From Kampala to Bollywood to Gulu

Kampala Karaoke most definitely does not fit in with any notion of Karaoke I was previously familiar with. First, Kampalan karaoke is not a participatory event. Everyone drinks at their tables or dances, while a troupe of semi-professional dancers lip synch pop songs.

Between songs, there are dramatic and comedic interludes in Luganda, which are amusing even when you understand nothing the performers say.

The entertainers at the karaoke club last night in the university district were "The Sober Royals", who are among the better karaoke groups in Kampala according to my friends who had brought me out of Zzana and back into the city. As the Sober Royals shook their asses, made out on stage, and some of the men partied in drag as pregnant women, I couldn't help but suspect that their definition of "sober" was different from mine as well. So, I reached over the web of empty beer bottles on my table and tapped my friend Dora on the shoulder.

"What does sober mean?" I asked.

"Mmmmm." She thought. "Here it means that they don't drink or do drugs and have a very calm mind," she answered.

Oh well, I thought. I guess their definition is the same as mine.

Throughout the entire show, I tried to figure out why the format seemed so familiar to me, but I couldn't place where I had seen anything like it until after one character, having won the heart of a fellow dancer, lipsynched "You are my inspiration" with such sincerity that a woman stepped out of the audience onto the stage and refused to leave the lipsynchers side for the rest of the show.

Yes. There was something familiar to all of this... and it wasn't just Courtney Cox's stepping up onto the stage in Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' video.

This was to me a live version of a Bollywood movie. It had the drama, the comedy, the suggested sex, the dancing, and the lipsynching... And Ugandans' facinations with India and Indians made me wonder if the connection was not something more than a synchronicity.

So, what my friends called Karaoke, I called my first live Bollywood show.

I woke up this morning to the sound of lowing cattle... in the same night club district I had fallen asleep in with a group of four other kids crashed on the floor of my friend Barbara's Kampala apartment. Even in the night club district, their is grazing to be done.

I headed back up to Zzana where I learned that tomorrow is the day that Steve, myself and a few other kids will be heading up to Gulu. I believe we are going to visit Olee's home and the area where he was abducted by the LRA. Then, we will be heading up to Gulu. If there is time, we may be going to the Pader IDP camp outside Gulu as well.

We should be back to web-friendly urban environs Friday.

Cinderella's Long, Hot, Festering Winter

Ah. It's Sunday morning, and it's a beautiful day to burn some trash.

As I walk down to Zzana today, giving less and less attention to the "Bye Mzungu" cat calls, I try desperately to get Ja Rule out of my head. Ja Rule, according to most young Ugandans, is really Tupac. Nevermind that he doesn't look much like Tupac (shorter eyelashes for starters) or doesn't necessarily sound like Tupac, and of course nevermind that Tupac is dead, telling a Uganda "Gangstah" fan that Tupac is dead is a heartbreaking conversation that should be avoided at all costs.

If only Kampalans knew another Ja Rule song beside the (avec Ashanti) "I'm not always there when you call/ But I'm always on Time..." then Ja Rule's popularity here would not be so grinding. For some reason, even radio stations (not to mention kids with their Chinese "Ju Xing" boom boxes) enjoy playing that song on repeat ad infinitum.

So, what song saved me from the Ja Rule quagmire? Nothing less than the apotheosis of butt rock, Cinderella's "Don't know what'cha got 'till it's gone" followed by another two powerhouse tracks from their 1988 career apex, Long Cold Winter. (The other two songs in my head were "Gypsy Road" and "Long Cold Winter.")

As I passed by the piles of burning trash, the children screaming "Bye, white man" to me, and the children screaming because their mother was beating them in the middle of the "fu fu" (red dust) road, I reflected back on a few of the days previous events.

Just when I thought I had figured out how to navigate my newfound celebrity, yesterday brought a number of further difficult-to-digest adventures in whiteness. There were three people yesterday who felt my hair and skin without asking, only then to comment on how soft I was. "No," I said. "Your skin is softer. That is your idea rather than your hands talking. You put vaseline on your skin multiple times a day. My skin is dry and sunburned." But these protestations never convinces anyone.

I had dealt with the hair rubbing before, and it wouldn't have bothered me if only thirty minutes before, a man my age, completely naked from the waste down and hacked half-to-death by a machete only handful of moons before had not grabbed my arm and refused to let go during my walk home. He didn't say or ask for anything. I think he thought I was just lucky, or maybe his insanity was too much... But, he did not have a necessarily crazy look about him. Pieces of his one remaining ear fanned out of his skull like peacock feathers. And I stared at the ear as I, with increasing force, disentangled his fingers from my arm.

I also got blood on my shirt when I broke up a fight yesterday, which perhaps would add to the tension I felt later that evening but had nothing to do with whiteness or an American passport.

Actually, I had a wonderful moment in the evening before things slid downhill. I showered when I got home, worked with the children for a few more hours, then headed around the corner to the neighborhood watering hole. I slunk into the store's garden and opened my beer. There were a number of western Ugandans there (from Besigye and Museveni's home district) who had traveled to Kampala for the elections. They were all well educated, and I was able to have a conversation about politics and language and never had to discuss Tupac's death or how I was going to help them to America. Things seemed good.

I headed home after the conversation, where I was greeted by Jerry, one of the Outside the Dream students, who reminded me that I had told him I would visit his sister sometime while I was here. He, Jjuko (another student), and I traversed the hair-thin trail through the trees, over barbed wire and breadcrumb trails of plastic bags to his sister's house for half an hour. Though it was much longer than the five-minute walk he had promised, I was looking forward to meeting his sister. She was married, had a professional husband and a child, and I thought there was a much better chance of another interesting conversation than a half-hour haranguing to ensure my transport of her to America.

I could not have been more wrong. She was more insistent than anyone I have met that I take her to America, and there was no way I would be able to navigate the trails home in the dark. We stayed five hours, until I finally agreed to look into what it would take to get her to America when I got back to the States. I told her the odds of my actually finding a way to get her to America were no better than one in a million, but she seemed either satisfied with that, or much more likely simply annoyed with my stubborness.

But, the attention my passport (white skin? or tiny blue portfolio?) brought yesterday still had more to offer. When I arrived home, I found a present on my bed accompanied with a long letter and poem about the importance of friendship. It was from Isma, whom I'd met twice, the first time for less than twenty minutes, the second time for less twenty seconds. I opened the bag to find a wonderful pair of 501 Levi's, which I now must return to him.

Excepting my superficial promise to look into immigration for Jerry's sister, I have never made any hint of a promise to help anyone here except for my students (and then only by teaching and educating them), but I can't help but feel some guilt when someone gives me a present that I do not inted to repay.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I still think it's better to talk to people than ignore them. And if they buy presents of their own volition, it may bring with it valuable lessons of its own. I don't want to ignore everyone and only leave the compound with Steve's private driver. But, it is increasingly seems to my benefit (time-wise and sanity) to focus only on what I need to be doing here and little else.

Mzungu Ali Wa: Celebrity of Whiteness

Being different always brings a certain amount of attention. And for those on the streets in Zzana, my whiteness makes me very, very different and extremely conspicuous. Despite the fact that there are at least five other white people in this area, no one seems to get tired of crying out "Mzungu, mzungu! Bye, Mzungu" when I walk past.

The celebrity of whiteness here is worse than it is in China or anywhere else I have traveled to. I often find myself surrounded by more than ten people at a time who want to talk with me about being friends, how I can help their football careers, or if I am a "tu-a" (tourist). Today, I counted 173 "Bye Mzungu"'s in the twenty minute walk to Zzana. Almost all of these people have seen me many times before. Most have a vague idea of who I am and what I am doing here. I have introduced myself and talked to many of them as well. But, there is still a great excitement for them at saying "Bye, Mzungu."

The phrase "Bye, Mzungu" has been puzzling to me. Why do most people say Mzungu when it is a Swahili word rather than the Luganda word (omuntu omweru)? Why do they say "Bye" instead of "Hello."

First, very few Ugandans whom I have met know that Mzungu is Swahili. Most think it is Luganda. Of those that have discussed the term with me, their definitions have varied widely. Most insist that the word is for any non-Black, including Arabs, Indians and Chinese. However, they admit that they would primarily use the term for white people.

Another person told me that the word was Swahili for "brown" and it meant brown people. This made a great deal of sense to me, and I asked if the term grew with the spread of Swahili during the Omani kingdom, a time at which it would have made a great deal of sense to refer to the Arab outsiders as "brown". He said he thought that made sense. But, a quick internet search later on would show that Mzungu did not mean brown in Swahili. It meant "trick" "skill" "ruse" and "white person", but not brown.

So, I have come to the conclusion, that despite many Ugandan's insistence on Mzungu meaning outsider, it basically means white person.

But, what about the strange greeting I face each day, "Bye, Mzungu"? I asked my friend Naomi about this. She said, "The white people are too proud and will never stop to talk to us blacks. So, we always say 'bye' and never 'hello'."

That didn't entirely make sense to me since most white people I know here do stop and talk or at least say hello to most "Bye, Mzungu" calls. Also, that logic seems beyond the main perpetrator of the "Bye, Mzungu" fad: very young children. Most adults add, "What's going on?" or the occassional "What's up?" to "Bye, Mzungu." Occassionally, I here, "Bye, Mzungu. Hello!"So, I have not yet found a satisfactory answer for why people here are always saying "bye" instead of "hello" to me.

I have found, however, one satisfactory response to children's "Bye Mzungu"'s. While I treat all adult "Bye Mzungu"'s with a "hello", "how are you", or an occasional "sivi-otya", I have tried very hard to come up with an amusing response to the kids. Answering in Luganda is always entertaining, but it seems rude to me to say goodbye to them (an early response of mine). Answering Hello Ugandan in Luganda and English was greeted with blank stares and more "Bye Mzungus". For some reason, "Who is the Mzungu?" (in Luganda) didn't go over well either.

The only amusing response I have found is "Mzungu? A-li wa?" (A Mzungu? Where is he?) . This response is usually met with sincere responses from the children. The mzungu is here they say in Luganda pointing at me. One has grabbed my hand and pointed at it, saying "this is Mzungu" with great enthusiasm. Parents often laugh and offer me a seat, malwa, or in one case a bride.

With the exception of the bride (she is very nice), I have not taken up many of these offers. Most people are not interested in getting to know me, and many have absurd ideas of what kind of power I hold. I do not know Tupac. I cannot help them with their dance, football, or singing careers. And, I don't want to go visit a stranger's family (Though I actually did this once.) Usually, I am satisfied with the superficial "Mzungu? A-li wa?" or "How are you?" and I keep walking.

However, I have made two Ugandan friends in the neighborhood who are also in their twenties and whom I met first through a "Mzungu! Mzungu!" yell. They are dancers who spend most of their days drinking beer or vodka out of plastic bags at the store around the corner. They are both smart and interesting, and it's nice to have found some Ugandan friends my age in the neighborhood. Somehow, they never seem to get drunk. And, they both got over my whiteness fairly quickly and we are able to talk about much more than America, which is nice.

Hide your thumbs, part II: Antidote for a violent funeral

A few nights ago, I went to my first Ugandan party, which was the perfect antidote for a violent and chaotic funeral the previous day. Voices were hushed. No one drank to excess. Most people spent the party, talking quietly, drinking a beer, having a food. Many watched DVDs on television.

I was invited to sit next to the brother-in-law of the host. It did not occur to me until I sat next to him that he and most everyone else at the party were Loa, Acholi speakers from the north. (People from the north and south usually look quite different.) I greeting him in Luganda, and he answered back, then told me he was Loa, with great emphasis on the word.

I told him that I planned to go to Gulu soon, and we began to discuss the civil war. He repeatedly said that, "There is no Kony." I asked him what he meant. Clearly the rebel leader was waging a civil war in the north. I told him that many of our children had been abducted by Kony's men. Some had been shot, burned, forced to kill, and raped.

"Yes," he said. "This is true. It is very dangerous. Many children get abducted. When I go back to my village outside Gulu, I always use a military escort. But, Kony doesn't matter. It's not him whose doing this. It's Museveni."

Again, I didn't understand. "Isn't Museveni, fighting Kony and his Lord's Reistance Army?"

He insisted that Museveni wanted the war. He told me that when Bush had met with Museveni, he offered to have American troops kill Kony. And, Museveni insisted that Museveni's men do it. He insisted that as soon as Museveni disappeared, so too would Kony.

Although I didn't share his optimism about Kony, I was struck by how vehemently he and everyone I have met here oppose Museveni.

To be fair, Museveni, rising to power after the overthrow of Idi Amin, has been a vast improvement over Uganda's previous leadership. And while, Uganda has very serious economic and socio-political problems that Museveni has failed to counter, anyone else is a wild card. And, Besigye, who rose to power as Museveni's personal doctor, would unlikely offer real unity to Uganda.

But there is one thing almost all Ugandans seem to agree on: Museveni will win an unfair election after which, tension and civil war will again flare. Whether or not Besigye could offer better solutions to Uganda's problems will unlikely ever be known, but after twenty years of Museveni's leadership, all Ugandans I have discussed politics with are willing to gamble on any kind of change.

Thumbs Up is a dirty gesture

In some cultures, the thumbs up sign is a dirty gesture, because like the bird, the outstretched thumb symbolizes an erect penis, giving the message, "fuck you."

In Uganda, the thumbs up is a different kind of dirty gesture. It means you support the current president, Yoweri Museveni.

Every time I leave the OTD gate and head into the outside world, I am barraged by the neighborhood kids, street chefs, and people walking down the street. "Muzungu, Muzungu", they yell. Now, that most know I speak some Luganda, I am greeted by the more intimate, "Muzungu, O-suvu-o-tya" (White man, how was your rest?) in the morning, or "Muzungu, O-Sivi-otya, sevo?" (White man, how is your day?) in the afternoon and evening. Although I usually just want a quiet walk alone, this is rarely a real possibility, and I usually end up talking to five or six people who insist upon walking with me, or holding me in conversation.

The boda-boda (a word meaning "flexible" and "motorcycle" because boda-boda can bend through traffic jams) drivers on the corner are particularly difficult for me to get away from without being rude. They all know me and always want to talk.

Still after being in Uganda for a week, it's difficult for me not to occassionally give the thumbs-up sign to them. "O-rimuka-luganda!" (You rock at Luganda) they say. "Wei-bare, kali," I say. "N-mani-katono-tono-Luganda" (No I just know a little), I say back. Then, "You're English is really rock n' roll." I inevitable then raise my thumb.

The boda-boda drivers, scream, make angry faces, jump for cover. "No! No!" they yell. "Not that,... THIS!" they say showing me the victory symbol.

Where the thumbs-up sign stands for Museveni in the current campaign , the victory/peace sign stands for Dr. Kizza Besigye, his competition in the March election. Despite what the polls say, it is nearly impossible to find someone without a personal chauffeur who supports Museveni in Kampala. In the north, it's even worse. In his speech yesterday, Museveni was drowned out by boos.

That doesn't mean anyone expects him to lose the election. The 2001 election was ruled by Uganda's Supreme Court to be rife with inconsistencies and stolen votes. Yet, Museveni still holds the top seat, and a very suspicious rape case has emerged against Besigye that still fails to diminish the support for him.

In the meantime, I'm doing my best to keep my thumbs to myself.

Learning Luganda, part 2: How to tell Chinese people apart

I am sitting at Margarette's house. She is one of the "mothers" who works at Outside the Dream.

"Wei bare," I say to her (thanks). "Akaunga-di burungi" (the posho is rock and roll.)

"Kali, kali," she responds laughing. Laughing is a very popular response to Muzungu's speaking Luganda.

"Blake," she says. "Let me ask you something."

"Okay," I say.

"You work so hard to learn Luganda. You plan to marry Muganda, don't you?"

"No," I say. "I plan to marry Chinese." (note: Dijia - bu yao dang xin, wo na shi hou zhi zai wan ta men er yi. Ni dang ran hai shi you zi you de ni.)

"Chinese!", everyone screams laughing, clapping their hands.

"Oh no!" yells Mama Hilda. "The Chinese! They all look the same."

"Yes," I say. "That causes many problems for them."

"Blake," says Mama Joyce. "If you marry Chinese and you go to the market in China, you will never be able to tell which one she is."

"If they all look the same," I say, "then it doesn't matter. I'll take home whomever is standing closest to me."

This time, the men laugh much harder than the women.

"You can't tell them apart from their eyes or their hair," says Mama Hilda. "And they are all very small and short."

The women discuss in Luganda for a second and then come to a most unexpected conclusion: "Perhaps, you can tell them apart from their hands."

"Yes," says Joyce. "Their hands are always different."

I have been surprised by what physical elements are emphasized by certain cultures and languages. In China, women place great emphasis on the quality of other women's skin. In America, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on the color rather than quality of the skin (in terms of olive, pale, dark, etc. not in terms of race.) But, this was my first introduction to an emphasis on the hands.

But after this incident, I heard more and more comments about hands. When I was lighting a cigarette with my friends, Robert and Alex (who are Ugandan artists/heavy drinkers who live in my neighborhood.) They commented twice on my hands, and then twice on Robert's hands. (Robert and I both have good hands, it seems, but I have not yet mastered Ugandan wax matches.)

All in all this makes sense. When you meet a Muganda, you shake hands for what seems like ten or fifteen minutes. There are numerous motions and movements that are made with the hands during this process. When you hang out with a Muganda, you tend to punch fists or shake hands again after every few sentences.

Hands are key not only to getting along with people here, but for Kampala's small Chinese community, they may also be the key to remembering precisely what one's spouse looks like.

Learning Luganda, part 1: So many syllables, so little time

Luganda, which is spoken throughout the southern part of Uganda in what was once the Buganda Kingdom, is not an easy language to learn.

The main obstacle to learning Luganda for most Muzungu here is that there are almost no books on the language whatsoever. The Muzungu who speak the best Luganda I have met yet are two British girls who live in my neighborhood, but they are struggling with the language as well. They were shocked to learn that I had found a book on Luganda, though there is still no dictionary in sight.

The book I have was published in 1951 by Oxford University Press. It portrays a language vastly different from the urban language of Kampala today with its various English cognates. Of the few complete sentences in the book, most describe life in the bush:

"The Hippopatamus chased the edible rat, but ate some weeds instead."

The vocabulary and antiquated phrasings are rarely useful for my day-to-day use of Luganda. But, what the book is great for is Luganda grammar. This has helped immensely.

Luganda is in many ways the polar opposite to Chinese, which is in the process of transforming from a monosyllabic language into a pollysyllabic one. It is often difficult for me to learn new vocabulary from people here because they treat entire sentences sometimes as words.

Take for example this: Nsanyaseokulaba (nice to meet you.) I learned this phrase last weekend, but my friend Deo who taught me the "word" could not seem to break it down to explain what it meant. He insisted it was one word for a long time, until I began to break it down into parts showing him what the English counterparts would be. Out of the challenge, I learned one new word, or part of a word, if you prefer.

N is the prefix for "I". (Verbs in Luganda are conjugated with prefixes.) Sanyase means "to be happy". Ku means "to", forming the infinitive of "laba" to see you. The "O" in the middle is the prefix for you in verb conjugations, though here it is being used in the objective case.

Therefore I read Nsanyaseokulaba as N-sanyase-o-ku-laba, or five seperate words.

This perhaps begins to explain the absence of a Luganda dictionary.

Mr. Bean as Cultural Universal

The concept of cultural universals is suspect at best. Anthropologists have for years described the incest taboo as the only culturally universal principle. But, feminist anthropologists have done a fairly good job at debunking that assertion, at least in terms of how it has encouraged social scientists to overlook how cultures deal with and internalize sexual abuse.

That being said, there are a number of cultural icons that have achieved almost universal status as celebrities among the world's various cultures and people: Michael Jackson and Bob Marley have often been described as such. But, these seem naive to me... especially with Michael Jackson's vanishing notoriety outside the US. Bob Marley certainly seems close to being a universally recognized celebrity. I heard Bob Marley even in the most remote villages I visited while in China and Bolivia. But, I think it is time to recognize someone who has superceded even Bob Marley's fame: Mr. Bean.

I have never visited a country without at some point coming across a group of ten or fifteen people applauding Mr. Bean's genius. Last night was my second encounter with "Bean" in Zzana.

Twenty five people, adults and children, were watching him on a small television, all laughing their respective asses off as Mr. Bean changed into his swimming suit without taking off his pants.

Because Mr. Bean's humor is almost entirely physical and language-free, it trancends all language barriers. But like Laura Bohannon in her essay, Shakespeare in the Bush, one cannot overlook how Mr. Bean is interpretted differently from culture to culture.

There is one question I have been asked twice about Mr. Bean in Uganda that disturb me greatly. It first came from a nice woman who looked as if she were in her mid-forties. After she caught her breath from laughing at Bean's blowing his nose into the lining of his coat pocket, she looked up at me and patted me on the back. "Do you Muzungu think Bean is as handsome as I do?" she asked.

"No," I said. "For us, his ugliness is part of the humor."

"Ohhh. I don't believe you. He is very handsome. He looks like your father."

"Yes," I said. "That's true."

She went back to laughing at Mr. Bean as he proceeded to fall asleep during church and fall into the fetal position by the pew.

"Bean!" she cried. "You have no wisdom, knowledge or understanding."

Another woman cried later, "Bean! You look handsome in that suit."

Since that night, I have been wondering what it would be like to be Mr. Bean's lover. I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Bean is great in bed.

Nga Kitaro

I have never been to a funeral where people through bricks at each other, where someone threatened to pull someone else's teeth out, or where there were multiple people taking photographs throughout the service... until yesterday.

But, despite all the threats, the young men drunk on malwa, and a vicious rumor among the local kids of Gideon's age set that I or the OTD kids had poisoned Gideon, the funeral had an intimacy that one never finds in an American funeral home.

The 24-hour wake, the burial on family land, and the physical process of everyone taking turns digging the grave made the funeral the kind of palpable experience that has been easily avoidable at funerals I had attended in the past.

After travelling for about two hours by bus, I arrived with twelve of the kids in Kakiri early yesterday morning. Hilda, a fourteen year old with very interesting braid extensions, had been teaching me what I needed to say, mainly "Nga kitaro", which translates loosely to I feel very sad.

A number of boys from OTD had arrived in Kakiri the previous night, and after greeting them, I headed into the room where the wake was. Steve, the photographer who runs OTD, and another kid were already vigorously snapping pictures of the coffin: Yet more exploitation of death and pain, this time for a purpose I really could not understand.

A window pane at the top of the coffin showed Gideon's head. The head and the boddy had been wrapped in a gauze like cloth, revealing only the front of his face. His mouth was wide open and tissue was sticking out of his nose.

I knelt down and said a few words to the family, then headed out of the room. I greeted the grandfather, who unlike Gideon's real father, showed a genuine sorrow for what had happened to him. He thanked me for helping him off the street and getting back in touch with his family. I did not want to tell him I had only met Gideon twice. I told him in English that he was a very smart wonderful kid, then said in Luganda that I felt very sad.

Most of the men were already at the top of the hill, past the banana fields, where the burial site would be. I walked the path to the top of the hill, where I met some of the OTD kids who were carrying bricks. I grabbed some bricks myself and headed to the grave, which was still being dug.

Two teenagers were rapidly chopping away at the red earth with garden hoes. They were already four feet deep in the earth. When they got tired, two more people jumped in. The process continued throughout the morning. It was important that everyone participate in making the grave, I was told.

I continued to carry bricks, cement, and sand to the burial site for about an hour and a half. I was supposed to dig at one point, but I was pulled away before I began by someone who told me it was not safe to be up there. Before while carrying the sand, I had come across two teenagers, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, from Gideon's age set who were fighting. One pelted the other with a brick. I was not sure what they were fighting about at the time, but I think it had to do with what I hadjust been told: that some of the kids thought the OTD kids or I had poisoned Gideon. It didn't make sense to them that he would have died without warning, without having gotten sick.

I followed one of the kids back down the hill. Behind us, the other kids followed watching. When we got down to the bottom of the hill where the grandfather was, we told him and then Steve what had happened. A huge argument soon ensued with thirty or forty people screaming at each other about fifty feet from the body. This was clearly a very bad thing. Arguing and fighting was meant to be saved until after the burial, it seemed.

After about half an hour of screaming at each other, everyone headed back up the hill. We continued to work on the grave. After it was fully dug and materials were prepared, Gideon's father stepped into the grave, with cement, bricks, sand, and dirt he and the others built four walls that would house Gideon and his coffin.

I told someone who had asked that this was similar to what we do in America, but that we just put the coffin into the ground. We do not need to use bricks. I was told that the cement and bricks were very important because no one should ever build anything on a grave site, but that perhaps in a thousand years, after the bricks had disappeared, it would be okay.

The service was similar to an American service in form. A priest stood in front of the casket, he read from the Bible and told a few stories relating to Gideon. I could not follow anything, but I heard the words "good" and "how do we" several times. The attendees sang a few hymns and then said the Lord's Prayer.

Throughout the entire service, buses continued to arrive bringing mostly young men, many of whom were already quite drunk on malwa, the same drink the men drank while working on the grave.

This group of people screamed, yelled and cracked jokes throughout the service, much to the dismay of most at the funeral.

The communal labor of building the grave seemed far more important to saying goodby to Gideon than the service itself. There was nothing abstract about that process. And it was a far more solemn experience than the raucous service.

The one moment where the grief intensified the most, however, was at the end. When Gideon's body had been put into the ground and all last words had been said, everyone at last grew entirely quiet. The men standing on the mound of red dirt that encircled the grave, grabbed their shovels and pushed a pool of cement over the casket.

At this moment, some fell to their knees screaming. One of our students, passed out and wet himself. It was as though the funeral up until that point had been a happy experience and the pain of his death was meant to be focused upon this one moment.

After the grave was firmly cemented, the hundred or so of us at the top of the hill headed down again. People began talking loudly again. Men came up to me and asked me to take their pictures to take back to America. Some began smoking cigarettes and drinking before reaching the bottom of the hill, where a group of women were just putting the finishing touches on a feast of rice, beans, and matoki.

Gideon

Last night when I came home, I learned that one of our kids at Outside the Dream had died. It was Gideon, an intelligent soft spoken kid whom everyone got along with. The doctor who is working with us said she thought it was most likely an aneurysm. He had fallen down while playing cards and began bleeding profusely from the nose. Then, he began having seizures. There was nothing to be done.

The children took everything out of the main room, expecting to have a wake at Outside the Dream. But, it was decided that the wake would be held at Gideon's father's home in Kakiri on Friday. Gideon had lived on the street for two years after his mother had died of AIDS before being picked up by OTD. It seemed sort of strange to the kids that the wake would not have been held at OTD. But, the adults all thought it most appropriate to have the wake in Kakiri, and then drive the kids up there.

While I agree that going to Kakiri is the best decision. It was a massive problem today. There are about forty of the seventy plus OTD kids with us in Zzana (outside Kampala) now. And they all wanted to go for the wake and the funeral. But, there was no way to expect Gideon's father to take care of 30 kids at the wake. So, it was decided that ten of his closest friends would go to Kakiri today. Margaret, Steve, and I will bring the others up for the funeral tomorrow.

When I arrived at Margaret's today to see the kids, there were very awkward greetings. The kids are used to greeting me in Luganda, but they think I only will understand I am doing very well in Luganda. And they are mostly right. So, I found myself being asked How are you? To which I would respond, Okay, worried. How are you? They would respond, great, then smile real big. And then say, but I am not good in English.

Arrived in Kampala

I am now in Kampala, Uganda. I am working with two NGOs on three different projects.

With Life in Africa, I am working on an art/book project with children who have been displaced by the civil war in the north. The project collects their stories and own illustrations of the war there and their journies to Kampala. Most have lost family members to the war. And most live in the Acholi Quarter of the city.The project made me feel very uncomfortable at first. I felt that the organization was exploiting the children's pain to get income. But once i started working with the kids, i realized that they had lived through this. and they seem to deal with it every day with people at life in africa, most of whom are also from the north. i spent a long time today with an eleven year old girl named poitagat whose sister was gunned down in their garden by rebels. her friends and her managed to escape, hiding in a tree. one of them came down when she thought the coast was clear and was also gunned down. they stayed in the tree almost the whole night. those are the kinds of stories these kids are telling. i don't know what to say to it. they talk about these experiences and then they want me to play soccer with them. it's all very surreal. The project still seems exploitative in many ways. But, it does raise money for the kids and the organization. And, exploitation of pain is somewhat of the MO here in Uganda... especially with aid and development organizations.

The two other projects are with Outside the Dream. With one, I am teaching computer, web design, and photography classes to orphans who are sponsored by the organization.

With Stephen Shames, the director of OTD and the photographer I work for in NYC, I am also working on a short documentary with the children and the director on two of the children's stories. Both of those children are former child soldiers from the north. More details to follow. Tomorrow, I'm heading to Mbali. I may be going to Gulu next week, which is somewhat at the heart of the violence in the north. I have mixed feelings about travelling to a place where there is continuous militant violence. And, I have not decided for certain if the project merits the trip. But at the moment, I am leaning towards saying it does.

In the meantime, Kampala is one of the most interesting and safest (though simultaneously most chaotic) cities I have visited. The language, Luganda, that I am learning here is also quite difficult to learn in the early stages. The grammar is based on an extremely complex system of prefixes, so that singular and plural words sound entirely different to me. As do the various tenses... and so do the various conjugations of verbs. Today, I cooked my first Ugandan meal for myself and a few students. I made posho (a mesh of cassava and corn meal) and beans. Dry, but tasty. The fruit here is extraordinary, but definitely too sweet for my tastes.