In closing...

With my trip to Uganda wrapped up, I feel that I must make a closing post to this blog for all of those that have been traveling with me via my blogging.

My preconceived notions of Africa were probably much of the same of all foreigners that have lacked the opportunity to travel there. I expected to be dodging firefights between the military and the rebels and that this would be a daily occurrence, naïve—yes. Although I did hear guns shots a few nights, I never feared my preconceptions after I started to spend some time in Gulu.

What I found there was something much more disturbing than the quick pace of a gun fight, I found the aftermath of such events that has plagued this country. Things that cannot be fully explained through words nor pictures, but to see with ones own eyes does one realize the utter despair of these people. Because of this I become frustrated with myself when trying to answer the question, “How was Africa?” How do I explain poverty--not American poverty, but true poverty? The type of poverty if your child gets Malaria, an absolutely treatable parasite, your child will die because you couldn’t afford the two dollar pills to fight the parasite. Impossible, only through experience of looking upon these people, touching them, humanizing their situation and struggles will you understand, thus when presented with the question, “how was Africa?” I will be inclined to answer, “It was incogitable.”

My original intent with this trip was that of just observation, reconnecting with an old good friend, and maybe a good deed or two along the way. My itinerary as such was followed, I was learning a lot everywhere I went, I was reconnecting with my buddy, and it is hard to say if I did any good deeds or not in the grand scheme of things. But a few weeks into the trip it became quite obvious that this trip changed from a learning experience to benevolent peregrinate. The amount of different problems here could measure up to the number of grains of sand on the beach; it was too overwhelming for me. Where do I start, who do I help? From the short time that I was there I did what I could but leaving a place like that all I can think of was all the sand that slipped through my fingers, all of the irretrievable opportunities. I try to reassure myself by thinking of the parable of the boy throwing star fish back into the ocean after a storm washed thousands of them onto the shore. A man approached the boy and said, “There is no way that you are going to make a difference with the amount of star fish beached.” The boy stood for a second and looked at the star fish in his hand and then said, “I made a difference to this one” and threw the creature back into the sea. But for some reason, the story doesn’t help my apprehensive mind.

Like I said, my biggest frustration being home is my lack of vocabulary to do these people and their situation justice when talking about them.

If you have any questions about my trip, about the people, about the situation, about Invisible Children, or anything else I’ll be more than happy to try to answer them to the best of my ability. Maybe this is how I can make up for all the missed opportunities by being an ambassador for Uganda.

I had a great trip, and I want to thank my parents for all the support they had for me, my girlfriend for being so understanding, Adam for being accommodating, the family, and everyone else that was shooting me messages to help with the times of loneliness.

Thank you,

Scott

random pictures and a story or two

So I guess this is going to be more of a relaxed post

I was basically wrapping up my evening a few nights ago and I noticed something on the ground that was slithering away from me. I casually pointed this out to the others that were around and proceed to take a closer look. Not being the snake expert, and being really dumb, I think that I'd be fine touching it and such but then I remember...Black Mambas reside in East Africa so I pull up trusty ol' google images for the Black Mamba and sure enough we had a Black Mamba on our hands. Me still being a fool continue to play with it with Adam and others by our sides...we catch and then kill it with a knife. Can't have those things around the house, but what bothered me was, although this snake wasn't terribly large (somewhere in the range of 10-15 inches) it meant that a mother had to be around somewhere near and though it hasn't been located yet, I watch were I step outside our house. So this story could still have a fun and exciting ending (as if catching and killing a black mamba with a knife isn't enough) dealing with the mother snake. Aside from the Mamba, the total snake count that have been located on the property and "take care of" would be 2 other cobras (much bigger).

As one could imagine, soccer is huge here...I mean HUGE. Good way to stay in shape and play with the locals. Me thinking back to my AYSO days I begin to feel pretty confident in my ability, plus the kids I was playing with didn't have shoes (not that that would matter as I find out later, but for some reason I thought my shoes would make me run faster than those that lack 'em, sorely mistaken). So we start the game and I start jogging towards on the kids that controls the ball--second by second action goes like this, boy with ball, we'll call him B1 for simplicity sake and time intervals (seconds) will be S1 (1 second), S2 (2 seconds), etc....so here we go
S1: B1 is in front of me 30 feet
S2: B1 is in front of me 20 feet
S3: B1 is in front of me 10 feet
S4: B1 is in front of me 5 feet
S5: B1 is past me (with ball) 40 feet <--something happened here...i just remember a black flash kicking a ball blow by me. These kids were amazing and it was by no stretch of the imagination that we promptly got whooped. anyway, here are a few pictures of random things, one including Adam and I pre-whooping, and of course I had to get the Black Mamba on film! Cheers, Scott