry post-fem gal who liked Daisy. She was hot and very very nice. Besides, she just edged out my other perhaps more obvious fem hero, Wonder Woman, because nude tights and red boots were simply too much costume preparation.

This got me thinking though that while I loved these two ladies (and donned their Underoos with energy and pride as a kid), I don’t know that I imagined myself as them when I grew up or just liked to pretend to be them in the moment. Then I started to panic, because I really couldn’t remember wanting to be anything when I grew up. Perhaps I was in the now as a child. I cannot recall wanting to be a brain surgeon (in Jeanne’s case), a gas pumper (in Hayden’s case, despite protests from his cousins that he would not make enough money), a rock star (Coy) or a sea princess (in Erin’s wonderful, fantastical case.)

As I sit at my desk in Gulu pondering my next move and semi-urgently scan the internet for jobs, I’m really not sure where I’m headed. Part of me wants to shift gears dramatically and start a bead business and help Emily’s mom and the gang create something more sustainable. Part of me wants to take up Erin Baines’ offer of a few months as a fellow at UBC, sheltered from distraction in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, and finally write something a little more substantial than a blog. Part of me wants to find the perfect career step up - as I imagine it now – a mix of project management and administrative responsibility that sees me headed to the field but based in the States. Part of me wants to chill and not have a next move yet. Part of me wants something that seems impossible to obtain…

The fact is that I have no idea what's next for me. I’m not even sure where the heck I’m going to stick my dog when I get home. Will Maggie and the cats cede some temporary space for him at 3 North Drive or will Jeter and I be hanging at the Motel 6 on Route 18?? While it feels a bit late to ask the question, “what do I want to be when I grow up?” I wonder if there is ever a point at which one knows the answer to that question. Is that what life’s like these days...or is it just me?

I really love my friends in Gulu. When I was at a wedding in Houston in May, a woman who spent her whole life in Iowa asked me if I had any friends. I looked at her in surprise, but then saw it from her perspective of ancient friendships developed over years. Indeed there is some sacrifice to the pace of friendships here in Gulu, but I think the sincerity of friendships remains the same. On Saturday, hungover and craving bacon, Mollie and I set off after dark to the evening vegetable stalls in the center of Gulu to find some veggies to make us feel less guilty about the bacon. I had never been there after dark before. I turned to Mollie and said “I’m having fun.” She seemed confused, perhaps because she didn’t hear me or perhaps because I don’t usually utter such happy phrases. I explained that it was cool to be walking with her in a funky evening market, surrounded by Africa.

The best costume of the night went to our resident laugh track, Amy, who came impeccably dressed as Hulk Hogan. An honorable mention goes to Mollie as a gold medal ice skater. She had very convincing hair and posture. We sort of have a post-tequila pact not to post pictures online, but I figure the ones below are ok, because they were pre-tequila.

Choices

Part of me uses this blog as a reminder of all of the good news that’s here in Gulu and to help me step away from the daily difficulties. I guess it is a coping mechanism. Challenging myself to find the lighter, fun moments amidst some heavy experiences is not easy. I also like to write about the escapist, superficial moments here that perhaps shed light on an unexpected version of Africa. Hence blogs about humping lions, my dogs, matches, etc. But life is tough here for people and I don’t always make the right decision in handling these challenges. Sometimes I avoid them. I must record these moments too. Here’s some samples of bad and selfish decisions I’ve made recently:

A couple of days ago I told a man that I absolutely could not give him a single penny more of assistance. When he asked, “even milk for the baby?” I said still said no, but could barely meet his eyes. His wife died of cancer a couple of weeks ago and he appeared one day at my office in tears asking me for some assistance, because he worked at Norwegian Refugee Council with me. Although I did not know him (NRC had 600 employees) I gave him money. Twice. This time, as I thought about my impending departure, I thought it was better to cut this guy off now instead of building up expectations. I don’t know why I decided I could not spend another penny on him. But I did and in moment I did so without hesitation and with a clarity that I now ponder. Would 20,000 Ugandan shillings ($10) really have stretched me? No, of course not. But it would have really helped him.

A woman I really admire asked me for some assistance with a dance competition she is hosting soon. I’ve been ducking her phone calls for 2 weeks. I love this woman Christine. She’s been the closest thing to a local friend I have had here. But I didn’t want to give her the money. Unlike the baby’s milk, Christine was asking for a substantial amount. I’m avoiding her, because I don’t want to have a relationship with her that involves money. I don’t want to change the way we feel about each other. Somehow giving her money would remove a level playing field. Of course, that field has never been level.

Yesterday I overheard Hayden giving Stephen 15,000 Ugandan shillings or about $7.50. I was enraged and confronted him about it. “Why did you sneak Stephen money? Didn't you read my blog?” Hayden looked at me slightly startled and simply said “He needed to buy some paper.” The conversation ended and for the life of me I could not figure out what Hayden had done wrong or why it had bothered me.

A while back I had a conversation with Johnson, my hapless, alcoholic guard/gardener who I struggle to keep employed despite his many disappointments. The conversation went like this:

“Johnson, why are you two and a half hours late?”
“Jessica, sorry, but the baby’s sick in the hospital with malaria.”
“Oh, is he ok?”
“Yes. He is improving.”
“Well next time, you need to call and inform me that you’re going to be late.”

My goodness. I remember walking away from that conversation thinking thank god no one heard that exchange. I felt terrible about it. I was so cold with him. Maybe I even signaled that my life was more important than his, than his baby’s. Like you see in a movie, I treated Johnson like a servant and this was not the first time.

This morning on CNN there was a story about child labor that focused on an 8 year old goat herder. I was practically rolling my eyes over the story. “Big friggin deal,” I actually said out loud, “we see that every day and then some here in Gulu.” Yikes.

I guess this is some sort of confessional. I’ve made it clear that living here is tough, but I constantly exonerate my behavior. Part of the reason I need to leave for a while is to recalibrate my relationship with Africa. I want to keep the passion and dedication to the work, but I want to lose the neocolonial chip on my shoulder. I don’t want to lobotomize my engagement with the continent, like many I have seen here do. But I don’t want to blurt out vaguely racist statements I’ve heard myself say recently like “everyone here is so damn corrupt and this place is broken!” That’s not ok.

Stephen

On Friday I had an upper wisdom tooth pulled. Luckily it had mostly descended anyway and the dentist assured me it was a simple extraction. And he was right. Despite images of goats and chickens traipsing the waiting room, I found a very modern office with x-rays beamed directly to the computer next to my chair and a delightful expert dentist.

The anticipation of the tooth extraction on the other hand was not delightful. My trepidation grew exponentially to the point at which I was in silent hysterics by the time the pliers came into view. To try and keep from leaping up out of the chair, I relied on two things a.) the tooth hurt so bad I had no choice b.) distraction techniques. I had xanax with me, but feared it might clash with whatever drugs he would give me and that was too much of an anxiety sandwich to stomach. So I started blogging in my head and decided that I needed to tell Stephen’s story.

Stephen is another beneficiary from the bead sales. With the money I collected, I bought him a bike. A bike in northern Uganda is like a car. It is a critical people and stuff mover that a household is lucky to have, because few own them. Stephen is one of my “employees” at the café. To capture the unique experience that is Stephen, I usually introduce him as the future President of Uganda. He’s cute as a button, charming and very very ambitious. With only his grandmother and little brother as family, Stephen is the head of the house at age 16, which sadly is not that uncommon in Gulu. Stephen handles this tough deal of the deck with hard work that is sometimes above board and sometimes not.

Stephen looks like he’s about 12 and it’s funny to watch people come into the café and gawk in stifled horror at the child laborer I’ve employed. For those who actually verbalize their concern, we assure them that he’s 16 (although in desperate need of a growth spurt) and only comes to the café after work for two hours and half days on the weekend. In fact we had to argue with Stephen about this. He was turning up all the time and I did fear he might be ditching school to hang out at the café. I quickly explained to him that the future President had to graduate from secondary school and would do so under the café’s watchful eyes. And by eyes, I mean that all seven of us at Café Larem watch out for Stephen. I told him that he had seven mothers. He tried to look pleased with this, but couldn’t mask his fear. Exactly like I like it!

I was introduced to Stephen by Hayden who has a history of picking up random people who need work and pawning them off on me. Recently he tried to get his ex-landlord’s son a job with me. I explained that with two gardeners, a housekeeper and several extraneous café workers there was simply no other job I could dream up at this stage. Hayden met Stephen while working alongside the US Military’s Veterinarian contingent. (An aside: yes, apparently there is a Vet wing of the US Military that works on the hearts and minds of farm animals.) Stephen had embedded with them as their errand boy and when they left after a few months, he let Hayden inherit him, who naturally turned him over to me. I hired him as the café’s busboy. It’s the perfect job for him. He gets a steady income moving some dishes around and generally picking up for the other staff. The other staff love it, because they give him all the jobs they hate.

When you meet Stephen it’s hard not to squeeze his cheeks and cuddle him immediately. In fact, a few minutes into meeting him you are not even paying attention to him, because you’re going through adoption strategies in your head. He’s extremely well spoken and perfectly fluent in English. His eyes and his feet are way too big for his body. And he’s usually wearing his favorite t-shirt “too cool for school.” Indeed.

The downside of Stephen’s cute ambition is that he’s always working multiple angles for stuff. Small stuff mostly, but it adds up when you factor in all the other non-essential employees on the payroll. “Can you buy me an extra pair of shoes, a bell for my bike, a chicken for my grandmother?” But then he reached too far and asked me, Hayden, Mollie and Apolo separately for school fees, school fees already paid for by Watoto Church. In addition to busting him, I told him that I provided him with a regular salary, that he better stop asking me for extras and that I was in communication with the others so he better not try to pull a fast one like that again. It’s especially exasperating, because it’s difficult to resist his fleecing when he casts those doe eyes in your direction. "Just one chicken for grandma" "No!" You see how difficult!

So the way I broke my own rule about helping Stephen too much was by bringing in the bead money. I thought that it would be very important for him to understand that this was not my money, and because it was from good people donating to a good cause he was not to take it lightly. I also made him match the gift with his own money. We agreed that the cost of the bike would be split 50-50 between the bead money and his café salary. He agreed to have half of his salary deducted each month in order to meet the match. After two months, I forgave him the remaining debt, so the split is more like 80-20, but I felt that was a reasonable cost share.

He is in love with his bike. And he’s still hard at work for us at the café. It has given him wonderful freedom of movement that will last long after I leave, which makes me relieved and happy. Thanks everyone for your help with a boy who’s going places (on a bike!)

Cool Cats

Apologies for the double safari blog but I realize I didn’t write a blog about the trip to Murchison I took with my boys, Babu and Samson, along with our friends Inbal and Pierre. We planned this trip well in advance based on the boys’ boarding school holidays. I also planned it because the next time they’re home I may be gone or going – a thought that fills me with guilt. I know the boys are also thinking about my departure with great anxiety.

I love hanging out with these boys. I have a parent-friend hybrid relationship, which means I can boss them around and download their latest hip hop music. It also fascinates me that despite the fact that these two kids are orphans and grew up night commuting to escape LRA abduction, they're really not much different than teens in the US. They’re tortured by puberty. Babu is a ladies’ man. It’s funny, because he’s not a big talker, but he’s got game. Samson is a mama’s boy or would be if he had a mom. He shares his feelings and even calls me often from school for no reason. Unfortunately, he does not have game. The other day I introduced the concept of a stalker to him as a preventative strategy. He wants a girlfriend badly and is clearly stuck in the friend zone.

As a semi-parental figure, I’m very lucky that I only receive about 30% of their potential attitude capabilities. I can almost see them reeling in the attitude and mortification when I do something that embarrasses them. We went to visit them at school recently and they were squirming when I made them pose with me for a picture in front of their friends. The mere fact that I wasn't using their cool new school names (Sammy and Ricky) was killin them. I loved it!

Another universal trait of a teenager is selfishness mixed with greed, or rather the “need” to acquire stuff. I kinda like this trait though. It's very different from the crippling corruption plaguing everyday life in Africa. These kids aren’t swindling me; they just want to be cool around their friends. The other reason I like it (and perhaps parents of teens will concur) is because I have to admit that I like spoiling them...within reason.

Samson and I got into it the other day. He called me from school and asked me to buy him a pair of shoes. I immediately refused. I told him I would buy him the wrong pair and besides he’d be home in a few weeks. He insisted, I relented and guess what? He hated them. The conversation went like this:

So what did you think of the shoes?
Well Jess, they’re not really ok.
Damn it Samson! I told you! I’m taking them back and you’re not getting another pair!
Jess…that’s not fair

Aha! The universal teenage anthem: that's not fair. I had to fight to keep the smile off my face.

So we entered the safari park and I laid out the rules 1) no ipods on safari 2) internet after dinner only. These rules had to be reiterated throughout the trip. “Babu, isn’t that giraffe cool?” “Babu?” “Damn it Babu I said no ipod!”

They loved it though. Despite the park being in their backyard their whole lives, this was the first time they had been there. I had to pry a bit for monosyllabic responses. “Wasn’t that lion cool?” “Yeah.” Did you enjoy the boat ride?” “Yeah.”

I think teenage boys are kind of like cats. (Sigh…crazy cat lady alert.) Cats often like to be near you, but they do not necessarily require physical contact or your undivided attention. The night we returned from safari, the boys came over. They didn’t talk much. Their ipods were blaring and they were combing through facebook. But they hung out all night and hugged me when they left.

Safari...boring

We’re in the last month of implementation for our project, which closes in December. I’ll leave Gulu in December after 3 ½ years, a thought that thrills me and fills me with anxiety. I manage 10 projects, which means I manage program content, logistics and administration for each. It’s been nuts. Mostly in a good way. I’ve taken part in mediation, peace days, early child care development, trainings, etc. And sometimes it’s been nuts in not so good ways: one partner has fired all of its staff and another has somehow misplaced 65 million Ugandan shillings (about $32,000).

So, as I headed back to the lovely Paraa Safari Lodge for oil dialogue number 2, I was distracted. We were supposed to leave Gulu at 2pm, but in addition to work distractions, there were the inevitable life distractions. I suppose it’s probably not that different from suburban living in the US, at least as I imagine it. I’m quite settled in Gulu. I know a lot of people in the community and am very involved in the daily hustle and bustle. This first dawned on me one evening after I got back from Christmas break in the US. I was walking my dog on our usual loop and a woman weeding her potato patch looked up and said, “welcome back,” even though we had never spoken before.

On the way out of town, I stopped at the Café for a quick drop off of bread and found Stephen, our 16 year old bus boy/manager semi-coherent and quite feverish. We piled him in the car and went to the clinic for malaria treatment. Of course the malaria test came back negative. It’s always negative, but with a 103 temp, headache and all the other hallmarks, they started him on treatment anyway. Once assured that Stephen would survive, we finally left Gulu. I tucked into my computer, bringing my head up briefly as we broke off from the tarmac road and entered the dirt road that led to the park. Before I had time to finish sifting through all of my offline email, I found myself suddenly approaching the Lodge. It felt like the quickest trip from Gulu. I’m sure it took the normal three hours, but on other occasions the trip felt longer, because my nose is usually pressed to the window spying for elephants, giraffes and maybe, just maybe, the wayward lion. I walked into the majestic, faux colonial hallways traipsed with dark mahogany pillars and superfluous colonial gear such as pith helmets and ornate looking glasses. As the view of the Nile appeared from the Lodge’s porch, I started to remember how freaking awesome this place is.

The oil meeting went well. My boss from DC arrived at noon. We’re excited for his visit. We have a lot to show him. The oil company gave another slick presentation. FYI, Uganda has a lot of oil. An estimated 2 billion barrels has recently been discovered. Ye-gads, I can only imagine the challenges ahead.

The first night I had a wee bout of food poisoning (not cypro level, but definitely immodium level). My boss and Hayden were getting up for the 6am game drive, but I thought that I would skip it to rest up and attend the last day of meetings. Besides, I just did the game drive two weeks ago with Samson and Babu. It’s cool and all, but how many giraffe shots can one take?

There is, however, a tugging allure about game drives. They’re addictive. During a drive, which is 85% uneventful, you’re always thinking that around the next bend you might strike safari gold and see an elephant wrestling a hippo while a giraffe is giving birth. So I decided to go…just in case. We were already far away from the lodge as the sun rose to full daylight. We saw lots and lots of giraffes. It turns out you can’t get enough giraffe shots. They’re just so cool. They run in slow motion! We asked our guide Dennis, who has worked in park for 14 years, to find us elephants and lions. He gave a coy remark that made me think, ugh, I should have stayed in bed. We drove and drove and saw not much other than the usual smattering of antelope.

But then unexpected treasures began to appear. We went off road to look for lions. No such luck. But we did spot two Ugandan crested cranes, the beautiful national bird. In three years here I had never seen one. A few minutes later Dennis spotted a leopard in a tree. I can’t find the words to describe this moment. Extraordinary? Surreal? Yes and yes.

After watching the leopards, we were satisfied. Anything else would be a bonus. And bonuses there were. Every kilometer or so a new gaggle of giraffes posed for us like something straight out of National Geographic. And then…the biggest prize of all, the king of the jungle himself appeared. When you see a lion in Murchison it’s sort of like crossing the finish line or hitting a home run. You exhale massively, with your arms shaking up in the air over your head in triumph while making (muted) whoops of joy. We found a male and female literally in the middle of the road and they were doing IT. I got some good lion porn video! So cool. We even got a shot of the lions with a giraffe in the background. It was a lion king moment.

As we raced back to catch the final session of our meeting, (yes, we ditched a little…but only a little!) we clapped each other on the back and assured one another that we were not that late and that we’d catch the elephants on the way out of the park. Just as we approached the lodge, a bit in the distance, we spotted a group of elephants. And scene.

So yeah, safaris are not boring at all. They rock and I’m a lucky ducky!