So here I am in Guadalajara, revisiting a city I first tasted in 1965 with my parents. It has brought fresh memories of a road trip taken after I graduated high school. We had a brand new Oldsmobile – not the car to have brought to Mexico where mechanics knew
As much as adapting to Uganda and specifically Gulu, was an adventure and a challenge, re-entry is offering equal opportunities for surprise, fury, self-analysis, befuddlement and feeling out-of-sync. It doesn’t provide the sucking-in-of-breath kind of surprises that Africa offers but there’s been plenty of gasping and shock at what I’ve
After twenty hours of travel and 48 hours without sleep, I have landed in what feels like a parallel universe. It looks like a place I remember: there are people, cars, paved roads – places I recall. I’m supposed to know this place, but it feels alien. Describing this sense
It’s the last day in Uganda. “How to spend it,” was my first question – now beginning to be fully aware and a little panicked that I’ve missed something! Well – of course I have – but most of it is too late to capture now – so I’ll have
Well – I’m almost there – relatively speaking. After 28 months, what’s another two days? Right? Left Gulu amid a flurry of last minute activity – two days of goodbyes, giving things away, packing and re-packing. Had a small congratulations party for Peter for finishing his PLE exams and blessedly
It’s 4:30 AM on the next to last night in Gulu. I’ve been awake since 1:30 – the pre-leaving middle of the night “what-ifs” have jolted me awake. Last night I dreamed I was at the airport and not one, but two groups of little Ugandan school kids had taken
As I began writing this, the power was off and I sat in an almost empty house in the soft glow of candlelight. It’s a memory I’ll have forever. To keep it from getting spooky, I spaced tea-candles in the hall offering little puddles of light from living room to
The Broken Digit: Ordinarily, one wouldn’t bother to write a blog about a broken finger. There are plenty of worse things and more interesting, but I think you’ll enjoy or possibly gasp some of this. let me say though – up front – that the actual doctors involved in this
Started on September 23… Perched in a cushioned blocky wooden chair on the front porch of Carpe Diem Guesthouse overlooking Lake Victoria in Entebbe, it’s 7-ish on a cool, misty morning as I drain my cup of French press coffee. Birds twitter and there’s an occasional rooster down below. Every
“Defiling pupil is a crime” This is not a blog I would have thought of writing earlier, but a lot of topics we would consider taboo in the States are just part of the fabric of life here. Even though it’s OK to show Milie Cyrus gyrating on stage and
The following is the truth – nothing but the truth – so help me Gulu: It’s going on two weeks without eggs in Gulu and it will be another week before egg delivery. Somewhere I suppose there were eggs hiding out in small clutches – there are certainly chickens.
After the gloom and doom of the last blog, I thought I’d send along some lighter fare and in the way that the universe sometimes colludes with humans, a story delivered itself as I walked to work this morning. Gulu in the morning – no that is not a song