After church on Sunday, Colin and I stayed at the school for the afternoon and hung out with the kids.  Sunday is their only full day off from school and it was great to spend a little time getting to know them.

These kids are so funny.  Laughter is like breathing here, bubbling out of the easy smiles of the students.  It’s the white noise of the campus.

It never ceases to amaze me what kids will share if you just spend time with them sans agenda.  Colin and I were sitting in the shade of one of the outdoor classrooms shooting the breeze with the kids, talking about things like rap music and soccer.

Then the conversation took a turn and the kids started talking about their experiences as night travelers during the terror-filled years when Kony rampaged through the north.

Each night they’d travel the dark road from their houses and huts and into Gulu.  You can’t imagine the pitch darkness of this road.  No glow of electricity.  No flashlights.  Only stars pin pricking the sky and the white face of the moon to watch over them.  The boys walked for miles with their cousins and siblings, an ant trail of children hurrying along the edges of the roads in search of shelter and the hope of safety in town.  One particular boy was ten years old at the time.  I think about my nieces and nephews who are around that age and I imagine them walking that dark road together and my heart fills with agony that spills out of my eyes.

The boys talked about family members who were taken; uncles whisked away, fathers snatched out of the potato garden in the early morning hours.  They talked about family members who are still missing and about others who were mercifully released.

They also told stories of children forced into servitude for the LRA, walking for days with heavy loads balanced on their heads.  A single utterance hinting at hunger or fatigue meant a sure and swift death.

The boys told horrific stories that I can’t even bring myself to type because the malevolent inhumanity of it burns in my stomach and causes hot vomit to sizzle in my throat.

It’s fitting to me that the new campus is built in what was once one of the most violent and unstable areas in Northern Uganda.  The heart of the school is their dedication to love and justice and I can’t think of a more fitting place to make such a declaration.

On our way home Sunday, Colin and I walked part of the road used by the night traveling children.  Two of the boys escorted us and I couldn’t help but sneak peeks at their faces, imagining younger versions of them making this walk in the dead of night.  We walked about a mile before flagging down bodas that took us the remaining nine miles back into Gulu.

Sunday night my heart was heavy, weighing me down in my sleep as the boys’ stories came to life in my nightmares.

Every good teacher learns from his or her students.  Here in Uganda, I’m eager to learn how these children walked the darkest road and arrived at this destination, to a time and place where laughing is like breathing.

This was my hotel room in Entebbe where I spent my first night in Africa.  It was a lovely room with a bed I sank into before falling asleep to the sounds of Africa outside my window and the hum of the fan cutting through the humid air.  It’s fitting that I was in Suite 16.  It just sounds right, doesn’t it?  After two days of traveling, I took great delight in this oasis.  In the morning I had a hot shower and enjoyed a breakfast cooked just for me.  It was a shame I’d only be spending the one night there and another night upon my return to the airport at the end of the month.

In Gulu, I expected my room to be the same caliber.  Here’s a shot of my toilet in Gulu.

Gah!

I’m sorry I didn’t mean to frighten you.  Quick, try to think of pretty flowers or cute bunnies or something.  Try not to think about how my toilet looks like a crime scene.

While staying here, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ryan and his lotus tattoo.  Part of the adventure is finding beauty in unexpected places, right?  Right???

So the beauty of this toilet is that it flushes and because I’m a girl I don’t actually face the horror of the back of the toilet when I squat to do my business.

You looked at the toilet picture again, didn’t you?  Sorry.

Let me replace it with a different image.  Here’s my “shower”.  I say shower because the shower nozzle doesn’t work, meaning I get to stand in the bucket and splash water on my dirty bits while dunking my head under the faucet.  The beauty in this is that the hot water tap is a ruse and there is only cold water here, so really I wouldn’t have wanted to actually stand under a freezing cold shower anyway, right?  Since the sink doesn’t work, the shower is technically my sink, too, meaning I can save time by taking care of all of my showering, sink and toilet needs at the same time.  And who doesn’t like to save a little time now and then?

What you can’t tell from the picture is that several times a night the shower faucet spontaneously fires massive amounts of water into the tub below with such force that the first night it woke me from a dead sleep.  The beauty in that situation is that the first time it happened, I’d just recently used my CSI toilet so I didn’t pee my sheets.

This is the sleeping part of  my room.  Note the pristine mosquito net.  It was part of an end of the year gift from one of my students.  The net that previously covered my bed was riddled with holes which is actually counter productive when it comes to mosquito nets because it only serves to trap them inside the net instead of keeping them out.  So the beauty in this is that I now get to tell my former student just how much I appreciated her thoughtful gift.

But wait, the beauty of this room doesn’t end there.  Check out my view.  Breathtaking in a sort of gasping for air kind of way, no?  Note the lack of screen on the window, meaning that when I can’t possibly take the humid air a second longer and have to open the window, I get to study a variety of insects from inside the safety of my mosquito net.  I do love a good entomology lesson.  I don’t even want to think about what the bars are for.  No, I don’t know what that stain on the window is and, yes, people walk by my window and say hello.  Hang on a sec, I’m going to go look at my toilet to make myself feel better about my window.

Okay, where was I?  Ah yes, my window.  What you can’t tell from the picture is that there’s a club right down the road that plays loud American music until the wee hours of the morning.  So when I wake up and feel homesick, I get an earful of Kelly Clarkson or Usher.  The beautiful thing about that is that I brought lots and lots of earplugs.

From my quick peek into Colin’s room, it appears that my room is the anomaly, the neglected step child of the hotel.  So that’s good.  Except for the ‘my room’ part.

I still think Lotus Ryan is right about the importance of finding beauty in unexpected places.  For the next few weeks, I’m just going to have to look hard to find it in this particular room.

An addendum to the finding beauty in unexpected places thing is that I’m also going to do a better job of appreciating beauty, even when it’s expected.  When I again cross through the doorway of beautiful Suite 16 back in Entebbe, my appreciation for the bed, the heated shower, the screened windows and the toilet will have increased tenfold.

An addendum to the addendum, the next day I was able to move to a different room and found all sorts of beauty.  Behold my toilet. I almost kissed it.  Until I saw a cockroach crawl out of it.  The beauty in that is that the cockroach didn’t crawl out of it whilst I was using my brand new throne.