The Saga Continues

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Well, I guess New Hampshire isn't THAT far away. Although on the recognizability scale its probably right up there with Wyoming.

So I'm 9. My life as I have always know it has begun to disintegrate, although I was blissfully unaware of this fact. Life for me at that time didn't change a whole lot, at least I was so wrapped up in being a kid I was oblivious. Sure, we started buying "generic" groceries all the time--remember when "generics" first came out? Not store brands or "off" brands, black-and-white UPC-symbol-only generics. Lots of canned food, mac and cheese, eggs, that sort of thing. Plenty of shopping at Bradlees (the New England equivalent of say, KMart), although that wouldn't bother me much until I was in middle school. But seriously, I had much more important things to worry about. What kind of Trapper Keeper would I choose for school? Where were my sister and the neighbors and I going to build our next fort? Would I ever be able to master the Nelson's pogo stick or stilts? (No and no!) I was good at school and had plenty of friends and there was always something fun to do. We didn't have to get rid of our pets or our car or our house (at this point) so it didn't seem like such a big deal.

Of course, that very fact would later prove to be a major problem. See, when you ignore financial reality for a long enough time it WILL come back to bite you in the butt, I promise you.

Dad took lots of random jobs as previously mentioned, so sometimes we didn't get to see him all that much. One thing mom was good at was making sure we got to spend time with him. One Halloween instead of going trick or treating we dressed up and went to the country club where he was bartending and hung out there, eating hot dogs, drinking sodas and playing PacMan. Of course, that was the Halloween of the Tylenol scare so she wasn't about to let us out to get candy anyway, but still...She would keep us out of school once in a while when he was home during the day so we could just hang out with him. She wouldn't even lie about it to the school, she'd just say "My kids need to spend time with their dad". It helped that we were good students of course. What I remember most about those days is going to the dump. Seriously, we didn't have trash pickup, so we loaded up his yellow/gold truck and headed to the dump, my sister, the dog and I bouncing around on the front seat. I loved going to the dump and seeing all the trash people got rid of. Washing machines, kids toys, sofas, whole cars...it was like junk paradise. I was fascinated. Plus I just liked hanging out with my dad. I also remember, so clearly, when he was working on the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. He'd usually get home right around the 11 o'clock news. We had a wood stove, and he'd lay out his wet jacket, gloves, boots, hat, all around the wood stove. Then he'd plunk down in our big armchair--godawful ugly it was to remember it, huge yellow roses all over it--and settle in to watch the news before heading to bed. I'd often wake up and come down and just climb in his lap and cuddle there with him, just the two of us, Penny the dog curled up alongside of us, while WBZ Channel 4 went on about whatever "important" things happened that day. I wonder if he remembers that at all.

I try to imagine what it must have been like for him, to have his livelihood stripped away by some politician in Washington trying to show his muscle in his first year of office. I don't know if anyone hates or has hated a person as much as he hated our President for taking this from him. Of course, God forbid he should express his feelings about this, no, a good man stuffs them all inside and just soldiers on, bearing those burdens alone. Ignore what isn't pretty, pretend it isn't there. Just keep plowing ahead in spite of all the blaring warning signs of impending disaster. If I don't think about it, it doesn't exsist, right?

Of course Mom had her own issues that suddenly seemed to bloom with the new financial stresses. Suddenly she had to find a job, which was successful off and on depending on the swing of her increasingly erratic moods. Remembering days when she would just lie in bed and cry for no apparent reason. As the cleanliness of our house eroded (except for my immaculate room of course) and weird behaviors started cropping up. Like not throwing anything away because it might be vital to our existence. McDonald's napkins, empty envelopes, months old store circulars...As her mental state deteriorated, so did everything else. Fights became more and more frequent, louder, more angry. Usually over money, or how strangely she was acting. My sister and I would just retreat to our rooms, and as the next few years went by, we would slowly start to realize that things were not all ok at 10 Beechwood Road. And here you find me, starting to make that vow, challenge myself to NOT be like her at any cost.

More, more, always more to tell...

This is part 2 of an undetermined number of parts.

It’s funny, telling your “life story”. Most of us probably think our lives are pretty unremarkable. Why would anyone want to know the ins and outs of our lives? It seems so insignificant, trivial. It’s why we say “Fine!” when people ask us how we are, when we are not fine, not even close. Why would anyone else care about the things I have gone through? You can’t really judge the significance (or lack thereof) of your life for yourself though, you’re too close. Someone with a really amazing life probably doesn’t stop much and say “Wow! I have a really fantastic life!” It’s just their life, they’re used to it the way it is. And you always hear stories about abused kids who would rather stay with their parents than be in foster care. It’s not so bad, really, it’s just the way life is. When people say “wow, that must have been really hard” about something in my life, my initial reaction is, something along the lines of “Hmmm…I guess it was!” I didn’t have any choice about the way things happened, I just was along for the ride. But I know that telling your story is important—people can learn things from you, and everyone’s going to get something different from the story you tell. Even if it’s only “So that’s why my best friend is so insane.” And you figure out things about your own self along the way, understanding more about who you are, where you’ve been and maybe even where you may end up.

I can’t remember life without my sister at all. There are pictures of me kissing her the day they brought her home from the hospital, but in spite of my incredibly good memory, I don’t remember anything before that time. She has always been there. We were best friends and mortal enemies. I always had someone to play with and to kick really hard. Looking back I can’t believe how much we physically fought one another. How did we get away with that? Why didn’t they stop us? I wonder too, if we fought more during the “after” period, as we watched the fighting escalate in front of our eyes. Did we fight before then? That I don’t really remember. We laughed together and screamed at each other…even into adulthood. I remember one appalling event, riding in the backseat of her ridiculous white egg of a car and the two of us getting into a slapping girl fight. We were both in our 20’s and my mother was sitting incredulously in the front seat as her two grown daughters went at it. We could not be more different. I look at her and I wonder how she is even my friend because aside from being related we would probably not give each other the time of day if we passed on the street. I can’t imagine life without her. She is the only one who had a front row seat to the events that shaped who I am, and yet those same events shaped us completely differently. Her story would have the same characters but be unrecognizable next to mine.

There was a time when they were happy, I know it. I was there, I saw it. Even if there were seething things underneath that I couldn’t see, whispered stories and misunderstandings, there were happy times. I wonder if he even remembers those anymore. Long drives up in the mountains to see the fall foliage. The Deerfield Fair in the fall, and apple picking. Spending the day at the pond. Christmases, the feeling of which I am constantly trying to recreate but always fail miserably. I can hear them reassuring us that just because they argued sometimes didn’t mean they didn’t love each other. I guess that was before the hole punched in the door and the ashtray flung across the house. She wasn’t always scatterbrained and ridiculous, using one excuse after another about how that’s just the way she is. That is not how I remember her, them. Sure, sometimes he drank too much and we had to be dragged out of bed to go pick him up at the Holiday Inn bar after softball games. Yes, there were times when we couldn’t follow through on pre-made plans because she just couldn’t get it together. But those times were rare, at least until everything changed.

It was 1981, the summer I turned 9 and was going into 4th grade. I really had no awareness of what was going on because my grandparents had been living with us that summer and I was basking in the glow of constant adult attention. It was probably the only summer that I didn’t worry about thunderstorms because there were always enough adults around to make me feel safe. I was more worried about the end of the summer, when Nana and Pepere would be leaving not just our house but the state too, and moving to Florida. My mom may have had a contentious relationship with them, but I thought they were wonderful. All her rants about my Nana just went over my head, because, well, she wasn’t my mother. The call came early in the morning in early August, and in spite of everyone’s reassurances that things would be fine, things would never be fine again. There were meetings, countless damn union rallies where the speakers would shout about SCABS! and I would cry and we would have to leave. Christmas parties, picnics—we were always around the stupid union people. It was like a family watching their house burn down and yet trying to comfort one another that it would all be all right. My dad (and mom sometimes) spending the day picketing, on the news. Sitting down telling me that police may come to the house and arrest him because, well, he’d done something illegal. When I heard that I planned an elaborate booby trap for the porch so that they could not come get him, could not take him from me. If they managed to get past the booby trap then I would just race down to the police station on my Big Wheel and demand they release him to me. I swear I thought this would work.

The weeks and months went by and it was clear that he wasn’t getting his job back, but he wasn’t one to sit around feeling sorry for himself, no sir. So the long litany of jobs began that would one day end up right back where he started, only in another country. Gas station attendant. Bartender. Golf club repairman. Construction worker. Nuclear power plant builder. Laundromat equipment salesman. He never went without work but he never made enough money to make it all go back to the way it was either. And no one really wanted to admit that it wasn’t going to go back to the way it was. So, we shopped at Bradlees a lot more, and we ate the black and white UPC generic canned food a lot more, and didn’t take as many trips or bought as many things. But we didn’t pay the bills either and that sure came back to bite us in the butt you can bet. She took some jobs too, at a preschool, Burger King, but the darkness that had flitted around the edges of her for a long time (according to her) started to advance and suddenly I had a mother who suddenly was not acting much like my mother at all, and a father who was working tirelessly for ends that would never be able to meet.

Trying To Tell My Story

Funny you should've commented just a couple days ago Sandra. Here you go.

This is just the beginning. More to follow.

I can remember that day. Very clearly, in my mind it stands out. It was the day I decided to stop crying, to never cry about anything, ever. It was summer, we were riding our bikes in the driveway. Mine was pink with a huge banana seat. It was a cheap used bike we’d had to buy somewhere because suddenly we were poor (how had that happened?) and couldn’t afford new bikes. I was probably 9, and was making a sharp turn at the top of the driveway, by the porch steps, near where the backyard tilted down at a sharp angle. I skidded on the dirt—probably on purpose, because we were always trying to do daring things on our bikes like ride them off ramps and “jump” them. The back wheels slid out from underneath me and I landed on my knee on the sharp gravel. I can see myself, standing there. Small rocks embedded in my knee, the blood already starting to drip down. “Don’t do it. Don’t” in my head over and over and I didn’t. I didn’t cry. I stared and stared at my wound, waiting for the tears to come, forcing them to STOP. As I held it in I felt a new power, a sense that it all didn’t have to come apart, that I was not going to be like her. I would not be like her.

My resolve to quit crying lasted a long time. Later my mother would tell me she was worried about me, how nothing ever seemed to bother me, how I would shrug everything off. But like any resolution there’s no real way to hold on to it forever. I blame Jesus for making me cry again. Once I became a real live born-again Christian, it seemed like all I did was cry. Over the stupidest things too. And then there I am sitting in a doctor’s office in Knoxville, Tennessee, and this doctor is talking but the words coming out of her mouth aren’t really making any sense to me. “What the hell are you talking about”, I want to say to her, as she’s writing me a prescription. “I just came in for a physical”. But nothing comes out of my mouth, no sound at all, just a nod of my head as I read the doctors orders for 20 mg of Prozac. I want to throw it back at her, tear it to pieces and scream at her “NO! This is not for me! You have the wrong person! I am NOT HER.” But I keep it and thank God the tears don’t come until I get in the car (because if they hadn’t then she’d have had the satisfaction of knowing she was right all along) and they come because it is true, it is true, it is true. No matter how hard I tried I was like her. I had failed.

There are a lot of things I remember about my childhood. A lot of memories of “before” that make “after” all the more confusing. I remember thinking my mom was the best cook, how she would make me these great cakes in the shapes of different things for my birthdays. There was this page in the Betty Crocker cookbook she had with all these different cakes—one of them was this kitty cat cake, which she had made me for my 2nd birthday. I would stare and stare at those cakes, thinking they were the most wonderful things I had ever seen. I loved my mother’s jewelry box. My sister and I would pore over its contents, like we’d stumbled upon buried treasure. My favorites were the cameos she had, one of them had even belonged to her grandmother (which seemed like an ancient relic in my mind) and they were so beautiful, like pearls from a time I would never experience. She had this red dress with white polka dots which I thought was so beautiful and fancy. I would watch her as she would get ready to go out on a date with my dad…they went on dates, they loved each other, they laughed and joked together. I would always ask her what she had to eat and she would always say “a Strawberry Daquiri and French Onion Soup”, which I thought had to be the most glamorous, grown up foods around. They went to see "An Officer And A Gentleman". When I am grown, I thought, I will drink nothing but strawberry daquiris and eat French onion soup and go to romantic movies with my husband.

She is the oldest of 4, the one that perhaps suffered the most at the hands of parents raising children in the mid-20th century. Sometimes I have to wonder what the heck happened during those years, you read so many horror stories of growing up in the 50’s, how repressed and held back and abused everyone was. Did World War II cause people to forget how to care for children? I don’t ever remember Laura Ingalls feeling abused by her parents, and she had to milk cows and churn butter at age 7 for heaven’s sake! It’s ironic how everyone pictures the 50’s as this idyllic place, June Cleaver and all, and yet it is apparently a decade full of tortured souls, parents and children alike, and the scars they would inflict on one another would continue to fester as the century wound down. Then the 60’s and 70’s, the sexual revolution and women’s lib movements…so much tumult and confusion. I suppose its no surprise that things ended up the way they did. Keep it all neat and clean on the surface, ignore the mess brewing just below.

I heard stories of how when she met my dad at a hockey game, he spilled his beer on her. Or did he throw up? No, I think it was beer. She had slept and procrastinated her way through college and barely passed. She was teaching middle school and some of her colleagues set her up with him. He was an air-traffic controller, a job which still seems very exciting to me. I wonder if she felt the same way. He was dashing and charming, a façade he would continue to excel at presenting to the rest of the world in spite of the truth. Were they sleeping together before they got married? I don’t even know, probably. Their families were Catholic, mom’s very much so, I imagine the subject was never even broached. Funny how Catholics get so worked up about this sin and that one, and yet the thought of actually not sinning never seemed to cross anyone’s mind. Just say your Hail Mary’s, you’ll be fine. She had dated some real losers in the past—I remember her stories of the one who used to smack her on the ass and say “Crisco! Fat in a can!” or the one who was trying to write a book called 101 Ways To Kill a Cat. My dad must have seemed like Prince Charming after those two. So she married him, even though I think he had to ask her a few times before she actually said yes.

Then came me, and 2 years later, my sister. I would always pine for a baby brother. Or an older brother, I would’ve been happy with either one. She had a miscarriage sometime before I was born (so yes, they must have been sleeping together already…time reveals all) and I always wondered about the baby who had never been. It never actually crossed my mind that if that baby had been born, I never would have been. We moved from our small house to a bigger one in the next town over, the house that would become the tomb of my parent’s marriage, and in spite of its attempts to keep us all together, would eventually spit us all out as if to say “I’ve tried, I’m done with you. Fend for yourselves.”

My dad was always larger than life to me, just like most dads are I guess. I loved to watch him shave. I thought he had the coolest job in the world and I was so proud when he came to talk to my 3rd grade class about it, and my Brownie troop went on a field trip to the control center. I loved nothing more than to sit in one of those big rolling chairs in front of the radar screens and push the buttons and think about all the planes going by and how my dad took care of them. When he was not home all manner of bad things happened, namely thunderstorms and power outages and the dog peeing all over the house. He grilled my favorite steaks and barbecued chicken. He terrified me by standing on the porch during bad storms. He played softball and hockey and went hunting, which I forgave in spite of my undying love of Bambi, because he was my dad and that made it ok. It took a long time for him to shrink down and become just like every other man in the world, and it was rather shocking to me when he did even though the signs had been there all along.

The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn...

It's around midnight on our first night in Kitgum. Nancy is still up, but about to go to bed. I've been asleep for about an hour and a half. Suddenly, everything goes dark as the power goes out. We were told to expect this--electrical service in Kitgum (and probably all over Africa) is sketchy at best. Many places of business(including our hotel) have generators, but they do not run them at night because, well, its a waste (take that Americans!) to run the electricity all night while everyone's asleep (!). I do not enjoy or appreciate total darkness. I wake up immediately and am smothered by the complete and utter BLACK that surrounds us. There is no ambient light coming from ANYWHERE, as the entire city is without power. Not only is it totally dark, it is dead quiet. Again, something I do not cope well with. Thankfully, I have brought a small, battery operated fan which serves as my "white noise" and my flashlight (plenty of extra batteries too). But these are small consolations--not only is it dark and silent, but remember, I am in the middle of Africa, thousands of miles away from family and familiarity. I was just getting sort of comfortable with that second part, and now this. Nancy doesn't seem to notice at all and falls right asleep. I spend the next several hours fitfully drifting in and out of sleep, clutching my flashlight and trying not to let my mind wander to all sorts of unpleasantness. I pray and pray and am afraid and afraid...Somewhere around 4 am another fun thing happens, a thunderstorm starts to roll in. Great. Probably 3 of my biggest fears-darkness, silence, and thunderstorms, all bundled together. I wouldn't be comfortable even in my own bed, and well, obviously I'm not there! Suffice it to say I do not get much sleep.

Around 5:30 it starts getting gray outside our window. I can't stand lying there awake any more so I creep out of the room and down the hall a bit to explore. I go to the end of the hall and kneel on the chair there and look out the window. (after moving the GIANT box of condoms. Part of Uganda's HIV/AIDS prevention requires all hotels to have copious amounts of prophylactics available. The box has a cuddly black couple on it, I wish I could remember the name of the brand!) I'm looking out on a gray morning, the clouds from the thunderstorm are starting to clear, you can tell eventually the sun will come out, but it is still very overcast. There are houses beyond the compound wall, no one anywhere seems to be stirring. Somewhere you hear a rooster crowing, but that's it. I feel like the only conscious person in this whole city. On the windowsill are 3 small mushrooms growing up from a crack, their stems are so weak and skinny that they are lying on their side. For some reason this image sticks with me very clearly, of these 3 anemic mushrooms. I am wondering just what in the world I am doing in this place.

Nancy gets up and hops in the shower first. She lets me use her phone to call Bill--it's $4.99 a minute, which is outrageous, but I am desperate to talk to him. I keep it short--I think I only talk to him for 3 minutes, all of which is spent with me crying "I want to come home!!!" and him patiently reassuring me (how many times something like this has happened in our marriage is not even funny!). I tell him about my long night, and he keeps telling me how much he and the kids love me and that everything's going to be fine. As I'm sitting there on the bed, I'm noticing a pool of soapy water that is emerging from the bathroom and slowly making its way across the bedroom. I hop up and quickly start to pick up everything off the floor and get it to higher ground. Apparently the shallow "tub" area was clogged and would not drain, so basically our bathroom flooded. I decide to skip a shower for that morning, and Nancy and I lay down our towels to try and sop up the worst of it, but it's not entirely helpful. We go down to the front desk to tell Pamela what's happened and she is appalled that we have put our towels down on the floor--that seems to be her main concern. She also seems totally exasperated at these 2 stupid American girls, like we can't figure out how to work a shower and its our fault. We're trying to be nice, really!

Breakfast time, which consists of bread, jam, bananas and passion fruit juice. I'm not so much hungry, but I need to eat to take my malaria pill. The jam comes in cans--it's "red plum" jam which kind of looks/tastes like raspberry jam without the seeds. It's actually quite good and I'll eat a couple slices of white bread with butter and jam for breakfast all week. One day we even had a toaster! But it only worked for like 3 or 4 cycles then went kaput. This morning we are going to be attending church services at the 4 "mother" churches we'll be working with all week long. Somehow last night Chad got me to agree to share my testimony at the church we'll be going to. This is not something I would do even at home, but strangely enough I'm not entirely nervous about it. I think I just feel so out of sorts that this is just one more uncomfortable thing in a whole litany of uncomfortable things so I don't even notice anymore. More waiting and sitting, God, if we could just get going and do something maybe I wouldn't feel so awful! But when you're sitting around for like 2 hours its hard not to just be thinking about everything you're missing. Finally its time to board the busses and head to church--the sun has come out and it is a beautiful day...amazing how the terrors of night pass when the light comes...

Finally Arrived!

So, its 2 or 3 in the afternoon and we are finally on the last leg of our journey to Kitgum, Uganda. It won't really hit me until I get back home just how messed up all this travel and time changes will make me. I think I'm pretty much going on adrenaline for the whole 11 days and then I crash when I get back. We're taking the road from Gulu to Kitgum--to call it a road is really being generous. Uganda used to be a British colony, so vehicles are supposed to drive down the left side. And in the cities, where the roads may actually be paved, this is possible. But once you leave town and the road is just dirt, well, basically you have to ride on the side of the road that is functional, whichever one that may be! There are HUGE ruts in the road, and when it rains, these get filled with water, and the roads also become full of red mud, which makes them nearly impassible. I am thankful we are not here during the rainy season. The few times it rains during our trip really throws a wrench into the transportation "system", if you can call it that, I can't imagine what its like when it rains all the time. So, we're riding on an extremely bumpy road, in a creaky old bus that has no shocks whatsoever. Your bottom is basically bouncing and vibrating the entire trip. You are pretty much numb from the waist down after riding in these things for more than a few minutes. I have no idea just how far it is from Gulu to Kitgum--we keep asking the bus driver how far and he says "20 km" or "10 km" or whatever. Doesn't he know we're stupid Americans and have no idea what kilometers means? It takes about 3, 4 hours to get to Kitgum. Its kind of hard to doze off because there's no way to get comfortable on the bus seats--they are cushioned, but the cushions are so thin you can feel every spring inside them, plus you are feeling every bounce the bus makes. We snack on Sour Patch Kids--I break them out much to everyone's delight--and everyone chats and I do snooze at some point with my head banging against the window...its a gorgeous day, bright blue sky and puffy white clouds...

It's funny, if it weren't for the road it would almost be hard to know you're in Africa. The open landscape around you could be anywhere--lots of grassy areas, trees, rock formations--pretty flat though generally. But then you go through a small town or village and any sense of normalcy goes out the window. There's so much to see! Once again, I am wishing we weren't going so fast so I could take some pictures. Women carrying large loads balanced on their heads, kids running around chasing goats and other livestock, village water pumps with bright yellow containers lined up for yards and yards, with a lone child standing there filling them up, women drying laundry out on the grass, cooking over fires...you pass a lot of schools and NGO buildings--mainly just a concrete rectangle with nothing I can see inside of them. Anytime you see UNHC or World Food Programme signs, you know you're in another world from America. Several times we pass LARGE signs warning of leftover landmines from the years of civil war--I really wish I could take a picture of these! Scary and yet fascinating, I mean, this is the stuff you watch on the news and here I am right in the middle of it! (Not in the middle of actual war though, thank God!) It is really exciting--the newness of everything kind of makes the distance between me and my family not so poignant. But I still look at the clock thinking "Oh, Julia's getting up for school now..." or "Oh, Kendall's at preschool", "Xavier's napping..." just wanting the sense of that routine I know so well. Because I do love routine and that is just one reason why this trip is such a big deal because it's throwing me totally out of my comfortable routine! Which is good, I need that! I get too comfortable sometimes. Anyway, back to Africa...kids are always running up to the bus and waving, waving...sometimes we have to slow way down to go carefully through a particularly deep rut, or to let another vehicle pass, and the kids will run up to the bus and wave and say hello and want to shake your hands...they are just beautiful, even in their dirty, raggedy clothing, their smiles are absolutely radiant. By the way, these close encounters with other vehicles are rather scary--you hold your breath because there is a hairs-width between you and you wonder how on earth you will make it past each other. Sometimes we pass HUGE trucks--they look like dump trucks on steroids--overflowing with men going to or from a job somewhere. In one village we pass a big soccer game going on--the field is just a big dirt patch by the side of the road, but the teams are wearing different colored jerseys and there is a big crowd cheering them on...wake up America, soccer is a big deal in the rest of the world, even in an out of the way village in Uganda!

Someone on the bus--Candace or Courtney I believe--has to go to the bathroom really bad. So does Rob. Since we can't figure out just how far away we are from where we're going, everyone's wondering if we need to pull over somewhere so they can go in the bush. But suddenly--here we are, entering the outskirts of Kitgum! The road becomes paved (slightly!) and there are more buildings, more people on bikes, motorcycles, walking...and then there it is, the Bomah Hotel--we pull into the driveway and it is such a relief to get where we will actually be settling for the next few days! It's a yellowish building, with red tile roof--kind of Spanish looking. There are three wings in a U shape, surrounded by a wall with an armed guard of course. There's a pool with some scary looking water in it--the wing in front of us is where we'll be staying--we go in and sit in the lobby while we wait for our room keys. The chairs and couches in here are actually cushioned with cracked vinyl, so they are considerably more comfortable than the ones at the Acholi. Since the lobby is open to the outside (all week I don't believe the doors were ever closed, even at night, which made me a little uneasy, even though our doors were locked) it is packed with mosquitoes, and I am PRAYING that our rooms don't have the same kind of bug population! Our "hostess" is named Pamela and she seems very frazzled and stressed and smiles very little. Later in the week we'll find out why. Eventually we get our room keys and Nancy and I are on the 2nd floor--we drag our bags up and get settled.

It's not a bad room--tile floor, 2 beds with 2 mosquito nets hanging above. A "hotel-y" picture hanging on the wall, a tv(!), a fan. The sheets on the bed seem clean enough, there's fuzzy blankets on each bed. The bathroom is small but not disgusting--honestly, it's a lot better than I was imagining when I was planning this trip! There's a closet and a chair, Nancy and I kind of claim sides and take out some of our things. Then it's off to dinner--well, to wait for dinner. We're sitting out at these tables--plastic white ones like you'd get for cheap for your backyard, and as it gets darker and darker we are still waiting for our meals...finally someone takes our orders and I think around 7:30 or 8 we actually eat dinner. It's really kind of nice out there on the patio--trees and flagstones, but oddly enough no lights. The light from the bar/restaurant kind of illuminates our area but I will come to get used to eating in semi-darkness. I have no idea what I order that first night, I am SO tired. I think it's baked chicken and the ever-present french fries. Did I tell you about Top-Up? It's Ugandan ketchup and it is SKETCHY!!! It looks like you took Xavier's red Fisher Price Farm and melted it down and put it into a bottle with a big tomato on it and claimed it was ketchup! It is gelatinous and translucent and totally scary! Some of the others love it, but I stay away, salt on my fries works just fine, thanks! The chicken is fine but really scrawny, not a lot of meat on the bones so you have to work really hard to get anything going. After we eat we have a brief meeting and then its off to bed until breakfast at 7...I totally crash around 10 even though Nancy's still up with the light on, I'm just too tired to care or even notice!

Good Morning, Uganda!

Nancy and I get up, our first morning in Uganda. It's still dark out, maybe 5:30 or 6? My brain is still all addled from the 9 hour time change and 2 days of travel. I take a shower, which feels great, and is actually not too bad. The shower has a very shallow area to catch the water, so the bathroom gets soaked. There's a big plastic bucket in the shower--apparently most people in Africa prefer to bathe out of the bucket rather than take a shower, showers must be a pretty "western" thing. We head upstairs to the dining area, its actually a pretty nice hotel. So far we've seen pictures everywhere of President Museveni--sometimes in a suit, sometimes in his military uniform. Imagine if there were official photos of Obama everywhere in America...Breakfast is sparse, fresh pineapple and papaya and toast, with passion fruit juice. Courteney and Candace, who have both been to Africa several times, recommend putting a spoonful of sugar in the juice because it is extremely tart. It's obviously fresh, thick with pulp. The sugar--sugar in the raw and a brownish color--doesn't totally dissolve but it definitely helps. I sit with Nancy and Courteney and Candace and we chat, I show them pictures of the kids. As the sun is rising we all go out to this really pretty patio area that "overlooks" Lake Victoria. All you really see is a small slice of the lake, its obviously really big because it kind of looks like you're looking over the ocean. Built right up to the hotels walls are numerous small houses--no one's up yet, there's a rooster and some chickens strutting around in one small yard, laundry's still hanging on the line. Not too far away there's a big building that looks like it could be some sort of school or office building. It's quiet everywhere, like we're the only people up. As the sun rises we get ready to head out. Everyone's taking bunches of pictures, but I can't seem to get too many that are worth saving. Nancy lets me send Bill a text on her phone--she switched her service to work in Uganda--I'm completely inept at sending a text. I'm not sure it even goes through. A while later Nancy will shout up to me on the bus "Hey, your husband says they all love you and they're so proud of you!" Obviously he got the text but its kind of embarrassing to be 36 and have an international trip be such a big deal.

We hop on our rickety bus to head to the airport. We drive through Entebbe--everyone's awake now. It's a jumble of people and things to look at--everyone's walking along the street heading...wherever. There are concrete buildings one on top of the other, all painted totally garish colors like bright yellow and fuschia. Its like all the rejected paint colors from the rest of the world got sent to Uganda. Ads for Coca Cola and tons of cell phone advertisements. We pass numerous schools with crazy looking playgrounds--I'm wishing we weren't zipping along so fast so I could take some pictures. It's total sensory overload. Women carrying loads on their heads, babies on their backs, men riding bicycles, motorcycles, carrying other people. Cars coming precariously close to crashing...we turn off onto a really rutted dirt road, passing by huts and small concrete huts--how can this be the way to the airport? But of course we're not going to an AIRPORT, we're going to an air STRIP and a strip is exactly what it is--we pull up to a chainlink fence and there they are, 4 small planes, 2 of which will be carrying us to Gulu today. My stomach kind of drops--there's no tower, no tarmac, just a small building and a dirt strip right in the middle of a field. We go into the building where the crew weighs us and our bags (kind of forboding!) to make sure we're not too heavy--we are flying with Missionary Aviation Fellowship. Our pilots are British I believe, ours looks kind of like Archie Morris from ER: red hair, light complexion, kind of leprechaun-y. I'm totally apprehensive as we all take pictures and then board, but my nervousness is immediately relieved by the friendliness and assurance of our pilot, who is as nice as can be. He leads us in prayer (when does that ever happen on Southwest!) and off we go. Rob's sitting in the front seat wearing the headphones and his mirrored sunglasses--now we're starting to see his crazy side! Off we go down this dirt track, and suddenly we're up in the air, looking down on all the houses and buildings of Entebbe...

We fly for about an hour, and I've got to say it was one of the smoothest plane rides I have EVER experienced. And we were totally flying over AFRICA and the NILE RIVER!!! How amazing! I didn't really get to see any of Africa, since we flew in at night, and I was in the middle rows besides. It is so green and lush looking down there, you see random villages here and there, and their huts look like clusters of small brown mushrooms that have popped up in the jungle. We begin our approach to Gulu, which is a city of around 50,000. We land on an actual asphalt landing strip, its obviously just rained here. I guess we just missed a quick thunderstorm. Dana, Chad, Fred and Alex are waiting for us here. Dana is big and reassuring, Chad, as his son, is too. Its like having a dad and big brother with you on the trip. Fred and Alex are Chinese American and VERY kind and friendly. We hop in another rickety bus to head to the Acholi Inn where we'll have lunch before heading off to Kitgum.

Driving through Gulu is like watching every show about Africa you've ever seen--big, fancy looking "compounds" in the middle of incredible poverty. Lots of people everywhere, like in Entebbe. The Acholi in is a pretty, yellow, low building surrounded by a big yellow wall. Out front is a handsome young man to greet us dressed in some traditional Acholi costume.(the Acholi are a tribal group of Africans in Northern Uganda/Southern Sudan. They are extremely proud of their heritage.) We go in to a big cafeteria area, there are tables with folding chairs and some of the most uncomfortable armchairs and "couches" I've ever seen. They're wooden and look like they should have cushions on them but don't. Its like sitting on a rock. I opt for a round table with Linda and Alex who do not stop talking. We order lunch--I think almost all of us order the fried tilapia with french fries, which is SO yummy, crispy and tasty and flaky, with an orange Fanta (I'll drink loads of soda over here!) in a glass bottle. The novelty of that wears off by the end of the week, trust me. I need to use the bathroom, but apparently the public ones are not so great, so Fred and Alex give me the key to the room they were staying in before we got there. I go back into the hotel, the hall opens up onto a beautiful courtyard, there's a young man sweeping the path that meanders under some trees, the sun is shining and sparkling through them. I don't see much of the room, but the bathroom's ok except for the mass of mosquitoes that seem to have congregated there. It's the most of them I will see all week. Mosquitoes gross me out anyway, but watching them all buzz around me as I go to the bathroom gives me the creeps. I smack as many as I can for good measure and hope that my DEET is still potent from this morning. I go back to the sitting room and we sit...and wait...and sit some more...I'm not at all sure what we're waiting for, but we sure are waiting a long time. Eventually I "get comfy" if you can call it that on one of the wooden couches, leaning over to rest on my backpack, and totally pass out. Sometime later--an hour maybe--someone shakes me awake (thank God, what if they'd forgotten me and I wake up all alone? What the heck would I have done then???) because we're finally leaving. I sit up and my right side seems to be permanently bent over to the side from my awkward nap and I've drooled all over my backpack. Nice. I ignore my abdominal muscles and force myself to straighten out and head out to the bus. It's warm and humid and sunny, there are pretty flowers on bushes all around the hotel complex. Now we're really finally on our way to our final destination, but just WHEN will we get there?

Finally arrived, sort of

We all deplane, its around 8:00 at night. There's a big moon and lots of stars as we walk across the tarmac to the airport. It's funny to see the moon and stars--I'm not sure exactly if I'm in the northern or southern hemisphere, the equator runs pretty much right through Kampala, so I may actually slightly be in the southern hemisphere, which is fun. I am wishing that somewhere there's a big sign saying "Equator!" that I can take a picture of me straddling both hemispheres. I'm sure there is one somewhere but we never see it, so much for the cheesy photo-op! Everyone herds into the terminal--it looks like an airport, but small and very plain. There's pretty much nothing on the walls, nothing around to look at. We wait in line behind the rest of the foreigners getting our visas and then head to the one baggage claim (apparently there's not a whole lot of people flying into Entebbe on a daily basis!). Thankfully, all our luggage arrives-I've managed to pack incredibly economically for this trip. I've got one big bag I checked, a rolling carry-on and my backpack. This is going to serve me well later on, trust me. Seeing my bag is like meeting an old friend, I wonder what its journey was like. I'm glad it arrived. We all mill around making small talk and make our way to the parking area in the front of the airport. It's so surreal, it looks like it could be the parking lot at any old little airport (Manchester, say, before it got so big!) I'm expecting to be mobbed by mosquitoes and I'm a little worried because I haven't been able to douse myself in my 100% DEET spray yet, but there are none to be seen. We stand around in the parking lot for what seems like hours yet is only about 20 minutes waiting for our cab to arrive. This is my first experience with the "African time" phenomenon--there is plenty more sitting and waiting in store for me on the remainder of this trip! I thought we were going to exchange our money before we left the airport but we didn't. Everyone's chatting about their lives and families, some of the people know each other pretty well. Rob and I seem like the most uncomfortable of the bunch--this is his first big trip like this too, he has 3 young children and a gorgeous wife at home in Texas, and its obvious he's feeling out of sorts, at least to me. He's pretty quiet and answers in short sentences. Finally, a rickety van type thing arrives and we squeeze our luggage and half of ourselves in--the rest pile into another similar vehicle. The drive to our hotel takes maybe 10 minutes--it is so odd because it just feels like you're driving through any other unfamiliar city, you just happen to be in Uganda, of all places! And I think we're driving on the "wrong" side of the road, I don't really remember. Later, when we're driving during the day you pretty much drive on whatever side of the road is drivable, here in the city the roads are actually paved although there is a strange lack of stoplights.

We round a corner and there, smack in the middle of what seems like a regular old neighborhood is Sophie's Motel. It actually looks pretty nice. The armed guard at the gate is a little bit intimidating but strangely reassuring at the same time. We stand around in the lobby with our luggage piled around us as Dana and Linda get our rooms and breakfast all sorted out. As we were driving in, a sign declaring "Internet Cafe!" was posted on all the Sophie's Motel signs--this "cafe" is pretty much a glassed in area of the lobby with a desk and a computer. You have to pay for your time on it and its apparently pretty sketchy whether you'll get a connection or not. Still, the fact that there's an Internet connection is funny. You just don't imagine that you'll be in that kind of technological contact with the outside world when you go to a Third World country. I guess that's a testimony to what a big deal the internet really is, that you can find it in a little hole in the wall in Uganda!

We finally get our keys to our rooms--all the rooms have the name of an African country--Nancy and I are assigned to the "Botswana" room. Its got 3 beds, surrounded of course by a mosquito net, which is suspiciously holey. That concerns me, although I don't see any mosquitoes anywhere. There's a fan, thank goodness--I need white noise to sleep! I pull out my travel alarm clock and we figure out what time it is (Nancy didn't bring one, which I think is odd, since she's been on like 12short term missions trips so far. She doesn't bring a lot of things I'd expect a seasoned traveler to bring, I'll find out. Some people I think just don't know what to pack and end up bringing everything except what they actually need!) We get changed quickly and collapse into bed, totally exhausted. I'm hugging Julia's stuffed giraffe and Xavier's blanket, but I'm really too tired to even be homesick at this point. I'm just happy to be in a safe, clean place that is not an airplane! Tomorrow holds another big adventure as we take an in-country flight (scary!) up to Gulu and then drive to Kitgum, our final destination. It's sure to be another long day of traveling, but for now I'm just thankful to be stopped to rest.