life is like a box of chocolates

simply having a wonderful christmas time! my precious friend debbie sent me an email with that sentiment. of course it only warms one with christmas cheer if you sing it in an oh-so paul mccartney sort of way. as it is, i did have a simply wonderful christmas. may family was here with me! in africa! you must not have heard me. let me repeat myself.

my family came to uganda... it was fantastic. simply.

anecdote #1: here we go a cantata-ing
can-ta-ta (noun) a medium-length narrative or descriptive piece of music with vocal solos and usually a chorus and orchestra.

the christmas cantata in kampala was a 'must see' as we were told. and so we went to see it. and it really was lovely! beautifully descriptive music and expert vocal soloing and choral accompaniment. it was the most christmasy i'd felt the whole season. until some ridiculous woman got up and gave some shpeel about blessings and i threw up in my mouth a little. but the highlights for me would include the little hip hop dancers who did back flips off the stage and especially all the songs about snow. and white christmases. context people. context.

anecdote #2: candy and cocktails. i think those were their names...
my parents, being the beautifully generous people they are, had a christmas surprise in store for us all when they took the fam to spend christmas day and then some in a many-starred hotel in downtown kampala. hot showers. clean sheets. laundry service. food coming out your ears. i could not have imagined a more perfect christmas gift. and in the spirit of festive moods and foods, we went for christmas dinner in the hotel restaurant where we proceeded to stuff ourselves like a christmas turkey.

and then the entertainment appeared. for the next three nights, at every meal, deuce bigalow and his two lovely chinese entertainers would take the stage singing classic covers such as 'we've only just begun,' 'easy (like sunday morning),' and 'hips don't lie.' each night their shorts got a little shorter and by saturday they were in fishnets. merry christmas to all. and to all a good night...

anecdote #3: mzungu, mukono, matooke, matatu
annie: yeah, i really don't like matooke. it's just mushy banana.
family member 1: i'll take some matooke, waiter.
family member 2: i would too please.
annie: hmm...

one of the best aspects of my family as travelers is that we're all willing to try everything at least once. even if told not to. within the first two days the fam had been exposed to much of what life here is about. being shouted at. mzungu! mzungu! (white person! white person!). riding a matatu (a 15 passenger van used as a taxi that seats 23). eating matooke (mashed up unripe matooke bananas. see above dialogue). and walking the hot dusty hill from campus into mukono town (grocery shopping. pineapple purchasing. occasional obama debates). mother, father, sister, and sister all tried it. even if just for once.

and now they're not here any more. and i think i didn't realize how special it was to have them here until they weren't. bouncing on the hotel bed. sitting in traffic for two hours. making dinner. none of those things are quite as doable when you're doing them alone. especially the bed jumping. you just look crazy.

and now as the new year approaches i think even more often about them. last night my boss and his wife had me and phil up to their house for dinner. after delicious indian food and hot cookie pie we sat in the living room and i spilled all the contents of my head all over their coffee table. do you two feel like you're the people you thought you'd be when you were younger? do you think the values that define your personal economic lifestyle also define your integrity? what should my mind be most preoccupied with? part of me thinks i hit a wall of micah and joellen withdrawals and word vomited all over them for lack of a more familiar place to spew them. but they proved to be patient and wise and just what i needed in that moment.

poor phil sat quiet on the couch while i bogarted the conversation.

but i think what was most significant about the whole ordeal was the realization of where my mind has wandered. i don't know what it is i want. do i want to live in a place that makes me laugh? do i want to have a career i can be blushingly proud of? do i want to be not only family but also neighbors? i don't know! i just don't know much any more.

a sweet friend of mine sent me some fun mail several weeks ago. in it, she included chocolate kisses for the office staff. i hid a handful away in my desk drawer before putting the bag out on the conference table. don't judge me. now every once and while, i get an overwhelming email or i read a bbc report or hear a story or remember a nightmare and, before it has time to get me down or get me scared, i open up my desk drawer, peel back the foil paper and put a kiss in my mouth. sometimes i close my eyes. sometimes i wipe away tears. but i always feel better. the chocolate always melts. and if i ever feel like i know nothing else in the world, i do know this. the chocolate always melts. and there are so many chocolate kisses in my life. family. friends. sunny weather. low cost of living. organic vegetables. and unfortunately, many more. because as mark always says, the greatest burden for the american young person is the stress of choices. and so, even for all of those chocolates in my life, i'll stick with the ones in my desk drawer. the simple ones.

because sometimes you just need a kiss on the mouth.

1995 called, they want harrison ford back

1. the grasshoppers are leaving

2. immigration around here is like playing 'king's quest.' yes you may have your passport back but first, you must go to the bank in kampala, retrieve a receipt and bring it back to me in 24 hours! tomorrow i will send you for a basket of golden apples!

3. students are leaving in 2 weeks

4. as it turns out, you don't cry water. you actually cry a complex chemical makeup of protein hormones and a natural painkiller (who knew??). in addition, tears come from your eyes.

5. i'm out of coffee grounds

6. i fell in a hole. it left a scar on my foot

7. i miss nachos now. it's happening again!

8. my family will be here on the 17th... MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

9. new addition to my life's 'to do' list: see the northern lights

10. remember that time carissa had mono and i made her take 3 benedryll to sleep and then asked her to cut my hair? yeah... i do.

11. manchester united is number 3. behind chelsea and liverpool (??). but who cares. bama is UNDEFEATED!

12. yes nicole i did steal your mint oreo and no, i'm not sorry!

13. there is a spider the size of a 4 year old child in my dorm bathroom. he's been there for four days, not moving, in the same spot. we decided that he was dead. then we poked him and he ran up the wall. only a very specific kind of evil has that sort of patience.

14. it stopped raining

15. i've been eating samosas like my life depends on it

16. sophie doesn't swear

17. yesterday in staff meeting we scheduled our way through june. my weekends are planned. i know when i'm flying out. weird.

18. did anyone notice how it's december?

19. sometimes when i forget what it felt like to drive my car with the windows down, i listen to counting crows

20. people are shouting in the office right now and it's giving me a headache

21. mountain dew just came to east africa. UGANDA HAS NEVER BEEN MORE EXCITED!! do the dew...

22. i ate pizza by lake victoria last week. it was delicious and beautiful

23. there are few things i genuinely take very seriously. strawberry scented softlips chapstick is one of them

should i have gotten a business degree...

i think i figured out this week why i love wild places. the colorado rocky mountains. the sipi falls of uganda. i always seem to be drawn to these sorts of powerful places. and i think i can say why. landscapes like these move entirely independently of me. the wind in the trees, the rush of waterfalls and rivers, the speed of a storm coming over the mountains. the force of nature in wild places, big, strong, untouched places, moves and breathes with speed i could never catch. i could never control. it makes my finger tips tingle! it makes me want to curl up in its shadow and be small. be unseen in the presence of something so untamed. it makes me want to be a bit more invisible. which is unexpected considering my preoccupation with the conundrum of anonymity.

i've never quite sorted out what would be worse: going out in a blaze of glory while leaving a world of possibility behind, or dying alone where no one knows you are. there are days when my worst fear is being unimportant to any other life. those are the days i feel paralyzed by insignificance. but then there are days, more frequent it seems when surrounded by east africa, that i find peace and rare and precious rest in the prospect of being still and small. walking through life quietly. i don't want to be a big deal. i want to own a used bookstore.

and i'll tell you, there is no more powerful feeling of anonymity in the world than your five-foot five-inch self standing in the spray of a 175 foot waterfall.

there are lovely landscapes here. and this is a lovely home. and the weather around here has been really lovely too these days! it feels like fall all over the place. which is odd considering uganda doesn't really have a fall. or any variation of seasons to be honest. but for whatever reason, it's been breezy and cool. this has been nothing more than a nice change for pace for me these days. but... i remember when fall weather was a lot more than that.

i remember when breezes and bundling up made me think of leaves and pumpkins. which made me think of fireplaces and hot chocolate. which made me think of christmas trees, cooked turkeys and the gospel of luke. which made me think of no school for weeks! because i used to schedule my life by the seasons. i used to map out my days by holiday vacations. and if i try really hard, i can remember why. i can remember how three weeks at home in a christmas sweater could justify months at a school desk. i can remember how the three months between school years was actually what life was. september to may were just obstacles. obstacles in the way of what was actually important. ant hills and butterfly wings. ice cream trucks and bathing suits, sprinklers and bike rides, marigolds and fireworks. all the rest of it was just traffic lights.

but then traffic stopped. and now i'm in a world where there are no seasons. i don't spend my mondays waiting for friday. i don't wait at the window listening for the ice cream man. i don't spend my mornings and my lunch hours watching the clock. well... not always. my days aren't determined by the coming holiday. i don't get to count down to kid things anymore. my calendar is marked with pay days and paying debts. i still look forward to good things. to my family coming to africa (eek!). to the sundays i spend eating brunch with amos. to the days i finish a book and get to pick up an new one. but what kid measures their days by dog-eared pages in a novel?

i guess i'm not a kid.

but i guess i can try. i can eat ice cream. i can run through a sprinkler. i can be small. i can be still. i can be a bit more invisible. in the corner of my used bookstore.

theme songs for the road

i've always been really good at losing things. i've lost homework, car keys, the left shoe from a pair of red flats. i've always been waiting to grow out of it. surely someday i'll be organized enough to keep a pair of shoes together! but i guess i'm still waiting. since being here i've lost a cell phone, a pillow case, 5,000 shillings, and about 9 pounds. maybe i could have anticipated losing those things. but what i never did anticipate was feeling lost.

i've amassed alot of road maps in my time. moving state to state. driving place to place. florida. illinois. oklahoma. tennesse and everything in between. all of the above and maybe more are in folds and wrinkles in the back seat of my car. i've used them all. i've read them in the rain. i've held them open over the stearing wheel. i've torn them in the open-window wind. they have gotten me from place to place to place and back again. little red and blue lines telling which way to turn and what to stay away from. this being the case, there can't possibly be any man out there more suited for me than mister rand mcnally. my knight's armor shines with tail lights and turn signals and he saves his damsel from culdesacs and cops with bad attitudes.

road maps are great. but i have to ask, where are the maps for getting around life? what about those potholes and police officers? rand darling, how could you have failed me?

i feel like i've gotten lost somehow. or at least i've gotten stuck. i'm sitting at the most unexpected intersection of all. there are no red lights here. nothing has stopped me. instead, i've come to a crossroads of all green lights, all go signs, all endless options. where do you want to go? what do you want to do? who do you want to be? go. Go. GO!

but maybe i don't want to go any further. maybe i'm too tired to turn the engine over. maybe i'm done starting again. maybe dave matthews said it best when he said, 'turns out it's not where but who you're with that really matters.' in which case... where don't i go?

more green lights. more people in more places. all of us dissolving like sugar cubes in warm water. slowly separating away in this direction and that, sweetening our surroundings but doing it with one less grain of sugar at our side. sugar cubes. how despairing. wouldn't we rather be like licorice? all twisted together, all sweet and all insoluble.

insoluble. maybe that's what i want my super power to be.

in the mean time i'll just cut all my hair off and get a pedicure...

when my khaki pants used to fit

i moved to africa in the month of july
i was eating bowls of rice by 7:00 am
and got used to it real quick

rice and beans
water to drink
lunch at 2 pm

i started walking to get around town
my shoes got covered in red dirt
my thighs got a good work out

up the hill
down the hill
back and forth through town

i do my laundry on the weekends
scrubbing by hand in a bucket
hanging them out to dry

pull and stretch
wring them out again
leave them on the line

i used to be meticulous about style
before i left home in july
that was when my khaki pants still fit

stone soup and other recipes

i found ants in my sugar bowl and a gecko in my t-shirt. i swept them both away and went about my business. i'm not often thrown by the little african quirks of the day around here. i eat rice three times a day, go without dairy, do my laundry in a bucket, and wake up the next day and do it all again. no big thing. but today i had a craving. today i looked at the clock, saw that it was nearly one, and had a vision. i saw a sandwich. i saw a sandwich of honey wheat whole grain bread. it was spread with trader joe's red pepper humus and stacked with green peppers, alfalfa sprouts, tomato, snow peas and avocado. it sat on a little ceramic plate with a cold clausen pickle next to it and a tall glass of 2% milk. when i woke from my vision i was sitting in the office with a bread roll and an empty coffee mug. i was real sad.

question: how does someone keep eating rice and pumpkin over and over everyday without their taste buds and tummy atrophying?
answer: because on certain mondays in october, they get a letter in the mail full of love and fruit snacks that taste like heaven going down and make all the rest of it worth swallowing.

i'm a lucky girl. with love and fruit snacks and sleep overs and skype dates and good morning coffee and even better emails that together make all the rest of it worth swallowing.

yum yum.

i hoped it would be easy to build

if you were the kind of person who wore a seat belt, you wouldn't be living in Africa in the first place.

deborah scroggins said that in her book 'emma's war.' when i first read it, i laughed. i laughed like a person who feels like they have a right to laugh at that. yeah, i know what you mean. and then i re-read the quote. i read how it began:

for whites, it's part of the mind-set: if you were the kind of person who wore a seat belt, you wouldn't be living in Africa in the first place.

for whites. which i am. and no, i don't wear my seat belt. but maybe i should. and tell me, what about Africa makes it more necessary to wear a seat belt than the next place? if a car crashes on a dirt road it would kill me just as surely as on a paved one. a gun would go off just as well in a banana field as it would in an unlit parking lot. and do just as much damage. the moon over me is the same moon over you. even though i could swear it's 10 times bigger here. but it's not. it's the same moon. in the same sky. over the same planet. all 6,602,224,175 of us are standing on the same round planet. it's not so big after all. we're not so different. people are people wherever you go. for better or worse, we all have failings. but bigger than all of it, we also all have feats.

the mountain we scaled in colorado. the piano we learned to master. the foreign language we fluently speak. the sport we dominate. the paintbrush between our fingers. our voice that gets a standing ovation. or maybe it's the courage to paint our toenails pink. the decision to shave our head. the joke that made our boss laugh. for some of us, it's feat enough that we got out of bed this morning.

today i wore navy pants with a black shirt. maybe that's the kind of person it takes to live in Africa. a person who puts on whatever's clean. or maybe that's just what it takes to make it through the day sometimes, wherever you are. mismatched clothes. spilled coffee. unexplainable headaches. the smell of honeysuckle outside your window. all those human things. all those people things. they happen to all people. in all places. which Africa is. just another place. where i live. where i work. and as it turns out, it's chock full of people i love.

i just realized i don't know where to go with this now. most of my entries these days have had a common thread. life. living it. this time i tried to think of something funny to write. like the dragon fly that floated into the office and spent all afternoon on the picture of my parents. or the day that i was greeted with, good morning, ann. you look exhausted. even wearing yellow. good times. but i think i'll just tell those stories later. today i'd rather tell this story:

little girl: the shop across the street is where my uncle sells. we sell from shops here.
marsha: i see! and what's that big pile?
little girl: that's where they make bricks. we make our own bricks here.
marsha: i know. i like that they're working by lamp light.
little girl: yes. we use paraffin here.
marsha: look! look at the stars. aren't they beautiful?!
little girl: yes. we have stars here. do they have stars in your world?

we have stars. we have stripes. we have banks and buses and brick layers. we have what they have. we even have seat belts. and some of us even wear them.

you start, bob. i'll sing the harmony.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse." That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

that's such a lovely quote. and so true and so real. poetry, beauty, romance, love. these aren't what we live for. they are what we stay alive for.

staying alive. it's nearly an entity of its own. p.s. i hate the bee gees. and i hate even more what they have to say about staying alive. trying to get high. trying to get low. trying to understand the new york times' effect on man. why? why try so hard to make things more than what they are? life is complicated enough. a mongoose is not a goose. it's not even a bird. lynyrd skynyrd is not a man's name. ring around the rosy is about the plague. progeria syndrome makes children grow old and kills them too young. people get fat and their neighbors starve to death. things don't make sense as it is. why rage against it all?

we've all been in situations and heard stories that have sucked the wonder right out of our bones. i've visited orphan villages. i've watched men dying of AIDS. i've heard testimonies that have made my palms sweat. and it's in these moments that my faith is that of a cynical old chain smoker suffering from insomnia and not a wide eyed child who dreams of sugar plum fairies. and i feel weighed down. yes, weighed down. but not always hopeless. it takes poets like dylan thomas and painters like william bouguereau to bring me back to life. it takes mountains like the rwenzori and theologians like g.k. chesterton to remind me that loveliness is essential to life and sugar plum fairies will set you free.

it's a relief to learn that my periodic childishness is part of living. it's ok to be creative. it's ok to think in iambic pentameter and remember faces in 3x5. it's all part of staying alive. yes people get sick. yes parents get divorced. yes buildings burn down. but sometimes even doctors learn to sketch. moms and dads make funny jokes. neighbors come together and build a new barn. life is good. even when it's not. and this goodness, these surprises, the poetry and beauty and love, this is why we stay alive. and wherever this all ends, wherever it goes and wherever it stops or starts over, i will be happy to have lived through it.

thank you for sticking with me, those of you who keep reading this. i wish you were here. and hey aunt beth, how can i get ahold of you?? i keep visiting your phantom blogspot and still have no way of saying hi!

all my love
peace on earth
hope in hearts
food on tables,
annie

on you i just can't rely

i'm sick these days. a chesty, feverish, sneezing, coughing, nose-blowing kind of sick. it's pretty much par for the course at this point. stress, sleeplessness and an unwillingness to take a day off will usually knock you off your feet at some point.

other than that, i don't have too much to say today. maybe it's because the sloshing in my head has me thinking slower. i will say this: i love my job and i love this place. but i can say with utter certainty that this would be a nearly impossible position to hold for longer than a year and it makes me admire my boss and this office staff all the more. how on earth would you survive taking 30 or so lovely and dynamic people in your arms for 4 months only to let them go into the great unknown and have a whole new group come in to love and invest in before, yet again, having them taken from you? or maybe i just know myself well enough to know that i couldn't survive like that. it's only been about 3 and a half weeks since the students got here and i'm already madly in love with all of them. and i don't think it's natural to fall in and out of love so often.

on a car ride at 1 in the morning, someone once said, 

i do believe that the community of humanity has the singular purpose of existing for each other. for other people and their joy and survival. and if you're not existing for someone else, then you're just... existing. 

in the clarity of daylight, i can see the potential melodrama of a statement like that. however, i don't think the concept is false. man was not meant to be left alone. and for those of us who have gotten accustom to running away from home, i think we each have a moment when we look up into the sky over yet another temporary world wide travel destination and say, 

when do i get to claim a community of my own? when do i get an apartment whose walls i can paint and a neighbor who shouts at his dog? when do i get a diner down the street and a church with a steeple? 

and although i don't regret for a moment where i am now, i have started to wonder, when will i finally be content sitting still?

and do you know what makes that question so difficult to answer? it's that everywhere i go, i see a glimpse contentment there. i find a hill with a shady tree where i can watch the sun set. i find a coffee shop with free wireless internet and delicious monkey bread. i find a friend who can make me laugh or even let me cry. i find Grace. and Joy. and i learn a few more chords on the guitar. for me it has never come down to choosing between devils and angels. it's always come down to plane tickets and restlessness. and while the beginnings are exciting, the endings are just a bunch of goodbyes. i don't know when i'll be content sitting still. but i do know that i'm tired of saying goodbye. 

the thief he kindly spoke

i've just got back from rwanda. i love it enough to never leave. but that place is almost too much to take. the hills too beautiful. the people too generous. the death too rancid. all of it just so much. 

driving back to uganda, i recalled a memory i had not thought of for nearly 15 years. it was a sunday and i was wearing a dress. i was very young. or at least i remember being very short. i could only see the first two pie shelves in the glass display case. my family and i were waiting at a tippin's restaurant for sunday lunch. on our way to the lobby doors, there was a man alone outside. he looked tired and dirty. his hair was unwashed and his beard untrimmed. he was not wearing sunday clothes. i watched him with round childhood eyes as he staggered to and from the families outside, asking for money. before i could have much of a reaction, the restaurateur came out and made him leave. in the lobby, i sat down on a bench by the window. i had the strangest feeling. i wasn't sure what i was thinking or why i had to sit down. i was very young. but in a few minutes, my mom came over and sat by me.

what's wrong annie? why so quiet?

in the next instant, surprising both my mother and myself, i burst into tears. and through choking little girl sobs, i asked,

why couldn't we give him something? even 50 cents?

i don't remember what my mother said. it must have been comforting because i soon stopped crying and ate some pie. but i do remember that she held me. i remember her rubbing my back. i remember my face on her neck. and i remember for the first time being miserable because the world was unjust. did this man have a mother to hold him? why didn't he have any money? what was going to happen to him when he left? and why couldn't i help him?

murambi is a schoolhouse on a hill in butare, rwanda. 50,000 people were massacred there in 1994. since then, they've exhumed the bodies from the pile of mass graves that the killers left. they have reburied most of them in coffins and the rest they have preserved with lime. these bodies are laid out on picnic tables in the school rooms. you can't imagine the smell.

leaving murambi, i sat on the bus watching rwanda out my window wondering how many of the people i passed on the street didn't have families any more. no aunts, no fathers, no mothers. do they have enough money to eat these days? what's going to happen here in the next few years? and why, o God, couldn't we have helped them? i wished my mother were there. i wanted her to hold me so i could bury my face in her neck. instead, i put my head against the window and slept. i was just so tired.

close encounters of the roach kind

i was cleaning up my desktop today. i started emptying and editing old school folders and assignments. in the process, i came across the following senior-year assignments. a paragraph about how to behave in an interview: "When asked about yourself, give good clues and information concerning how you function at work, interact with others, things that make you happy. But don’t go on and on about your cats and your kitchen and your great aunt Edna. This is an interview, not a first date."

followed up by a response to what role economics is going to play in my future: "I am going to have to start doing my own taxes next year and I desperately need to make sure that I don’t get hosed by the government."

what?? who the criz let me graduate??

while contemplating this and other mysteries of life, i had a sudden shock. i was sitting on my bed, swathed in mosquito netting, when i heard a noise from against the wall. i paused the ryan adams tunes blasting from my laptop and listened for it again. and there it came. from behind my trash can i heard a rustle rustle. hmm, a mouse, i think to myself. now how will be the best way to usher the little guy out the room? i sit still and wait for him to emerge. in a few seconds, he does emerge. but to my surprise and horror, what comes creeping out is not a mouse, but a roach roughly the size of a large breakfast sausage. lucky for the other residence of my hall, i didn't scream out-loud like i was inside. paralyzed by shock, i just dropped my mouth open and sat with my eyes bugging out like a kid choking on a marble. (it happened to me once. another story for another time)

oh jumpin jehosaphat. i didn't move. i watched him make his way from behind my trash can to the door and then, with a crinkly noise of his wings, he squeezed through the door and out into the hall. i wanted to be relieved, but all i could think of was all those irritating statistics people throw around when they're not actually in the presence of a huge bug. "where you see one, there's a hundred." "every year, at least 53,005 spiders crawl in and out of your mouth while you sleep," or whatever the in-vogue number at that moment might be. i got out of bed and tip toed across the floor to the trash can. with one swift and expertly aimed toss, i dumped all of the contents into an empty plastic grocery bag and tied it off. that would need to go out to the dumpster asap. next would be yet another treacherous trip to the bathroom down the hall to wash up so i could get to bed. 

with various soaps in hand and protective footwear on, i unlocked my door and slowly crept out into the hall, watching in all directions for any roach-y sneak attack. i got to the bathroom, tip toed to the sinks, and when i finally decided it was all clear, i set about washing up. well, it's uncanny. with the next glance at my feet, i see none other but the fat sausage roach scurrying toward my protective footwear. i jump back aghast, only to be seen by two of my hall mates coming in for a shower.

um, sorry, there's a... this bug is in here and... what should we do?

one of the ladies crouched down next to him where he was cowering against the floor board, and she casually asked her friend, 

is this the kind that bite?

no, her friend said. and then she stood up straight again and asked me,

do you fear it?

well, no, it's just, i mean, he's big and gross, you know? and...

ah, screw all this coy bunk.

yes. i'm afraid of it.

mmm.

and then she stomped on it with her flimsy shower shoes and in one triumphant crunch he was dead.

the ugandan mmm is, in these parts, the equivalent of the lebowski dude. entire conversations can be had with just this noise depending on inflection, context, and eyebrow raise. it can be a question, a reprimand, an exclamation, an agreement, or el duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing. 

mmm?

mmm.

mmm!

mmm.

mmm.

i've come to use it primarily in conversations i've zoned out of or questions i don't understand. i dunt noo ifa you wunt un to woosh de clothe ez?

mmm. 

i thanked the ladies and instantly felt ridiculous. they said, mmm. none the less, the next day i went straight into town and bought some 'doom,' the liquid-death aerosol that kills roaches, ants, beetles, scorpions, house cats, and humans who don't wear a nurse's mask. i mean, come on. roaches? in my bedroom? this is a private residence, man!

domo arigato

i've got a secret. tonight i walked into the men's bathroom accidentally. i've never done that before in my life. never even as the little girl following her dad, or the school kid tricked by mean classmates. and leave it to me to kick things off right by wondering in at 10:30 at night, in my pajamas, onto an african man by himself trying to urinate in peace. allow me to explain.

so i've been house sitting for this couple. well it gives me the creeps. it's this big house on a hill with lots of bedrooms and closed doors and i'm there all by myself with some cats. so sometimes i stay the night there and sometimes i go back to my dorm room. i stay on the nights i feel like watching a dvd or cooking myself dinner. the other nights i high-tail it back down the hill in the dark, waving my flashlight around and singing hymns. well today left me in a bit of a pickle. i slept in really late after staying up to watch 'forever young' with adeline and phil. classic film. mel gibson in his prime, and playing a pilot no less. anyway, so i slept in and was woken up by a text from phil reminding me that we were leaving at 11 to go to entebbe with the honours college gang. 10:25. oops. so i get up and get ready all quick and then on the walk to the taxi park, remember that i hadn't fed the animals. well, whatever, i'll feed them when i get back.

so we hang out at entebbe beach all day, laying in the sun, playing frisbee, eavesdropping on south africans speaking afrikaans. and by the time we head back it's already dark. not a great idea for road travel as it is and now we'll be getting back late and i'm hungry and sunburned and have to pee and can't wait to get back to my bed and read. and then i remember the cats. well i was specifically told that if the day should come when i couldn't feed them, don't worry, they wont die from one day. so great, this is my one day.

so i get back to my room, get in my jammies and go to pee. someones in the bathroom. i go back to my room and wait. a few minutes later i go back to the bathroom, the door is still shut. i really have to pee, so i bend down and look under the door. no one's there! great, so i start to open the door, all the while wondering why someone would shut the door with the light on and no one in it. as i open the door, i hear a funny rustling sound. naturally, i immediately think: black mamba hiding in the toilet. so i quickly shut the door and run back to my room. well this isn't gonna work at all. i've got to pee and its hitting critical mass.

then i have a brilliant idea! i'll just walk up to the house, feed the cats, pee, get something cold to drink from the fridge, and then come back to my room. i get to pee without fear of black mambas and sleep guilt-free after feeding the cats. so i head out right then and there, not worrying about my pajamas because surely i wont run into someone at this hour of the night. and so i'm off for the long, dark walk to the big house on the hill.

well half way there, i remember that there are outdoor bathrooms near my dorm, next to the classrooms. this is even better. forget the cats, i'll pee and head back. it's too dark anyway. all of this is running through my head as i'm shuffling sleepily along, up the dirt path to the classrooms and into... the men's bathroom. i round the corner, wondering when they redecorated with this grey paint, and run right into a man mid-pee in what appears to be one tiny room for a urinary free-for-all. 'oh my! sorry!' and then i jog all the way up the hill to the big empty house.

when i got back to my dorm, the bathroom door was open and there were no snakes anywhere. someone had just taken a dump and was trying to keep the smell out of the hall.

sometimes by step

"A Spell to Make Hidden Things Visible. She read it through to make sure of all the hard words and then said it out loud. And she knew at once that it was working because as she spoke the colors came into the capital letters at the top of the page and the pictures began appearing in the margins. They were odd pictures and contained many figures that Lucy did not much like the look of. And then she thought, 'I suppose I've made everything visible. There might be lots of invisible things hanging about a place like this. I'm not sure that I want to see them all.'

At that moment she heard soft, heavy footfalls coming along the corridor behind her; and of course she remembered what she had been told about the Magician walking in his bare feet and making no more noise than a cat. It is always better to turn around than to have anything creeping up behind your back. Lucy did so.

Then her face lit up, and she ran forward with a little cry of delight and with her arms stretched out. For what stood in the doorway was Aslan himself, The Lion, the highest of all High Kings. And he was solid and real and warm and he let her kiss him and bury herself in his shining mane. And from the low, earthquake-like sound that came from inside him, Lucy even dared to think that he was purring.

'Oh, Aslan,' said she, 'it was kind of you to come.'

'I have been here all the time,' said he, 'but you have just made me visible.'

'Aslan!' said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. 'Don't make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!'

'It did,' said Aslan. 'Do you think I wouldn't obey my own rules?'

Lucy followed the great Lion out into the passage and at once she saw coming toward them an old man, barefoot, dressed in a red robe. His white hair was crowned with a chaplet of oak leaves. When he saw Aslan he bowed low and said,

'Welcome, Sir, to the least of your houses.'

'Do you grow weary, Coriakin, of ruling such foolish subjects as I have given you here?'

'No,' said the Magician, 'they are very stupid but there is no real harm in them. Sometimes, perhaps, I am a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic.'

'All in good time, Coriakin.' said Aslan. 'Now, today I must visit Trumpkin the Dwarf. I will tell him all your story, Lucy. Do not look so sad. We shall meet soon again.'

'Please, Aslan,' said Lucy, 'what do you call soon?'

'I call all times soon,' said Aslan; and instantly he was vanished away and Lucy was alone with the Magician.

- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis

and we're back...

ahem, where was i... i'm actually not sure where i was headed with all that. so i'll just move along. suffice it to say, the trip over was exhaustingly long. long long long. but once i landed i really felt much better. i was greeted by adeline and vincent (two UCU folks i knew from last year) and phil, the other intern. it was so refreshing to see familiar faces and phil could not have been more kind. i felt very much embraced. and back on campus, it was odd actually. i was here only a few short months ago so it reallt feels like i just went on vacation and now am back. nothing much has changed.

i've seen a few of the students that i was in class with. neo and jones and esseza. but it is really strange to be here without my usp group. i keep expecting to run into shannon or will, seth or kari, just around the corner. but it's just me. that's gonna take some getting used to. it's funny, i don't think i gave enough credit to the fact that i would be here on my own, essentially. i sat next to the sweetest woman on my flight into nairobi. she was headed to the congo for mission work and she asked me what i was off to. when i explained it to her she said, 'wow, that's neat! and how many are with you?' and then i told her it was just me and she said, 'oh my! that's very impressive. really, it shows that you don't need someone holding your hand the whole way, you know?' i think it was a compliment. but then it just got me thinking, what's so great about not having someone hold your hand? sometimes that's all it takes to make a sad day feel better. just someone to hold your hand.

i'm house sitting for an american professor and his english wife this week. they live in a lovely house with some rare luxuries. ie. a dvd player, hot showers, cats, and wireless internet. the dvd player will come in handy since movies on my laptop seem to be all that can get me to sleep these nights. as you can imagine, hot showers for a week will be an incredible treat. i'm a little nervous about the pets. they have cats, fish, and a hampster. all have to be fed at various intervals throughout the day. if the power goes out the fish tank needs to be uncovered. if the hampster bottle quits working he needs a separate bowl, if the cats wont go out at night just beat them out with a pillow (???). but apparently, of all the creatures in the house, it's the hampster that has to be payed special attention to. i was told that it really doesn't matter if the fish die or the cats run off into the african bush. it's the hampster that matters. their daughter is border line in love with it. no pressure or anything... so wish me luck! and hop on your skype around mid-day your time! i'll (hopefully) be able to use mine about that time while i'm at the house.

as far as other excitement is concerned, debbie and justin got married yesterday! usp gang, you'll remember them. debbie was a student here and justin was a usp alum. and now they're married! the wedding was lovely. a mix of africa and america. there was a really lovely sermon and some delicious food and speech after speech after speech. i forgot about that part of ugandan culture. :) speeches. it was a fun experience.

and now on to tomorrow. my first real work day. i'm ready to get busy. to feel purposeful. i send all my love in all your directions!! i hope everyone is happy and healthy and having an excellent life! please keep me updated. post comments. send emails. (anniebegins@gmail.com) letters even.

annie carter
uganda christian university
usp
box 4
mukono, uganda

or CALL me!! or text even. :) 774280059. it works like so: dial your calling card number first. then 011-256-774280059. YAY! i love voices.

and i love you all!! everybody off adventuring in their various directions, in and out of doors, on and off of airplanes, starting and finishing school. our lives just like the pevensies. and i pray we all of us get to look Aslan in the face. just every once and a while. just enough to not believe that we're on our own.

have a happy day! talk to you later...

just came to say

i said goodbye to my parents in the chicago o'hare airport at 7:20pm on july 29th. i cried, of course. there are few things as special to me in the world as my family. but now i'm here. uganda africa, august 1, 9:03 am. and i'm tired.

my flight wa delayed leaving chicago so i had less time in london then i expected. sadly, my plans to visit the balham tube station were shot. (ask my about that one later...) instead, i took the 77 bus out to windsor to look at the castle. what a lovely trip! and an especially lovely town! it actually felt a little like disney world. cobbled streets and vendors and street performers dressed in costumes. not sure what that was all about. i didn't have time to actually tour the castle so i bought an ice cream cone instead and stood in the shade looking at the huge home. i tried to imagine what it would be like to live there. but i couldn't. not even a little bit. so i turned around and walked down peascod street looking in shop windows and listening to a flute-playing street performer play outside marks&spencer. i got ice cream in my hair at one point. better than getting pooped on by a pigeon, my last welcome to london. at which the illustrious luke joseph smith was present for. and pooped on too actually. (how's that for an inclusion?) i started trying to clean the ice cream out of my hair and was feeling a little like i stuck out like a sore thumb. and then this little english lady came up and asked me where the something-something bank was. i felt very proud. until i had to tell that i actually didn't know. but oh well.

(pause. i have a staff meeting. to be continued)