Above:  My garden .  Above above:  A watermelon in the garden.

I’ve started a garden behind my house in Gulu. Of the gardens I’ve had in the past in New Jersey and Japan, this garden is the most healthy and least difficult to tend. The soil here is rich and strong, and, like a kiln that turns wet clay into beautiful pottery, it magically morphs seeds into thick plants.

I’m growing about 60 tomato plants of a local variety, a strain called Moneymaker. I don’t know if Moneymaker tomatoes are part of the famed group of seeds once designed specifically for the developing world, seeds that sparked the Green Revolution in Asia, but these seeds produce plants that are incredibly drought resistant and hearty. My plants can go seven or eight days straight without rain, persisting miraculously under the unrelenting blaze of the equatorial sunshine. In Japan and Jersey, plants under similar waterless, hot conditions would have surely withered away and died.

Being in the garden centers me.  After a stressful day, I can think of no place I’d rather be.

Above:  Some of the tomato plants

I live in a house that is equipped to host 36 people. !!! Every room but mine is filled with six beds (split up over two triple-bunk beds). The house is set on a nice plot of grassy land just outside of downtown Gulu. Currently, 11 teachers are staying in the house with me, but 20 students from the US are going to move in at the end of June. The students and teachers are part of a wave of visitors that washes over Invisible Children facilities each summer. Come mid-August, though, all visitors will have left Gulu and things will quiet down.

I’ve been working on a few posts lately for IC’s blog.  The site has just moved to a new address.  Find it here.  Bookmark it!

I’m still trying to figure out a way to juggle writing for work and writing for this site.  When I sit and write at my desk each day for work, I feel less motivated to come home and write at night for Teacherontwowheels.  Hmmmmmm.  I’m still trying to figure out a good system for keeping the blog content flowing.

Thankfully, lots of the writing I’m doing for work is stuff that is aligned with the type of writing I’ve been doing for TOTW.  From time to time, I’ll cross-post stuff here that I’ve written for IC’s blog or other publications.

In the meantime, head to IC’s blog to read about an incredible 18-year-old Canadian who is unicycling across Canada to raise money for Invisible Children!  Go Phil!

Unless otherwise indicated, all the posts on IC’s blog under the category ‘IC in Uganda’ are written by me.  If one post on the blog floats your boat, or if one irks you in some way, leave a comment!

Above:  Sunday during a recent visit to IC’s offices in Gulu, Uganda

**The following is a piece I just wrote for work.  This is an example of the type of writing I’m doing most often for Invisible Children–interview-based articles about beneficiaries for use in organization publications/websites.  Check out Invisible Children’s blog (www.invisiblechildren.com/blog) to see this post and others like it**

Sunday
St. Michael’s High School
17 years old

When he sat down across from me, I faced a shy boy with darting eyes. Within moments, though, Sunday came alive in a flurry of smiles and hand gestures. We spent 30 minutes talking about school, about the future, about life. At the start of our interview, I asked Sunday how things had been going, and, waxing poetic like someone twice his age, he replied without hesitation. “You know, in life everything has two sides, like a coin. The good also has the bad. For me, it is the same–two sides. But for now, most things are good.”

Sunday, the central figure in IC’s black bracelet video (titled Sunday: The Story of a Displaced Child), is studying at St. Michael’s High School in southern Uganda. With just over a year under his belt at the new school, Sunday finally feels like he’s settled into the school’s rigorous academic schedule. A typical day for Sunday looks something like this:

5:00 am—Wake up, eat breakfast
6:30 am—Start studying for the day ahead
8:00 am—Lessons start
11:30 am—Lunch
12:30 pm—Lessons resume
4:40 pm—Classes end, brief break for supper and rest
6:00 pm—Evening study sessions begin
11:30 pm—Return to the dorm to crawl into bed

After I listened to Sunday’s schedule, I jotted down some numbers in the margin of my notebook:  7.5 hours of independent study per day, 7.5 hours of class time per day. By any standards–national or international–Sunday is devoting an incredible portion of each day to thought, to bettering himself. I asked him if he had difficulty shifting into such a study-heavy routine.

“At first, I couldn’t keep up easily,” Sunday explained. “There were so many study preps.  I slept a little each night, and I was tired all the time. But I got an alarm clock and started using a time table. Now I use a time table everyday to organize things.  I never  needed to use one before.”

As time passed, Sunday acclimated to his new school. And slowly, students he might have never met had he not been studying at a reputable school–students from Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and other tribes within Uganda–befriended him. Learning about the customs of his peers has fascinated Sunday. The bouts of stress and sleeplessness that once plagued him now surface only before term exams, just as they do for students everywhere. Seeing Sunday so animated while talking about school, so excited to share his world with me because it was brimming with positivity, with hope, I couldn’t resist asking him about the flip side of his life’s coin.

“And the struggles? Before you said everything has two sides,” I reminded him. “What’s the other side to all of this?”

His face slackened and he looked down at his feet to mull over an answer. After a moment, he spoke. “I still struggle. When I’m at home, during term breaks from school, I have a lot of things to do. I need to dig with my uncle to help him prepare his fields. It’s difficult work. Look,” he said. “Look at my hands, these are the signs of digging.” He held out two calloused palms for me to see, each crowned with an arc of thin, white blisters.

Like many children here, Sunday helps his family members earn the money they need to survive. The practice is so prevalent in Uganda that school breaks are aligned with the start of the planting season, so children can help their parents in the fields. Whereas his American or Australian counterparts would see summer break as a time to relax and recover from the stresses of the school year, Sunday’s ‘breaks’ from school aren’t really breaks at all; when one form of work ends, another begins.

Despite his blisters, despite his 15-hour-a-day study regiment, Sunday is filled with optimism. When I asked him about his future, his face lit up. “My future is going to be bright! You know, at first my dream was to get into a good school. Now I’m there. I’m in the place I dreamed about. So now I’m aiming at another dream: I want to be a doctor. I know that being a doctor is not easy, but I think I can do it.”

I think he can do it, too. For someone like Sunday, someone who is aware of his ability to overcome adversity, becoming a doctor is simply the next step on a path that he’s already walking.

Walk on, Sunday!

Above:  The bride entering the church

Sunday 5/31/09  Gulu, Uganda

I recently attended the wedding of a Ugandan co-worker.  In Uganda, couples often have two weddings when they marry:   a typical, traditional wedding and a Western, Christian wedding.  Both events are hours-long affairs.  The footage below is from a Christian wedding ceremony.

In this video, you’ll see and hear elements of the pre-Christian, indigenous Acholi culture–repetitive singing, group dance, screams punctuated with tongue clicks, ornate tribal clothing– fused with of iconic components of  the Christian wedding ceremony–white bridal gown, child flower girls, ribbon-lined church pews.  Ugandans, like other peoples who have also taken on foreign religions, carried over elements of their pre-existing religious ideology to their adopted religion.  A Ugandan wedding service absent of dance and song would lack legitimacy and spirit.

Religious fusion, a blending of thought and tradition that eases a group’s transition from one set of spiritual beliefs to another, is behind everything from Japanese brides who rent both white gowns and kimonos on wedding day to South African witch doctors who help ‘cure’ Christians of evil by using roots and animal bones.  The honored remnants of culture that persist amidst adopted religious ceremonies can be delicate echoes of past times.

How long, though, will the Acholi continue to separate their weddings?  How long will old Acholi women continue to congratulate brides by stepping forth from wedding crowds to yell and point in a bride’s face?

Some of the cultural echoes that ring through modern society deserve to be silenced, regardless of which language you speak or which passport you hold.  I once heard someone tell me that any and everything ‘cultural’ had a certain relevance to it, a certain validity that warranted its protection.  Here in Uganda, because people are still so fervently debating the legality of things like female genital mutilation, and because village spirit mediums are still committing child sacrifice for their paying customers seeking luck and fortune, newspaper articles about these practices are commonplace.  No compassionate, educated person, however, could defend such traditions; they were steeped in beliefs that preceded things like medical understanding and the prizing of gender equality.  Yet they persist.  Despite its ability to endure, not every old practice or ancient thought deserves a place in the present.

The vestiges of Acholi marriage sewn into this modern Christian ceremony, though, are beautiful and energizing elements of celebration.  Without them, this service would have taken on a very different (and less jubilant) energy.  I watched this wedding while in a malarial daze, but was thankful I had the chance to see it, nonetheless.

Above:  Leo, an IC staffer, inspecting a new IC-built classroom

**The post below is a piece I just wrote for work.  It appears on Invisible Children’s blog.**

Every school that Invisible Children builds or renovates is more than just bricks and mortar. Each new classroom is the manifestation of countless hours of planning, of intricate processes that connect contractors, evaluators, engineers, and donors. Because IC values accountability and efficiency just as much as it values education, no part of our school construction process is taken lightly. From scouting out potential sites to post-project evaluation, a team of IC engineers and administrators from our Schools for Schools program is devoted to ensuring money is spent well and walls are made strong.

*****

The classroom, flooded with light, was so bright and clean it took on a sterile feel. The faint smell of fresh paint still hung in the sunlit air. The juxtaposition between it and the rooms in the surrounding classroom blocks, aging buildings tattooed with blooming swaths of mold and water stains, was striking.  Christo, the head of IC’s engineering team, wanted our impressions of the place.

“The windows look great, but the red trim around the ceiling is kind of odd,” I said, honestly. I didn’t know what else to comment on–my only past construction experience involved a pile of Legos when I was in the fifth grade. I apologized to Christo. “Sorry, I don’t know if I should be looking for cracks in things or–”

“No, it’s OK. You just need to think about the general feeling of these buildings, about whether these contractors did professional work. You don’t need to be an expert,” Christo explained.

Four of us pushed through the midday heat to evaluate different Schools for Schools projects–classrooms, latrines, water tanks. With not a single professional contractor among us, we still were qualified enough to complete the third and final post-project evaluation for Christo: the lay person evaluation.

Above:  Checking out a new school water tank

You see, when a building is finished, IC conducts three different evaluations–one done by a technical crew, one done by administrators, and one done by regular folks like me–to see how successful contractors were in meeting IC’s objectives. The results of these evaluations are used to determine whether or not we use a contractor again in the future. Great work equates to new contracts; mediocre work sends contractors packing. Over time, this culling process leaves IC with a small group of time-tested, professional contractors.

*****

Before I sat down with James, the Assistant Program Manager for Schools for Schools, to hear about how IC builds its partner schools, I thought I knew how much work went into raising a new classroom. Thirty minutes later, after James had given me an abridged overview of the construction process from start to finish, I realized how little I knew.

Not a single brick is made until Schools for Schools ‘pre-qualifies’ its contractors. In order to achieve pre-qualified status, contractors must submit a 200+ page document to IC that highlights their technical abilities, work history, financial capacity, size of on-site staff, and whether or not they are a legally registered company. Schools for Schools staff read through these documents to determine a contractor’s eligibility for pre-qualification. Once a contractor is pre-qualified, it is eligible to enter the bidding process.

Schools for Schools accepts at least 10 bids for every project it starts. This large bid pool ensures that IC never pays anything other than a fair price. (IC engineers also create a price estimate; all bids are measured against this estimate.) Once the bid pool is narrowed down to three contractors, a contract committee, chaired by our Ugandan Country Director, reviews the bids and chooses a winning contractor.

Once a contractor wins a bid and signs a contract, it must pay 5% of the total bid price as a ‘retention fee’. IC holds this fee for six months after a project has finished as a kind of security payment. OK, so the retention fee works like this: Let’s say a school is finished, but after three months, cracks appear in a classroom’s walls. IC calls the contractor and asks it to fix the cracks. The contractor, because it wants its retention fee back, goes out to the school and makes repairs. For six months after the end of a project, IC can call a contractor at any time to come back for more work.

As contractors build, they are never left to do the work without supervision. IC engineers are on-site as supervisors three days a week to monitor progress.  Sometimes IC hires site supervisors to sleep on-site for more difficult stages of projects (pouring foundations, etc.) to oversee critical work. Even though contractors know what they’re doing, our engineers can often give them in-progress tips to keep things as smooth and straight as we need them to be.  And if an element of a project ever veers off course, even the slightest bit, site supervisors are there to help get things back on track.

*****

Essentially, IC does everything in its power to guarantee quality. That’s what it all boils down to:  IC takes on mountains of behind-the-scenes work to bring high quality improvements to each and every one of our partner schools. Because Schools for Schools designs buildings meant to last, and because we have vowed to spend every donor dollar as efficiently as possible, IC is dotting the hills outside of Gulu with schools that are worthy of their students–bright, solid spaces deserving of the hopes and futures they shelter.

Above:  Heading to inspect the rain water collection system at Gulu High’s new IC-built girls dormitory.

Above:  Home invader that entered the premises through an open shower drain

Monday 5/18/09  Gulu, Uganda

First came the white ants.  Clouds of them revolved around the lights outside, creating fluttering orbs of long wings and stubby bodies.

Moths arrived; a fist-sized one with disproportionately long antennae stuck itself to the railing one night and refused to move.

Without warning, grasshoppers, some inches long and splashed with color, landed from outer space.

A frog climbed up through the shower drain and sent an intern screaming.

Yesterday, ants–the viscious, blood-thirsty kind–found my shoes as I was watering the tomato plants.  From one’s shoes, legs aren’t hard to find.  So I wasn’t surprised when piercing pinches of pain started sliding up past my knees, but how did two manage to get onto my shoulders?

*****

The rain is here, and with it have come her creatures.  Some have been waiting months for the feel and sound of her coaxing patter on the skin of the land; moisture signaling a frenzy of ephemeral birth.  Others, less energetic ones,  seem to have stumbled blindly into the forests of fresh spring grasses, like lost fools bumbling down the dark streets of a foreign city.

Above:  Students interviewed for this article

**This is a piece I wrote recently for work.  This article appeared in a quarterly newsletter I helped write and organize for Invisible Children.**

When I asked a group of students at Pope Paul VI School in Anaka, Uganda what they first thought when they spotted their new classrooms, buildings built under IC’s Schools for Schools (S4S) program, wide, toothy smiles ripped across their faces.

“When I first saw the new classrooms, I wondered, Who put these buildings here?!” Betty, a 19-year-old student, said, smiling. “I walked closer and looked at them. I was excited for class to start.”

Nodding in agreement, Petra Faith, 20, added, “Yes, everything was organized in the classrooms, and I thought, For sure, now our education will improve.”

School for Schools, a program started by IC in 2006, gets students like Betty and Petra Faith smiling over school memories by improving both the structural and educational elements of 11 schools in northern Uganda. Through constructing things like classrooms, bathrooms, water pumps, and libraries, and by strengthening in-school education through teacher exchange, teacher workshops, and emotional literacy classes, S4S is changing the cores of its partner schools. More than 1,100 schools around the world work throughout the year to raise money to fund S4S projects in Uganda. For some of the 11 schools, schools like Pope Paul VI, the S4S program is doing more than improving educational infrastructure—it’s letting students return home.

Violence displaces people. It pushes people from their homes and schools and forces them to safer areas. Because of displacement, the students at Pope Paul VI have been studying at a make-shift school site for more than 20 years, waiting for the waves of violence in northern Uganda to ebb. Now, thanks to both recent stability in northern areas of Uganda and support from S4S, high school students from Anaka are finally coming home. Doors to their new classrooms are open. Teachers are writing on fresh chalkboards. Seeing students sitting at clean desks in bright buildings, though, made me wonder what things were like before, how much things had changed. I sat down with a group of five students and one teacher to find out.

“Rain was disturbing us a lot. The desks would always get wet if it rained because rain would enter in the roof. And sometimes the teacher would leave the class because he didn’t want to get wet,” said Filda, 21. She told me about the classroom floors, how the rain would puddle in the red dirt and turn it to mud.

Another student, Richard, 21, spoke up. “I sat on rocks in class many times because there weren’t enough chairs. After some time in the classroom, the rocks got very uncomfortable.”

The students told me about how their school environment retarded their academic progress. They described packed classrooms devoid of chalkboards and proper furniture. They told me about how villagers would use their school water pump; how, when they needed to fetch water, students would leave class early with their jerry cans to wait in line at the pump. When I asked Justin, 18, what the bathrooms were like at the temporary school, he just shook his head. “Things were not good,” he said. “Often, villagers would use the school bathrooms. It wasn’t good.”

The experiences of Oyoo Samson Otukene, a teacher at Pope Paul VI, mirrored those of his students. “Teaching at the old school was hectic. Class control was so difficult. At the end of class, you could feel in your heart that the class was not effective. Students were often late for class. Their energy was not positive,” he explained.

As the new school grows, as buildings continue to rise on Anaka’s campus, its students are enjoying the benefits of development. Gone are the days when classes struggled to write down lecture notes because no chalkboard adorned the wall. No longer must students leave class to line up their jerry cans by the pump. With reliable electricity, large windows, and sound roofs, new classrooms prevent storms from drowning out lessons.

Above:  Countryside near Anaka, where Pope Paul VI is located

Even though class sizes are still large (one classroom I visited had 147 students in it), many of Anaka’s barriers to learning have been removed. And this, says teacher Otukene, has made all the difference.

“All that’s left for our students to do now is pass their tests,” Otukene said. “I’ve noticed a change in their attitudes. They are more positive now. They come to class on time and are excited for class to start. Really, all of sudden, once they arrived at the new school, the problem with lateness went away,” he explained, smiling.

I asked him if any of these changes surprised him.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re not surprised by the changes. We all know where the changes come from—they come from this,” he explained, pointing to the new classroom blocks to our right.

There is still an immense amount of work that needs to be done at Pope Paul VI. In the future, IC hopes to build a science lab, a library, a computer lab, latrines, and a power supply system at the school. Beyond the school’s physical structures, IC is planning on improving the school’s human support system, as well, through things like teacher capacity development and workshops with the school’s parent/guardian community. Completing the remaining projects at Pope Paul VI will take years. But if the current level of student optimism is any indicator for things to come in the future, the completion of Invisible Children’s S4S projects will be met with more than just smiles on students’ faces; academic improvement is on its way, too.

Above:  I couldn’t take a picture of malaria, so instead, here’s a picture of a boy who, judging by his smile, doesn’t have malaria.  One of the most common illnesses treated at the clinic where this photo was snapped, however, is malaria.

Sunday 5/3/09   Gulu, Uganda

The morning started out fine.  By lunch, I felt myself dying.  I told my co-workers that, should I die from whatever was ailing me, they could have my most valuable possessions.  James?  My bike.  Cass?  My old yellow shirt.

When I got off the motorcycle taxi in front of the health clinic, I almost fell over.  My head was pounding.  My spine felt like it was filled with magma.  I was so achy my hair hurt.

A quick pin prick and 20 minutes later, the doctor confirmed it:  I had malaria.

*****

Outside malaria zones, malaria is known as a monster with 27 heads, an appetite for fresh baby’s blood, and a fondness for eyeball stew.  Inside malaria zones, however, it’s an illness that, although stronger than many other types of sickness, lacks mythical notoriety.  Here in Uganda people get malaria all the time.  It’s true that it can kill children and the eldery, but nearly every adult I’ve met has had it one or two (or 20) times.  One co-worker of mine gets it three or four times a year.  Malaria, for him, is like an annoying cold that comes on at the start of fall or winter.  Another co-worker gets it once every 10 years.

Yesterday one co-worker kindly explained why I got malaria after two short months in Uganda, while other people get it once every decade.

“You’re white,” he said.  “Mosquitoes like white people.”

“I never heard that!” I said, laughing.

“It’s true.  If we have a crowd of people sitting around at night, the mosquitoes will always find the mono.  They can smell you, I guess.  Maybe your blood tastes better.  I don’t know.  You people should start wearing black clothes to cover that skin!  Or paint yourselves black!”

*****

For two days I sweat and shivered my way deep into the recesses of malaria misery.  One hour would find me zipped up in my mummy bag with teeth chattering so hard I feared they’d chip; the next I’d be naked in bed in a pool of my own sweat.  Back and forth, back and forth.  The fever broke after two days of taking medicine, but still, five days later, I’m not totally right.  My head still hurts.  I feel out of sorts.  The thought of working up a sweat on a bicycle riding a single mile (much less 60 or 70) seems totally absurd and downright masochistic.  For someone without access to water (I drank 20 cups or so a day while sick) or medicine, I can see how the disease can be deadly.  In Africa, malaria’s Mecca thanks to a mixing of factors that create prime conditions for it, children most often succumb to the illness.  One co-worker spoke about malaria as if it was Death itself when we bumped into each other at the clinic:  “Malaria came for my life when I was a child.”

*****

Under the shade of a wide tree, 15 of us sat and ate.  I told Eric, a Ugandan and chronic sufferer of malaria, that I just came down with the M-word.

He smiled that big toothy smile of his and extended his hand.

“Welcome to Africa, buddy!”

Above:  The Nile, near Murchison Falls.  No, we didn’t raft anywhere NEAR this spot.  This would be a Class 1,575,093 rapid

Sunday 5/3/09  Gulu, Uganda

**No pictures of Rooster or the rest of the people mentioned below because cameras hate water.  It’s a known fact.**

Standing there, all 12 of us awkardly fidgeting in an arc around our would-be guide, I couldn’t help but notice what a motley crew we were:  two frail British women in their 60s chain smoking nervously, two bleary-eyed Austrian backpackers and their strange quiet friend, a pair of young polished Finnish couples, and Aida, an Invisible Children intern, and I.  All eyes were focused on our guide, a stocky freckled man in his late 30s with a shock of red hair atop his head and a stained cut off T-shirt.

“I’ll be your guide for today,” the man said.  “My name is Rooster.”

I smiled.  Rooster–excellent.  Of course you’re name is Rooster! I thought.  Have you ever met people who have names that perfectly suit them?  It’s comforting.  Amidst all the chaos in the world, it reminds you that some things still make sense.  Lyle Lovett, for example, could only be a Lyle, clearly.  Could you imagine Will Ferrell as a Max or a Richard?  Of course not.  So it was with a bit of comfort that I listened to Rooster, the world’s most suitably named river rafting guide.

“We’re going to go over some nice rapids today.  One of the rapids, Big Brother, is the steepest drop I’ve ever ridden in 15,000 kilometers of whitewater.  It’s a great little rapid,” Rooster crowed, grinning.

The two older British ladies nearly swallowed their cigarettes.  One visibly shivered in fear.

“Don’t worry guys, don’t worry.  Even with rapids like Big Brother, we have a safe river here.  This stretch of the Nile is deep and mostly free of rocks.  I’ve worked cold, rocky rivers before, and this is the complete opposite.”

The British ladies ignored Rooster and tried to pull reassurance from deep within their cigarettes.

I looked closely at Rooster’s face.  He had a fading black eye and two small deep cuts on his forehead and nose.  For some reason, this made him seem more capable as a river guide.  I imagined him saving some shrieking tourist from the raging foamy grasp of Big Brother, a daring rescue that caused him to take a quick paddle to the face, something he barely felt, being so hardened by years of cold spring rivers and all.  (Sadly, I later found out that his injures were rugby-related and lacked any sort of cool back story. )

Rooster went over all the basics; he told us to leave our jewelry back in our rooms; how the sun can be brutal because Uganda sits on the equator; how we didn’t have to worry about crocodiles; how we would practice flipping the raft in calm water first so that when it flipped for real we’d know what to do.  At the end of his speech, he advised us to go and get ‘river-ready’ and to meet him down at ‘Put In’ (which, I know now, is the opposite of ‘Take Out).  I fell in love with the expression ‘river-ready’.  For the next twenty minutes, I drove Aida crazy by asking her about her level of river-readiness and updating her on my level of river-readiness.

“Just one more thigh…almost…OK.  Aida!  Aida are you still listening over there?  I’m covered in sun lotion and am OFFICIALLY RIVER-READY!  Yeah!!  Let’s do this!”

*****

For eight or nine hours, I paddled down the Nile with Rooster and the others.  I sat at the back of the raft, close to Rooster, and, at times, rode the raft like it was a bucking bronco.  We flipped once.  We nearly flipped a few times.  Mostly though, we paddled and talked and let our day be swept along with the current.  We’d pass birds and Rooster, fittingly, would tell us about them.  “That’s an African Fish Eagle.  One cool bird!!” he’d say, or “Those guys usually fly away by now.  You’re lucky to see them stick around.”  We’d pass children and their families doing wash in the river and the children would scream out to us from the banks.  At the bigger rapids, Rooster would tell us stories about historic raft flippings here or there (”Saw a raft double-flip here once”), or why rapids were called certain names.  As we passed one particularly loud rapid, one that fell out of view into a haze of white spray, Rooster directed everyone’s attention to it.

“Hey, look over there,” he said, pointing to the rapid with one of his thick muscled fingers.  “That’s called The Dead Dutchman.  A few years ago a Dutch guy went tubing through this stretch–no raft just an inner tube.  He went over that rapid in a tube.  His life vest was crappy.  Rapid killed him.  There you have it–Dead Dutchman,” Rooster said with total indifference.

“Huh, wow,” one rafter said flatly, as if he’d just heard a random fact about the parenting style of cats or the speed at which Jello solidifies or something.

At the end of the day, over drinks at Take Out, one rafter asked me what I thought of the day.

“It was awesome,” I said honestly.

“It was the coolest thing I’ve done in my life,” he said, holding my gaze with an intense stare. 

*****

On the bouncy bus ride back to the hostel, I passed scores of mud brick homes complete with sheet metal roofs.  I didn’t see a single circular mud-and-thatch hut like folks use up north.  Although still poor, the communities we passed were noticeably more developed than their northern counterparts and had the signs to prove it–more stores/services, sturdier looking structures, bigger homes.  Reminders of the tribal and social barriers within a small country like Uganda are everywhere.

The last thing I spotted before I fell asleep was a pack of kids by the roadside waving at the bus so emphatically I feared their arms would snap at their joints.

Above:  A huge Stones fan?  Briefcase art?  You decide.  Strange sights on the streets of Buenos Aires…

I just uploaded a TON of photos to my Flickr page.  To check them out, go here.