Painted near the marketplace in Stone Town by self-taught Samuel Susuma
Monday, July 27, 2009
Samuel Susuma
Paintings from Zanzibar, Tanzania
Painted near the marketplace in Stone Town by self-taught Samuel Susuma
Painted near the marketplace in Stone Town by self-taught Samuel Susuma
back in the US of A
Well hello there everyone.
I am now sitting in my Chicago apartment with jet lag and a pair of eyes that can't stop noticing EVERY difference between the US and East Africa.
For those of you who are curious and/or have the time, I may continue to write on this blog for a while although I am already back. Some of the most revealing and pressing questions and realizations often come AFTER the fact. So hopefully you can join me in some of those journeys as I record them here.
I have many photos and videos to still share from my last days in Uganda. The walk to Grace's home to tell her and the family goodbye was early one morning. Simultaneously I felt the gift I had been given by so many people's love in Uganda, the pain I had been exposed to in endless stories of war, and the anticipation of someday returning to my family home in Lacor, Northern Uganda.
The week before departing to the USA, I traveled from Uganda to Tanzania. I stayed in Zanzibar for about a week of relaxation, sun, and water. Zanzibar is an island off the coast of Tanzania, right across the shore from Dar es Salaam. I traveled there with Megan Mercer and it was a much needed repose.
The culture, architecture, language, food, music, landscape, and weather of the place are completely distinct from that of Uganda. It was almost as if my mind had never created categories for what exists there. Typically the "African Island" cliche brings to mind (for me at least) one of two images: the Jamaican/Caribbean post-slave trade tourist attraction image OR the Spanish-colonized Cuban/Dominican Republic Afro-Latino image. And what both of these have in common is that Africans were taken to these places and the culture was blended most often with either English or Spanish culture.
But Zanzibar?? The Africans of the island are the NATIVES. They are the people who have farmed the land and bathed in the sea and built the boats for centuries. That is until the slave trade on the Indian Ocean changed everything. So now when you walk around you see the stereotypical Rastafarian African with dreadlocks, you see Muslim Arabs, and then you see Muslim Africans.... all living side by side in some cultural explosion unlike anything I'd ever fathomed.
We ate lobster, crab, shrimp, barracuda, kingfish at the night market on the shore along with samosas, falafel, and sugarcane juice. In the morning we woke to the songs of prayer, and by day we went scuba diving, met locals, and tried to wander our way through the most narrow, crooked streets.
Of everyone I met on the island, one man, an artist, a painter, inspired me most. I wrote a short story of our encounter and will post it next along with a photo of his paintings that I purchased.
If any one has connections to museums and would like to work with him to get his art exhibited let me know. He speaks English, has the most unique style I saw on the island, and is extremely eloquent.
I am now sitting in my Chicago apartment with jet lag and a pair of eyes that can't stop noticing EVERY difference between the US and East Africa.
For those of you who are curious and/or have the time, I may continue to write on this blog for a while although I am already back. Some of the most revealing and pressing questions and realizations often come AFTER the fact. So hopefully you can join me in some of those journeys as I record them here.
I have many photos and videos to still share from my last days in Uganda. The walk to Grace's home to tell her and the family goodbye was early one morning. Simultaneously I felt the gift I had been given by so many people's love in Uganda, the pain I had been exposed to in endless stories of war, and the anticipation of someday returning to my family home in Lacor, Northern Uganda.
The week before departing to the USA, I traveled from Uganda to Tanzania. I stayed in Zanzibar for about a week of relaxation, sun, and water. Zanzibar is an island off the coast of Tanzania, right across the shore from Dar es Salaam. I traveled there with Megan Mercer and it was a much needed repose.
The culture, architecture, language, food, music, landscape, and weather of the place are completely distinct from that of Uganda. It was almost as if my mind had never created categories for what exists there. Typically the "African Island" cliche brings to mind (for me at least) one of two images: the Jamaican/Caribbean post-slave trade tourist attraction image OR the Spanish-colonized Cuban/Dominican Republic Afro-Latino image. And what both of these have in common is that Africans were taken to these places and the culture was blended most often with either English or Spanish culture.
But Zanzibar?? The Africans of the island are the NATIVES. They are the people who have farmed the land and bathed in the sea and built the boats for centuries. That is until the slave trade on the Indian Ocean changed everything. So now when you walk around you see the stereotypical Rastafarian African with dreadlocks, you see Muslim Arabs, and then you see Muslim Africans.... all living side by side in some cultural explosion unlike anything I'd ever fathomed.
We ate lobster, crab, shrimp, barracuda, kingfish at the night market on the shore along with samosas, falafel, and sugarcane juice. In the morning we woke to the songs of prayer, and by day we went scuba diving, met locals, and tried to wander our way through the most narrow, crooked streets.
Of everyone I met on the island, one man, an artist, a painter, inspired me most. I wrote a short story of our encounter and will post it next along with a photo of his paintings that I purchased.
If any one has connections to museums and would like to work with him to get his art exhibited let me know. He speaks English, has the most unique style I saw on the island, and is extremely eloquent.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
A sister's pain
One of the families of Dwon Madiki has recently dug a hole into me and taken up a new space within me… a space that both aches and loves.
Peke Joel, one of the kids in Dwon Madiki, is 14 years old and in P4 (equivalent to 4th grade). His guardian is Piloya Grace, who is technically his aunt, and recently she invited us to her home with the most enormous spread of Ugandan food I’ve seen yet. While sitting on a mat near her and her mother, Piloya Grace looked at me translating her mother’s words: “She says you are now her daughter and she is your ‘mego’. Not only because you are here, but because the father of Peke Joel passed some time ago and left him alone. His father was her first born. And this one (pointing), her second born. Me, her third born. And her (pointing again), her last born. So she says now you are in the family. For when there was no one to care for Peke Joel, you wrote him letters and sent him to school and now you are here. She says that now you are her first born child.”
I immediately felt so deeply connected to this mother of mine, this family of mine I’d never met.
Yesterday, we went to Piloya Grace’s home again to visit because her 5th child, a newborn girl, is sick. The doctor has diagnosed malaria, pneumonia, and Down Syndrome. Grace told us that when the doctor gave her the diagnosis she could not stop crying in disbelief. As she told us she tried to breastfeed her baby, but she could not keep the milk down and started vomiting on the floor.
I felt I couldn’t do anything even remotely worthy for her in that moment. All I could think was to reassure her that there are parents in the United States who have many children. Then all of the sudden they have a child with Down syndrome and don’t exactly understand why. I told her that these parents struggle and work extra hard but that with that work and love and support, the child can learn and graduate from Primary school and even Secondary school. Her eyes showed surprise in response to the glimpse of hope, but her situation is still the same.
I couldn’t show her my pain, but the minute I left her home my chest was pulsing and my tears were connected to a place in me that held a hurt too infinite for it to fit inside my body.
I thought of Piloya Grace-the sister to Peke Joel’s deceased father and realized that now she is my sister, her daughter is my niece, and her pain is closer than I’d ever imagined.
Today, of all days, I had scheduled to observe a teacher her in Gulu Town. She teaches a small group of Special Needs children by using Music Therapy. She says she’s willing to meet with Piloya Grace and me tomorrow at the Dwon Madiki office in Lacor.
By this Sunday I’ll be gone from Gulu. My hope is that at least by connecting these women, Piloya Grace finds that her struggle is not one she needs to face alone.
Peke Joel, one of the kids in Dwon Madiki, is 14 years old and in P4 (equivalent to 4th grade). His guardian is Piloya Grace, who is technically his aunt, and recently she invited us to her home with the most enormous spread of Ugandan food I’ve seen yet. While sitting on a mat near her and her mother, Piloya Grace looked at me translating her mother’s words: “She says you are now her daughter and she is your ‘mego’. Not only because you are here, but because the father of Peke Joel passed some time ago and left him alone. His father was her first born. And this one (pointing), her second born. Me, her third born. And her (pointing again), her last born. So she says now you are in the family. For when there was no one to care for Peke Joel, you wrote him letters and sent him to school and now you are here. She says that now you are her first born child.”
I immediately felt so deeply connected to this mother of mine, this family of mine I’d never met.
Yesterday, we went to Piloya Grace’s home again to visit because her 5th child, a newborn girl, is sick. The doctor has diagnosed malaria, pneumonia, and Down Syndrome. Grace told us that when the doctor gave her the diagnosis she could not stop crying in disbelief. As she told us she tried to breastfeed her baby, but she could not keep the milk down and started vomiting on the floor.
I felt I couldn’t do anything even remotely worthy for her in that moment. All I could think was to reassure her that there are parents in the United States who have many children. Then all of the sudden they have a child with Down syndrome and don’t exactly understand why. I told her that these parents struggle and work extra hard but that with that work and love and support, the child can learn and graduate from Primary school and even Secondary school. Her eyes showed surprise in response to the glimpse of hope, but her situation is still the same.
I couldn’t show her my pain, but the minute I left her home my chest was pulsing and my tears were connected to a place in me that held a hurt too infinite for it to fit inside my body.
I thought of Piloya Grace-the sister to Peke Joel’s deceased father and realized that now she is my sister, her daughter is my niece, and her pain is closer than I’d ever imagined.
Today, of all days, I had scheduled to observe a teacher her in Gulu Town. She teaches a small group of Special Needs children by using Music Therapy. She says she’s willing to meet with Piloya Grace and me tomorrow at the Dwon Madiki office in Lacor.
By this Sunday I’ll be gone from Gulu. My hope is that at least by connecting these women, Piloya Grace finds that her struggle is not one she needs to face alone.
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