TRAVEL | Uganda day 1

Uganda.
I’ve been dreaming dark for a month now. Faces, unlike mine, visiting me at night and I wake and start and wonder and fear.
But.
So many things.
Flying over Africa and it’s dark. Only a fire or occasional light can be seen from the heavens.
Stepping into the country, each moment matters. I’m surrounded by the differences and I catch my breath, heart beating fast and praying I move through the lines with out incident.
Man, tall and dark, unsmiling with his semi-automatic slung over his shoulder, held in place by woven grass cording is our greeting. And I wonder why I’ve come so far.

We wait on the bus, it’s late in the night, and we’re more weary than words. Bryan sings from the back of God’s love and the apples of His eyes and I’m reminded that this day was planned before time. Through the dark we pass Lake Victoria and field, traffic is still moving even at this hour and groups of people gather along the road, smoke rising high. There are no street signs, no way of knowing where we are headed except for the driver, in whom we must trust for our safety.
I see a woman curled by the door of clinic, closed, and she waits. Is she desperate for the light or desperate for help?

The hotel is a welcoming and though it’s 2am and I’ve not slept a full 5 hours together in 3 days, I shower in the cold and lay awake, watching the mosquito net sway in the breeze. And I wonder why I’ve come so far.

Morning comes fast and we begin our journey north. I sit quiet, alone in the front and my arms and face hang out the window, breathing in deep the African air. The sky is the deepest blue against green grasses and I realize the view is so very different from what I expected. Colors are bright against the poverty.
We won’t drive more than 500 feet in eight hours without passing many people on the road. Shirtless men line the road, digging by hand and primitive tool, a sewer ditch, wiping brow and beginning again. Cattle, long horned and healthy, wander and women carry piles stacked high on their heads, babies sleeping tied on their backs, toddlers by the hand.
Little children are alone, girls with beads and barefoot, carrying bright yellow Jerry cans of water from who knows how far away. And a snake you would only see back in our zoo crosses the road and still the little faces only stare back at ours and not at the danger ahead. The red earth is packed hard and the heavens have never been so big, clouds billowy and fluff.
I lean out to take pictures as we speed along the broken road and the children drop their loads and make faces, laughing hard and I smile big. Whole families pass on motorcycles, child in lap, two behind and mother with baby tied tight.
Groups are in waist deep in puddles along the dirt road where humans and animals waste, washing themselves and clothes unclean.
Women sit under trees and on porches, drinking deep, laughing loud, clothes drip and wave in the sunlight. Bowls of full of their harvest sit, tomatoes, oranges, bananas and roots, begging to be bought, feeding two.
Under branches a foot steadily moves the treadle, needle moving fast and sure. She sews for beauty and she sews to live. The dirt paths are swept with branches and free-range chickens roam between barefoot owners.
Driving all day I’ve only seen two people with glasses. Bicycles are loaded high and wide with loads of water, firewood, banana bundles.
Fields of sunflowers, faces high, greet the sun and follow it across the sky, bowing low with weight of seed and sunset.

My sleep comes and I dream of nothing.