uganda: a place that it is often far too difficult for me to speak positively of.
'at least you like the weather, right?': a saying from terrill.
this post isn't about what i do or don't like about uganda, though (weather notwithstanding), as much as it is about why i keep going back.
i got lunch with stephen buerger a few days ago--we got pho, and we laughed about the karamoja days. i don't remember exactly what my fortune was, but it was essentially 'only a fool is caught in the same trap twice.'
we laughed. i'm currently writing grant applications for my third trip to karamoja, and it has taken a few months to get my head back on straight after each of my first two trips there.
today i drove to dallas to hang out in a bookstore with terrill and amber schrock. terrill is the reason that i still work in uganda. three and a half years ago, i emailed him to inform him that i had just completed a few months of fieldwork in the so language--a language related to Ik, which he works on. in the coming years, he sent me a few invitations to return to karamoja to work on nyang'i, the third and final language of the kuliak/robic cluster of languages in northeastern uganda. two years after he first suggested that i come, i got a few thousand dollars from the university and investigated the situation.
terrill and amber have been in the united states for the past three months. this weekend, their travels took them to dallas, the closest that we've been to each other since the came back. so i went to see them.
'what have you missed most about karamoja?'
we laughed wryly at my question, but then the tone once more became serious.
'i've missed the frontier living. simplicity. less of... this...' terrill gestured toward the window. a busy highway in an upscale suburb of dallas flashed into view.
'my kids.' amber's response came without gesture, but brought back six-month-old memories of laughing children swarming her outside of the home in which she and terill have lived on and off for several years.
some days, ice cream and white russian are dear friends to me. on those days, it's hard to want to return to karamoja. on those days, there's not really anything about karamoja per se that makes me want to be there, or that makes me love it.
those days aren't days when i've been around terrill and amber, though. terrill and amber love karamoja. they love the karamojong and the ik and whoever happens to be wandering through--turkana, didinga, mzungu--regardless of whether or not that love is merited.
that love is a bridge for me. i love the schrocks, they love karamoja, and i find that consequentially, somehow, that teaches me to love karamoja myself--at least a little bit.
photos are from my first few days in karenga, uganda, near the border between karamoja and acholiland.
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