Where there's a will...

Good Morning!
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So I was right. In my last days in Kampala something inside of me opened up and my spirit relaxed. It might be that I was preparing to go home but I dont think that was all. We did get to see the city and despite the lack of traffic lights it was great. Bustling, busy and beautiful. We went to the National Theatre (built by the Brits in 1903) and the parlament building (also built by the Brits) As I traveled through the city I couldnt help but to think about the mindset of the British colonizers when they first set foot in Uganda. How audacious to claim a space on sight and then to walk away after you've robbed the soil of its life and shipped it off to make your profit. How, inhumane to judge Africa now as though the history of this land was its own doing. How do you sleep, live knowing what you've done. There is an unyielding strenght in the people I met and an expectation that I be as strong. Someone told me that the in the local folklore the people talk about how decendents of Africans who live in the "new world" are of the best genes because they were the only ones who could have survived the long walk across Africa to the ports and the perilious journey to the new world in unimaginable conditions. So my "return" to Africa is a testiment to that folklore. I am because I must be and I am expected to continue.

Hope North
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We traveled to Hope North, a safe haven for children who have fled the war in the north. This is real: they are making guns small enough for a 10 year old and forcing young children into war. The children of Hope North are surviviors of this war that has gone on for over 20 years. A war that no one could really tell me the cause of much less the way to end it. And while the polititians dance around cease fire agreements and while the soldiers continue to rape, kill and plunder, the number of victims grow and the prospect of reconciliation is pushed further and further away. And I have to ask what in the world are we doing about it? is there a benefit to having war, to people dying by the thousands each year? Who benefits and Why do we let it continue? And we in the west continue to allow it as though ingorning it is the same as stopping it. As though we are unaffected by what happens in the world.

Bustling Busy and Beautiful

Ugandan Sunset
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I am now back in Los Angeles and terribly homesick for a place that is my spiritual home. I am filled to bursting and changed forever. Thank you for reading this. Sorry if you were looking for recommendations on tourism. I travel for other reasons but I do believe in tourism - as a means to boost the local economy.

I will be back to Rwanda and Uganda next year.

Peace, Nataki