Faces of Africa

Africa has so many faces.  Before I left my recent home I traveled to my real home, in Pennsylvania.  I had a short visit with my family when unfortunate circumstances drew us all together.  Like most of my weekends and summers in college, I camped out on my older sister’s couch and slipped into childhood with my nephews.  The morning before I left, I had the rare opportunity to steal a few sweet moments of frank conversation with Baden (7) and Dylan (4) on y sister’s bed.  This was right after we finished attacking Baden with pillows until his face was blazing red and tears of laughter were streaming down his face.  “I’m going to think about you guys every single day that I’m away,” I told them when we all began to recover from painful laughter.  Baden’s cheeks flushed again under his usual bashful smile while Dylan looked confused.

“Where are you going?”

“Dyl-an, mom told us, remember?  She’s going back to Africa.”

The word flowed from his little mouth with a captivating tone that elicited wide eyes and an awe-struck, “Ohhhhh,” from his little brother.  This made me giggle a bit.  I know 4-year-old Dylan knows nothing of Africa, and I often wonder what image is contained in Baden’s head when he utters Africa with such fascination.  But what could anyone know if this whole continent?  I’ve been to only two of the countries on this fast landmass and been overwhelmed at the contrary images thrown at me by each.

The cities are painful.  Then, I might describe most of the world’s crowded urban settings this way.  They are hot, stuffy, and place silent me in a sea of impenetrable voices.  Indistinguishable languages weave into conversations from all directions.  Swahili, Lugalla, Afrikaans… I can’t even keep track.  My name, my identity, my invisible sign reads only “Mzungu,” Swahili slang for “white person,” which actually seems to translate to “rich person that will be easily ripped off” or “unwed girl with free ticket to wealth in the USA.”  Cities stifle me.  Girls in expensive outfits with turned up noses and business men on fancy cell phones carrying pricey briefcases.  One day in a coffee shop in Kampala I was met with shock and disbelief when a twenty-something Ugandan man asked if I had an iPhone charger that he could use.  “I don’t have an iPhone,” I replied, “mine is an old no-internet Samsung.”  He must have thought, “what kind of Mzungu doesn’t have four iphones?”  The kind that’s more interested in monkeys and running, that’s what.

This is just one small shade of Africa though.  It is dotted with towns and villages of countless sizes, climates, and tribes.  Driving as few as thirty miles will surround you with an entirely different language, culture, and demographic.  Some stereotypes ring true though.  Most villages will contain women wearing bright colors atop mismatched printed fabrics layered one over the other, with child in arm, child at feet, and heavy weighted items on head.  African women amaze me.  People carry entire living rooms on the back of rusty bicycles and children wreak playful havoc through mud filled streets with bare, crusty feet like schools of bright, tiny fish.

Then there is the wilderness.  The thing that called to this woman from the earliest memories she can conjure.  The wilderness of Africa is a perfect mosaic of every habitat that you could dream.  The savannas draw in large herbivorous game to their dry, scalding expanses.  The deserts call the foxes and the reptiles.  Giant lakes and raging rivers are teeming with fish and hippos and birds of every size and call.  The hot, muggy forests house my beloved primates, and to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro you will need a parka and your warmest hat.  How can a cocktail like this exclude the desires of any person?

How can diversity like this call to mind any one picture?  What is it then that my nephew sees when he stares at me with unknowing admiration and whispers the word Africa?  Perhaps it is the same tantalizing picture that called to me as a girl of the same age.  If so, good luck to his poor mother, my sister, for it is a picture you cannot resist or forget.

The Face of the Reserve

The escarpment that beckons me to my writing spot is like the face of this reserve.  All of the organs: the heart, the lungs, the stomach that swallows up each kill, are broken into chambers of forest and riverbed and savanna.  The face, the part of this being that displays every shift in mood and intent is on the surface of the giant escarpment that looms over it all.

I’ve taken a thousand pictures of this one angle of the escarpment that I face each day from the chair on my tent platform.  I spend most of my life trying to capture images with some odd combination of photos and words and numbers on spreadsheets.  The many moods of this reserve are impossible to comprehend with any combination of these though.  So, sometimes, I’ve just taken to watching.

I watch the sweet, warm shades of pink and orange and deep red that bleed from the sky and drip behind it in the evening.  When the sun is high and bright, I study the million shades of green and brown that stripe and spot it like black on a sheet of music.  My favorite time to meet faces with my escarpment is when its mood turns intense and dark.  When the green notes hide behind a thick veil of gray, and the breaths of the forest, the birds and the monkeys, turn silent.  I can see this warning  before the darkness blows to my own face and the rain pelts my skin.  This is the only place in the world that I love a good storm.  At least my escarpment always warns me.

Child Eyes

Three days.  I’d hiked through the forest, up and down mountains over rivers, and through masses of thorns, all without a single chimpanzee sighting.  I’d expected this though.  These chimpanzees are some of the most elusive, dispersed groups in the world.  For well over a decade, researchers have endured this harsh habitat with its unique coctail of deep mud, dark, dense forest, burning, dizzying savanna, and steep mountains in the hopes of grabbing just a fraction of the new information that this unique population holds.  Many have faced disappointment though, and few have walked away with the wealth of observations their questions would require.

Still, knowing this did not seem to impede my welling frustration.  That may be because the other researchers had not found a group for three straight weeks now.  Their steps were dragging, their breaths seemed heavy, and their eyes were moving from the treetops to their feet with increasingly hopeless gazes.  This mood can penetrate and deflate the hopes of anyone quickly, and I could feel my own feet begin to gain mass.

Then I found a sample.  As my tired eyes followed my heavy toes I could hardly believe what laid before me: a wadge!  When chimpanzees eat, like us, they do not swallow large seeds and fibrous material.  Their digestive system is just as generalized as ours, and cannot handle these materials.  After rolling them around in their mouths into a wadded ball, they spit the mass to the ground, leaving a little gift of DNA-containing cheek cells behind.  I dropped to the ground and began digging into my pack for collection materials.  Just as the latex of a sterile glove snapped against my skin we heard a rustle.  It was subtle and decisive, not obnoxious enough to be colobus, but too dense and low for a baboon or red-tailed monkey.  All four of our sets of eyes snapped in that direction, then darted to one another.  Our bodies were frozen, and you could not even sense a single exhale.  Then, I saw Joel’s lips part to a smile and Alimose’s brow raised from furrowed to thrilled.  It was a chimpanzee, then another, then a scream that even a child could not mistake for any other species.

We were surrounded by a group of 10-20 individuals.  It was difficult to see much.  Most of them were on the ground, hidden deep in the leafy, thorn-filled underbrush of the forest floor.  But could you ever hear them.  The sounds were like a dream, so loud and deep that it vibrated my core.  Each set of minutes alternated between deceptive stillness and dramatic vocal displays.

Eventually the vocalizing disintegrated to silence.  The group was at rest, so we sat and waited.  After forty minutes or so the rustling began again.  A party was cautiously approaching on the ground, clearly quite wary of our presence.  Dark masses rustled leaves closer and closer, until they froze.  I felt desperate to look as unthreatening as possible.  Because I have no experience with chimps, I resorted to the postures I knew used to calm the gorillas that I worked with at the zoo.  I turned my side to them, and relaxed all of my core muscles until my spine curved forward, and my shoulders collapsed into my chest.  I grabbed the nearest half-eaten fruit, inspecting it, then bringing it to my face.  I carefully pulled my eyes over to the bushes and felt my heart skip before my stomach rose.  Two deep, black eyes framed between perfect, large ears and a thick, rounded brow stared back at me.  The intense curiosity of those deep eyes was something that I have only ever witnessed in a human child.  The juvenile quickly broke my gaze and scurried forward to glue himself to the path of a female with an infant clinging desperately to her back.  Those eyes will surely be the premise of the rest of my career with chimpanzees.

We tried to keep up, but within an hour the group seemed to dissolve into the thick forest air.  Our group trekked back to camp in silence, feet bouncing and eyes lit with hope.

Dissertation Adventure: Day One

I entered the forest without high hopes for research progress on the first day.  I woke before the sun touched the savanna, tightly sealed beneath my mosquito net while the calls of a thousand birds and insects penetrated the thin nylon walls of my tent.  My headlamp clicked on as I peeled back my net and began gathering familiar supplies.  Binoculars, clipboard, watch, water bottle… I stuffed it all in my green pack, tied back my matted hair, and met the others in the kitchen area where we wiped the sleep from our eyes and scarfed down slices of dry bread.

Shades of orange and pink seeped over the savanna behind me as I tucked my socks and slid my feet into a pair of large, black gumboots.  A familiar routine, indeed.  Our ranger, Alimose, was waiting with his orange canteen slung over one shoulder, and his old, wooden AK-47 over the other.  Whether this would guard us from the elephants, buffalo, and poachers or not, it surely made us feel as though we carried a guardian into isolated woodlands.  Also living at the site and ready to enter the forest were two American undergraduate interns: Austin and Joel.  The site manager, a field scientist from Britain named Will, was staying behind with an injury.  Just before we left, a boda-boda motorcycle appeared on the horizon with two German tourists.  They’d paid UWA to let them tag along with us for the day.  Joel turned his back, rolling his eyes as we moved to the forest entrance.

Entering the forest felt like a descent into a world that was all at once new but familiar.  We all stomped clumsily down a steep, muddy hill until the arms of ancient trees joined over us.  My feet seemed to have a strong memory of how to trudge through mud and over branches silently but for the unavoidable slap of my wide rubber boots against my narrow calves.  My eyes instinctively gazed upward for heavy movement of primates in the branches.  There were ravaged shells of fruit and seeds all over the trail.  It was not long before our paths crossed those of some of these fruit-eating culprits: baboons, then red-tailed monkeys, then the all-too-familiar lazy, leaf-eating colobus monkeys.  They thrashed about in the branches like the clowns they become of any forest, their white bushy tails trailing behind them.

This time, for once, I was not here for the monkeys, but they surrounded us everywhere.  Suddenly our own parade of bipedal primates halted.  The whispers quickly traveled back the line to me, as the others parted to reveal my prize: chimpanzee poop!  Alimose’s hand pointed to it as he gave me a proud smile.  I felt every limb tense with excitement, a smile stretching my face so thin that I could not even hope to conceal my joy.  “It’s fresh!” I exclaimed, dropping to the ground and tearing open my pack for collection supplies.  The tourists stared at me with shock as I reached for a stick and began to scoop fresh feces into a tube of ethanol.  “Excuse me, may we?” whispered one of the Germans while she raised a camera to her face.  Completely focused on my shock at a fresh sample within my first hour in the field, I gave a hurried nod and let the Germans snap away at this crazy American girl.

To be honest, I can’t remember much else about the day.  I pranced through the forest with price, fresh DNA sloshing in an ethanol tube on my back.  What a great start to a new field adventure.

The Arrival

The grass thatch roofs arose from the savanna out of nowhere.  We’d been riding in the damp, worn out taxi for well over three hours, and I was withered and dazed fro ma week of travel.  For the duration of my six hour bus ride that morning I’d been afraid to leave my seat to use the toilet or eat, incase the bus would leave me behind as it had others.  I’d seen men come running behind us while sympathetic passengers shouted to the stubborn driver.  When we reached the town of Fort Portal rain was falling from the deep gray sky in buckets the way I’ve only seen it flood streets into raging rivers in tropical countries.  Climate controls culture in these places like nowhere else.  The young man next to me on the bus stunk like sweat and grain liquor.  Like most Africans, he’d never learned anything about personal space concepts of westerners and leaned his sweaty head over me to gaze out my window for most of the ride.  Once he woke me from my deep, Dramamine-sleep, and I shoved him back to his own seat.  His face showed no sign of offense or surprise at my African-learned pushiness and frankness.

As I hopped off the bus, frantically fumbling for my umbrella, a taxi driver immediately jumped for my bags, both of us instantly soaked to the bone and running back and forth to flee from the downpour.  I started shouting out prices over the deafening sound of rain pelting the muddy river-streets.  He laughed and shouted back, “Just get in the car!  We will talk prices there!”  After a few minutes of haggling in the front seat, we settled on an agreeable price, and I was thrilled to discover that he knew the location of the Semliki Chimpanzee Research Site.

We drove around windy mountain roads, stopping frequently to wait for crews to clear rockslides.  I am always amazed at times like these that children from rural African villages seem to appear out of nowhere.  Their eyes dig into my fair skin and blonde hair instantly while they grow braver, moving in closer to this strange being.  One girl’s mouth was stretched so thin with a nervous smile that she clenched her little hands over it in a futile attempt to conceal her reaction to my glances.  “Cookies! Money!” they mumbled in awkward, forced English.  I don’t want to consider how these are the only English words they seem to know.  My kind taxi driver scolded their manners and threw an embarrassed glance in my direction.  After several minutes of silence he turned to me with a curious smile.  “Where did you learn to bargain like that?”  I smiled and thought for a few seconds, “I guess a little of my own nature and more from my Kenyan friends. Why do you ask?”  “You are very skilled for a Mzungu,” he told me with a smile, seemingly pleased for a skilled opponent in the game of African price haggling.  Bargaining prices here is usually done with coy smiles and careful body language, rather than aggression or frustration.  It is a game.

The winding roads turned to red dirt, surrounded by savanna woodland as we passed into the mountains and through the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve gates.  We slowed each time a cob or troop of baboons crossed the dirt road in front of us.  The even road unfolded into muddy paths as we neared our camp.  I held my breath each time the old Toyota Corolla slowed to cross pits of deep, red clay or cut through patches of savanna reserved for the thick tread of a Land Rover.  My country-girl-respect for this driver was strengthened.

Then I saw grass thatched roofs arise out of nowhere and felt a week’s worth of tension exhale from my lungs.  The three other researchers emerged from their tents, rushing out to greet me.  The small local staff scuttled to the trunks, grabbing my luggage as I shook hands and fumbled for the driver’s payment.  No place has ever made me sense a home the way a forest does, and I had made it.  I stared at my new home: a tent surrounded by savanna and forest with a majestic escarpment in the distance.  What a destination I had reached.

Escape from the City

I’d reached a point of desperation.  Kampala and I were no longer on amiable terms, and I knew if I didn’t escape its hold soon, I’d spiral into a pit of negativity that may spoil my experience.  My two biggest priorities before leaving for the field, however, were still looming before me.  I still had no permits from the Ugandan Wildlife Authority (UWA) and the Uganda National Council on Science and Technology (UNCST).  Without these, I was at the mercy of this city, and its thick crowds and noisy evenings were beginning to suffocate me.

I woke up on Monday morning, 5 days after my departure from home, with a weight of determination that becomes dangerous in my hands.  “I will get out of here tomorrow,” I told myself.  After another breakfast of fruit and yogurt with a cup of coffee, I raced back to my hotel room to begin making phone calls.  After 40 minutes of calling back and forth, I had reached my latest UWA contact and been told to meet him at the Post Office in five minutes.  The representative for UNCST told me to make it to her office outside of the city to “discuss this matter in person.”

I grabbed my heavy pack, loaded with all of my valuables and paperwork, and rushed out of the hotel and onto the hot, congested street.  No time for getting lost right now, I thought, and quickly decided to resort to a boda-boda.  I jumped on the back of a motorcycle and was off to the Post Office, my hair blowing wildly as my fingers gripped the back of the seat hard enough to leave bruises and cracked knuckles.  Boda drivers move quickly and fearlessly through those crowded streets, weaving through the traffic and cutting off any motorist in the way, large or small.

Once I located the UWA official, the process was quick and painless.  I had my first permits.  My heart seemed to lose a few grams of weight, giving me hope that my determination may finally pay off.  The man insisted on escorting me to UNCST.  How, after all, could a Mzungu woman possibly make it to Ntinda safely on her own?  I appreciated his helpful attitude, and hopped onto a matatu with him.  These are large, dilapidated vans that are packed with more passengers than any single vehicle should ever hold.

The woman at UNCST was not as amiable.  The building was air conditioned though, so I faked patience and a pleasant attitude with ease.  She tried to write me off several times, claiming that without a title number for our project she would never be able to write me a permit.  I know that if someone wants rid of you enough, however, they will give you any kind of permit on earth.  I acted as though I did not understand her desire to just be rid of me, and kept politely stating that I would be in the waiting room until she found the record and finished the permit.  “No problem,” I kept saying, “I don’t mind waiting until you work it out,” adding a nice smile at the end.  After two or so hours she shoved a permit into my hand and marched back into her office.  I rushed out of the air conditioned room before I could make a fool of myself with a victory dance, not managing to avoid tripping over an end table and sliding down a couple of stairs.  I practically skipped out to the street, and was back at the post office buying a bus ticket before I could catch m

Pace and Patience

One day in Kenya the monkeys were particularly difficult to find.  The group that I studied was both the largest and the most habituated (meaning comfortable with human researchers) of all our study groups, which says a lot.  Basically, I was spoiled.  A reminder of this may have been just what I needed.

I was working with the only other American at the site then (Corey) for the day, and we split up to scour the forests trying to find even just one monkey to complete a follow on (on a good day I could get as many as ten 20-minute follows on females in the group).  It was incredibly dry for that time of year, the kind of Africa-dry where all of the rusty red dirt seems to float up from the ground like steam off of a lake in the morning and just fill every cell in your body.  Every time I blew my nose red-brown snot would come out and my hair took on a whole new tint and texture, reminding me just how low the rain tanks were becoming.  The missing monkeys were the final blow, and in typical fashion, my temper welled.  Not realizing Corey was just one trail over, I started to mutter cuss words under my breath and throw a miniature researcher-tantrum in the middle of the forest.  Not for the last time in my research future, someone had to give me a speech on patience and acceptance.

Intense focus and drive can get you pretty far in field research, athletics, and academia.  When unchecked, however, it can drive you to insanity.  I’ve been stuck in Kampala for three days now.  From the moment I tossed a purple clipboard into my pack and counted the sterile sample tubes back in Indiana, I have had one thing on my mind: the Semliki chimpanzees.  I told myself again and again that I would have many annoying things to take care of in Kampala, mostly meeting directors of various government agencies to get research permission and collecting some supplies that could not be carried on the plane (e.g. ethanol alcohol for preserving genetic samples).  In theory I should remember that this would be even more complicated then I ever planned for, but my personality is what it is, and when I was told today that I would not be leaving for my beloved forest tomorrow, but rather five days from now, I nearly lost it.  Okay, I kind of did, solely internally though.

You see, in Africa, timing is a completely different concept.  When you agree to meet on a Monday, that often means Wednesday.  If you tell someone to have lunch with you in the early afternoon, you may end up meeting for dinner.  No one seems to mind, and you are definitely not expected to take offense.  T.I.A. (This is Africa), and you adjust to Africa time if you expect to survive.  Lesson one that I am still struggling to learn after six months in Africa three years ago.

Kampala is a bustling metropolis.  The streets are packed with dilapidated taxi cars and land rovers trying to pass matatu vans as they slowly move through the streets with men hanging out the side yelling destinations and trying to entice passengers.  Passengers in the taxis bake in the stale dry season heat with the windows up to avoid that ever-infamous red-brown airborne earth and the clouds of black smog being emitted from the occasional large truck.  All the while tiny “boda-boda” motorcycle taxis zip in and out and around all of these stationary vehicles going every which way and direction on the street that they wish like coyotes moving through a herd of cattle.  The sidewalks are so packed with pedestrians that I am constantly being jostled and elbowed or even gently moved aside by a hand.  I am constantly forced to maneuver around all of these people walking every which way, while trying not to step on the countless street venders with their piles of pens and candies strewn out on old clothes in the middle of the sidewalks, usually with two or three children and babies at their side.  Teens recruited by missionaries stalk me along the street, surely this Mzungu has plenty of money to hand us, they must think the second they see a blonde head bobbing from a block away.  Boda-boda and taxi drivers litter the street-sides trying to grab me as I pass, “taxi? Boda?”  I almost no longer hear them already.

All of this commotion leaves me to wonder, if everyone is always out of their office, then why are all of these people in such a hurry?!  Then tonight, as I walked back from my session of dinner/internet it occurred to me, I’m the only one pushing through these crowds at three times their speed.  The traffic is at a stand still.  The people are stopping to browse the street vendors and talk with friends.  The cafes and the markets are packed tightly with locals all day long.  This really is Africa, and everyone really is slowing down.

I was reminded once again today (and I’m sure I will be in the future), that I need to accept where I am.  That means accepting more than just the lack of pampering and refinement to my appearance, the fact that flushing toilets (or even toilets at all) are often not available, and I had my last Jiffy Treat sundae of the summer last week.  I’ve already accepted all of that.  It also means accepting that time moves slower here.  Tasks take longer to complete, and breaks are not an option, but a forced part of each day.  I don’t really know if that is better or worse.  The streets are still crowded, and I’m still stuck in a city when I’d rather be in the forest, but how much of my life do I spend looking three steps ahead of me?  I’m sure if you know me you can jump on that answer faster than I can, and the truth is, those chimpanzees will not go extinct before next Wednesday.  So I guess it is time to throw in my speed demon towel for a bit.  Tomorrow, I’m sleeping in and going shopping.

Value in Solitude

I have a few running friends that can only train in groups.  They say without their scheduled meetings they may never be able to pull themselves out of bed or off of the couch every single day to sweat and gasp for air hours at a time.  I have also been told that a running companion can push you to new training levels and give you the strength to conquer a hill that you may never be able to push yourself over.  I have heard them call solo runners crazy and reach to understand how a person could possible want to run two or three hours at a time all alone.

I am one of the crazy ones.  The thought of spending hours upon hours of time when I am in my most focused, most driven state with another individual yapping at me, expecting me to share my deepest thoughts and redirect energy to connect with them has never drawn me in.  When I run through town, breezing past crowds of students standing at a bus stop, or alongside groups of friends walking to class, I feel like I am all alone in a comforting sea of people, zipping by a stationary scene within my tunnel of observation.  It is one of the few times when I can be around other people, observing them, wondering about them, without ever having to bother with formalities of small talk or polite “hello’s.”  I can be entirely focused on my own thoughts, or the people around me, or the sights, or even the position and motion of each part of my body (which I spend a surprising amount of time contemplating).

I think this is why I have always loved to travel alone.  Don’t get me wrong; occasionally I like to visit places with other people.  Some of my favorite moments have been camping with my boyfriend.  Likewise, I have been able to enjoy the occasionally short, easy run with someone close to me, like my brother.  Traveling in Africa by myself brings back the same sort of comfort that a long solo run on a busy morning in Bloomington gives me.

Kampala is a lively city, the capitol of Uganda.  Since Idi Amin’s demise in the 1980’s the city and the country has become much safer and well maintained.  Unlike Nairobi, it is perfectly safe for me to walk around all alone, and I am rarely hassled for money or food.  Once again I am able to walk through a sea of people speaking languages I barely follow, knowing full well that no matter what I do I will be strange and I will be an outsider.  That means I can focus on the sights around me, the thoughts racing through my head, and the interesting people I pass, without worrying about whether or not they are judging me.  They will judge me no matter what, and I might as well take full advantage of that comfort.

I find that when a familiar companion does not distract me I am able to observe my surroundings more intently, focusing on my own reactions before I let another person’s judgment cloud my own.  Humans are so adapted to empathizing with trusted allies that we easily mistaken their impressions and reactions for our own without realizing it.  When we break away from that occasionally, and spend time with no one else around, no voice but the one inside our own head, it is surprising the things we can learn about ourselves and the world around us.  It is even easier to block out every voice outside my own when I can’t understand the language that everyone is speaking.  Of course too much of this can lead to isolation and, to put it bluntly, complete social awkwardness (but we’ll get back to that when I leave in two months).  Still, there is such value in stepping out alone to discover things sometimes, and I will always be grateful that my career has forced me to do that with my travels.

The Journey

The theme of my journey and first few days here has been comparing every sight, sound, and feeling to my first journey into Africa three years ago.  When I was getting ready to leave I kept thinking to myself, “how can I feel just as nervous all over again?  Haven’t I been through all of this before?”  Like an athlete resuming a harsh training regimen after months of an off-season, however, I felt like my field-researcher-muscles were severely out of shape.  Three years is a long time to allow oneself to forget all of the lessons learned after only six months of living in East Africa.  It is not long enough, however, to forget many of the obstacles I faced while there.  I knew a repeat of similar circumstances would be inevitable, and I stayed up many nights wondering if I would still have the disposition to handle unforeseen circumstances with decisive optimism and confidence.

            I have grown up a lot in the last three years though, and a lot about my life has changed.  I am no longer a college student, rather now I am a Ph.D. student, already having suffered the shock of forced maturity and increased independence.  Also, I have gained an obsession with distance running since I was last here, and it has become a metaphor for most of the challenges in my life.  Just a month before leaving for Africa I completed my first full marathon, and I quickly realized that all of the stages of emotional preparation that I underwent for the marathon were occurring all over again as I prepared for my journey.  I used this to my advantage and thought over and over again, “You are a marathon runner.  You are tough enough for anything.”

            Some things about me will never change though, and will always make me a seemingly terrible candidate for world traveling (and athleticism, for that matter).  I suffer from mild asthma, allergies, hypoglycemia, and anemia, have terrible reactions to most medications and immunizations, and most importantly, have been plagued with severe motion sickness for all of my life.  No amount of preparation can deter these complications from interfering with a trip at some point.  This time around it did not take long at all.

            Ten hours into my thirteen hour flight into Ethiopia from Washington D.C. (after two domestic flights in the U.S., and before one flight across East Africa), the motion sickness mixed with a reaction to my malaria medication and low blood sugar.  I became terribly ill.  As the flight landed and everyone began getting off the plane, I became an unpleasant issue as I started vomiting in the walkway from the plane.  What a sight I must have been.

            An Ethiopian airport is not a pleasant place to be ill, either.  The air was hot and sticky, and people were allowed to smoke in there.  The only bathroom had no toilet paper or paper towels (though I should be thankful that the toilets flushed when you pressed a button inside of the hood).  There were no garbage cans around, and the seats were less than comfortable, if you were lucky enough to snag one.  After waiting in 1.5 hours of security lines, I laid down on the dirty floor of my terminal and went into a deep sleep until someone woke me up as my flight started boarding.

            The flight attendants looked at my pale face and droopy eyes with pity and tried to force ice water and crackers on me.  Luckily I immediately fell into another deep sleep on the plane, avoiding more episodes of motion sickness.  I cannot say so much for the hour-long taxi ride from the airport to my hotel.  Again, I barely managed to survive.

            In between waves of nausea and severe headaches, I managed to take a few moments to appreciate a familiar site, though.  The airport at Entebbe, just outside Kampala, sits right alongside Lake Victoria, the largest body of water in Africa.  I spent quite a bit of my time in Kenya going back and forth to Kisumu, a city that sits right on the other side of Lake Victoria.  There was something comforting about seeing that water, and knowing that I had been on the shores of it before, even if those shores were hundreds of miles away.

            As I made my way from customs to the doors of the airport I was bombarded by taxi drivers offering me a ride, another familiar site.  Even through my mental haze, I found myself bargaining for a better price as drivers tried to take advantage of my Caucasian skin.  I found a ride for over half of the initial offer made, and was relieved to find that the bargaining skills I learned in my last stay in Africa had not left me.  We got into the cab, and as we pulled away from the parking lot, a school bus full of children stuck their heads out the window yelling, “Hello, Mzungu, how are you!”  “Yes,” I thought to myself, “this part of the world is still another home to me.”