I spot you in the crowd

Tied across your sisters back

Yellow cloth

Hides you from view.

I see your face

You lean against her five-year-old back

Your eyes are shut

Slits

Deep within the darkened sockets

Cheek bones sharp

Emaciated.

You awaken

Big beautiful brown eyes.

You look at me

Confused.

Unconsciously, I step towards you

Drawn to your sweet

Beautiful eyes

Set in a face sad as death

I reach out my hand

And touch your head

You do not move.

Your sister’s mournful face

Turns to me

Her hand outstretched

Holds a card

I read:

Natee Lucia

Birth date blank.

"Bua" I beckon

To loosen the knot

Binding you to her back

Leah takes her MUAC tape

Measures around your left bicep

8 cm

Red

Dangerous.

I hold out my arms

Your sister hands you

Cautiously

I shift you to the scale

5 kg

You do not scream like every other child

You only stare

I hold you in my arms.

I can feel every bone

Beneath the skin that hangs so loosely

Like cloth draped over a tree

Wilted in the drought

Shriveled from malnutrition.

I clutch your brittle legs to my side

Terrified that you will

Fall to dust in my hands

And blow away in the breeze.

You are too scared to struggle

You are too tired

You lay your head,

Bigger than your body,

Against my chest

And exhale a ghost.

Natee Lucia!

I want to cry.

uncountable words

He wraps himself in light as with a garment;

He stretches out the heaven like a tent

and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.

He makes the clouds His chariot

and rides the wings of the wind.

He makes the winds His messengers,

 flames of fire His servants.

I look up from the book that rests in my hands and I see a picture that not even a thousand words could begin to repaint. David tried, as have many others, as do I. But what construction of my painted babbling can measure up to what only a word of God’s has brought to reality?

 I sit in a blue plastic shred of a chair, my feet scraping the cold cracked concrete of the school floor. Oh God, what a world you have created. From where I sit I can see the cold tendrils of yellow sunlight threading the needle-like trees that bridge the roof of the school to the unfertile garden. It is chilly. The sun glints and glimmers off the dew on the grass, making the ground glitter as if it were covered with snow. A soft breeze floats in from the East, heralding the sun's approach, shaking the earth in her sleep and daring her to rise to meet the day. From where I sit I watch our cold corpse of a compound warm and stretch and yawn the night from her eyes. The shadows shift. The world alights with the flame of rising dawn.

The Day Lucky Went Berserk

                We have three dogs. These dogs have a cage in which they are locked every Sunday morning so they don’t follow us to church and “play” with our neighbors’ livestock which are also brought to church.  We are very thankful for this cage and its sturdiness. It’s probably ten feet high with a roof that was originally noticeably mabati. But now it is camouflaged by ivy-like vines which would make it look very quaint if it wasn’t a metal cage edged by cinder blocks and locked with a chain. Unfortunately, the crows spend much more time in the cage than the dogs do. Or at least, one particularly large pied crow by the name of Lucky.

                Every morning, Cosmas puts dog food in the green basin in the cage. And every day, morning to evening, the singularly ugly crow stands on the edge of the basin, snarfing up what he can with his jagged black beak. A few days ago, Cosmas decided to shut the door of the cage and trap the crow in. He went berserk (the bird, not Cosmas). He flew around in circles, banging against the sides of the cage and squawking like he was being attacked. Feathers flew… and consequently, he did not. He can’t fly anymore, poor Lucky. Though I don’t know why James named him that. He seems to me to be a singularly unlucky bird now that his method of escaping the clutches of gravity has lost a few important feathers. He can’t fly at all. He can hop, though. He hops from stone to stone around and around the fire pit in the back yard. But he can’t hop over the fence surrounding our compound. It’s kind of like he’s our prisoner or something, being punished for the crime of stealing dog food. I can see him now, sitting quietly in the shade of the lemon tree, facing into the wind. He hasn’t realized yet that if he wanted to, he could walk out the front gate and be free. Maybe he just likes us.

                I feel bad for the poor thing. I think he stands facing into the wind in hopes that it will lift him off his feet and he will be able to fly home. Or maybe it just makes him feel like he’s flying, the wind pouring around him like that. He stretches out his shortened wings and stands there for a few minutes. Then, once he realizes he has made no progress, he returns to the shade of the lemon tree to await the terminus of his pet-hood.

progress shmogress

As I sit here, looking out the window of my bedroom, there is a pole for electricity going up in the garden. The Chinese are here—about three of them from the CPCC power project, all dressed in their navy jumpsuits, brown work boots and grey baseball caps. Museveni has been true to his word. Electricity is being brought to Karamoja.

 When the workmen first came to our mission and asked about setting up the poles, I had the opportunity to talk to one of the hired drivers. He was Ugandan and had lived in Kampala his whole life. He asked me earnestly how in the world I managed to live up here with the Karimojong. “The Karimojong…” he spit out the word in disgust “they are only animals! How can they use this electricity?” I wasn’t shocked by his words because I have heard similar things from people down-country, but I was still deeply offended. I felt like retorting with a snide remark about who the real animal was. But instead I simply asked him if he had ever tried to get to know them. “No, they will kill me with their spears!” he responded. I then coldly asked him how it was that I had made friends with Karimojong people without being speared. “Ah! That is because you are mzungu and they want you to give them money!” he said with a smirk. Good grief! Why do people have to be so darn prejudiced? This is exactly the kind of mindset that has kept Karamoja behind the eight ball since the very beginning. No wonder it’s the Chinese actually putting up the power lines.

                I don’t really know how they do it, these Chinese. They speak very little English which makes communication with us, not to mention with the men they hire, very difficult. But somehow, it doesn’t seem to hinder their work. I am told they pay exorbitant prices to local people, men and women, to dig the holes and such. Last week, the holes were dug, about ten feet deep each. Yesterday, the trucks came with the poles and all day we heard the “one, two, three, GO!” of the Chinese providing direction to the hired men. To the regular count, the men pulled on the rope, dragged the treated poles off the truck and lugged them to their corresponding holes. Today, the same shout of “one, two, three, GO!” is heard all over Nakaale as they travel from hole to hole, setting the poles upright and filling in the dirt. I don’t think the power will actually be connected for a while, but for now at least, there are definite signs of progress. Karamoja is slowly catching up.

Not that kind of rafting

                “Hey look, rapids! Wanna go rafting?” Josh exclaimed, pointing out the window. Unfortunately, we were not looking out at the beautiful River Nile. If we had been, then I guarantee you I would have responded to Josh’s exclamation with incredible enthusiasm. April 7^th 2010, the day that I actually did go white-water rafting on the mighty Nile, was one of the best days of my life. By the end of the day-long rafting trip, I was not ready to get out and return to dusty Karamoja. I wanted to jump right back into the water and just keep going and going till the sun had fried me to a crisp. Mom attributed my enthusiasm to adrenaline and nine hours of direct sunlight, but I swear it was more than that.

                Needless to say, that was not what my little brother was referring to as he pressed his finger to the cold, rain-streaked window of our Toyota Land Cruiser. We were stuck in traffic in Kampala and it had been pouring rain all morning. And the rapids Josh was referring to? They were no less than a torrential river of mud and sewage cascading over the heaps of filth on the sides of the roads. The flow was meant to be kept to the drainage ditches that lined the streets, but rubbish had clogged them so that a foul river now flooded the pavement.

                Uganda is a beautiful country. Kampala used to be beautiful too. Like Rome, she was built on seven hills and if you are standing atop one of these hills, the view of Uganda’s capital city is breath taking. From up there, all of the red of the rusted mabati roofs blend with the red tiles of the more expensive houses, camouflaging their poverty. From up there the Gadaffi Mosque stands tall and majestic, looming out of the sea of average buildings. From up there, the vibrant green hills stand out against the bright blue of the huge African sky. The vibrancy of the colors alone takes your breath away.

But like so many other cities, the skyline paints a different picture than the heart of the city itself. And while Kampala is beautiful from the ground too, it’s a different kind of beauty. It’s a squashed beauty. Everything in Kampala is crammed: the houses, the living space, the traffic, the parking lots, the beggars and salesmen in the streets, the trash in the gutters. There are parts where graffiti, crumbling paint and ragged, illegible posters detract from the impressive architecture of the buildings themselves. There are parts where trash flows through the streets like the Nile, creating rapids comparable to Bujagali Falls. There are parts where dirt smudges the beauty till it’s unrecognizable. It’s like someone smeared dirt all over the Sistine Chapel. It’s still impressive, you just can’t see it through the grime.