The Blog.

Well I’m sure most of you have forgotten that this blog even exists. I had kinda even counted on it just to keep from having to worry about updating for a couple months. It was a pretty good system. But then comes along an old friend who went and asked me if I would update him about what’s been going on, and is my blog still working, and the link might be dead, etc…

Well thanks to the esteemed mister Ben Cressy, I have been simultaneously guilted and flattered into finally taking it up again and letting the world–at least the 10 or so people who read this–know what’s been happening to me for the past two months in the Rift Valley. I’ve decided that there’s far too much to cram into one entry and still retain a coherent thread of thought. So I’ve decided to break up my reflections of practicum into chapters, which will appear as I feel so inclined and in no particular order, chronological or otherwise. So enjoy the first, entitled: Travel.

Chapter One: Travel

Since I last left off I was still in Rwanda. That now feels like ages ago, as well it should. I’ve not only left Rwanda since then, but I have spent time traversing the entire country of Uganda, from Kitgum to Entebbe to Kapchorwa to Gulu. For the majority (all eight) of you for whom those names mean nothing, it’s a pretty wide spread, ranging from the border of Sudan to the border of Kenya to the Rwanda/DRC border to Lake Victoria.

I’ve been everywhere, man.

Lake Victoria

All that travel meant a lot of time in transit. Hours upon hours riding Kampala Coach, Matatus, the FHU company car, an Eagle Air puddle jumper, on the metal rack of a 100cc dirt bike (sore for days), with Godwin the unofficial taxi driver of Food for the Hungry, pushing a van up a washed out “road,” blazing a trail in another mzungu’s land rover through the jungle of Mt. Elgon National Park,  et plenty alia. That may sound like a drag to some of you, but I’ve come to find traveling very therapeutic. The feeling of being in motion, even slow, turbulent motion over the marshes of central Uganda, is a thrill. Not those anxious adrenaline soaked experiences we call thrills, but the warm pulsating and expectant kind of thrill. The thrill of merely doing, realized in moving. Now, granted, arranging travel is stressful, and time spent in a particular location feels like a scramble to make the most of it, but when you’re relegated to sitting halfway on the vinyl middle seat in the quad cab of a Toyota Hilux for two more hours of dirt roads, squished between two Africans and the only other American you’ve seen for weeks, in equatorial heat, the only thing keeping you sane is your still unhindered ability to sit, stare, and contemplate. You submit to “Africa Time,*” and let go of your illusion of control. You celebrate the four day weekend you unexpectedly get after your ride to work, scheduled to arrive on Sunday, fails to make it until Tuesday. From the illusory safety of a passenger seat, you can get away without having your wits at the ready, which is a luxury when you’re already at your wit’s end.

From a car you see things unseen. From a plane much more so. As much I already love flying, riding in a twin turboprop putt putt plane to and from Pader, my practicum location, was something uniquely spectacular. Sure, the British Airways 747 that got us from Phoenix to London, and from there to Entebbe flew higher, faster and smoother than our intra-national flights within Uganda, but something is lost in the grandeur of 30,000ft, evaporating among the cirrostratus and contrails. Those sights are too much to take in for the human mind, and from within the sensory diving bell of the Boeing’s great fuselage, all the spectacle of the 50-below outside seems distant, as though watching it on TV. Trying to appreciate it at once is like trying to remember the face of a loved one you only just left. There is too much information to draw upon to construct beauty. So you watch X-Men Origins: Wolverine on the screen before you instead.

The Putt Putt

But God bless the putt putt plane. Flying in one of these cans is an existential experience, without the high church airport rituals of security checkpoints, removing your shoes as you are proved without sin to enter the holy of holy terminal, casting your burdens to a mysterious inner sanctum, trusting in Southwest almighty that your stuff will arrive with you, entering the labyrinthine passages only when your name has been seen in the holy book of the manifest, attentively hearing the flight attendant priestesses recite the liturgy of the exit locations, and finally being welcomed on the holy tarmac by the grand minaret of the control tower, giving thanks, world unending, Amen. But how different an experience is the puddle jumper! It is like those rapturous revelations of the divine that only occur during tribulation, great joy, or humbling defeat. It is the conversion experience of air travel.

Marshes of Central Uganda

It is the third Kierkegaardian stage of existence intermingled with its own despair found in the intimacy between you, the plane, and the pilots. All fear is felt at once between the three, as is all joy. One perceives the turbulence inside, rather than out. Phantom sensations of aluminum wings being tickled by the rushing wind and warmed by the unveiled sun fire from synapses you never knew you had. You look forward to the open cockpit and take a bearing of the dirt strip before you.  And outside of that window is a sight so perfectly situated between transcendent and mundane that it practically erupts with meaning. As though at once with your own thoughts, the gear comes down, the speed brake goes up and you land.

And it gives you just enough time to think and something to think about. Outside the window isn’t a story that like an orange hasn’t already been juiced of all it’s meaning into convenient, marketable form. Outside is just a thing, a ripe view asking you to squeeze it with your own hands. Here’s a piece of my journal which took me two plane rides to complete, just reflecting on the world outside:

Right now I am flying over the Ugandan countryside in a tiny little twin turboprop puddle jumper. Correction: I am actually over a beautiful crystal- blue lake fringed with lacy bright green marshes cut by canals, forming patterns like cracks in broken glass. Farther inland are knobs of earth and rock, tufted with dark green tree clumps. The deeper part of the lake falls into a midnight blue-blackness of stomach-knotting depth, with green wisps of algae floating atop. Another atmosphere. Between the marsh and the knobs of rock are the inhabited grassy flats. Farms irregularly shaped fit snugly like a jigsaw puzzle, but stitched by red sandy dirt roads into a quiltwork.

We fly through a cloud, informing me of our velocity.

Smaller lakes break up the plains and hills. Steel roofs of an unknown town glisten in the distance, barely discernible as the land melts into the atmosphere at the horizon. Green tufts disperse into brighter grass deltas which melt into brown algae, swirling unmixed into clear, dark water.

The engines hum and roar slightly out of phase in stereo, but the rarified air dulls the hearing. Ears pop. The stomach lurches and disappears through turbulent cloud banks. It’s the rainy season. A perfectly quadrilateral stand of trees demands a second look. A rare forest reserve in the plains. The plane seats twenty, but five ride today. I stretch my legs out to the next seat. The town still twinkles, more obscure than before, behind us like a mirage. A stubborn white fist of rock stands alone among the ancient red soil, the remains of its brother mountains, as it patiently awaits its own inevitable dissolution. The land is a sea of soil–melted mountains of forgotten heights, untold epics; Their unyielding masses of geological hubris slowly massaged into oblivion by the compliant yet persistent suggestions of wind and water.

Out of the death of grandeur–from it’s dust–came life. Cold splendor crumbled into a cradle bedded with the dust into which the Creator breathed the spirit. From the very dust that clings to my clothes, nostrils, back of throat came a creation destined to worship, covenant, and image the inspiring One. The Lord God, YHWH Elohim, formed man from the dust of the ground, adamah, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul. An aerial view of a fallen Eden, not unlike one vantage of the Creator himself, hovering over the waters.

Reminding me we still exist

I’m about to embark on the three-day journey of posh air travel to get back home. I don’t foresee any more revelations of that sort in the environment of the modern transcontinental aircraft, calculated to curb deep thought with recycled air, in-flight entertainment, and teeny bottles of table wine. Ho hum.

But not all is lost, folks. Just be sure to ride a little plane before you die.

Peace.

*The term Africa Time is a controversial one which means whatever time is stated plus between typically three and seventy-two hours. The controversy arises from the uses of it which imply something negative about African culture or work ethic. The term as I use it, however is simply a statement of fact, because any sort of plan made on the continent is at the mercy of the whims of rain washing away dirt roads, and cars breaking down without spare parts, and the absurd amount of deadly traffic faced anywhere in an Afrian city, as well as the African’s delightful (albeit annoying to my own sensibilities) way of valuing hospitality and conversation over any form of time keeping.