Spending a Tuesday night sunset on a hammock made of tree branches and listening to the sounds of Lake Victoria, of Uganda, of Africa was one of the sweetest moments of my life. The sounds were a cacophony of bugs, birds, and frogs.Three lively dogs were my company. Our abode this last week in Kampala was a cozy luxury, a retreat for sure. Our friend Leslie was hosting us in her guest cottage, something out of a fairytale- two small bedrooms, lots of light, wooden and wicker furniture and an outlook over the lake. The main house had a screened in veranda on the second floor with a view like I have never seen. For our last three days, we lived like the privileged Westerners we are.As a kid I collected Adventure Men, plastic action figures like GI Joes, who wore adventure clothes and came with kayaks, tents and backpacks. I wanted to be one of them. Pretended it. When we went camping as a family I would jump into shorts with extra pockets, hooks, Velcro, and snaps to be an adventurer myself. Night and day during the last two weeks in Uganda I got to dress like an adventure man again. I wore hiking pants and packable shoes, durable, lived in button downs, and a head lamp around my neck. I smelled of unwashed clothes and deepwoods bug spray, but I felt more fresh and alive than I do most days here in New York.
Though it takes more work to make it through a day, and simple things like running water and electricity, things we take for granted, are often missing, days in Uganda are experienced in hyper reality. Every sense is heightened. Life is a bit more on the edge and ordinary comings and goings felt like adventures. Riding the back of a boda boda forty five minutes on a dirt road into the bush, eating rice and beans at a table full of men who were dipping meat in broth with their bare hands, or trekking in the dark to meet the night commuting kids, ordinary events in our time there, were intensified by the senses, made overwhelmingly extraordinary. Walking between huts in IDP camps with cameras in hand and dozens of children tailing us, we saw and heard horrors we were incapable of taking in. You step back emotionally, unable to process what is coming at you. It is all too much. But that onslaught of experiences is also so full that one cannot help but want to live everyday so deeply.
I realize that two weeks in a place is a honeymoon not real life. Over time, the amazement would rub thin and the annoyances of corrupt government and dangerous roads would frustrate like flies in your food. But nonetheless, Chris and I spoke endlessly about ways to stay and places to come back to. And I think we will return, sooner rather than later and remain past the easy days.
We were white outsiders in Uganda, and I have to mention white because that was all most people knew of us when they stared. We were constantly on display. Our every step, glance, and word were watched as if entertainment. They laughed at us, asked money of us, wanted to meet us, and sometimes looked to take advantage of us. Whatever the scenario, we were very much aware at all times that we were the"Mzungo". Things are not equal in the world. We are by virtue of birth and nationality rich; they are, upon the same merits, poor. The realization is stunning. Returning to New York City, in the midst of the holiday hub-bub, the African world we just came from feels totally other, separate. Coming out onto Park Avenue from the subway, I am reminded of something I read while on the trip, Mountains Beyond Mountains, the biography ofPaul Farmer, a doctor to the poor in Haiti. Upon returning to the U.S., Farmer is asked the same question by a friend, "Doesn't this feel likea different world?" He responds somewhat sarcastically, "The polite thing to say would be, 'You're right. It's a parallel universe. There really is no relation between the massive accumulation of wealth in one part of the world and the abject misery of another.'"
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