How we feel

Hello Friends,

In a world where so many cannot meet their basic needs, we have a tendency of dismissing feelings. What’s a bit of loneliness compared to an empty stomach, or a bit of sadness to a lack of shelter? While it is true that basic needs are essential for survival and have a strong effect on how we feel, these past few weeks I have been awoken to the power of feelings.

Feelings are like the guy who shines shoes near by our home in Kampala. I see him every morning, arranging shoes on a mat, taking out his supplies, preparing for a day of work. I think he makes me smile every day, but I never notice until the days he is not there and some happy feeling I had not recognized is missing. Rarely do I wake up and think ‘I am so thankful I did not wake up sad!’ Until I wake up sad and miss those happy mornings when I wake up from a nice dream and feel deep in my heart a sense of purpose.

A few months ago each of the community organizations we work with through Bantwana Initiative trained a group of community volunteers on psychosocial support. It is a fancy term for mobilizing community members to support each other in social, emotional, and spiritual ways. This month I had the opportunity to visit some of these volunteers and observe their sessions with families caring for orphans and other vulnerable children. Usually when we visit partners, we focus on the tangible results, how the maize is doing, how many goats have been sold, are children going to school, etc. This time, the volunteers focused on how families are feeling.

Someone asked me once during graduate school what keeps me up in the long nights of studying. I would have liked to have answered curiosity or passion, and perhaps those are there, but often it is pure fear of failure that kept me going. I’ve come to see fear as a source of motivation. This week I realized, I was never really afraid of anything, perhaps highly concerned, but fear has taken a new meaning for me, and it is paralyzing.

A colleague and I are squatting under a tree to observe a session. A woman in a bright pink dress is leaning against the mud wall of her house and looking at the sky. A small child is resting between her legs. The volunteer is asking about how things have been going with her. ‘Have you been taking your ARVs?’ (treatment for people affected with HIV). ‘Yes, I take them at night or I feel dizzy, but people say the supply is finished. Next month they might charge us for the treatment.’ The conversation continues and the volunteer tries to encourage the woman to keep up with her maize production as soon it will be harvest time.

‘Do you know where to sell your maize mandam?’

‘If I am here, I will sell. I know where. Until then, I buy my children an egg each day, when I am not here, they will remember that.’
Fear – immense and powerful fear – not just of death but of those who stay behind. A fear that is lived each day when looking into children’s eyes, or caring for the maize plants, or going to the clinic, not knowing if today is the day the drugs will not be there.

In another household we find a pair of elderly grandparents caring for their granddaughter who has a severe disability. The mother had died and the father, their son, has taken off and refuses to care for the child. The grandparents show us the maize field they planted with support from the program. At an age when they should be cared for, these two kinds souls are working the fields for their granddaughter. For this visit we go inside, since the girl is paralyzed and is too heavy for the grandparents to carry outside. We enter a dark mud-walled house that is covered with colorful drawings and newspapers. The girl is 13 but is so stunted she does not look a day over 6 years. Her head is swollen due to water around the brain, a condition that has paralyzed her completely. I am thinking of the son of these kind people; a man who leaves his own daughter behind for greener pastures, and the love of his parents tested. Parents are supposed to love their children unconditionally, do they still when children neglect their own children? I am lost in thoughts when the grandmother starts crying. A colleague translates for me.

‘We took her to the referral hospital with help from some people in the community. At first we were happy to see other children in her condition. We felt like at least she is not the only one. We even saw some kids who were getting better. But when the doctor saw us he said we came too late. There is nothing he can do. We came too late, too late, maybe if we came earlier.’

Guilt, it eats away at this woman’s soul, feasting on her sadness, adding hardships to her hard days. We comfort her that it is clear they had done the best they can. We spend some time with the young girl introducing ourselves and she smiles back. We all leave feeling guilty, that we, too, came too late.

The backdrop to these experiences is beautiful scenery. We walk along green mountain and valleys, sometimes picking guavas off trees, and I feel like I am inside an encyclopedia of where food comes from. I always ask, ‘what is this one, or that one,’ pointing at anything green. It is hard to explain that we do not see how things grow when you buy everything in a supermarket. I wish we got to see more often all the lives that are touched by what we consume… perhaps it would make us more caring as consumer, more careful and also more generous. At times the scenery seems misaligned with the hardships we find, like someone forgot to change the set between shows, but mostly, I am thankful for this beauty, the rest it provides for the heart. I am thankful that courageous people live in such beauty.

At another house we sit under a tree with chickens running around. An old woman is discussing intensely with one of the volunteers. To her right, on a straw chair, sits a young woman with a disability who cannot talk and has difficult moving her arms. A small child stands next to her staring to the side. When my colleague turns to translate for me, I ask her not to. I already know, I was briefed before we got there, and hearing it again is too painful. The young woman was raped and no one knew about it until she showed signs of being pregnant. Now, the old grandmother is tired. She is old and she already spent her life caring for a child with a disability, and now, she does not want to take care of another child. Discussions continue intensely and I listen to bits of the translation – keep the child, give him to the father’s family, demand payment, involve local leaders. I phase in and out. I just look at that child. I heard once that to grow into healthy adults children need at least one person who thinks they are number one. Will this child have that? We try to interact with the young boy, but after 2 years of emotional neglect he is non-responsive. ‘The pathways responding to affection in the brain are not developed,’ explains a colleague of mine. Children who do not know how to respond to love. We advise about next steps – ‘best interest of the child’ and ‘local leader involvement’ and other terms – when we leave that house I actually cry, silently and without attracting attention; we’re supposed to be ‘strong’ in this line of work. I thank my parents for teaching me from a young age how to accept love.

I do this for 5 days and I feel exhausted, yet our volunteers face these issues all the time. I wonder how they manage, and in later visits, I understand they persevere because they can see they are making an impact.

‘I was afraid to get tested,’ tell us a woman in a dark green dress, ‘but my friend here, this one, he helped me. He encouraged me and even took me to the place and stayed with me to get my results. Now I am on treatment and I am ok. I am not afraid anymore.’

Another woman runs out of her house to meet us at the road and gives me a huge warm hug. ‘These people, these friends of mine,’ she points at the volunteers, ‘they found me dying at my house, but I did not know why. I did not want to know why. They took me for testing and now I receive treatment. They even come with food sometimes.’

Tense relationships between grandparents who want their retirement and children who want their childhood have been mended as volunteers counsel families to share the work. Malnourished kids who could not walk a few months ago are playing happily as families were advised about kitchen gardens and healthy food for children. Community members have come together to construct shelters for families whose roofs had fallen in on them, literally! People have found motivation to participate in organic agriculture and animal husbandry as volunteers remind them that each hard day in the sun will result in school fees, medical treatment, and new clothes. Children facing stigma because their clothes are worn out or their parents have died of AIDS have someone who cares, who comes once a week to give them strength to ‘ignore those silly kids and focus on how smart you are.’ Volunteers come with nothing but notebook and a smile and they leave behind so much hope and companionship.

Hope is the magic ingredient – the energy that keeps people going even in the toughest of circumstances because tomorrow could be better. Love, or friendship, provides the ability to endure because together we are so much stronger. Next time I do a program budget I’ll make sure to include tons of hope and loads of love along side seeds, goats, and piglets.

I have also gotten to visit partners in Eastern Uganda, another beautiful part of Uganda, and to visit Sipi Falls, which was great.

Back in Kampala, cherishing the feelings of enjoying a new place, Pierre and I continue to settle in. The kids on the street have learned out names. I am Imba and Pierre is Pia or Mpira (which he likes because it means football). After a week in Western Uganda, I was greeted to hugs and before I even got home, Carol, my favorite little kid, announced to the whole street, ‘Imba, Imba, Pia is not home now, but come. Madina, Madina, Imba is back.’ Walking around our neighborhood, we also found where everyone dumps their garbage, in a huge pit down the hill from our house, and discovered that it is a prime bird watching place. There are the giant Uganda storks, which are not the nice kind in kids books, but dinosaur looking giant birds that are always filthy. Then among the garbage, sparkling clean and beautiful, as if immune to the chaos, are Uganda crested cranes, a majestic bird with a yellow crown. This time of year is also grasshopper season, which is a delicacy to eat. On our street people have set a giant trap which consists of really bright lights, iron sheets leading into buckets. At night, it looks like someone left the sun turned on, with millions of grasshopper swarming around, and kids and birds competing with each other to catch the spoils.


Hope you are feeling well.

Thanks for being in my life

Inbal
Pictures:


With community volunteers discussing a case


A family taking care of their kitchen garden


Stopping at a school to hear children sing about child rights



Fields of tea





And don't forget the coffee!



Walking around to visit households





Is that not the most beautiful school you have ever seen?!?


Now for Eastern Uganda - on the slopes of Mount Elgon




Sipi Falls

Update from Kampala

In the old days, when people still used ships to travel across continents, perhaps the transition to a new life was a bit more gradual. During the weeks at sea, the waves would slowly wash away habits and daily routines; the sun would fade the present into memories, like brightly colored clothes left to dry in the sun for too long. People would enter an in-between-space, ready to be filled with newness. These days, you can work a few hours in the morning, have lunch with your family, spend a blurry amount of time in lines, watching movies, eating neatly organized airplane meals, and then you arrive. Even now, a month after arriving in Uganda to work and live here for the foreseeable future, it is with disbelief that I write this update. It still feels unreal that I am actually here; I wake up every morning in surprise, gratitude, and a slight bit of confusion.

I arrived in Entebbe Airport, which is looking more and more like an international airport since it was renovated in 2007 for the Queen’s visit. At night, the drive from Entebbe to Kampala is a pleasant one, with no traffic and a cool breeze, the seven hills of Kampala looking green and calm, the darkness and distance, hiding the hectic city. The next morning I went to work, with a bit of jetlag and a lot of excitement to keep me awake. The Bantwana team, all of whom I have met before, welcomed me with wonderful friendliness and kindness. We’ve been busy since I got here, and with all the other changes in my life, work has provided a base in which to ground in. It has been great to be so much closer to the projects I work on, and in the coming weeks, as I visit all our field partners, I look forward to learning so much more.

Just two days after I arrived, chaos engulfed Kampala. I will not even pretend to understand the complexities and multiple reasons behind the violent riots that spread through Kampala for three days. The simplest explanation I heard numerous times was that before President Museveni’s rule kingdoms were abolished in Uganda. Museveni, some say in an effort to win allies, allowed kingdoms to return as cultural institutions. The largest kingdom in Uganda is Buganda, and its king is the Kabaka. In September, the Kabaka was invited to officially open a youth summit, an event with the government felt was more political than cultural, and he was denied to travel to the event. Buganda supporters started to set up for the Kabaka’s visit. The police intercepted the set-up, the violent clashes started between youth and police. The mood of violence quickly spread around Kampala, with numerous clashes around the city, which were exacerbated with general looting and lawlessness that attach on to massive riots. In general, people felt that the riots became larger than the issue itself, a venting of anger from youth, unemployed and uncertain about their future, that they have been left behind. It was very strange, as the part of Kampala where I live and work was largely unaffected, and it was hard to believe that the pictures coming in on the news were only kilometers away from us. Our office has a mzee (old man) who guards during the day, and he is so kind and gentle, I often felt that if anything happened our first instinct would be to guard him. While I felt very safe throughout the affair, a close friend got caught in the middle of the riots, and although she came back unharmed it was scary. Watching on the news how quickly Kampala fell into madness was alarming, especially with elections coming in 2011. With Pierre in Afghanistan, and violence in Kampala, my heart was heavy for a few days with the brutality that human beings are capable of creating. We have such potential to create so much beauty, yet so often we destroy. Fortunately, order returned fast. The city was heavily militarized for a few days, and life returned to normal. Only days after riots, markets were bustling again, a true testament to the resiliency of Ugandans. My sincere hope is that these riots will serve as a warning, a glimpse into the consequences of exclusion, discrimination, and violent confrontation, and in the long-run provide Uganda with more advocates for peace and justice; only time will tell.

With stability restored to the city, I started my endeavor to get settled and catch up with friends. I met with a real-estate broker, in a dark wooden shed with one bench next to a large market, and although I was a bit skeptical at the beginning, once we went out on the town, he was incredibly helpful. I really liked the first apartment he showed me, a small two-bedroom place, in a cute neighborhood. The dirt road is lined with little stalls selling basic groceries. I think of them as magic stalls as the vendors fit more into the tiny sheds than many department stores. On the street and there are lots of kids running around, with the occasional goats or cows passing by. There is always a group of women sitting around, washing clothes, cooking chapattis, and taking care of the small kids. When Pierre came for a day, between his Afghanistan and Democratic Republic of Congo consultancies, he saw the place, and we decided to take it. We are slowly getting to know people around us, and Pierre has already found some friends to play football with. My best neighborhood friends so far are Gideon, whose probably three years old, and Carol, most likely five years old, who hug me with such delightful enthusiasm each time I get home, as their mother greets ‘welcome back.’ In the past two weeks, since Pierre has been back from Congo, the apartment has progressed tremendously, and feels like a comfortable little home.

I have also gotten to see some old friends, including many of my Gulu friends and sisters, some were visiting Kampala and some live here now. Betty, my Ugandan mother, finally got to meet Pierre, and with our wedding coming soon, she reminded him of the Ugandan custom of paying dowry. Betty said that I am a good catch, Pierre is supposed to bring many cows, so many that when they stand in front of me once should not be able to see my legs! We might just organize a big party for everyone and call it even.

One of my Gulu sisters, Clare, took me to her friend’s introduction ceremony, which is considered the traditional wedding (often followed by a church wedding and reception, though usually people wait a few years for those to save up money). The introduction is when the man’s family comes to the bride’s home to negotiate on the bride price, or dowry. The negotiations take place in a closed room, and neither bride nor groom is involved. The bride is called in a few times, in case the groom’s family wants to ‘inspect’ anything; at this introduction the bride was called once so they could hear her voice and see her teeth. The women wear the traditional and colorful gomez dresses. The negotiations are supposed to take long as a sign of respect. These days, the price is usually agreed upon ahead of time, and the negotiations are part of the ceremony. I was told that in the past, sometimes negotiations took so long into the night, that people would sleep there and begin again the next day. I had another appointment that evening, and negotiations took long enough, that I actually had to leave before the party, though I was told an agreement was reached and a good celebration followed.

I also got to take a trip to Nairobi for work and got to see many of my Kenyan friends whom I have missed so much and I am so excited that being back in East Africa I will get to see more regularly.

On October 9, Uganda celebrated 47 years of independence. Pierre and I went to see the national celebrations. There was a very nice podium set up, for President Museveni and his guests of honor, which included Salva Kir, President of South Sudan. For many hours, thousands of people marched in enthusiastic military style in front of the president, each group carrying a banner, and expressing their love for God, Museveni, and the country. It was interesting that the national independence celebrations were very much party-based, all people marching were supporters of the NRM, Museveni’s party, and the theme for the day was ’47 years of independence, 23 years of stability,’ which is how long Museveni has been president.

For the next few months, Pierre and I look forward to getting to know more of Uganda, and of Kampala, which is a new city for both of us. It is a fascinating city, with parts of Kampala feeling quite rural and calm, and others so busy and hectic with commercial activity. It is a city where walking to work every morning I struggle with the heavy traffic and pollution, but also stop to admire the lush green hills and beautiful purple flowers covering the trees with such abundance that they fall into the gutters. It is a city where children in ironed uniforms walk every morning to the best schools in the country, and street kids walk on the same roads picking up trash, or begging. It is a city of contrasts, in a country filled with possibilities, and the exploring is just beginning.

Thank you for being in my life,

Inbal

Some views in Kampala




With Netta for Jewish New Years


Visiting a friend and family







Pierre taking every opportunity to teach math


At the Introduction (traditional Wedding)








the beautiful bride


The view from our house

Our living room

Independence celebrations

Museveni Speaking

Visiting Friends in Kenya

In Memory of My Friend Kalpna - a year later

A few months ago I wrote something short about how I have been dealing with Kalpna’s passing away, but I did not share it. Why? I am not sure. Perhaps because it is personal, perhaps because it is sad. Then, a few days ago I was thinking about Kalpna and the genuine and authentic person she was, and I felt the need to share this. That perhaps some of you are feeling similar emotions of love, sadness, regret, and joy, and that by sharing we would come together, and bringing people together is something I have always admired about Kalpna, so here we go…

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What I remember most about Kalpna is her death, and that makes me sad because she had such a full life. A life full of life, which not many people have these days.

I was in my office, just getting used to the air-conditioned air after coming in from the hot summer morning. I look out at the water, and then at the piles on my desk – piles of articles wire requests, budgets, and reports – the day to day work of someone like me. I open my work e mail and decide I need a few more minutes. I check my personal e mail and a few websites. The computer screen is already starting to hurt my eyes and the blue sky outside seems appealing. As I surrender to the work ahead and e mail comes in that Kalpna Mistry died on August 4^th in the Philippines. I didn’t even know she was there. I follow a link to a website and a beautiful picture of Kalpna appeared. She is wearing a stunning red scarf and gold jewelry, both outshined by her smile.

‘Kalpna received medical treatment and was among friends from her Fulbright Program,’ the black text on a gray background declare. ‘The family is working to get the body home and funeral arrangements will be announced on this site.’ Funeral – somehow that word makes it feel real. I search my e mail for the last time we wrote each other. I am disappointed when the most recent e mail is more than a year old. I quickly scan through Kalpna’s facebook wall, searching for my name, looking for hope, but find nothing except permission for tears. I feel different but I am not sure how, like a seed has been dropped into my heart and I must wait patiently to see what grows.

That night I have to write. I have to share memories of Kalpna so they do not disappear. I remember our first Voices for Africa meeting in graduate school. We were all so nervous and Kalpna came in with a huge smile, every tooth showing. Without any experience in Africa she just wanted to learn and help with anything. I write down everything I can remember.

For the next few days I read everything people wrote about Kalpna. I saw pictures of places and people she never told me about. I read about stories she never mentioned. I saw videos of meetings I missed for reasons I cannot remember. The stories that moved me most are of Kalpna as a teacher, her ability to connect to students and inspire them.

In the weeks after Kalpna’s death, I felt like I got to know Kalpna better each day. We were becoming better friends – my friendship with a memory. At night, we would talk, or mainly I talked and she would listen, or I like to think she did. ‘I’m sorry we did not spend more time together. I miss you. I hope to be a great teacher like you someday. I hope you can see how many people love and adore you.’

In the weeks that followed, Kalpna inspired me. I’d smile more, care more about others, try to show it more – like Kalpna did with her thank you biscuits, a habit I read about in a post. The seed that fell on the day of Kalpna’s death grew from anger to grief to friendship. A friendship with a memory and Kalpna is always a part of each of my days.

I wish I knew her better when we had the time, but I know I love her to my heart’s full capacity. She reminds me of all that is good in the world and to believe in change and in people. I wish she was around to see Obama win the election and to see her students graduate from high school and then college, as I know she would push them there. I like to think that someday our paths would have crossed again. She’s with me each day, more friend than memory.

Waves of Change

Hi Everyone,

I hope you have been well. It has been a long time since I sent one of these updates, but you have all been in my thoughts.

My father is a numbers person so he has kept count; it has been 579 days since he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and began treatments.

I remember the day he called, sitting on my bed in Gulu reading, after a long day of visiting students in different schools. He spoke, I listened, and his words dropped on me like a wave that takes the sand from under your toes and leaves you off balance, a magician’s curtain that falls and in an instant life is transformed. In the following weeks of goodbyes and packing, the waves kept coming, washing away the sand castle I had constructed in Gulu. Nothing can hold on the sand, like change it is comes and goes through the tiniest cracks.

I am not so much a numbers person, but more of sentimental one, so when I look through the memories, messages, cards, e mails, and pictures of the past 579 days, I see waves of change.

For me leaving Gulu and the wonderful Ocan family was difficult, for my family a year and a half of chemotherapy was a challenge, and yet for all we have lost, we have gained so much more. The time spent with my family and good friends in Boston, be it in Red Sox games, beautiful Boston gardens, snowy cold mornings, restaurants, our living room, or hospital waiting rooms has been a blessing. In challenging times, Pierre and I also found our way back to each other, from our corners in Africa to Boston, and it has been an incredible opportunity for Pierre and my family to get to know each other so well. I have taken classes in storytelling and healing, joined a writing group, met new people, learned to how to cook a few things from my mom, got to spend time with old friends, attend both of my sisters’ graduations; just a few of the pearls the waves dropped in my open palms, once I let go of the sand. The back and forth sounds of the waves, coming and going, going and coming, soothes and heals.

We had a family party this past weekend, to celebrate Lior’s graduation from high school, Neta’s graduation from University of Massachusetts, the engagement of Pierre and I, and my dad’s preparation for his stem-cell transplant. While I didn’t notice, the waves had constructed another castle in the sand. Change is the only constant we can count on. It reminds me in hard times that this too shall pass, and in good times to enjoy every moment because even happiness passes so that we can grow and learn and then be happy again in a new way.

So today, as my dad goes in for his stem-cell transplant, the procedure that will take him into remission and health, I feel another wave of change coming, and I am thankful. He will be in the hospital for three weeks, and then a few more months of recovery at home. My dad’s strength, courage, grace, and optimism have been an inspiration to all of us and many others. Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, wishes, and support over the past year and a half. It has meant a lot to all of us. In September, Pierre and I plan to move back to Uganda; life may not be predictable, but it has a way of taking us where we need to be.

I am also attaching a short fiction story I have written, as some of you have asked about my progress in the creative writing realm. It has been slow, but very enjoyable. This short story here is based on a moment at the airport, a split second of seeing someone stopped by immigration control, the rest is fictional… some story my mind visited.

We’ll be in touch soon.

Thank you for being in my life,

Inbal

Short story and a few pictures from the party below.

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Jacob Dinka, a short work of fiction by Inbal Alon

‘Jacob Dinka,’ the passport control officer says in a quiet voice.

‘Yes,’ Jaco says trying to look like his picture, taken long ago in better days.

‘Jacob, when did you arrive in Uganda?

Jaco notices her hair, very finely braided, a sign of a woman who cares about her appearance.

‘Jacob, when did you arrive?’ She asks again, more sternly.

Jaco wishes she’d stop calling him Jacob, a good biblical name he wishes to forget and leave behind.

‘About a year ago,’ he says politely.

He can feel her glance on his dark skin, stopping around the three parallel lines scarred under each of his eyes.

‘Where are you from?’

His passport says Sudan, his skin says Sudan. Jaco feels annoyed that she has to ask, as if asking for a confession that no, I am not from your perfect little country.

‘Sudan, Madam, I am from Sudan.’

‘You’ve over stayed your visa sir, by months. According to my calculations you owe…’

She stops and looks down. The computer keys click loudly and repeatedly. Each click another penalty.

‘$258. The penalty for your illegal stay is Uganda is $258.’

Jaco doesn’t need to check his wallet. He knows that he has exactly $23.04. He changed all 44,928 Ugandan shillings with a money changer offering the best rate in all of Kampala. He pulls out his wallet slowly, counting the money one bill at a time. The passport officer seems happy to give him time to count. To his left Jaco notices the other passport control officer, a young Ugandan guy with a wide smile and shaved head. People are passing him continuously, Ugandan in business suits, children in their church clothes, and tourists with their over-paid straw baskets and African-print T-shirts. No one seems to have a problem getting through. The passport control officer on the left is just stamping each passport with no questions. The stamp has a loud clunk of authority. The sound is almost mocking Jaco.

Clunk, safe travels. Clunk, come again. Clunk, have a good vacation.

Silence, you’ll never leave.

‘You got it?’, the passport control officer on the right interrupts.

Jaco wishes he went to the left.

‘One second, let me check my bag.’

Jaco wonders if his brother has left the airport already. He is sure he is long gone and he feels scared for the first time. Jaco wishes Mo would come with him. Jaco is the older brother and he feels ashamed to leave Mo behind, especially since they are the only family they have left. Last time they saw their mother was when their village in South Sudan was bombed.

‘Run Moses, do not stop, she begged.’

Moses, another good biblical name. She’d hate to know Jaco turned it into Mo. Their father, woke up one morning, not long before the village was bombed, and joined the SPLA, the liberation army. That was the last time they saw him. When they walked from Sudan to Ethiopia, Jaco told everyone their names were Mo and Jaco. Now, he does not really remember why. After years in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, many of the lost boys of Sudan got resettled all over the world. Jaco and Mo stayed in Kakuma camp. Jaco got sick of camp life and they escaped, hitch-hiked to Uganda, and bribed a young border control officer to give them 6 months tourist visas.

‘Sir, please step aside while you find the money. I need to help others in line.’

Jaco steps aside, his thoughts racing.

After they got their visas, Jaco and Mo got a small room in an iron roof shack in Namuongo, one of Kampala’s muddy slums. They opened a radio fixing shop in the market, a skill Mo had learned in the refugee camp. Jaco kept records and walked around the market finding customers. Money was always tight; sometimes not even enough for food. The business was losing money, spending more on parts and rent than the revenue from customers. Jaco wanted to keep Mo’s dreams alive so he took out loans in secret. It did not take long before he started defaulting on the payments. When he started to get beat up every other day by bullies to whom he owed money, Mo was convinced that he drank their money and was getting into trouble. Mo told Harriet, Jaco’s girlfriend, who was four months pregnant. Harriet left immediately; abused by her own alcoholic father for many years, she did not even given Jaco a chance to explain. Jaco has spent every night since then dreaming about his baby girl who he will never know. He remembers how Harriet used to kiss his scarred decorations and how much he loved her for it. Perhaps I should have told her, he thinks.

Without his brother’s partnerships and Harriet’s love, Jaco felt there was nothing left for him in Uganda. He saw an add in the paper: some sleazy looking entrepreneur that helps with applications to foreign universities and makes money when students send back some of their living stipends to pay their debts. The advert did not say anything about what happens to those who do not get in to any university. Jaco did not like the man’s picture in the newspaper, but he felt out of ideas and contacted him. He applied for a university in Atlanta, the applications man had some intelligence that they were looking for more Africa students, and Jaco got accepted with a full scholarship; the entrepreneur made his money. Jaco had good grades at the refugee camp school and with all the hype around the Lost Boys, each university was looking for its own alumni magazine article. Mo dropped Jaco at the airport, wished him a good life, and walked away as fast as he could. Jaco wished that bombs were falling on his head, to make this hurried, non-emotional goodbye feel necessary, not chosen.

From behind him, other passengers keep passing through in both lanes. I step to the side and the right lane becomes an express, Jaco thinks with a tint of resentment. Minutes ago he was just like the other passengers, passing through, checking in, looking at duty free windows, heading towards his gate of departure. Behind him is the path from which he came. He can’t go back; he gave Kampala all he had and he does not think he’ll survive long, he wouldn’t want to if he had to go back. In front is the path to a new life, an educated life in a new country, but the road seems blocked. To his sides, Jaco notices the duty free windows. There are bottles of alcohol lined up on clean shelves, expensive imported alcohol that makes you just as stupid. He hates alcohol, and shifts his glance. There is a poster of a white lady, sitting in a suggestive position, with a huge diamond necklace on her neck. He thinks of Harriet and looks away. A tourist has picked up a lion doll with bright yellow fur; Jaco feels confused why anyone would spend so much money on a toy that is not even accurate. Was the woman not just back from safari? Did she not notice lions are an earthy brown? Above her a flat screen TV is sitting by the window, its screen blank. Even if something was showing on that TV, no one would watch, too busy with the travels ahead. Mo would die for a TV like this; he’ll never have one. On another shelf chocolates wrapped in bright colors adorn the wall; the price of one pack could feed a family in Namuongo for a month. He observed this world of money, a world in which he knows he does not belong, and should have never tried to cross. All of a sudden he feels dizzy.

‘Sir, are you ok? The passport control officer looks at him with a glimpse of concern.

‘I think so.’

‘I cannot let you through without the money.’

Clunk

The gate is on the right, so close but so far away.

Clunk

‘Please hurry up, the flight is departing soon.’

Clunk

Everyone is going

Clunk

Everyone but you

Clunk

Clunk

Clunk

The ceiling seems to be spinning, the blue tiles on the floor seem to shift from side to side. People are walking fast from both sides of Jaco, announcements are made on the loud speaker for boarding. The noises and sights mix in Jaco’s head and Mo is all alone in Kampala and his baby has no father and the university has no lost boy. Jaco runs to the bathroom and sits on the floor, which is cleaner than any toilet he’s used in a long time. He holds his head and cries, tears that are years over due. He knows that soon airport security will find him. He’s not sure where they will take him – back to Kampala, a detention center, on to his flight to Atlanta – and he really does not care. ‘Wherever they take me next, Ma, I’ll start again as Jacob, I promise.’

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Pictures from the Family Party