Standing on the Equator, I’m as centered as I’ve felt during my entire journey. A few feet to my left, in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a sign that says “Did you know?” with a shallow bowl that drains into a bucket. In the Southern Hemisphere: same thing. Did you know, in the north, water drains […]
Tag Archives: Uganda-2012
Uganda Journal: Africa’s darkest heart
Final words, written in shit: “I never for my husband was killed….” Scrawled on concrete, marred by blood: “Cry far help me the dead.” The lost voices of 300,000 dead, forgotten beneath the earth. These are Idi Amin’s torture chambers—five concrete bunkers burrowed into the mountainside beneath Mengo Palace in Kampala. Amin, the notorious dictator […]
Uganda Journal: making matooke
Because he’s back home from secondary school for the holiday, Simon is in charge of the kitchen at the Bethlehem School this month. Although only seventeen, he’s easily one of the best cooks whose food I’ve ever eaten. “In Uganda, it’s considered a disgrace for a man to cook unless he trains to be a […]
Uganda Journal: a walk to the well
The well at Nakagongo sits in a low valley, with a web of trails that lead down to it from the surrounding hillsides. It’s not an especially grueling walk and not especially steep, but it’s a five-minute hike downhill from the road. On days like today, when it rained for a couple hours in the […]
Uganda Journal: the double tragedies of Kasensero
The Rwanda Genocide Memorial in Kasensero sits high atop a limestone bluff that overlooks Lake Victoria, which shimmers gray-blue against the horizon a half-dozen kilometers away. In 1994, the bodies of more than 10,000 genocide victims washed up on Victoria’s shores after floating nearly a hundred kilometers downriver from the killing grounds in Rwanda. The […]
Uganda Journal: the safari (part two of two)
The second of two parts The first thing we see on our boatride along the shores of Lake Mburo is a pair of African fish eagles, which look like streamlined bald eagles but with the white extending from the head and neck down to the chest. Our park ranger, Moses, tries to fill us in […]
Uganda Journal: the safari (part one of two)
The colonial King of Ankole, Omugabe, loved his impala. The capital of Uganda, Kampala, had been named for the graceful antelopes—but the growing population in the city began to squeeze the impala out of their habitat, and they were being hunted relentlessly. The king knew he had to protect the impala he so dearly loved. […]
Uganda Journal: the sunrise
I know it seems counter-intuitive to put a disco on the first floor of a hotel, but someone in Kyotera apparently thought it was an excellent idea. I have a corner room, and one of my windows opens on the same side of the hotel as the disco, three floors and a thousand thumping beats […]
Uganda Journal: the market
One of the best ways to see how the locals live, I’ve found, is to visit the market. Alas, on such a trip, words fail me—mostly because I don’t always know what I’m looking at and a language barrier prevents a lot of question-asking. So I’ll let some pictures do the talking this time:
Uganda Journal: The Bethlehem School
Our van stops a few yards outside the gate, and our driver, Herman, tells us it’s okay to get out. In front of us, a hundred schoolchildren have gathered to greet us. They sing and jump and clap in rhythm. At the lead are two teenage girls with shaved heads and with lions’ manes tied […]
Uganda Journal: the road
The road to Bethlehem runs through jungles and slums and Seussian forests, past packed-mud houses and tethered goats, from Uganda’s capital of Kampala through hilly countryside, 90 miles southwest, to Kyotera. There, at an intersection crowded with vendors tending small cookfires and grills, where the roadsides are choked with motorcycles, a dirt road spits away […]
Uganda Journal: the arrival
I wake up to the indistinct sounds of people chattering and a continent’s worth of bird chirping, or so it seems. I hear someone’s rooster crow every once in a while off in the distance, but it’s 9 a.m., so he’s probably been at work for a while now and I’ve been ignoring him all […]
Uganda Journal: Into my Heart of Darkness
In the morning, I leave for Africa. Specifically, I’m heading to Uganda for twelve days, for reasons that still remain vague to me beyond “I’m going to write about being in Africa.” That’s all the reason I really need, though: Africa has been a bucket-lister for me for as long as I can remember. I’ve written […]
S&R Honors
Click here to learn more about past honorees...- IRS/Tea Party controversy: progressive groups “targeted,” too, and corporate media once again refuses to tell Americans the whole truth
- “Useful Enemies”: U.S. admitted not just Nazis after WWII, but their sadistic collaborators
- The time a source has to respond to request for comment? Virtually none.
- Profiling the Tea Party: In defense of the IRS. Sorta. Or not.
- Saturday Video Roundup: “Imagine the Band,” by John Lennon and Wings
- Mystery Unraveled: How a white, moderate, married, churchgoing, middle-class, middle-aged woman could vote for Obama
- An open letter to Burt Rutan, regarding his WSJ commentary on human-caused climate disruption
- Meet the men of Match.com: Really, guys, are you serious?
- Climate scientists still besieged
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- Carnival of Cities for 15 May 2013 | Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff: […] Turkey Scholars & Rogues present…
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