ask the questions

it is strange, this living between worlds.

i eat matoke and g-nut sauce with my fingers on the ground outside of an old church that serves as our village clinic in luwero- no bathrooms- no running water- no electricity. we eat and laugh and watch the kids run around and the fire burn and the chickens poke.

i go home to my house, with window screens and a television and nutella and peanut butter.  i drive my children through the slums of mud houses, and drainage ditches, and arrive at a new, well designed international school- where they learn all day with other kids who have TVs and cars.  they beg for a snack on the way home, then fall asleep to the bumpy ride as i drive through this tunnel of disparity, and wake them at the gate.

i love a dark brown child, who lives in my house and i tuck into bed each night. she calls me mama and likes sesame street and has more clothes than i do, while her birth mother begs on the street downtown.

i go examine a child with fever on a bench outside of her one room home as her mother washes plastic dishes beside us in the dirt. i have come from my exercise group in kampala with my friends who rejuvenate and inspire me, who work to live here and help their children process differences, and our world, and what we do about it, as their husbands work to fix the big deep problems that surround us here.  maybe it's my yoga pants and tank top that have inspired the crowd around us.   children giggle and i hear the murmurs of 'mazungu' while i listen to her lungs.  she looks like my youngest child- beautiful.

is it horrible and inconsistent?

should i have built my house of the red dirt too? with my own hands? should i be going for water, to fill my giant yellow jerry can at the pump a kilometer down the road? should i live outside between the mosquito biting hours of 7 to 11, to cook and wash, because my kitchen is outside, and only then crawl under my net?

where is my solidarity? how can i understand anything from my university provided porch? from my position of freedom? from my permanent awareness that any time, i can get up and leave it all behind?

i go out with mike each saturday  night.  it's our time. it's important for us- even if only for us- to process these things together.  should our dinner money be spent on something else? another childs school fees? more medical supplies?  or are we supporting the local economy? giving jobs and tips to servers, and guards, and babysitters, and gas station attendants? are we saving ourselves years of therapy bills by consciously talking through our life here, as middle aged americans living in east africa, trying to somehow be helpful?

these questions circle around in my mind.  they need to be asked- even if they have no answer.  they should not haunt me, but challenge and inspire me. these thoughts are relevant and universal although typically more hidden, they should be discussed over dinner tables in america even if the differences are harder to see. 

what do we do about inequality? what do we who have more, do about those who have less? and how much do we do? and does it even matter? and are we brave enough to open our eyes?

by asking, we aren't ignoring or forgetting or pretending.  by asking, we are trying.