The kitchen

For those of you following this project, here are the latest updates regarding how the funds are helping. I love this shot of some of the smaller kids lining up for a good meal, cooked in the kitchen you see to the left.

Cooks and serving women

Happy little boy!

The letter to the right is from Ojok Morgan, orphaned for eight years and living on the street.

Asleep on the street

A typical Ugandan village, accessible only by footpath.

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I admit to having felt fairly flat since being in Mexico except for those unexpected moments of pure joy that erupt over some random sighting, smell or experience. The fact that I’ve still been dealing with getting Peter in school has contributed to the malaise.  More on that later as a way of responding to queries.  

However blue water has a way of healing most maladies in my book and the instant I saw the arch over the highway announcing CANCUN my heart lifted  and when I caught just a glimpse of ocean I knew I was home in the way the soul recognizes:  a place where memories are kept, mysteries abide and the ever changing tide speaks to life. 

Still, I had to disembark and find the ferry to get to the good stuff.   The gods must have been favoring me because I had the good luck of discovering Renaud, a French Canadian who knows his way around Cancun – and more specifically from the bus station to the ferry landing!  Even more to my delight he was headed to Isla Mujeres for his ritual few weeks of escape from Quebec’s winter, this – his fifth year.  Like many folks who come and fall in love with the spirit of the Mexican people, the food, the sea and the cost of living, he plans to live here permanently in the not too distant future.  He been my intrepid guide for the week and here are some of the sights.  

It has been good to tap the well of fond memories:  having lived on the water discovering the sailor within,  summers on sailboats with the kids when life seemed easier, terrifying storms that did not – after all send us to the sharks,  blissful full moon nights where I saw starfish on the sandy bottom at 40 feet.  With a complicated life in between, recovering the wheat and throwing away the chaff was good therapy.   The technicolor hues of the houses, fanciful grave yards, a fishermen mending nets… colluded to reaffirm my love affair with islands and sea side life.

I was on this island in the early 80s when there was little here but a few buildings, no lodging save a few hammocks that could be rented for $1 per night and the only approach was the single ferry that wallowed its way across the channel from Cancun – and as I recall has engine failure half way across, making everyone aboard green with seasickness.  In the intervening years it’s become a tourist Mecca but a little more “real” than Cancun, retaining its spirit and charm.  Five ferries run the gamut from the high end tourist rig with live music to those meant for cars and finally the slow boat that most of the locals or people immune to sea-sickness and with more time take.

 Tomorrow I head for Tulum, known for world class cave diving, postcard perfect lagoons,  Ceotes (sink holes filled with sea water) and a few World Heritage ruins.  It too has been discovered, but less so.  Will be good to get out of the tourist bustle of Isla Mujeres and with low season starting things should quiet down everywhere.  Looking for a place to hunker down for a while with the key word being cheap.  Naturally I want an ocean view where I can sit and write, meditate and stop moving.  Hmmm – an ocean view for cheap? We’ll see how that works…  But luck has been in my favor so far. 

I met a couple of women about my age in Merida and discovered they have been interested in applying for Peace Corps! Naturally, that got the conversation going and it ended in one of them offering her condo in Playa del Carmen as a place to stay when it’s empty in June.   Can hardly believe my good fortune and intend to take full advantage of what I hear is a spectacular beach.  That will probably mark my final month here, but that leaves April and May to explore and continue with the Spanish!

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The Saturday before leaving my LABE friends gave me a beautiful going away party that was so thoughtfully put together I was deeply honored and moved.   They are dear friends and it’s not real yet that I won’t see them again – unless I somehow made it back to Uganda…  It is completely surreal to think that I’ve created a life here and in two days life will shift dramatically and I’ll have running water and lights on demand, not to mention all the hubbub that goes with re-entry and the excitement of seeing old friends.  I’m excited to be coming home but part of my heart will always be here. And I think that’s as it should be.

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As time  comes to a close here in Gulu it’s a bit surreal.  The house feels like a shell and is essentially empty except for the basic pieces of furniture.  All but a couple of pieces of artwork is down, crafts packed.  Knowing me as many of you do, I packed the arts crafts and mementos first and those things the kids gave me to make life comfy here: battery chargers, Life Save Water Bottle, Steri-pen, solar charger.. I continued to be one of the best prepared PCV’s in country – thanks again to the forward thinking of my kids. 

Naively I thought I had only one suitcase of treasures. Well – the joke was/is on me. Two 40lb bags later, I realized that packing to leave is actually more complicated than packing to get here and for one simple reason: things I forgot from home could be (and were) mailed to me and – I knew I would return to the States and the family and friends.

Leaving here, I realize it’s entirely possible I won’t return – or at least not for years. And – as is my nature – I want to take every morsel of memory back with me. And it appears I’m doing just that. So – pack-unpack-repack repeat.

Mentally, I’m somewhere else. Physically, I’m here doing what I need to do to leave. Part of that equation is Peter and setting up a really functional and caring support network for him when I’m gone and one that can manage his continuation in school assuming his grades on his Primary Leaving Exams allow that. Since we won’t really know that until January, things will have to move fast because school starts again on February and the group will have to find him a school and one I can fund. Peter certainly had good people in his life before I arrived on the scene and they will be the constants in his life when I leave.

The challenge has been convincing Peter of that life will move forward, but slowly-by-slowly as the expression goes that is happening. We gathered in the office of the DRDC (Deputy Residential Regional Commissioner) who has been so instrumental in helping Peter when problems have come up. It’s amazing the people Peter has gathered around him – how a street kid can become friends with and befriended by high district officials, the police, pastors and others. But it was through Peter that I began to know most of Gulu! Anyway – that network is in place and that feels good for all of us.

I met a young woman who is here working with Educate for Change and she’s taking over the house making the task of finding places for all the furniture a lot easier.  She’s also helping with Peter.  So things are falling into place. The universe works in amazing ways.

My LABE friends here are wonderful and they have just this week moved into the larger offices promised a year ago, but still have no power or water.  This is an office we’re talking about – no copier, internet, lights, etc.   The library project however, seems to be in hands that will work to continue its growth and that’s satisfying.

I spent the weekend saying goodbye to friends I’ve served with and a curious thing in happening.  One volunteer I really like met Travis and Brett and will probably connect with Travis in Florida to go cave diving.  A Ugandan friend who left while I was traveling, turns out to be in Dallas now working as a CPA.  We’ll get to visit when he comes to see friends who have a house in the Austin hill country!    Another RPCV who is working here with a social-enterprise group also left while I was traveling, but is going to be in Austin the day after I arrive! So we’ll also see each other.  The world keeps getting smaller and I like it.

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I meet a lot of people on the street and we have brief casual conversations that consist mostly of greetings or “no, I’m sorry I don’t have any money to give you.”    With Peter, this became a dialog about what he was trying to do to get the 100 or so street kids in Gulu off the street, fed, back into school or at the least back with families.  

It wasn’t until later that I realized Peter had also been a street kid, getting random help from random people, working at odd jobs and getting a meal when he could.  Yet Peter never asked for money or even implied that he was in need himself. It was only obliquely that I learned he was trying to get back into school.  The focus was always on “his” street kids.  He never mentioned that all of the money he had saved for school had been stolen (story to follow). That came to me quite by accident from another woman who was in Peter’s life when it happened.

Fast forward to my deciding to help Peter get into Gulu Public Primary School (Grades 1 – 7) where he will have shelter and food as well as education. Peter’s been on the street for a few years and has developed a level of autonomy that’s doesn’t fit too well in a school where you have to ask permission to go to the latrine! As is true for many students, he is much older than the typical American 7th grader, because students attend school when there is money, time, and parental permission. Yet, he’s driven to continue his education.

Last Sunday was Parent’s Day at the school – and I guess as his sponsor, I’m the closest thing Peter has to a parent, so I went, signed in as a “parent,” was given his test results and stayed to visit.  I learned more about his history and had a fascinating conversation as Peter asked me about things he’d heard about the United States.  Sooo interesting to learn what Ugandans have heard and how it’s been interpreted in the context of life in Uganda, half-truths and all.  to do well and is following all the rules.  So far – so good, and his teachers are noticing.

The more I learn about Peter, the more amazed I am at how this young man has managed to hold on to such a single vision and motivation to be educated.  For the first few years of his life, Peter and his nine siblings were raised in a village on the outskirts of Gulu, much like the one pictured here.   Evidently the mother left the picture early on and his father was left to raise the kids alone.  They struggled for food and all of the children were expected to work in the fields or otherwise contribute to family livelihood.  Peter made it to P3 before it became evident that his father would not/could not continue to send him to school and it became a source of chronic conflict and later abuse from his older siblings.  So he went to live with another family after physical violence erupted as he became the  referee to keep his older brother from stealing food from the Peter’s younger siblings.   The new “family” got him through another year of school, but that living arrangement fell apart as well.  (Nearly every family I meet here has at least a few extra kids living with them or has sent their kids to live with someone who is better equipped to handle them.  The nuclear family is non-existant here for the most part.)

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So here we are.  I paid his fees for this term – part of them anyway – enough to get him in.  And as we get our PC stipend each month I’ll add to it.  He’ll work on holidays to finish it out, but the requirement with boarding school is that you don’t leave campus unescorted for the full three months of the term.    Interestingly, school fees include a contribution of: cement for repairs, a lightening rod, beans and posho, exam fees and an odd assortment of miscellany.   It amounts to 286,000 shillings (about $100 US). 

The dorm consists of a large room with cement floors, where the boys lay their mattresses butted up against each other on the floor.  They share an outdoor latrine and bathing area (bucket baths) and are required to bring their own toilet paper, copy paper and broom – among other things.   He couldn’t afford the socks or the flashlight or the toilet paper or the shoe polish or Vaseline or –or –or the 6 passport pictures or the 21 notebooks – so we’re piecing that all together.   I’ll post a picture when I get one.  

Today I walked to the school to take him a bag of supplies and it was an odd feeling to be helping another young man with school: a mixture of old memories of going to school for my own kids and somehow becoming a surrogate mother to a 17 year old  man-child.  This term is a test of sorts to see how he does.  Considering the fact that last year was his first year back in school and part of that time he was working to pay for it, he’s done pretty well.  In the process of getting him back in, I’ve met what amounts to a handful of people who represent his support system.   Since he has no home to go over the holidays, someone has agreed to find him “some small space.   Others have agreed to continue to seek a place for his street kids.  It’s rather daunting and the Nigerian proverb “it takes a whole village to raise a child” has become real. Here it’s quite literal.  

As we were walking back to the school yesterday he asked what we do in America when the electricity goes out.  I answered that that rarely happens and he was stunned.  Then he said:  “I hear that in the UK they don’t use candles for light, they are only used for celebrations! Can that really be true?”    When I answered “yes” he was silent for a long time after uttering an almost reverent, “wow!”  

And that’s my week in review. It’s now Sunday morning and it’s uncharacteristically quite.  The club music provided a thud all might and turned into the Call t Prayer this morning followed by church music on steroids.  I guess everyone has finally fallen asleep, because the only sound is a rooster and the wind through the trees.  Onward to another cup of coffee…

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