You are wondering how to live and the hills are green burning off mist. The boy in the car driven across the border to Kigali for project smile. His eyes, round deep brown. They are pounding in the fields in the valley with a hoe, tilling, a young woman rests holding the small of her back in her hands. The wind carries Eucalyptus through the open windows.
The men in the car speak in a language I do not. When will we get there?
The heat comes.
To wake up each morning to the hills. It is work to take in so much beauty. It is work to tend these fields.
The familiarity of roadtrip.
In my head, I am trying to tell myself a story of belonging to something so I must feel a little lost in the back seat of the car driving to Kigali - which arrives suddenly and stretches itself out among the hills.

He will be in Kigali four days, the boy. The men, Ugandans who work for an NGO in the villages, say they noticed the other children at school avoid to sit with him. I wonder what the boy thinks. Does he know what surgery is? How long will it take to heal? What will it be like to smile at someone?

I saw the muscle tighten - the involuntary one above the eyes that distinguishes genuine happiness from the polite smile - when he first got in the car to cross the border. A long road for a little boy. He sits forward in the middle seat. He leans forward. There is so much we can recover from.

I am writing a story to myself of how I came to Rwanda to begin with. In the backseat of a car in Valencia, CA I am asked - something that implies the inadequacy of the question 'why does suffering exist' - that fingers the immaturity of shock and of placing all suffering as elsewhere. But I think a series of events the summer of 96 made me stop believing that suffering was redemptive. That the choice to accept suffering led to any meaning. Or at least, parsing through that space for god was much harder than I had been conceiving it. The stranger knocks and you turn him away. He had round brown eyes like the boy.

I wonder the difference between recovery and redemption.

After two days, the incision all the way down to the muscle will hold itself together on its own. Hours, days, weeks in bed and the tissues knit themselves meticulously together. The work of surviving. But we don't. Survive life.

Is it the same work, to support the conditions that make life possible and to support the conditions that make life meaningful?

There is a lake the sound of sheep cows fast paced human voice a thin haze of volcano sun will set no mosquitos how far we all have to go little see-through black trees. \
What is left over.
Abundance.
Where from here?
There is no space between you and alone. Or that is exactly what is there.
the backs of shoes, receeding
to break knowing
Lake Bunyonyi
The second deepest lake in Africa? no, the world
meaning that is not knowing -
what we allow ourselves to be changed by
a lake means
a crater - a volcano, a rock from space
depth, islands, lake, lake smell, dugout canoe, below - another hotel, brick church, that island with the schools. primary and secondary. drums, drumming, curry crawfish, black moth, black
means a kind of quiet
in this way, meaning is lonely, elsewhere
following into knowing less, nothing

giving up

40 presents in 40 days

Today Mbarare. We travel - the roads - it is dark when I am awake and waiting at the Shell Station near my home. And then it is light, warm light on the quiet clay or cement. We pick up all the professional women and we drive east. Doze. Banana trees. fields have soft waves. Slowing on the one lane road for the speed bumps. For this one truck on the uphill. For police checkpoints. And then working out something about being alone in my sleep. We all sleep. Even G falls asleep over the paper she is trying to prep with for her Friday meeting.

We stop by the side of the road and buy sausages. We buy tea. We buy ginger soda. An old man in a bright plad jacket and a broadrimmed hat sells us medicines that he has cultivated and carries in a black plastic bag and we laugh at ourselves and buy them. This one is for heartburn. This one for asthma. We laugh and drive to Mbarare. Yes, we do.

It is like this, a long time ago you had a dream. You were on the bus in Uganda. It was your 30^th birthday and your father gave you a present. There were three words on the wrapping that you can’t remember. But in reading, they translated simultaneously to “Standing in the absence of god is standing in god’s presence” and “To know yourself is to be without self.” Separate, but not sequential. And then you looked to the back of the bus to show the person seated there, but cannot get his attention. It is only now 2 years later that it occurs to you, you were in error. You can’t give a thing you have not received.

in desert learning

can you write the time?

So. I've had a bunch of conversations this week about what it means to be creating locally but with an international vocabulary

I'm at the coffee shop reading a recent draft of a script Eric is writing for our loose adaptation of Antigone. A small man with a smooth walking stick, white hair, black rimmed glasses sits at the table next to me and we talk.

Is that a computer?
Yes.
What company do you work for?
I don't work for a company.
Where is the company based?
I don't work for a company?
Where are you from?
I'm from the United States.
People are rich there.
Some people are. There may be a lot of money in the country but not everyone sees it.
Do you think it is by god or by chance?
What?
That some people have much or some people have little?
I don't know.
But you think about it and you tell me. Is it by god or by chance?
So, I do. He leans in to hear, his face down and when I am done, saliva falls from his mouth like a blessing as he sits up to meet my gaze.
What's your tote?
I don't know.
Maybe you don't understand my question.
You are asking me about a totem - an image or an animal or thing that a community holds sacred.
No. That you can't touch. What's your tote?
Um...
Is blood or milk thicker?
Blood, I think.
And we all have blood. And the breath you cannot see. See, you have sat here, I have sat here, we have started a conversation and we have not abused each other.
Yes, the body of our conversation.
Is it god or chance?
I don't know.
Who knows?
And the woman who is dating his nephew comes to take him. He says, give me your number. And now write the date. And the time.
Did I miss his name or forget it?

The international conversation is not the universal conversation. Unless somehow the untranslatable is part of the vocabulary.

trip to Garden City mall for bacon pizza

...and...

running errands in Kampala. meeting with Kaya and then to the embassy to drop off some forms and then to the doctor. I don't bring enough money for a boda boda after coffee so I walk most of the way from CafePub to the embassy. parliament to gaba road before finally jumping on a mutato.





























































































































































































































































doctor is supposed to start seeing patients around 5pm but he doesn't show up til 8pm. he works in three other hospitals besides the clinic and he had an extended operation. doctors don't make so much here so many have private practices in addition to their work in the hospital. he writes a prescription by hand. his handwriting reminds me of water, of silhouettes after dusk. your handwriting is beautiful. yes, it's like art to me. i like to make something beautiful.

for Monica...

Kampala Rd.
















mutato, more or less the bus















it's campaign season for the presidential elections
on the news yesterday, they said Museveni is threatening to stay by force if he is not voted back



















Maribou stork















refrigerator















waiting in the car...















there will be a party for the last day of school this term.















stuck in jam















we pause while the student driver attempts the intersection. road rules can be impromptu here...