Upcoming Djibouti + Sad Note

If you've not seen the 90 minute version of Djibouti or Bust, two more shows are on the calendar for November 14th and November 21st. The first one will be hosted by Kay Cheatham in Piedmont, and the second by Laura Goetz in Potrero Hill in San Francisco. Please let me know if you're interested in attending and I can get you some more information. There's sure to be some space in the second show, and maybe even at the first one. Or please consider hosting your own!

I received some sad news this week, indirectly tied to my trip to East Africa. Along the way, I was taking lots of water pictures for a group called the Clearwater Initiative. This organization was founded and run by a gentleman named Ben Sklaver who had learned about the conflict in Northern Uganda and its impact on clean water while serving in the US military in the Horn of Africa. This week, I followed up with him about the photos only to learn that he had been killed in early October while serving in Afghanistan. I'm including a Time story about him, as well as another interesting piece about Jews in (or not in) the military:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1930683,00.html

http://www.forward.com/articles/116674/

People Love Djibouti!

I presented my new 90 minute slide show to a group of strangers on Friday night, and the woman who coordinated the event got a whole host of unsolicited comments about the event. Here are some of them (I've removed the names since these were forwarded to me, but maybe folks in attendance will chime in with their own thoughts about the show):

“I really had a wonderful time. Moses' slide show was amazing; not only are the photos beautiful, but he also provides a witty and touching narration of his thoughts and experiences from when he took the photos. I can't believe this Born into Brothel-esk slide show was free. ”

“Firstly, A big thank you to Moses for opening up his studio to all of us. Great food and nice photolog presentation. Brought back a lot of memories of my childhood and safaris through East Africa. Inspired me to hit the books and brush up my Swahili.”

“Great evening, great food, great people and Moses is very entertaining and educational. My daughter even loved his slide show.”

“It was a well organized party and the slide show was excellent!”

“Everything was awesome, the food, people and the slideshow was especially informational and entertaining. I had a wonderful time!”

“Great food and people, travel photos to boot. If only a small band of raccoons had ran through the place, stealing little morsels of food and startling people, then it would have been perfect.”

Again, if you're interested in hosting a slide show, all you need is 20 people and a couple hours. Find all the info here!

Djibouti or Bust is Hitting the Road!

I did my first "public" presentation of the Djibouti or Bust slide show yesterday at Transfair USA. It was very well-received and I hope that it's the first of many slide shows that I deliver. It went 82 minutes, and with a few tweaks here and there, it should be ready to go nationwide, or even world-wide. For more information about hosting, check out:

http://enlightstoryworks.com/DjiboutiOrBust

East Africa Slide Show on Saturday Night

Please come see pictures and hear stories about my recent travels to East Africa.

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
8:00PM-12:30AM
Slide Show at around 9:15PM

800 Heinz Ave #14
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-540-7008

Free and Open to the Public

Slide Show will likely be outside. Please dress warmly and bring folding chairs, sleeping bags, small convertibles for the drive-in slide show experience.

Some Closing Thoughts

(from Wednesday/Thursday)

This will be my last post from Africa, and it’s a bit of a hodgepodge of thoughts from the last several days, sometimes weeks. I’ve got another entry to do while traveling, and then I’ll try to post some of the pictures from the trip once I’m home and have better access to high-speed internet. I’m not sure if I’ll post the pictures in previous entries, where they sort of belong, or do some photo only entries, or save the images for a photo show that I’ll be doing in a few months time. Perhaps a combination of all of the above. In any case, thanks for reading the blog, and here are some closing thoughts:

So I’ve not said anything about Malawi, and that’s mostly because I was only there for a few days and saw a very small portion of the country. But what I did see was really very pretty, especially the tea fields that met me immediately as I crossed the border from Mozambique. Not sure what it is about tea fields and people picking tea that is so calming and romantic. It’s likely back-breaking work for the people doing it, yet I really love seeing it from afar. I’m not really a tea drinker so I’m not sure what the connection is besides gorgeous countryside, but it’s certainly worth seeing.

• Internet speeds picked up a great deal in Malawi. It may be a very poor country but they’ve got the internet figured out. I didn’t have a chance to talk to anybody about Madonna and Malawi, but the thought crossed my mind to do a web search of that when I was in an internet café. I’ll have to do that upon my return, since that seems to be Malawi’s claim to fame in the last couple of years. Too bad!

• Malawi also has beautiful roads and almost no pot-holes at all. That made traveling much less tiresome, and considerably quicker. What made travel in Malawi less enjoyable, at least on one long-distance ride, was the number of drunk people who got considerably more drunk over the course of the trip and wanted to engage me in conversation. We saw such a small number of drunk people on this trip—what a joy—but interestingly and sadly it seemed to increase as the trip moved southward.

• The majority of the people with whom I interacted with on this trip were either Christian or Moslem, and my guess is that those two groups were pretty evenly split across the trip. And I was struck by how much the Christians want to put their Christianity on other people, where that was seemingly absent within Islam. At meals and meetings and other gatherings, it seemed that Jesus and amens had to be there, and I can recall a bus ride in Malawi where a Jesus-lover came on and spent about 15 minutes ranting to everyone about the role that Jesus needed to play both in regard to the bus trip, and to life. Quite obnoxious.

• Never has there been part of the world where I’ve consistently enjoyed the music so much, and I’m referring to the music I heard on buses, in restaurants, and on the streets. I’ve always claimed to have been born without rhythm but there’s certainly been something about much of this music here that connects with me. Maybe I need to take an African dance class, but the African music that I heard in East Africa seems much different than what we get in the States. What I heard in Uganda was particularly delightful.

• I can’t remember where it was that I experienced this before but I got to once again participate in a sweet “community event” in Malawi’s commercial capital…rain. I was in a Blantyre travel agency when it started raining, but really really raining. It started raining so hard that the streets in Malawi’s largest city turned into rivers with water at least six inches deep. And everything in the city—at least everything that was outside came to a halt for the twenty minutes that it rained, and people either stood or sat under overhangs to just watch the water come down.

• Perhaps one of the most frustrating thing about third world travel is the practice of filling up buses before they depart. Now from a environmental and efficiency standpoint, I totally understand and appreciate it, but from a getting somewhere perspective, it’s quite maddening. After all, who knows when the bus (or taxi or truck) is going to finally fill up and when we’ll be able to leave on our trip. I can remember several instances when I waited for at least two hours as a vehicle seemed to get closer and closer to filling up, when the conductor would tell me ten more minutes or just another half hour, and then the wait become eternal. And once, when it looked like we were just about there, and I had finally committed to buy my ticket, the professional bus-sitters would get off the bus—about ten of them—and their seats needed to be sold. I guess nobody ever wants to be the first person on the bus, the first person to buy a ticket on a vehicle that may never sell out, so it helps to sell the “idea” that we’ll be hitting the road shortly as an attract to all the other passengers. In fact, I’m not sure how much it mattered to the locals. Even if they were in a hurry, they didn’t seem to be, and they seemed calm while my impatience grew by the minute. It was a bad feeling for me, and I tried to tell myself that it’s more about the journey than the destination, but rarely to any avail.

• Once the bus arrived from Blantyre to Lilongwe, the final bus ride of my trip, I was struck by how many of the people stayed on the bus. It was around 10 or 11PM by that time, and I inquired if there was another stop, since it didn’t look like a very busy bus station when we got there. Maybe this was not the place I was supposed to get off. But it was, and all the people on the bus intended to stay right there. They were some of Malawi’s famous “bus sleepers” and they would remain on the locked bus until 5AM. I’m not sure if it was a law or policy, but bus companies were not supposed to let people off the bus after dark unless they had someone picking them up or were going to an announced nearby destination. So while I couldn’t wait to get to the nearby hotel to sleep and shower, they were combining lodging and transportation and seemed perfectly happy to be doing so. And rumor has it that it’s had a significant impact on crime rates dramatically in the country—far fewer people to be preyed upon late at night. Seems like good policy to me, but I’m also glad that I didn’t get locked on the bus myself.

12 Floors Up

Looking out onto Downtown Nairobi from the 12th floor of a many star hotel is certainly a different view of Africa than what I’ve seen over the last five to six weeks. And I’m aware that the view that I have had is different from the perspective of someone being in one place for all that time, or from the perspective of an African living his or her life over that same amount of time. In fact, perhaps being 12 floors up is a good analogy for the trip, since I’d venture to guess that most people on this continent, and likely most people of the world, never make it to the 12th floor of anyplace, and certainly not of a luxury hotel.

I’m here because my plans did end up changing. When I got to Malawi, which was going to be little more than a transit stop for me between Mozambique and Ethiopia, I found a really good price on a ticket from Lilongwe to Addis Ababa, but it required a lay-over in Nairobi on Kenya Air’s tab. And then when I tried to change my KLM ticket to come home earlier, they suggested that it would be better to fly from Nairobi directly to Amsterdam, and to skip Addis altogether. So my stay in Nairobi—and at the Nairobi Safari Club (“the only all-suite hotel in Kenya)—has been extended until tonight.

I’m normally one to hate big hotels, though this one has a unique design, a great balcony, and the first non-foam mattress that I’ve slept on in well over a month. So I’m enjoying it, and will enjoy exploring the city from here on my last day on the continent (for this trip, at least). What I don’t quite know what to do with are the people who I sit near in the downstairs Safari Restaurant (my meals are comped) who are paying $50 for a meal, taking loud cell phone calls, and look as if they could be anywhere in the world, but certainly not in the Africa that I’ve traveled…at least up until now.

Nairobi is a big modern city, and likely has a lot less character than it’s bigger brother to the North, Addis Ababa. I’m sorry that I will be missing Ethiopia altogether on this trip, especially because it was the country that inspired this trip in the first place. But I’m sure that I’ll travel there, and at least inch closer to Djibouti in the future. What is certain is that this was not my last visit to this continent. East Africa (and I guess the portion of Central and Southern Africa that I visited) have been phenomenal places to visit and learn about. I would return to most of these places, and hopefully in the not too distant future. I can only hope that the people who I meet and the stories that I hear the next time around will be half as good as this time, and if they are, the trip will be a wonderful one.

Last Night in Moz

(this post is from Sunday Night)

It’s nice to be somewhere and know that it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be. My journey between Mozambique and Malawi has been a slow one, but clearly quite eventful. I had expected to cross into Malawi this afternoon and then I arrived at the border town and found it to be stunning. Also, after last night, I was due to arrive at a hotel during daylight hours, and I’m so fortunate to be able to look out the window at one of the most beautiful countries on earth.

I realize that I’ve not said much about Mozambique, and I’m about to leave it. I’m not sure that I have much to say besides raving about it’s beauty and cautioning about it’s bumpy roads.

Mozambique is a very large country, and certainly the longest of any of the countries that I will be visiting. And I’ve just seen a small slice of the top third of the country, which is the least developed. Since I don’t know as much as I should, here’s what Lonely Planet has to say:

If southern Mozambique’s lures are the accessible beaches and relaxing resorts, in the north it’s the paradisal coastal landscapes, the sense of space and the sheer adventure of travel. This is one of Africa’s last frontiers – wild, beautiful and untamed. Inland are vast expanses of bush where enough lions and elephants still roam to be the stuff of local lore and wreak havoc on villages. Along the coast is an almost endless succession of unspoiled beaches and islands, plus Ilha de Moçambique – one of Southern Africa’s top attractions.

In many respects, the north – the provinces of Nampula, Niassa and Cabo Delgado – might as well be a separate country. It’s divided from the rest of Mozambique by several major rivers and hundreds of kilometres of road. And, although home to one-third of Mozambique’s population, it accounts for only one-fifth of the gross national product, has the lowest adult literacy rates and often seems to drop out of sight for the southern-oriented government.

Culturally, northern Mozambique is intriguing as the home of many matrilineal tribes, in contrast with the strictly patrilineal south. Islamic influences are also stronger here, with centuries-old ties to the old Swahili trading networks. The north is also the birthplace of Mozambique’s independence struggle. It was here, in the bush, that the Frelimo cadres did their training, and it was here – in the unlikely village of Chai – that the first shots of war were fired.

My experience has been a bit strange because it’s the first place where I should know the language. I know enough Portuguese to have people start talking to me way too quickly, and not enough to understand more than 40% of what they’re saying. Since I learned Portuguese mostly in Brazil, I get a bit of Brazil feel here, yet it’s more of Brazil meets Islam…the rhythm is there but it’s more subdued, less in your face, but still a tad aggressive at times.

And it’s poor. Prices seem very high, especially for food, and I’m struck at how little people earn. In some of the factories that I visited, workers were making $2 a day on a good day, and would ask me for money when the boss was not around. It’s really a wonder that this is the case because the north of the country seems ideal for agriculture. But I guess years of war has set “development” back, and I’ve seen no shortage of beggars, including a good number with birth defects, which suggests that health indices might not be as good as in neighboring countries. I’ve also heard from many people that the work ethic is less than ideal here, but it would be hard for me to be inspired to work for $2/day and I’d likely 1) take it easy, 2) not show up for work regularly, and/or 3) steal from the workplace. Long and short is that this is a place with lots of potential, though it may take a while, and just like the stock market at 6500, it seems like a wise time to invest.

Temporary Contentment

(this post is from Saturday night as is in two parts—Temporary Contentment should be read first, and then Life on the Edge second)

Tonight I lay in a bed in a semi-dumpy motel, it’s quite hot and muggy, almost nothing in the bathroom works, and I’m incredibly relieved to finally be here.

Eight or nine hours ago, I sat on the side of the road in the town of Alto Molocue and thought how perfectly content I was. I had just finished up a third day of work for TechnoServe, and it had all gone quite well. The weather outside was a perfect 85-90 degrees with a bit of wind. My view where I sat was gorgeous. This part of northern Mozambique looks like a very spread-out Yosemite—Half-Dome like granite chunks popping out of the earth as far as the eye can see—combined with the very lush tropics. And the people are friendly enough and not too friendly. To top it all off, just about everyone I’ve met here loves to be photographed—more so perhaps than anywhere I’ve been—and the offense is in NOT taking someone’s picture, as opposed to taking it. I had reached a real moment where I was feeling entirely content.

I was about to head west towards Malawi, the next stop on my trip, with no real timetable or fixed destination. It was 3 or 4PM and I was trying to hitch a ride to Mocuba, which I had been told was 2-3 hours away. And for the first couple hours of the trip, I continued to feel totally content. I had a good seat in the cab, the view was beautiful, the weather was great, and the driver and his girlfriend were just so demonstrably in love with one another that I started to envision what it might be like to lead the life of a trucker in the States. Life was good.

But then the road got bad, I got hungry, the trip took hours longer than expected, the seat I was in got less comfortable, the sweet nothings that lover was whispering to lover sounded liking whining, and so on. You get the picture

And I wondered where that deep sense of contentment had gone. How is it that that feeling of being content for me can be so fleeting? Fact is that I think I should be content now and for months to come. After all, I’ve had an incredibly smooth trip, I’ve been safe and healthy, I’ve been welcomed with open arms everywhere I go, I’m doing something that I love to do, and feel like I’m doing it well, I have friends who love me and support me, I’m learning new things and growing, etc. It seems that all of these are the essence of life, and this trip alone should provide an afterglow for months to come, even if my life somehow gets less exciting once I’m back in the States. But just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and that was before the most powerful moment of the trip. Read on to the next post…

Life on the Edge

As I was looking for a ride westward after my last day of work in Mozambique and there seemed to be two semis that were leaving within a half hour of one another from Alto Molocue. The first one leaving was full--four people in the cab--so I caught the second one with a cast of characters. Besides being much longer and much more hellish than advertised (that is, after the first portion that was so delightful and beautiful), about two thirds of the way through the 7 hour trip, I was awoken by the driver's girlfriend telling me that we had come upon an accident. The first semi—the one that I had almost boarded—had rolled off the road down into a ravine and one of the passengers had been thrown from the cab and was wedged under the payload. I'm not sure that I knew right away that it was indeed this very truck—not that it should have mattered—and I went through a fascinating and disturbing string of thoughts and actions (or inactions) about the whole affair. I’m listing them in order as I can best remember:

• What a drag that we're stopping again.
• This is my big chance to save the day.
• I'm really hungry--I can finally get to my bag and dig out some food.
• I’m happy that for once I’m sitting and watching, and not trying to save the world.
• I'm moved that all these vehicles stopped and that everyone is concerned and helping.
• There are plenty of people helping--I'd just get in the way--and my lack of Portuguese would make me a liability.
• Did anyone check the cab of the truck? They must have, no? Would they have checked the cab for me? Why haven’t I checked?
• I should take a picture of this.
• And once they got the guy out from under the payload, I thought about putting my wilderness first-aid to use, but he SEEMED not nearly as bad off as I had expected so I did nothing.
• I did hear him say that he was one of four passengers in the truck. I didn't push the issue of where the other three were.
• I didn't suggest to the driver of my truck--who had been very central in the rescue efforts--that maybe we should take the guy to the hospital.
• And as we started to drive away, I thought "If that had been me, how would I have gotten my photographs to my clients?"

There’s really nothing that I can say in my own defense. Not sure if I was scared, selfish, lazy, uncaring, sage, in shock, respectful, detached, or a combination thereof, but I don’t want to act the same way again, and it makes me think that I need to have a clear mission statement for what I would do in a similar situation in the future. And I’ve been reflective since, wondering if this is a sign that everything having gone so well is now a thing of the past. I’ve thought about cutting my trip short, and being at home with the people I love. In any case, this is where my head is at…spinning a bit, to be sure.

Generosity in Moz

I’m writing from a place that could be nicknamed “The House of Fans”. 21 fans in a restaurant that might hold twice that many people…maybe. But it creates a nice breeze in the tropics of Mozambique, though it luckily cools off in these parts a bit in the evening. I’m waiting for a veggie pizza which will be a nice meal after a long, long day of photography for a group that’s promoting chicken farming as a way to improve their standard of living in the northern part of this country.

It’s been a very full 24 hours in Mozambique, and one that started with some amazing generosity. I arrived by plane in Nampula, the country’s third largest city but not huge by any means. Problem was that when I got to the airport, there was no money exchange office and the ATM would not take my card. As taxi drivers vied for my business, I tried to use my broken Portuguese to find out what it might cost to get there, and explain to them that I’d need to change money along the way. My Portuguese failed me, but luckily an airport officer took pity on me and made it his job to get me into the city. So he’s nice person number one.

He found a driver, Suleiman, who spoke English, and I told him where I wanted to go. He reported that the particular hotel was no longer in service, but that most of the hotels would change my money for me. So I picked another place, we hopped in his truck, and we were on our way. When we arrived at the hotel, they did have a room, but did not exchange money. So Suleiman said, “no worries, you can pay me tomorrow”, and thus became nice person number two.

But before Suleiman left, he had a conversation with the hotel manager to explain my plight, and got him to waive the pre-payment requirement. He said as long as I was staying for several days, I could pay later. Nice person number three.

Then I did find an ATM that gave me money (nice machine number one), but what I really needed to do was to make a phone call to the people I’d be working with and the mobile phone I had didn’t seem to be working. So I tried to talk to the guy on the street who sold cell phone minutes. He connected me to a bank guard who connected me to his boss, the bank manager, who ended up lending me his phone for me to make the important call. Nice person number four.

And in turn, nice #4 connected me to nice #5 when he learned that I needed to upgrade my cell service. Nice person number five, after a long day of work, offered to take me in his car to the place where they sell the SIM cards and minutes. Within five minutes, we were there, and my phone was back up and running again in no time. Calls were made and plans fell into place for the next couple of days.

But not to be outdone by all who had come before him was nice person number six. I had seen a pharmacy on my way to the cell phone store, and was in dire need of a decongestant since I had picked up a nasty runny nose and wanted to sleep well, but of course when I got back to the pharmacy, it had just closed. I stood outside the door, face like a sad puppy dog, as a few employees milled around inside. And once they saw how cute and cuddly I was (or perhaps how pathetically sad I was), one of them came to the door to ask me what I needed. He first tried to refer me to the list of other pharmacies that were open late that night—most were a bit far away—and then finally just said, “why don’t I just help you here”. So he took me back inside, spent about 10 minutes with me to figure out what would be the best medication, and then let me pay less than the cost when he couldn’t come up with the proper change. And this reminds me that I had promised to go back with the 50 Meticais to pay off my debt to this very generous man. I’ll do that right now.

I’d like to think that a string of generosity like this would happen in the States, but I highly doubt it. I guess that it could happen, as anything is possible in Land of Opportunity, but it seems a lot less likely than having a person of color or a woman elected as president. And it saddens me to know this. And sometimes I wonder why I’m OK about calling such a place home.

From Swahili to English to Portuguese

Dar es Salaam is definitely the most uncomfortably hot place that I’ve been to since Ghana. Not quite as hot, mind you, and the use of air conditioning here seems to be more widespread, but it’s definitely hotter than it should be, and I really wonder how many people like it this hot.

I took the ferry over from Zanzibar early this morning so that I could buy my airline ticket for northern Mozambique, where I’m going this afternoon. So I’ve got a few hours to explore the city and get my head ready to go from Swahili to English to Portuguese. I’m very lucky because the two women in the Mac store, Samira and Edy, are holding my suitcase for me, sent me over to a decent fast food place, and then are going to steer me to the inexpensive bus that will take me to the airport. And I’m not even buying the power source cord from them since it’s twice the price that it is in the States and the current makeshift version seems to be working OK. Famous last words, I know, I know.

I forgot to kiss the sand in Zanzibar before boarding the ferry, so I just blew kisses into the mist, because I’ll definitely be back. It was really one of my favorite places on earth, and there’s so much more to see. I’m glad that my initial love for the place held strong, and perhaps even deepened, and I could really see myself even living there one day.

If you’ve not been to Zanzibar, it’s hard to describe how fascinating the labyrinth-like alleys are. Very few of the Stonetown “roads” are open to cars—fact is they just wouldn’t fit—but they snake around the town, full of activity, and are delightful to explore. None seem to come to a dead end, and while I rarely knew where I was going, I knew that I’d always come out at the beach or the port or the market road, and from there I could get to anywhere that I was going. And besides the alleys filled with touts and tourist shops—and these are relatively few in the larger scheme of things—you won’t find nicer people, willing to help you find your way, or talk to you about politics, religion, or Zanzibar.

In one of my encounters, I came across a taxi driver who had three of the real Obama campaign stickers on his car. I asked him about them and he told me that we were standing at the official headquarters of “Zanzibar for Obama 08”, and that the campaign had sent over hundreds of stickers. Soon we were joined by Muhammed Alay, the campaign manager—also a taxi driver—who shared with me how “the campaign” had filled petitions with 300,000 signatures—in an archipelago that has only 1 million people—and published them in the paper in their support of Obama for President…of the World. “Not for president of the United States but for president…of the world”, said Alay, and he did so in a way that sounded just a bit like Zanzibar’s most famous native son, Freddie Mercury, in his Queen rendition of “We are the Champions”.

For those of you who have not been out of the country since the election, and it might be especially so here in East Africa, the love for Obama is unmistakable, and the love for me, by extension, is just slightly less. I got to play some beach soccer yesterday with a group of about 30 young people, and the guy that I was guarding was nicknamed “Obama”. When I asked him how he got that name, he said that it was because he was the best goal scorer and “could not be beat”, and somehow it was more of a compliment than calling him “Ronaldo”, “Gerrard” or “Messi”, and this was on the soccer field.

And that’s another reason why I love Zanzibar. It’s a political place, and folks are comfortable talking about international issues, and about the important place that Zanzibar holds in the confluence of Arab, Swahili, and Indian cultures. While 95% of Zanzibar is Moslem, it’s a very diverse group, and I’d be surprised to find more than a few radicals throughout the islands. Family is very important, as is cultural identity, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a better place to raise children. People look out for one another, it’s very safe (Morgan left his camera at a shop and came back a half hour later and it was there with the shopkeeper), and the beach, water, and alleyways offer infinite opportunities for good, clean fun. It’s one of those magical places—both intensely beautiful and intensely interesting—that for me will rank right up there with Valparaiso, Chile, Bhuj in western India, Kurdish Iraq, and maybe, possibly Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Sure Zanzibar has a fair number of tourists—and if it didn’t I’d likely have never made it here—but it seems to have a perfect balance. It has services and the infrastructure for visitors, but it also has a vibrant economy that seems to have nothing to do with tourism. I want to research the role that tourism plays in the economy, but on first blush, it seems that Zanzibar has struck the perfect balance. And that’s appropriate that such a perfect place has struck the perfect balance. Perfect, in fact.

I Love Zanzibar

(from Saturday night)



I love Zanzibar. So, I’ve only been here maybe five hours, but I just love Zanzibar. And it’s 10:30 at night and still 90 degrees outside and inside—way too hot for sleeping—but I still love Zanzibar. With touts in my face, with mosquitoes buzzing about, with too many tourists, I’m in love with Zanzibar.

Morgan and I are staying at a wonderful place right near the port. It’s off-season so we’re paying $25/night for a relatively palatial room with a really cool bathroom and a balcony overlooking a lush courtyard. And to top it all off, I have a canopied California king size bed, and if properly accompanied, this place could quickly become—as it was described to me—one of the most romantic places on earth. Without the romance, I’ll have to settle for the free breakfast served between 8-10AM.

This hotel rather reminds me of a place where my friend, David Belda, and I stayed in Havana Vieja, only at about a quarter of the price. Morgan suggested that the architecture here is likely from around the same time as that of Havana Vieja since there are certainly some similarities. I’m very excited to explore the city in the daytime hours to see the combination of Indian, Arab, and Swahili cultures coursing through the streets of this picturesque city.

We even had dinner tonight at a place that was very reminiscent of Cuba, only better. It’s a twenty person restaurant on the veranda of some people’s home here, and we were brought dish after dish of local food. Except we were the only two people there. Seems like business for them dropped off a fair amount after the embassy attacks in Dar and Nairobi, as the proprietor suggests that business has not been so good in the last ten years. In any case, the location was delightful, the food was quite tasty—including some of the best dal that I’ve ever had with tomatoes and cardamom—and I loved that the restaurant was in these people’s home. It’s called Sambusa’s Two Tables, and was recommended to me by my semi-food snob friends, David and Tina, who live and eat in San Francisco, but describe it as one of their favorite restaurants on earth.

Country #3

(from Monday/Tuesday)

My first impression upon arriving in Tanzania was “these people aren’t very nice”. They didn’t readily look me in the eyes, didn’t consistently smile and say “hello”, and didn’t always return my wave. Was it that I didn’t speak Swahili? Was it that the town we were in, Arusha, had a fair number of foreign visitors? Was I losing my charm, my intrigue?

And then within 24 hours, I realized that Tanzanians are perfectly nice and perfectly friendly. It’s just that very few people on the planet can compete with the Ugandans in this arena, so everyone looks bad in relation to them. So it was really just a matter of changing my perspective, and perhaps lowering my expectations. I ended up kind of liking Arusha: there was something both sort-of, semi-cosmopolitan and quite traditional about it. From the guide books, I thought that it might be little more than a jumping off point for trekkers and safari-goers, but it’s definitely a real city with a lot more commerce than that. And unlike the real cities in my beloved Uganda, there’s a lot more poverty and rarely a block without beggars. From what I’ve seen and heard, Tanzania is in a lot worse shape economically and health-wise than Uganda, and my guess is that my work over the next several days will bear this out.

But the small part of Tanzania that I’ve seen also suggests that this will be an amazingly beautiful country. The drive from Arusha to Keratu, where we are now, was brilliant, and I knew that I was in Africa when I saw two zebras to the side of the road. I had seen baboons in Uganda, but these were zebras, and I’m told that we’ll likely see elephants and frickin’ giraffes (my all-time favorites) as we drive today to Endulen. It makes me wonder a bit why people go on safaris when they’ve got giraffes on the cheap as we travel from one town to the next. With this said, I’m sure that I’d love seeing the animals that I’d see on safari, but I absolutely can’t afford to go and likely don’t have time for it, so it’s nice to be happy with the occasional wild animal sighting as I go about doing my nonprofit photography.

And maybe I’ll even get the chance to talk to the animals. Might be as easy as speaking to the average Tanzanian. While English and Swahili are the official languages, even minimal English seems rather rare in this part of the country, and I’ve been remiss in learning much, if any, Swahili. And I should. Both because it would help me, but also because it’s got to be one of the prettiest sounding languages I’ve ever heard. Some of the greetings are, in my poor transliteration, “salaam”, “mambo”, and “habari”, and some of the responses are “nzeri”, “poa”, and “sijambo”. Great language, and I’m sure that knowing it would open lots of doors and bring smiles to many a face. Of late, I’ve been interested in studying languages because of their functionality, and this is the first in a while that I’ve been inspired to learn because of its beauty. Who knows if I’ll follow through on actually learning it, but I’m putting it near the top of my list right after Hindi, which I’m hoping to study in the summer, and before Farsi. I’m told that I’ll be meeting some folks in the next couple of days from a tribe that speak a click language. Not high on my list of priorities…yet! But it reminds me of my good friend, Will, who would conjugate “click” using Spanish rules as we traveled the world. So, I’ll sign off with his version of click language meets Spanish that still sticks in my head so many years later: “click, clickas, clicka, clickamos, clickeis, clickaron.”

Country #2

Greetings from Kenya where I now introduce myself as Barack Obama. They don’t believe me but get a good belly laugh out of it nonetheless. The immigration officer (normally members of the stick-up-the-ass fraternity) even let me take his picture when he learned that we were Obamabrothers, but still would not waive my visa fee. My new identity will not last long as we’ll be here less than 24 hours, but I’ll have fun with this a few more times to be sure. It should be good for at least one more terrorist fist bump from the conductor on the bus, and from some of the fellow travelers under the age of five. It’s with that crowd that I really excel. I give out little bananas, “courtesy of Barack Obama”, and ask mothers if they “would like to have President Obama hold their baby”. They do. I give them the tender care that Malia and Sasha got as the bus rolls down the road. Morgan acts as the paparazzi, capturing images of the children in BHO’s hands. And then it’s time for breastfeeding so I relinquish the child…my work on this bus is now over.

The Traveler's Paradox

(this is from sometime in the wee hours between Saturday and Sunday)

Yesterday, Morgan and I spent our last day in Uganda visiting Sipi Falls. We had heard amazing things about the falls and in general, they didn’t disappoint. High in the foothills over Mbale, the falls are nestled amongst banana and coffee trees in beautiful countryside. While it’s not at the top of the list of tourist destinations in Uganda, it was easily the most touristy place that we visited. And while the beauty was unmistakable, it was in some ways the ugliest place that I experienced.

I’ll remember Uganda as the home of super friendly people, where generosity far surpasses aggression, where smiling curiosity is the norm, where strangers are made to feel very welcome. I didn’t feel that at Sipi Falls. I saw Ugandans jaded by a sea of visitors, trying to sell us whatever they could. I saw a place where capitalism rules the day, and where honesty is only used when convenient. In short, I saw many of the qualities of a border post—generally some of the slimier places on earth—nestled gorgeously up in the verdant hills.

I don’t blame the Ugandans for this. They’re just playing the game as anyone likely would if visitors were over-running your home. It’s a transaction, and transactions are by definition less authentic than fascination and/or curiosity about the other. And it’s also something that I hope doesn’t happen to other parts of Uganda, the Uganda I came to know and love.

Now what I’d be most interested to learn is whether the falls have brought a higher standard of living, better health indices, and more education, among other things, to the community. If that’s the case, I can’t argue their actions. But if it’s just changed the type of work and their way of being, then it seems rather tragic. And if it’s created a dependency on something that at some point will dry up, then it’s altogether problematic (though I can’t imagine the falls drying up, though I guess they literally could).

I think that the paradox for many travelers is that we want to find a place that’s untouched, yet by touching it, we somehow dilute it. And perhaps for the first ten, or hundred, or ten thousand, the community will remain mostly “authentic” but then a time will come when it’s become saturated, where attitudes have changed, where lifestyles and work choices are tailored to the visitor, and then we want to move on to the next untouched place. Or we look to one of these untouched places and think to ourselves “wouldn’t this place be great with cabins along the river or with a restaurant with cold beers”, and slowly we want to take all the exotic and soften it with the comforts of home. In the end is there anyplace we can visit that we can both love to pieces without taking pieces of it, or breaking it into pieces?

When I studied Development Studies a few decades back, I was definitely more eloquent with the ins and outs of such things. I am no longer. Now I think that I’ve just become more aloof. I don’t want to go to where the flood of other travelers are going. Somehow for me those places are kind of ruined. Yet do I always realize that my trailblazing along the road less traveled might be pushing more communities down that slippery slope?

Movin' on Out

(this is from Friday...)

I've been grappling with a fair amount of computer issues/diarrhea over the last few days, and I'm happy to report that the former was worse than the latter, but both are on the mend. We've been staying with some nice folks over our last few days in Uganda and should be in Kenya and maybe even Tanzania by the end of the weekend. We're moving this business along.

One thing that's clear as I leave Uganda is that if I were to go nowhere else on this trip, it would have been a wonderful experience, just because Uganda has been so interesting, so photogenic, and the people have been so nice. And yet, I'm not sure that I would jump at the chance to return. And that's a bit strange because I love stories, have collected a bunch, have felt safe, have been treated very generously, but it's not gotten under my skin like some other places I've visited...yet.

The Adventure Continues

A short post since I’m trying to upload some important things in a country where uploading should not take place…Count your lucky stars for high speed internet in the States—even for dial up for that matter!

The power cord/transformer for my Mac rather exploded the other day when I plugged it in at an office run by a generator. It was not a happy moment, and we scrambled a bit to see where we could find a new one. But then we figured, we’re in the land of cheap labor so why not try to get it fixed here. And this is where the adventure continues…

So while I was working this morning for Hope for Ugandan Students, Morgan was running around Mbale with a computer repairperson, fixing something that shouldn’t have been fixed, and it involved screwdrivers, hammers, pliers, running around on foot and motorcycle, pulling parts from various types of machines, and outstandingly, it worked. There’s more to this story but he’ll tell the whole thing at the slide show in the Spring. For the moment, here are a few pix.

A Photographer Again

I feel like a photographer again. Not always a great one. Not always an ethical one. But a photographer again. When I left DiversityWorks in 2005, my intent was to be a full-time photographer. I’ve failed. I think that what I soon realized was that I needed to be a three quarters-time lazaholic to reverse my workaholic ways, and photography was one of the things that got put to the side, unintentionally. So in the course of these past four years, I’ve done a lot LESS photography than I did during my time at DiversityWorks, and with the exception of a trip to West Africa and some jobs here and there, I’ve not really done any photography. It’s gotten to the point that when people ask me what I do, and I say “photographer”, I often feel disingenuous.

But now I’m a photographer, or at least I feel like one again. The feeling actually started about a month before the trip when I began contacting groups about doing photography for them. It meant me updating my resume, realizing that my work over the last ten years or so was really thin. It meant me researching groups that do work that I both admire, and that matches my style of photography. It meant me putting myself out there to groups and individuals, and trying to make a compelling case for why they should hire me for a day or a week or somewhere in between. And it was exciting, surprising, challenging, and fulfilling. I felt alive.

And not only have I felt like a photographer since arriving in Uganda, but I’ve acted like one. I’ve taken thousands of pictures in this, one of the most photogenic places that I’ve ever visited, and some of them might be really good. And I’ve also taught photography, both formally and informally, and I’ve not been all bad at it. The last several days, I’ve led two short workshops for women who will be documenting their communities through the Zion Project. The first group was in one of Northern Uganda’s many Internally Displaced Persons camps and the second was with Congolese refugees who are living in Gulu and often working as prostitutes. Both groups have stories to tell, and my job was to help them do it through photography. Many of you may know that I was soliciting camera donations before my trip, and Morgan and I carried 28 cameras and more than 40 rolls of film to Uganda to donate to this project. And while I cursed this extra bulk and weight in my bags for the first two weeks, I’m so glad that we did it, and so appreciative of the generosity of people who put their old cameras into the hands of new photographers. It’s of course impossible to say what the results will be, but I’m told that there will be a show of the women’s work in both San Francisco and the greater DC area in May of this year. And even if the photos suck, and some undoubtedly will, these women have an amazing story, and I hope those of you who live in these areas will come out just to hear some of these vignettes about their lives. Those absolutely will not suck.





Nor will the stories that I’ve collected along the way. I’m very conscious of the fact that I’m not telling all the stories on this blog, and that I’m even intentionally leaving out some of the most golden nuggets, because I know that there will be photography shows that come out of this trip, and I want all of you who are reading this religiously, even if it’s only a few of you, to be able to come and be delighted by new stories to accompany the many many photographs. And that’s likely all an ego thing, because when I do a photo show, one very clear goal is to have all the guests either 1) fall in love with me, or 2) fall in love with me all over again. So come to the show and feed my ego. Or don’t and I’ll add an epilogue after my show, along with a link to a photo gallery, to fill in some of the blanks.

With this said, not all of the photographs have been winners, and I realized yesterday that I shot a whole bunch of indoor shots in dark huts that are painfully out of focus. But I think it’s all part of the process of getting back into the game, remembering who I am as a photographer, and using the camera as an effective tool. And to be honest, I don’t know how good I am nor how good I can be since making good photographs here is like shooting fish in a barrel. And ultimately I will judge my work on this trip to a great extent by how it’s received by you, the viewers; how they attract you to want to learn more, engage you in discussion, inspire you to reflect, and do something the same or differently in your lives.

Being back in the photo game is also challenging me to ‘do the right thing’, or to call myself on it when I don’t. I’ve been guilty of taking photographs of people without asking them, something I claim to never do. I’ve been guilty of aiming my wide angle lens at a landscape or cityscape and including a non-assuming bystander in the picture…by design. And I’ve not hatched a plan to get photos to everyone I’ve photographed, also something that I like to think that I try to do religiously. But at least I’ve got 5-6 more weeks to right this ship, to be the photographer that I want to be, or to come to terms with the fact that I’m not only a flawed human being, but a flawed photographer.

250,000 Shillings

I want to start by saying that I love the comments that people leave, and if you want me to blog more, please leave more comments (or at least send me notes via email). With this said, the bandwidth and electricity have not been good of late, and that’s one of the real limiting factors for blogging, as is my time. I find it interesting that I’ve been busier on this trip than when I’m at home (at least when I’m doing NGO work along the way), and find that a good number of my hairs are turning gray. At this rate, I might be all gray by my return to the States. Now onto the subject at hand…

I had a really interesting conversation with an Anglican priest earlier this week. He was one of the town leaders in a community where the Bushenyi Alliance for Rural Health and Development, one of the groups with which I was working, was inaugurating a health clinic. He told me about the problems facing his community, as well as the resources, and shared with me that the typical farmer in his community will earn 250,000 Ugandan Shillings in cash over the course of the year. Mind you, this is above and beyond the food that they use to feed their families and crop payments used to pay rental on land, but it’s still only $130 in family income for an entire year! And to think that I’m struggling to live on $130 for a week around here. I don’t know how they do it. Or maybe I do, but the thought of it is so exotic that I refuse to really consider the possibility.

The cost of living in Uganda is quite cheap, and consistently so across the board…that is to say for people traveling with dollars. The boda boda rides that I wrote about in an earlier entry run anywhere from 25 cents to one dollar for the typical city ride. And today, we went for a ride to a refugee camp likely 30-35 km away from Gulu that ran us $2.50….and I found it expensive. Hotel rooms at decent places run $10-20 a night, food can easily be found for $2-5 a meal, and bus travel runs about a dollar an hour.

In terms of Ugandans who are not rural farmers, some folks with formal employment make as little as $60/month. Some, of course, make more, but even food service folks in the capital—where things are not always cheap—make only twice that amount. And today we met two groups of Congolese refugees who are supporting themselves through prostitution—they refer to it as “through any means possible”—and learned that the typical screw makes them fifty cents to a dollar, just about the same price as a boda boda ride. Honest question: which would I enjoy more?

But while Ugandans don’t make very much money, or at least a good slice of them don’t, there’s not a lot of poverty. In the North where I am now, there is definitely more since many people are displaced by war and without jobs and/or land, but conditions are certainly not dire. Uganda is a rich country. A rich country with problems, but that can be said about most places. What’s clear is that Uganda has it a lot better than many countries I’ve visited, perhaps most.

Quick Hits

I’ve been in Southwest Uganda the last several days, working with a group called the Bushenyi Alliance for Rural Health and Development. Between the seven hour drive from Kampala and the relatively full days of work, I don’t have a lot of time to write something really substantive. But here are some bits and pieces from since I last wrote (and some from before that):

•Rural Uganda is beautiful. Pretty green everywhere, and full of banana trees in this part of the country. Streetside stands with beautiful fish, tropical fruit, and one photogenic moment after another.

•Ugandans don’t seem to litter all that much. And what is littered gets cleaned up pretty fast. I see people sweeping everywhere and all the time, and while their bodies don’t always smell fresh and clean, there’s a real premium on keeping public spaces clean and tidy.

•Morgan noted the other day that we’ve not seen any public drunkenness, which I would have expected to be commonplace in the not-so-smart part of Kampala where we had been staying. But we’ve seen very little drinking and not too much smoking (and one man was sure to ask me if I’d be bothered by his smoke before he lit up). One booze-related tidbit is that many types of hard alcohol are sold in sealed plastic capsules—holding maybe 2 shots—and it’s quite interesting for me to see people pull those out in a bar, or suck directly from the capsule.

•People are relatively healthy here. There seems to be a lot of natural resources, and I’ve not seen any malnutrition or blatant public health problems that weren’t being addressed. Even at the rural clinic today, I would have expected to see far more patients with advanced medical problems than I did. This is not to say that there aren’t health concerns here—and HIV/AIDS remains big—but it doesn’t feel like it’s at a crisis level. The one glaring problem seems to be with dental health. Rotting teeth everywhere!

•Ugandans continue to be some of the nicest, most gracious people who I’ve met. If only I could leave my aggression at the door, as they seem to have, the world would be a better place.

•If I could make all of the potholes in the world go away, that would be one of my priorities after food, shelter, health and justice, peace, love, and harmony.

•The rain is really really really coming down hard right now! And it’s nice to be in a room with a very sturdy roof.

• The generosity of relative strangers amazes and delights me, and I need to be more generous.

•I had a wonderful dress-buying experience at the equator, and will tell the story at my slide show upon my return. And no, it’s not for me.

•And speaking of stories that I’ll be telling, I’m looking forward to sharing some from my day at an all girls school. Apparently, I melt the hearts of at least some Ugandan high school girls, and was delivered a few love letters today after I photographed and talked to their class. I actually felt like quite a celebrity in their company, thanks in no small part to Obama. All liked that I voted for Obama, and wanted me to carry their regards for the president back to the States.

•The internet is everywhere. Slow high speed access is available in what seem to be the smallest of towns, and here in Uganda it’s quite reasonably priced (half an hour for the price of a soda).

Ugandan Cameraman

First I want to say that I’ve been remiss in acknowledging that all the videos from yesterday’s post were taken by Morgan, as have been about half of the photos on the blog so far. Morgan has, in fact, made many pictures of me in the first week of this journey, yet the title of this blog entry does not refer to him. While as a tandem, we might rival just about any other camera-wielding duo in the country, at least in terms of quantity of shots, we were both humbled by one of our encounters yesterday.

Yesterday, Morgan and I spent a rather sublime day just walking around central Kampala, meeting people, having interesting conversations, buying a few things that we didn’t need, and taking some pictures. At one place, we stopped to talk to some boda boda drivers, who were themselves delightful, and one of them upon learning that we were photographers, ran over to find a real life Ugandan “cameraman” for us to meet. Kavuma Johnson was very handsomely dressed in a dark suit, offering up his services for weddings, graduations, birthday parties, and portraits to the Valentine’s Day revelers. Around his neck hung a twenty year old Canon AE-1, and as we took some pictures together, he mentioned that he’s been trying to get into digital photography.

Now I’ve never been one to fully embrace the generosity tenets of Karma Kitchen, where I’ve been volunteering once a month for over a year, and I’ve certainly not been as generous as I could have been thus far on this trip, but when I heard “digital photography”, it was as if Nipun and company from Karma Kitchen were the ones whispering it in my ear. Quickly I ran back to the nearby hotel and grabbed one of the many point and shoot cameras donated for this trip, this one an early digital model, and brought it to Kavuma. He was so flabbergasted. He asked “this is for me?” and then promised to pray for us (I get prayed for a lot here, mostly because I am Jewish—clearly in the wrong camp as far as many Ugandans are concerned) as he tried out his new camera, courtesy of either Skater and Liz in Tucson, or one of the teachers at the College Preparatory School in Oakland. Your camera has gone to a good home, even if it didn’t make it all the way to the resettlement camp in the north (we still have 27 cameras for that purpose, and I’ll write about that project in a future entry), and Kavuma was so thankful that within a few hours, he was at the front desk of the hotel, delivering 4x6 glossies of the three of us with our cameras, that he had printed from his new camera. There were many other lovely things that happened yesterday, and others that are sure to happen today and in the upcoming days, but this one will stick with me for a while.

Loving Boda Bodas on Valentine's Day

I LOVE boda bodas. And if I were to die on one of them today, I’m pretty sure that I’d die happy. Much like India’s motor rickshaws and Benin’s scooters, Uganda’s motorcycles weave in and out of traffic like whirling dervishes, almost with the grace of synchronized swimming gone a tad awry. I’ve never been a huge fan of amusement park rides, but somehow I think that the rush is a similar one. I’m certainly not following my father’s common mantra “safety first” as I ride them, but it is one of the first things that I utter to the driver, and remind him every so often to rein him in just a wee bit. In any case, here in Kampala, they’re certainly the fastest and cheapest way to travel, especially during rush hour, though it seems a bit ironic that I use them to travel back and forth to the main hospital in a city where traffic accidents are often fatal, and where there’s no EMT services.




While the hospital is perched on one of Kampala’s seven hills in a rather serene setting, the ride back into town jolts me back into the realities of urban Africa. And not just because of the boda boda ride. Morgan and I have been staying in what is described as “the smartest place in this not-so-smart part of the city”, and the throngs of people, plumes of dust and diesel, and products moving every which way certainly excite and enliven the senses. Whereas in other parts of the world, or for other people, central Kampala near the old taxi park could be described as “terrifying”, “exhausting”, and/or “chaotic”, for me it’s none of those things, though it’s very close at times. Morgan and I were discussing the fine line between “vibrant” and “overwhelming”, and we concluded that the dividing line between the two is aggressiveness. It would be a bold statement to say that Kampala has none, but Ugandans here seem to be some of the more polite and kind people who I’ve met, and that becomes especially clear and important when you pack a thousand of them into one city block, and reduce the walking space perhaps in half with people hawking shoes, tomatoes, and magazines/newspapers. This should not come as a surprise since the two Ugandans who I’ve had any real interaction with in the States are sweet as sugar, but still it is, because if you packed even half the number of Americans into the same city block, there’d likely be no shortage of drama, and I imagine that I’d quickly feel overwhelmed.



I remember when I first traveled to sub-Saharan Africa almost two years ago and was shocked that I didn’t feel shocked by it. I expected swarms of humanity, poverty as far as the eyes could see, and a fevered sense of sexuality and aggression. As I tried to describe in the slide show following the trip, I’m not sure if these preconceptions were due to my racism or the media, or a combination thereof, but for the most part none could have been further from the truth. Outside of the markets, there weren’t so many people, there was poverty but not dramatically so, and Ghana happened to be the least sexualized country that I’ve ever visited (I've not yet been to the Vatican). So prior to this trip, I wondered if I’d be shocked this time around, if things would feel so new, so different, so foreign. I DID expect to be humbled by the poverty, the victims left behind by AIDS, the impact of years of civil war. And all those things may come, but I’ve been struck by how little abject poverty I’ve seen. While most Ugandans are by no means rich, most people seem active and employed in some fashion—many in the informal economy—and beggars are a far less common sight than in Berkeley or San Francisco.

Speaking of Berkeley and San Francisco, there are many people here from there, and from other parts of the States and Europe. International development and relief-type work is a major industry here, and “wazungu”, Swahili for white people (and more commonly used for anyone who is not black), are quite a common sight because of it. My friend Erin had told me that people would be yelling “mzungu” at me all the time, and I’m sure that will be true in more rural areas, but it’s not been at all the case in the cities we’ve visited so far. In fact, much more common once people know that I’m from the US is a string of Bugandan words which I don’t understand followed by “Obama”, which I do. And not only that but bumper stickers, calendars, and framed pictures of “the first African leader of the United States” right next to the framed picture of president of Uganda. It’s no doubt that Obama’s been excellent for the American brand. My contact at the hospital wasn’t sure whether it was because he’s black, he’s got Kenyan connections, or because of his politics, but people here love Barack Obama, and perhaps they now like me just a little more by extension. If nothing else, it’s nice to be able to quietly chant “O-bam-a, O-bam-a” as I walk down a crowded street and see smiles come to people’s faces. Can’t imagine that if I were saying “Sar-ko-zy, Sar-ko-zy”, and that’s kind of nice to be associated with something/someone so positive.

Six and a Half Percent

6.5%. Of the Ugandan population, 6.5% are HIV positive. And shockingly that’s very positive news around here. Not long ago, I was told that close to 20% of the country was HIV positive, so great strides have been made to curb the epidemic so dramatically (and George W Bush should be thanked for pouring a huge amount of resources into this arena—this may be his one positive legacy in my book). Yesterday I had the opportunity to work with doctors, nurses, public health workers, and teachers who are on the front line of the epidemic, and to spend a day with an entire clinic for the HIV positive. And I spent a lot of time wondering how this group, mostly women, had contracted the disease when in many cases, their husbands were HIV negative. I look forward to learning more about HIV and AIDS today as I return for a second day of photographic work at the Infectious Diseases Institute. And now would be the time to put in your order for nicely boxed three packs of Ugandan condoms. Smooth. Lubricated. And available free of charge. Perhaps the perfect way to show the one(s) you really love that you’ll be keeping your infectious diseases to yourself on this Valentine’s Day.

Uganda’s improvement in AIDS-related care may be coming at a great cost to other sectors of the health care delivery system. I had a conversation with one of the surgeons in the anatomy department here at the hospital who told me that there are almost no resources for surgical services—quite a marked contrast to how medicine is delivered in the States. He said that a fractured leg, generally addressed within 8 hours in the States, will often take up to 8 months here in Uganda, 8 months that the person misses work, 8 months when rehabilitation could have been taking place, and 8 months of time to develop permanent disabilities. It seems that so many people have gone into primary care and general medicine that there is a real dearth of surgeons and anesthesiologists, the latter’s work often done by people with far less training, leading to a very high fatality rate for such procedures. This has led to some interesting mental gymnastics for me, since I’m not sure that I ever really made the connection between the work of the primary care physicians, in the fields of AIDS care or otherwise, and the surgeons that sometimes are called upon to serve the same group of patients. Nowhere did that become more clear than today during a visit to the cancer ward here at the hospital, where AIDS patients, hundreds of times more likely to contract many forms of cancer than the average Ugandan, were awaiting advanced procedures. I hope that you won’t ever have to see the pictures of the three men who I photographed today whose private parts had become ravaged by disease, the first of whom had a penis that was so swollen that it was the size of a coke bottle…of the two liter variety. You won’t be getting a picture of that on this blog.

I’ve got lots more to say about my impressions, but I think that I’ll save that for another entry. So stay tuned for that.

Finally in Africa

While today is my third day in Uganda, it's my first day in the capital. And it's vibrant,  full of people, and smog.  The last few days were spent in the sleepy little airport town of Entebbe, made famous by Idi Amin and the Israeli raid on a hijacked plane. We were there to meet with folks from the Nile Basin Initiative, the group that is threatening to hire me to do work for them in nine countries from Egypt to Burundi.  That could extend my trip significantly and push me over fifty countries.  I have nothing more profound to say, so I'm going to keep this short and say a lot more after my next couple of days when I'll be photographing at Uganda's largest hospital.  Should be an eyeful.

PS. you all are invited to the Opening Night Party of Effendy's Inn tomorrow night. Live music, free buffet, and lots of Turkish Delight.  We're sitting here now, and they've asked us to come back tomorrow for this 500+ person party.

Ways of Flying

Many of my friends have been asking me this week about whether I’m excited about my trip. Sometimes I take the easy way out and say “yeah, it’s going to be great”, but that’s not really the truth. The fact is that when it comes to travel, I rarely get excited until I get on the airplane, and then I’m generally excited about the flight more so than the destination (and then I’m excited about the destination once I’m there). I’d like to say this is so because I’m living in the moment, but that’s just not the case. I know of few people in my circle of friends who live less in the moment than I, and it sometimes haunts me. I’m a planner. I look ahead. I have dreams that I never will come close to achieving, and that seems simultaneously OK and doesn’t stop me from coming up with new unattainable ones. Even when I’m watching my beloved TV shows, I’m multi-tasking, reading email invitations to do things, checking out baseball trade rumors, and doing other things to take me out of the moment. And I guess that means that I’m generally not happy with the moment, or at least that it’s not quite enough.

But I’m quite delighted with the current moment of being on this airplane. Even though I’m thinking ahead to how this writing might be published, I’m also very reflective of the fact that the woman next to me on my KLM flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam has taken a dramatically different approach to her travel experience than I. Shortly after take-off, she began to very systematically pull out her flight paraphernalia, which included her blanket, eye cover, inflatable neck-ring, a pillow, and presumably some sleeping pills. And she hasn’t moved in more than four hours. Sometimes I have to look over at her to make sure that she’s still there.

I, on the other hand, have read parts of a travel guide, watched a delightful movie, had a tasty vegetarian meal, and have reflected about how two people right next to one another and traveling to the same exact place can have such a dramatically different experience. And she’s slept through it all! Now this is not a value judgment, mind you, and I’m certain that I’m often the one who’s sleeping through things, but it’s got to make me think that when I’m in a car with a friend, and we’re going to the same place, that I could very well be having the experience of having just thoroughly enjoyed “Flash of Genius” while the other person could have just experienced a nightmare about his or her childhood. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it would be like to be able to have an out-of-body experience and watch myself as I interact with others around me, finding myself sometimes charming, sometimes repulsive, but regardless learning so much from the experience. And this seems to take it to a whole other level, the level of experiencing or knowing what the other is thinking and feeling. And it makes me think of a conversation that I had on my first flight today, where I sat between an oncological nurse and a popcorn salesperson, and the latter shaking his head and saying ‘I don’t think I could do what you’re doing, it just seems so foreign’, and me thinking that I can’t imagine my life any other way, AND that I’d also like to learn about popcorn, popcorn-making, and popcorn sales sometime in my life.

The last bit about today that I don’t want to forget is that I realized after my brother dropped me off at the airport today that I had forgotten to give him my wallet and all the stuff in it. This is a common thing that I forget to unload when I travel internationally, and it’s silly because I don’t need my library card, my Best Buy receipts, or my East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse credit slip in East Africa. And moreover, these things have value to me and I don’t want to lose any of them along the way. So I asked the nurse “can I ask you a favor. I’d like to give you my wallet, and leave you some money in it, if you could just mail it back to my place in Berkeley.” The only response that she could muster was “yeah, right”, presumably thinking ‘who’s stupid enough to give me their wallet with money in it’. And what it made me realize is that I am almost never shy to ask people something that seems totally reasonable to me and that I would absolutely do for someone else, and it’s not uncommon that it’s met with a less reasonable sounding response. And while we only spoke for 10-15 minutes on the flight, I have absolutely no doubt that she will indeed mail me back my wallet. It makes me realize that I have a lot of faith in humanity, and even though I love to judge people and call many of them idiots, I really believe that there’s good in everyone once we can get past all the other stuff.

Prologue

I want to first start off by saying that I never ever expected to have a blog. What important things do I have to say that I can’t say in front of a crowd of people at one of my slide shows? And when people are coming to my slide shows, they have what I hope are beautiful pictures to look at, pictures that help move along the story. I have always thought of writing—even though I do it a fair amount—as pain and suffering, much in the same way as I experience reading. My older brother, now he is a great writer, but I lack the elegance with words, the creativity about how to put them together, the sense of when to stop because I’ve said enough, or said too much.

Yet here I am endeavoring to put something out there, something that will likely be read by others, and I want to be very sure that I’m doing it not for them (or should I say “you”), but instead as a tool to crystallize my thoughts that I will certainly otherwise forget over time. I see myself as a storyteller, and I believe that ultimately the only thing that I’m collecting in my life is stories. There was a time when I thought that I had some really good stories in my life, and that if I could only string 10-20 of them together, I’d have something, and I could often keep a group of people rapt in attention going from one to the next. But I’ve started to forget these stories, or at least the details of the stories, and the specifics of how I felt at the time, and that process of forgetting makes the stories feel cheaper to me and makes me think that I’m not quite as interesting as I once was. So if I’m being most authentic through this process, I hope that the result will be to prove to myself that I can be interesting/reflective/relevant, that writing can be a tool for remembering, and that I can still have a slide show where people will show up to see my work and I won’t have told all the interesting stories beforehand.