Christmas Cookies

Though we have no chimney, the stockings have been hung with care. The tree is up, hung with makeshift ornaments and draped with red akimat beads. Cookies are being consumed as fast as they can be produced while Christmas music, from Bing to Buble echoes through the hallways of the mission house, and wafts outside to where our slashers work and the dry Karamoja wind coats our world with the dust of everyday life.

Mom and Dad left this morning to drive to Kampala to pick up Emily from the airport. The British Airways threat of a strike caused us all much worry earlier last week, as it seemed to make it impossible for Em to return home for Christmas. But by the grace of God soon--oh so soon-- we shall be a family of seven once again. Until then, Maria, James, Joshua and I are alone at the house for a few days, baking enough cookies to feed our workers and ourselves until Christmas.

Its almost time.

Seven Things Learned in the Past Seven Days...

• That some things about Karamoja never change. Not the heat in December nor the hot wind that makes its way south from the Sahara, threatening to blow us over. Prices in Namalu have risen, as always…Begging has increased, as per usual…and the number of those gathered beneath the nagwe tree has multiplied…

• That since I left me, my family has begun to raise chicken in the hopes that the selling of eggs to our neighbors might assist in fight against malnutrition. Every evening Cosmas comes to the back door with a basket filled with about 50 or so eggs. That means that we somehow end up with over 300 eggs a week. Even with our guards workers, and interested villagers purchasing tray after tray of said brown orbs, the mission is still overwhelmed with eggs and our kitchen is quite full of them. Omelet anyone?

• Not that we mind…overabundance of food is never a terrible thing in this place. Though for Christmas all we shall be eating is deviled eggs…

• That despite my fears, I actually have managed to understand as much Karamojong as I could when I left. Speaking it is an entirely different matter however…the only words that comes to mind when I attempt to offer up a response are Italian and all the “si”s and “va bene”s that escape my lips fall on deaf ears…

• That I become less and less fond of White Christmas every time I watch it. And yet I continue to watch it—almost religiously—every year…

• That Sir Walter Scott really had it right when he wrote, “Oh what a tangled web we weave!” Life is complicated beyond all measure. But simultaneously, God is good beyond all measure. There is much comfort in that….

• That British Airways threatened to keep Emily away from us for Christmas, but thankfully their threatened strike was ruled illegal by the Britsish courts and thus far, Em’s flights from the US and London have yet to be cancelled. She boards the plane tomorrow, and hopefully she shall reach here the day after that…

Va Bene.

after the sun also rises

When I woke up in the morning it was already hot, and I walked over to the window to look out. The tress and grass were very dry and the slashers had little work to do because nothing was growing.

Maria and I lay on the couch for most of the day, sprawled over each other and reading. She read for school and I read for pleasure. I was happy to have no assignments. It meant that I could read whatever I wanted. I was reading Hemingway. She was reading Wodehouse. Sometimes we would read sections out loud to each other and laugh. Most of the time we just read in silence.

While we read we ate the snickerdoodles she had made in honour of my arrival on Monday. We also drank cold water. The water had been frozen and then thawed so there were bits of ice floating in it. It felt good to drink. It was very hot outside.

“I have a deep dark secret”
“What is that?”
“Im rather proud of these snickerdoodles.”
“As you should be my dear girl.”
“But really, they are jolly good.”
“Right ho.”
“Is it a sin to be so proud of snickerdoodles?”
“Proabably. You know what you should do, my dear?”
“Do tell.”
“You should make more.”
“More?”
“Yes, more. And they should be so lovely and so delectable that you wont be able to feel prideful about these ones at all. Don’t you see?”
“Oh yes, I do see, now. Splendid plan.”
“And of course, we must eat them all because you cannot make more until these are finished.”
“I say, jolly good.”

trapping thoughts

That’s what it does to you sometimes.

Karamoja.

It messes with your head.

In the tiny space of the huge vastness that it occupies, unhinged, everything distills. Thoughts are swallowed. And memories are collected in the small void that home becomes, where they rattle around in the hollow emptiness of lost memory, unsure of where to settle. Thoughts are distilled to a potency that made one lose sight of sense. Lose ones head. For a bit. Too many trapped thoughts.

Something about Nakaale makes everywhere else in the world fade. You forget that you were ever anywhere else, and all there truly is is Karamoja. Everything else is nothing but a distant memory. The world suddenly shrinks, and this place is the only reality I can recall. At least for now...

I first saw Joyce on Tuesday. It was morning, and I had only arrived the night before.

"Katie!" She exclaimed to me as I ran out the back door to where she and many others stood, waiting to greet and say hello. I hugged her, and she began to laugh.

"Nakwang, you have become very small." then it was my turn to laugh.

"No, Joyce, really. I am just the same. It is the boys, they are the ones who have become very big."

She shook her head, "No, I think Italy has made you very short."

I first saw Lokwii on Monday night. He said that he waited for two hours after work for me to arrive. He brought his son with him, though James cried when he saw me because to him I am not familiar. We talked about football (soccer), and the Roma game I attended. I told him about the crowds and the screaming and the intense security around the stadium. He told me what had actually been happening during the game. How Totti scored and thats why everyone were cheering. He'd been listening to the game on there radio from here, while I was sitting in the stands there.

"If you had seen Arsenal play, Katie, then for me I would be sooo envious."

I smiled. "Wow. That would have been so nice."

"Yes. Crazy."

Maybe its the heat that dries your mind of memory and makes this place the way it is. Maybe the heat is why it messes with your head. Its messing with mine. The way the hot wind blows through the Neem trees sending dust devils twirling about the yard and coating everything with a layer of sand. Its very dry. There is little food and even less water. Josephine says we are technically in a drought now.

Pray for rain.

breathing in deeply

There is something about flying over the South of France that inspires one to try to write great things.

Pulling out my laptop, I began to type, my fingers clicking against the black and grey keys in the darkness of the dimly lit cabin. But as the words poured forth from my fingers like ink on wet page, I realized that in a sense I was not writing about the truth, for I was not writing about things that had happened, but rather about something that was about to come. I anticipated what it would be like to return to Uganda. I wrote about my return as if it had already occured although truly it had yet to happen. I have described coming home so many times...and each time it is very much the same. Last year. Two years ago. The year before that.

The last forty minutes of the ride from Europe to Entebbe always kill me. Sitting still for eight hours hardly bothers me now; Ive grown so accustomed to the steady plodding of the plane moving through clouded air. It takes time to fly. But those final forty minutes have no mercy on such a soul as me and when the descent into African airspace begins I become as antsy as a child on Christmas Eve.

I caught my first glimpse of Africa as I climbed down the metal ladder steps pressed against the side of the British Airways plane, the final steps in the long journey back. Looking out, I imagined I could see the green reeds by the lake, and the blue and grey haze that hovers over the water like damp cotton. The red clay color of the Ugandan dirt adding such color to those first glimpses of Africa…the rusty orange, heavy, ever-present, staining dirt. The color of life. But all was shrouded in the darkness of night and yet I was still able to breathe in deeply the smells of Africa. Clay, Sweat, Humidity, Rotting fruit and stale Nido.

My work permit has expired and I had to buy a new visa upon arrival. When they asked me questions, I lapsed back into my old accent without even noticing.

It is good to be back.

the only way I know how to say goodbye

And suddenly its all finished...

The books have all been read, assignments completed,the presentations given, the tests taken and I find myself sitting at my desk in my empty room, letting my fingers run across the keyboard of my laptop at frantic pace. The laptop is the only thing in the room unpacked now. Drawer and Wardrobes are emptied. Erin flew to Tanzania this afternoon, and her half of the room is bare.

I wonder where the time went.I wonder what else I must do to make myself ready to leave. Yesterday I turned 20 and three friends and I took one last trip to the Trevi Fountain and tossed coins over our shoulders in act of saying goodbye, as well as promising to come back. M, C and I ate pastries as the sun rose over Campo di Fiori this morning, and we watched the flower vendors cover the piazza with blooms and the air smelled sweet despite the December chill.

The streets were filled with students today. December 11 is a day for protesting, declared the posters covering the graffiti on Rome's stone walls. We found ourselves in the middle of a Communist rally, banners waving and crowds shouting. Traffic was at a stand still and the police were everyone, blocking roads in full uniform, bullet proof vests on.We jumped off the bus we'd been on and walked the rest of the way back to the convent.

Its funny to think that I'll be home tomorrow. Today I was at St. Peters in the Vatican, and tomorrow Ill be in Uganda. The closer I come to seeing my family again, the harder it becomes to pretend I haven't missed them dreadfully. As the hours tick down to when Ill see my Dad again, the harder it becomes to fool myself into thinking that a year really hasn't been that long. A year is very long. Its far too long.

Everyone is singing that "Home" song by Michale Buble, " Another sunny day has come and gone away in Paris and Rome, but I want to go home..." Were it not sch a cliche at the moment I might sing along as well. Not that I mean to complain. I have no desire to turn this post into a whining monologue of unsympathetic grief. I cannot even begin to understand all that I have learned and seen here in Italy...over the entirety of the semester. There is so much of Italy I have yet to see...there is so much of Rome I never even laid eyes on. I don't want to leave. I want this semester in Rome to continue on unending...this family that we have created is one I never expected, and I don't want to stop arguing over the definition of beauty, debating the talent of Marchal Deuchap (who is not talented), eating gelato,riding on trains, stealing each othothers Nutella and singing songs we composed to help us better understand our Italian homework. Pronto? Ciao Ciao Ciao. I think inside jokes are one of the greatest blessings God gave to us sinners...

But that said, I want to go home.
There is a longing for the smells of Africa and the heat on my face as I sweat beneath the Equatorial sun. burnt thatch and grass. Blue skies and green hills. I must continually remind myself that Karamoja is not how I left it. But memory contradicts my logic and I keep thinking that I know how it will be to be home. But home has changed. Its always changing. There are new people on the mission whom I have never met. New faces, new lives, new work. They will have those wonderful inside jokes...and I will not understand them, because I have been away for a very long time, and while I've been making memories of my own, they have also moved on.

Its funny to think that on Sunday I worshiped in a church and sat beside a statue sculpted by Michelangelo, and next week I'll once again be worshiping under a tree, where flocks of goats abide and the hot wind makes holding your Bible open challenge.
God has been so very good to me. I cannot begin to understand why...

A White Cloud

The only time I ever saw him was at the Festival of the Immaculate Conception in Rome.

It was raining. Veiled with a flickering tenderness of sunlight through shadow, clouds covered the sky and the greyness was only broken up by the occasional bird or swoop of a helicopter circle the crowds who had gathered in Piazza di Spagna to see him. The Spanish Steps were cloaked in a sea of umbrellas. Red. Blue. Green. Even the brightness of those coloured shields barely brightened up the greyness of the day. But people didn’t care that it was raining. Wandering tourists and devout Catholics alike pressed in together, pushing towards the statue of Mary and yet unable to break the wall of police men who stood guard, holding the crowds back and blowing their dull grey whistles.

I was pressed against the wall. Erik and I both were. We were pressed against a plexi-glass store front that shook every time a helicopter passed overhead. They passed often. The air was vibrating as much as the building. We’d already been waiting for two hours and there was another two left to wait before he came. It continued to rain, but no one seemed to care. We were wet, but nobody noticed. A choir stood on the steps of the Spanish Embassy beside the statue of Mary and began to sing Ave Maria. The street lights turned on before it was dark. That’s what happens when it rains in Rome.

Mass began. I hadn’t known there would be a mass. I knew that he would pray when he came, but I hadn’t known that mass would be held. I have attended mass many times over the past three months. Never before had I done so crushed between the coats of strangers while standing in a crowd, unable to see over the head of those in front of me. Famous men walked down the street and the crowd cheered. One was the mayor of Rome. I never discovered who the others were, but they all wore immaculate blue uniforms covered in red tassels and gold medals. They laid flowers at the base of the statue. Everyone laid flowers at the feet of Mary. The air smelled faintly of roses, and the air was full of rain and religion.

I didn’t think I would see him when he came. I thought the crowd was too thick and I’d never catch a glimpse. But there he was. In his special glass macchina, his pope-mobile. The Catholics crossed themselves and the tourists snapped pictures. He is old, the Pope. Very old. A red cap was placed carefully on his white head and there were two security guards and a camera man inside the glass car with him.

“Can you see him?” Erik asks me, as the crowd pressed us harder and harder against the store front window.

“Yeah, I can see him.” I reply, smiling. “I can see il Papa.”

When he arrives at the statue, the choir stops singing, the mass continues, he begins to pray, and we leave. Its finals week for those of us Studying in Rome, and four hours taken out of our day to wait for the pope was all the diversion we could allow ourselves for one afternoon. But still the piazza is like a ring tightening around us. We have to walk pressed closely against each other, in order to escape the clawing crowd of Catholics and the sea of umbrellas flooding the Spanish Steps.

one mere moment of memory

We were strangers when this semester began, but as roommates for the past three we’ve become the friends our fathers always wished we’d be. She is looking through pictures from home. Dirt road. White sandy beach. Clean green water of the foaming Indian Ocean. I remember Tanzania well from my visit there three years ago, and I try to recall the taste of the salty wind on my dry lips. The stiffness of my hair in my face. Heat. Sun. Air. She is laughing at pictures of K and M. “Oh look,” she says pointing and chuckling, “it’s the little boy.” I look over her shoulder and I see him, crouched over on the rocks, teasing the water with his two year old feet. He is naked, as most African children are at that age, and all suddenly I am struck. The full force of a flashback. Almost a sensation, as if the image of something unknown triggered more than mere memory. I want to touch the child. And yet somehow I feel as if I am. His rounded belly and closely shaved head are carefully supported by thin arms and legs, and I want to hold him close. Closer than I ever have. Like the hundreds of children whom I have held before. I can feel the heat of his skin against my arms. The touch of my cool hand on his burning cheek. For a split second I feel it. All the faces of the past flash before my eyes in quick succession and I am rendered speechless. My fingers ache to touch his small hands; my heart wants to hoist him up in my arms and carry him over the rocks. I remember too much in that brief moment. But then she switches to the next picture, and the child is gone. There is drama in the silence of my mind.

Roma vs. Basel

On Thursday we dressed warmly.

hats. gloves. twelve pairs of socks and three sweatshirts.

something like that.

Catching the bus to Termini, we rode the metro to Piazza dell Popolo and from there rode a tram out to a part of the city where I have never been. It was dark when we arrived, but even from where we stood across the river, we heard the crowds cheering.

Shouting.

Stomping.

Screaming.

As we crossed the Tiber River by bridge the sounds of fans and football grew louder and louder in our ears, till we stood at the base of the Stadio Olimpico and stared up at the thundering sports facility towering before us.

I've never been through such intense security at an entrance...I've never seen such mad skills. Roma beat Switzerland 2-1. It was a good night, and we stood in the seats along with all the Italians, shouting our lungs out for Rome and Totti.

Oh, how I love Euoropean football. Oh, how I wish Lokwii, Emmy and our other friends in Nakaale could have been there...

The Masque of Italy

"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure's rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles. "

[Lord Byron]

I first laid eyes upon Venice at twilight, when the moon was rising and the lampposts were suddenly illuminated along the Grand Canal. Stepping out of the train station I was greeted by the sweet smells of salty sea air and the sound of boats dipping up and down in the waters.

There she lay: Venezia. The city sprawled out before me like a movable feast, and my eyes scanned the narrow streets and wide canals as if they were written pages.

The missionaries at the Baptist church here in Rome said that Venice was overrated. As Melissa and I visited with them last Tuesday after a night of teach English classes to the community, we discussed Venice. "What will you do for five days in Venice?" They wondered. "You will run out of things to do after day two."

I am grateful that five days in the city of canals was not nearly enough. Too little time was spent lost among the canals and there were not enough nights to dangle off the edge of the Grand Canal, boxes of pizza in our laps as the water lapped hungrily at the great divide between earth and sea. That was the night the dog attacked us. Too friendly and too hungry is not a good combination. *smiles*

But then there was that other night...the one where we sat in the middle of San Marco's square, listening to the violinist play. I've never seen anyone more talented. My breathe caught in my throat as I watched his fingers fly.

Like Byron I also stood on the bridge of sighs, the Doge's palace to one side and his dungeons on the other. I visited both, walked throhe ugh the maze of halls, saw senate rooms and painting untouchable, saw cold iron bars and letters scratched deep in the walls of stone cells. The higher up the palace i climbed the grander the rooms of state. The deeper below the canals I trod, the deeper smaller the cells became. I ran my fingers over the stone, touched the letters of some worn man's desperate plea.

It wasn't called The Bridge of Sighs until Lord Byron coined the phrase in verse. But now everone refers to it as the Ponte dei Sospiri. There is no other way to describe it.

Outside of Venice we traveled by water bus to an island called Murano, and watched a man blow glass. Again, the bus took us to another island, Burano, where each house is painted a different colour and every one hand makes lace. When the sun shines, the building reflect off the canals in a vivdid rainbow display of colour. But we were there at night. There was no sun to shine.

In Venice there are no cars. There is no traffic, and no chaos of that sort. There are streets for walking and boats for riding, but the two never intersect. That is one thing I loved about Venice. There was time. It was calm. And there was nothing like watching the sun rise over the canal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0wT_ltJPg0