| | So I'm back from Uganda and Kenya and was thinking about why I love it so much...and I think it's because life hasn't become 'sanitized' there like it has here. The certainty we have with life here in North America, that things will go as we plan isn't the same there. In Uganda and Kenya there were mild riots about political events happening at the time. One guy was killed and they put the picture of the body on the front page of the newspaper. Death is real, why hide it? It's the one thing we all do really well. In parts of Africa (the parts I've seen) people aren't afraid to acknowledge death-they haven't built an antiseptic barrier between themselves and it. The buildings and landscape aren't kept meticulously clean, cement and paint are dirty sometimes, and stained--giving a clue that life isn't as neat and clean as we'd like. We have nursing homes and hospitals and orphanages so we can have a place to put the people we don't want to look at--we pay others to take care of them so we can have our own 'peaceful life'--the marginalized are marginalized--kept out of sight so we don't have to face our own mortality, our own weakness, our own pain. We learn to insulate ourselves from the reality of life that's all around us--the illusions is so real that we even take pictures of the dirty, snot-nosed HIV kids who laugh and dance around us--we take pictures because their laughter and joy (which we can't help but notice, try as we might) is real, and not the fake happiness we satisfy ourselves with. The snot-nosed HIV kids give us and show us something we want, but don't want to suffer for.
There is a rhythm to life in Africa (the parts I've seen). In the traffic, the dust, the birds, the animals, the music, the bugs, the flowers, the dancing, the people--there is a flow, a beat, a harmony that reminds me I'm alive. I love Africa because I want to feel alive, I want to dance with the rhythm.
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| | Posted 12/1/2005 11:59 AM - 14 Views - 6 eProps - 3 comments
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It would be fun to catch up and share our stories.
