monday morning

Our trip was amazing, and I dutifully kept a journal while I was in Rakai. I will share those daily entries with you IF MY LAPTOP TURNS UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, my laptop has gone AWOL. In all the chaos and frenzy of arriving in Kampala last night and unloading the beloved old rickety bus, my laptop bag disappeared. Thatcher and I have been on the case all morning. There are a few possibilities: 1. A few of the other students got off in different locations on the way back to Kampala, so perhaps one of them grabbed it by mistake 2. I left it at the hotel in Kyotera (which is unlikely, but hey, anything's possible I am learning) 3. It is still on the bus (again, unlikely, because we called Kenneth, the driver and another student who continued on in the bus, and they looked everywhere for it) 4. A passerby stole it while the bags were being unloaded and stacked in the parking lot of the hotel and then in the lobby.

So.... I am trying to understand how I will deal with the reality of losing all the images I have made thus far. I was just saying to Thatch and Corbin during the trip back last night (I feel like I am growing so close to them, and I feel lucky to be becoming their friends) that everything happens for a reason. If it is true that all the pictures I have made in Africa so far are gone, then I will need to figure out what that reason is,learn from it and go on from there.

I learned so much about myself and my life, my world, my heart and the meaning of family and humanity in the village. I learned these things from the beautiful and kind people I met and photographed. The village we stayed in is called Buyingi and has been ravaged by AIDS. I spent my days with Margaret, a 40 year old mother and grandmother. She lives in a mud hut with a tin roof, where her three children (her two older children died from AIDS) and four orphaned grandchildren sleep on ratty mats on the dirt floor... no electricity, no toilet (not even an outhouse)an open pit for cooking, a couple of goats and a few chickens - and a plot of very fertile land where she grows sweet potatoes, mangos, beans, cassava, etc. I hope I will be able to post my journal (yep, it's on Word which is on my laptop), because I wrote about the journey in good detail.

I don't know what today has in store. I was supposed to return to the orphanage to do a few "unfinished" things and just check in, but I will probably spend most of the day tracking down the laptop - or at least trying.

I am feeling great health wise, and I have made some good friends. I love Africa and would like to return someday. My heart feels very full.