Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall flies on the eagle, her white hair spiraling loose from its low bun, bristling in the wind of wings and the call of the chimpanzee.
She is slight and sweet with thin lips, kind eyes, and long limbs reminiscent of her constant subjects and her closest friends.
At the age of four, she hid in a haystack for hours to discover how the hen lays her eggs since explanation could not parallel witness.
Even Jane waited tables to save up enough money to board a ship and wave goodbye to life before dreams came true.
Her mother camped beside her in the jungles of Africa on her first journey, for how could a girl of 23 go unaccompanied into the wild.
Jane wonders where indigenous wisdom has gone – why the elders no longer meet to discuss the fate of the world; why each decision is made based on selfish immediate gratification.
She laments that we have somehow lost the connection between the clever brain and the human heart.
Jane says hope is a seed growing into a shoot, powerful enough to break through brick walls with its sheer will to survive.
She is a believer in the indomitable human spirit and the resilience of all things livng.

Half-baked

I've reconciled myself to the fact that this half year will be half-baked. Everything I attempt will not be fully realized as I'm functioning within the constraints of a system I've not had the privilege to devise. But I am determined suddenly to use the next few years here to design what I want out of drama - to start fresh next year with the potential created by this half-baked half year... because everyone likes a cookie even if it's undercooked and in its nascent form there is still the sweetness of what could be once fully gestated in the oven of my imagination. I remember my musings on "could be" in graduate school - the world an open possibility once the mind can grapple with what if, a blossom of creativity, a birth of possibility. I hear West Side Story lilting in my mind.

Heavy Sky Morning

The sky hangs heavy this morning, portentous; the weight of rain sagging the clouds towards Earth in a kiss of grey, blurring boundaries. I too feel heavy and boundless, smothered over with too many emotions to distinguish. Grey has feeling - betwixt and between the light and the dark. Each moment changing shades but never quite reaching one pole or the other. Juxtaposing the opposition in its own shade, in its own way. I hesitate, a breath between strength and fear, wondering where I stand. Thus, I sit at another computer, in another country, on another morning, with another storm thundering in my waking dream.

Goodies?

In case anyone wishes to send me old fashioned letters or goodies (i.e delicious chocolate bars or cheap dvds or anything else I can use to amuse myself when my head isn't spinning like a top or distract myself when I'm missing home), my address is as follows:

Ms Eve Kagan
The International School of Uganda
Plot 272 Lubowa, Entebbe Road
P.O. Box 4200
Kampala, Uganda
Phone: 256-414 200374/8

You must use registered mail (DHL is best) so don't send anything too heavy or it will cost a fortune and the truth is you can get a lot of fine things here I'm just a glutton for reminders of home these crazy days.
All love

The Prophet and the Poet

"Issa is the prophet Jesus," explains my hired taxi driver. "For Muslims, Jesus was a prophet." So Issa, the prophet Jesus taxi driver, steers Eve, the first woman and sign of life, through the maddening traffic of Kampala on a rainy Saturday morning. What a ride. Issa's voice is warm and smooth, like coffee with milk and sugar, yet it is his high falsetto laugh that wins me over - shocking, piercing, genuine, like that of a little girl shrieking in delight. A crescent moon scar from eyebrow to cheekbone graces the left side of his face, the side that turns towards me as we fill the time between moving inches with broken English conversation. "Dancing Queen" by Abba plays on the radio and he drums his finger against the dash as my foot flops in and out of my sandal with the rhythm of that silly delicious song. Issa has five children, one wife, one Toyota Corolla taxi, and more passengers in his lifetime then he could possibly count. For some reason I feel grateful to be one of the many this morning.

It suddenly strikes me that here I am in Uganda in the midst of it all: the motorcycles whirring around us with ladies sitting side-saddle in colorful skirts and flip-flops, the goats roped to fences bleating their woes, the children running in front of cars in street-crossing that resembles trench warfare, the bum on the street with his hand outstretched in the universal mudra of poverty, the guards at the bank with shotguns aimed at poorly tiled hallway floors, the boys on the median selling newspapers and phone cards at your car window like old-school drive-in diner waitresses minus the roller-skates, the hustle and bustle of the markets where mangoes topple in towers reminiscent of Pisa and bananas grow the size of your thumb, the life that teems regardless of the hour and the day and the time and the year all over this crazy beautiful world.

Getting Real

Alright time to get real... my stomach is doing flips from some weird food, my bed is hard as a rock (even with the comforter as a pillowtop), there was a roach the size of a golf ball in my bathroom and fire ants marching across the bathtub, the internet is down, the students are giving me hell and all I can think is how badly I wish I could trade places with them, the water only works on occassion, I feel totally underqualified for this job and I'M LONELY!
I had to just get that out there because I don't want you to think it's all poetry and light. I wouldn't want to lie and say the transformation of minds is simple or beautiful. Change is difficult. We struggle against the new even as it unfolds before us everpresent. I try to go breath to breath, moment to moment, but sometimes the air is suffocating, sometimes it gets caught in the lump in my throat (a lump of fear, regret, sadness, suffering), sometimes it's all just reflex and awareness jumps out of the mind like the spiders on my bedside table. It's all happening. The bittersweet of the moment. The pain and delight of choice.
The now. The now. The now.

Color your World

The local paint company says, "color your world!"
What color should I choose?
The motled green skin of the mango or the bright orange of its meat?
The brick red of the earth or the deep brown of the skin?
The bright fuschia of the flowers or the dull white of the plastic bags?
The ice blue of the mid-day sky or the indigo of the evening?
The haunting grey of the storm clouds or the shocking pink of the dawn?
The blood red carcass of the goat or the mangy golden fur of the street dogs?
If voices had a color perhaps I would paint the music in the air of Uganda - the birds and children and whispers in languages my ear is yet to comprehend.