Amy Rothenberg Photography: October 2012

The road to Sudan, Gulu, Uganda, July 2012

Someone greets you in Uganda, they immediately look you in the eye, gently grasp your hand with theirs and say, in a low, soft voice ~ "You are welcome." The greeting ends with an earnest smile and a new bridge has been built.

You Are Welcome

The first thing that I noticed when arriving in Uganda, from the very first moment I laid my

eyes on the life outside of the airport, I noticed that everyone spent their time outside. The entire community was lounging and talking, selling, carving, laughing, arguing and circulating under the sun, making their commutes by foot, shoes or no shoes, through the rosy rust colored dirt roads lined with tall, lush, dark pastel green Spear Grass (from which Ugandan’s make their roofs and brooms). Long, spinal shaped, purple-green piles of sugar cane are laid out on small mounds of grass on the sides of the roads; tall promises of hard cased sweetness sold along side handmade items. Reed baskets, boda (motor-taxi) tires (which the kids use as toys) wrapped in pretty shiny papers and tied with small ribbons. Cherry red door mats that say welcome in cursive white lettering, in tens and twenties, making their way up the sideline slopes as if to remind you of the openness and peace that has been so longed for for by the locals, and that you are there to imbibe. The air scented like eucalyptus fire and burning garbage, and when blue turns to black, The midnight ether is a bubbling symphony of frogs and crickets, death defying motor rides past overturned beer trucks pushed into the cassava fields, underneath a vast, glittering expanse of ancient, omnipotent cosmos. Each star representing one person or living being, and things yet to be born, in the place where humanity first emerged. The dark continent blazed into my heart and throughout my time there I unknowingly sank deeper and deeper into the places and formed friendships, feeling dwarfed by the greatness of the continent and all it holds, but still feeling a full vastness on the inside, going further and further until where I had traveled from no longer felt like home. The place I had always heard spoken about like something from a dream conjured by Salvador Dali and the sheer brilliance of natures bounty, was real and all around reaching from one sun scorched, dusty horizon to the next... Africa! A mother of pearl shell with a broken jagged edge...

I am Sitting here, in Oakland, CA. in an internet cafe. I am on a quality piece of equipment with the knowledge of the world at my fingertips. I have good shoes on my feet, I am showered and am healthy. I took my vitamins today and the electricity in the cafe is running fans, lights, spanish guitar music, cooking food (of which there seems to be an unending abundance, and I don’t even have to gather the ingredients or prepare, it’s hot and ready to eat. Needless to say, I am very comfortable. I look around me and most of this momentary community are on their computers and phones. Out of the full marble topped seventeen tables, two of them are alive with present, vocal, human discussion. I don’t know anyone here and no one seems interested in knowing anyone else in the immediate range. Eek, I am sitting in a crowded lacuna of the culture-cuerpo! Is that possible? I suppose this moment proves it is. You can feel their internal hustle and bustle, but little is shared outwardly. Most of us are staring into electronic boxes with silent words and pictures of real life, and all I can think about is how much I want to hang out and talk with people right now... face to face, all sensory communication firing. I feel separated.

When arriving in Gulu Uganda, after driving for six hours in a small, hot van to get there, through exotic expanses of short tangled jungle with little pockets of mud hut villages tucked here and there, my imagination soaring and urges to explore bubbling hotly upwards through my eager and curious core, my skin sticky from the new climate, limbs tired and achy, but no cares... my head is out the window so I can get as close as possible each minute of the trip. Fig trees, and tin roofed shanties having spots bright with color in between dreary faded beige, crumbling from wars and deferred maintenance, in the dusty clouds thrown out by long-horn-cattle trucks, there is a sense of ease. Gulu is a place where war has been, where war was born. The strongest forms of hate swooped down upon the quiet town and left a deep mark on the people... an emotional and economic scar, one that turns up in a look in someone’s eye, but also strewn about decorating the land with crumbling buildings, overflowing hospital beds and hospital lawns full of sick families, children’s homes, and heartache the whole world round. So, how is there an ease? Someone may think that it would be a depressed area, given that there has been so much hardship not only war but disease as well, that there would be a heaviness, a sadness that would be unbearable at times or one that seemed to compress your entire self upon meeting its acquaintance. But, what is in Gulu is a strength and generosity. After all that has happened with the LRA (the Lords Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony), Yoweri Museveni, globalization, and the rising HIV and rape rates, the people of Gulu rise above. Not to say that there isn’t all that stuff, sadness, poverty, disease, anger, but those dis-eases are not the affairs on which the community is focused. The focus is on sticking together, loving and working hard together for a better future, and praying for the best. The abstemious atmosphere embodies all that has happened or could happen to a human being, but the strongest thing felt is love and life force.

To be continued...