“Let go and let God”. Cory’s words keep coming into my mind today. Appropriate for a Sunday in Kampala when the city center empties and people fill the churches and other places of worship. How perfect to have been able to practice my own “religion” this morning. Numerous friends referred me to Kevin and Gavin, who have a beautiful home on the outskirts of the city. More modest than the average mzungu home – their “dining room” is a low table with cushions to sit on and the “living room” has been converted into a yoga space complete with an altar and candles. We practiced facing outside through the open sliding doors. Bohemian décor – their home immediately puts you at ease. I have to admit that I was not expecting the quality of class that I got. Kevin guided us in a vinyasa flow class that was one of the better classes I have ever taken. The fresh Ugandan breeze on my skin and the sounds of everyday life in the distance – dogs barking, trucks passing, children playing – the whole nine-yards. I set my intention: Energy for the work ahead.
But the intention that kept popping into my mind was to let go and let God. To gather with a group of strangers in a different country and pay respect to the divine – in the world and in ourselves – is, to me, the purest form of religion. Yet another reminder of why I have grown to love yoga. Yoga transcends boundaries that, dare I say, many religions create or at the least, perpetuate.
A nice Swedish lady drove me back into town and we talked about how useless it feels to plan out what we want to do next because life never happens as planned…She dropped me off at the National Theater Market where I have put my extra per diem to very good use. And now I am at Café Pap – the good old familiar place where I used to escape the emotional roller coaster of work last year to get a cup of coffee.
Walking the streets of Kampala on a Sunday has a calming effect. Maybe it’s the residual impact of a great yoga practice this morning, Or maybe it is the feeling of being comfortable in this city far away from home where I have come for my third time relatively by chance. God knows if I had had my way I would have led trips for GYPA to Takaungu, Kenya and if I had the choice of anywhere to go recruit people I would probably have requested to go somewhere new. But somehow my path has led me here and keeps bringing me back and each time I feel more and more at home and grateful to have returned to do something different. However it has happened…letting go and letting God…I feel I’m exactly where I should be.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
back to Uganda
After a 7 hour drive, a 4:30am wake up and a long day of plane rides, I arrived at the office suitcase in hand both physically and mentally exhausted. When I checked emails from the airport during a layover I saw that there was some talk of my going to Uganda to do some work for a proposal. However, there had been talk of my going to Uganda multiple different times during the year and it had always fallen through so I did not take it very seriously. An hour after arriving in the office I was working with the travel desk to buy a ticket. Can you go tomorrow? Yeah right! I can go on Wednesday… so a day and a half later I was on the plane to Uganda. Except this time, my third time, I was in business class and had a driver waiting for me at the airport.
The shock of the speed of my transition from home to DC to on a plane to Uganda did not hit me until I got into the car, rolled the windows down, and breathed in the smell of Uganda. Suddenly I found myself driving along Lake Victoria, passing by the exact location that I have gone to many times in my mind over this past year. I am back.
I am here to recruit local staff for a USAID proposal. I had a sense of what the assignment would require when I boarded the plane, I spent the entire flight learning more (note, the old man across the aisle introduced himself at the end of one flight and gave me his card saying that if I needed psychiatric help that he works in DC - so I must have looked stressed out)… and now, after two days of meetings that seemed to just fall into place and two interviews that were not nearly as uncomfortable/intimidating as I thought they would be, I have almost wrapped my head around the tasks at hand and feel relatively confident that I can do it
What is harder to wrap my head around is the hotel I am staying in. I used to walk by the Serena hotel and gawk, both in awe of its grandiosity, but also at the absurdity of it. How could one stay in such a nice hotel in such a poor country? Why would you want to?
“You do not have to live like an ascetic to do good development work” are the words that keep coming into my mind. “It is more about your how you handle yourself”, a good friend told me when I was grappling with the moral issue I have always had with traveling in this fashion. I think I am almost able to let go of the guilt associated with staying here (I have a raindrop therapy showerhead), but I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. I don’t think I want to get there. However, I agree that the most important thing is to never let it get to your head. How you handle this privilege in your mind is what determines how you behave and I, for one, never want to act like I am entitled to this luxury and, in a sense, status.
I have no conclusions.
What I do know is that I camped out in the lobby for two hours today waiting to see President Museveni walk in to a wedding reception being held in the hotel gardens. I sat there waiting for him to walk through the front doors for TWO HOURS! I was wondering why no one else seemed to have this idea…
….of course the president of Uganda would not use the main entrance. So no, after all of that, I did not see him, but I can see the group of people that he is among.
After I gave up on the President I wandered out of the oasis that is my hotel grounds and found myself a boda boda. First ride of the trip – as exhilarating as ever. How good it feels to hop onto a rusty motorcycle with a stranger and no helmet. Weaving in and out of traffic as though we are invincible with the smog filling my nose and dirtying my freshly washed hair and white t-shirt. Ah yes, the Uganda I know and love waiting for me beyond the gates of the hotel.
I am now going to bed feeling a combination of safety and fear with what seems like half of the Ugandan military wandering around outside…
The shock of the speed of my transition from home to DC to on a plane to Uganda did not hit me until I got into the car, rolled the windows down, and breathed in the smell of Uganda. Suddenly I found myself driving along Lake Victoria, passing by the exact location that I have gone to many times in my mind over this past year. I am back.
I am here to recruit local staff for a USAID proposal. I had a sense of what the assignment would require when I boarded the plane, I spent the entire flight learning more (note, the old man across the aisle introduced himself at the end of one flight and gave me his card saying that if I needed psychiatric help that he works in DC - so I must have looked stressed out)… and now, after two days of meetings that seemed to just fall into place and two interviews that were not nearly as uncomfortable/intimidating as I thought they would be, I have almost wrapped my head around the tasks at hand and feel relatively confident that I can do it
What is harder to wrap my head around is the hotel I am staying in. I used to walk by the Serena hotel and gawk, both in awe of its grandiosity, but also at the absurdity of it. How could one stay in such a nice hotel in such a poor country? Why would you want to?
“You do not have to live like an ascetic to do good development work” are the words that keep coming into my mind. “It is more about your how you handle yourself”, a good friend told me when I was grappling with the moral issue I have always had with traveling in this fashion. I think I am almost able to let go of the guilt associated with staying here (I have a raindrop therapy showerhead), but I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. I don’t think I want to get there. However, I agree that the most important thing is to never let it get to your head. How you handle this privilege in your mind is what determines how you behave and I, for one, never want to act like I am entitled to this luxury and, in a sense, status.
I have no conclusions.
What I do know is that I camped out in the lobby for two hours today waiting to see President Museveni walk in to a wedding reception being held in the hotel gardens. I sat there waiting for him to walk through the front doors for TWO HOURS! I was wondering why no one else seemed to have this idea…
….of course the president of Uganda would not use the main entrance. So no, after all of that, I did not see him, but I can see the group of people that he is among.
After I gave up on the President I wandered out of the oasis that is my hotel grounds and found myself a boda boda. First ride of the trip – as exhilarating as ever. How good it feels to hop onto a rusty motorcycle with a stranger and no helmet. Weaving in and out of traffic as though we are invincible with the smog filling my nose and dirtying my freshly washed hair and white t-shirt. Ah yes, the Uganda I know and love waiting for me beyond the gates of the hotel.
I am now going to bed feeling a combination of safety and fear with what seems like half of the Ugandan military wandering around outside…
how I want to know that sun
"...we are the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our flowering. I know in the text of the heart the flower is our death and the first opening of the new life we have yet to imagine...How I want to know that sun, and how I want to flower and how I want to claim my happiness and how I want to walk through life amazed and inarticulate with thanks". David Whyte's words have counseled me for years and somehow the page I open to at random always carries with it both the weight and lightness of truth.
The speed at which so many, including myself, rush through each day – each task, each commute, each exchange – is, in its own way, a refusal. A refusal to take the time to be amazed and inarticulate with thanks – to actually see what exists around us and the potential flowering inside of us. Slowing down to notice. Letting happiness flower by walking through life gratefully and conscientiously. Accepting this happiness.
In “The Pilgrimage” Paul Coelho writes about the “speed exercise” that his guide taught him on his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It is as simple as this: “Walk for twenty minutes at half the speed at which you normally walk. Pay attention to the details, people, and surroundings”. Coehlo’s guide explains to him that “when you are moving toward an objective it is very important to pay attention to the road. It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length”.
Flying across the Atlantic has always served as a forced, but welcomed, pause. Moving toward an objective, but with inevitable time to let your mind and body slow down and rise above the usual routine of your life. Small thoughts suddenly seem much more profound and you become more involved in the present journey simply trusting that you are going to arrive at your destination. In a few hours you will reach your objective and so you give yourself permission to let your mind drift away – but to a place that is actually much closer to your inner truths. To reach a state of what Greek philosophers termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’, which Alain de Botton believes that we better understand through travel. He writes that “if our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels. They express, how ever inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival”. Travel, inherently involving destinations is more about the journey – the quest – and, therefore, seems to bring us more fully into the present moment.
To pay attention to the world around us – to the journey, the moment – I feel, as Coehlo realizes on his pilgrimage, is one of the keys to happiness. To walk through life at half the speed at which you normally walk isn’t easy, but perhaps it can bring the eudaimonia, the sensation of flying over the Atlantic, the conscientiousness of travel into our daily lives. And so a goal: to try and treat every moment, or at least more moments with a faith that I will get to my destination so that I can let my mind lift up to a higher realm of thought and gratitude for the simplicity of each moment of the pleasure of the journey. Acceptance of my joy...How I want to see that sun.
The speed at which so many, including myself, rush through each day – each task, each commute, each exchange – is, in its own way, a refusal. A refusal to take the time to be amazed and inarticulate with thanks – to actually see what exists around us and the potential flowering inside of us. Slowing down to notice. Letting happiness flower by walking through life gratefully and conscientiously. Accepting this happiness.
In “The Pilgrimage” Paul Coelho writes about the “speed exercise” that his guide taught him on his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It is as simple as this: “Walk for twenty minutes at half the speed at which you normally walk. Pay attention to the details, people, and surroundings”. Coehlo’s guide explains to him that “when you are moving toward an objective it is very important to pay attention to the road. It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length”.
Flying across the Atlantic has always served as a forced, but welcomed, pause. Moving toward an objective, but with inevitable time to let your mind and body slow down and rise above the usual routine of your life. Small thoughts suddenly seem much more profound and you become more involved in the present journey simply trusting that you are going to arrive at your destination. In a few hours you will reach your objective and so you give yourself permission to let your mind drift away – but to a place that is actually much closer to your inner truths. To reach a state of what Greek philosophers termed eudaimonia, or ‘human flourishing’, which Alain de Botton believes that we better understand through travel. He writes that “if our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels. They express, how ever inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival”. Travel, inherently involving destinations is more about the journey – the quest – and, therefore, seems to bring us more fully into the present moment.
To pay attention to the world around us – to the journey, the moment – I feel, as Coehlo realizes on his pilgrimage, is one of the keys to happiness. To walk through life at half the speed at which you normally walk isn’t easy, but perhaps it can bring the eudaimonia, the sensation of flying over the Atlantic, the conscientiousness of travel into our daily lives. And so a goal: to try and treat every moment, or at least more moments with a faith that I will get to my destination so that I can let my mind lift up to a higher realm of thought and gratitude for the simplicity of each moment of the pleasure of the journey. Acceptance of my joy...How I want to see that sun.
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