maybe the monkeys are up to some good

sometimes, i wish i was a monkey.  i mean they have so much fun.  today they were out in the big front yard tree, two little ones, falling from high limb to low limb, chasing each other, swinging from branch to vine, scurrying up a trunk- no worries. at. all.

i was looking at them and wondering about the actual benefit of evolution.  sure we can reason and plan and build structures but are we any happier?  

zoe often attempts to befriend the monkeys, and actually most living things, including insects. she does have a great love for animals and i think animals really love her, but insects? i'm just not sure.  and inanimate objects? i'm very sure not ("i think that must be a friendly vacuum.")

the other day we were outside reading an abridged story version of shakespeare's romeo and juilet.  we were sitting on these deliciously colored african straw mats, and it was a beautiful day, the only thing wrecking it were the ants that crawled everywhere (despite concern over large or highly poisonous insects in africa, ants are our biggest pest).  zoe says, "this ant must really like me!" as it crawls up her arm.  sometimes when she does this i think it's cute and i smile and just say nothing- and sometimes it bugs me (no pun intended) and i don't.  so i said, "you don't really think that ant 'likes' you, do you?  i mean it's an ant- it doesn't have feelings so it can't 'like' you."  but after i said it i felt like a jerk- like i'd said santa wasn't real- i'd wrecked her monkey fun.  stolen something she wanted to have. luckily she wasn't giving up the ghost.
"well, it likes me enough to stay on my arm."
"that's true zo."

it had been a very long time since i'd read the tragic love story of romeo and juliet.   young lovers, feuding families, quick falling, passionate professions, marriage, secrecy, separation, a plan to be united, foiled by bad timing, death because of the inability to be with out the other. i have to admit, i don't love it.  i get too annoyed by the poor timing- why did romeo have to get the news of juliets 'death' before he hears the friars message about the plan for them to run away together? i guess i do like at least partially happy ending.  i much prefer casablana, an affair to remember, or gone with the wind.


it got me thinking about how tragedy in love is still a love story, but tragedy in life is just hard and painful and sad.  i began thinking about what it does to people, how it's related to expectations or lack of expectations, how it's related to fatalism- the believe that one has no control over events.  in africa there is much tragedy.

tragedy- an event causing great suffering, usually involving death

most ugandans have suffered the loss of immediate family members, like parents or children; or they have had much illness, like HIV or AIDS; or things taken, like their childhood; or experienced a lack of something important, like clean water, good education, appropriate medical care.  most ugandans have experienced tragedy in a variety of forms.  after multiplied traumas, do things reach a new plateau?  does bad news become normal? are reactions blunted? it seems like that- like it has to- its survival. but i wonder what is the fall out?  what happens because of this?

i see this mostly among the poor.  there is an awareness that life is brutal and short- it's a reality here.  is that why the woman with the fungating vulvar cancer wasn't more angry when i asked her what the small local 'clinic's' were doing about this for the past 5 months that they 'cared' for her as it continued to grow and bleed and stink?  is this passivity, this acceptance, a result of an emotional system wrecked by repeated trama? 

is it why people waited for 20 minutes outside the lab, silently, when i marched up to the counter, knocked and asked loudly if anyone was available to help us, which prompted an immediate response, to the shock and surprise of those waiting on the bench?

is it why people say they have no questions after finding out their son might have lymphoma or lukemia?  how can you have no questions?  doesn't that imply blind acceptance of what ever comes next- doesn't it imply a lack of control?  but maybe after losing several family members, you stop having questions.  maybe you stop having expectations- once bit, twice shy.  maybe you stop having hope- maybe you're too tired, too defeated, too broken by the broken to get riled up.

i wonder if the real tragedy isn't the death itself, but the fall out from it. the lack of hope or involvement, or investment- the 'pawn-ness" of life here.  but maybe this is why people here live more in the present-, in the moment, in the now. because they can feel it and trust it as it happens in real time.

i don't know.  i just know those monkeys are having a ball.

going to the zoo, when you live in safari land

going to the zoo in africa is probably like buying apples at stop 'n shop when you live in an orchard,  or blowing up the baby pool when you live beside the ocean, but today we went to the zoo.  i have red tailed monkeys and grey parrots in my yard and we drove an hour and a half to go to the zoo.  not a safari, but the regular old zoo.  but it was cheaper and quicker and easier and fun.

we saw all the usual suspects, lions and zebras and pythons and warthogs and giraffes.

jude loved the crocodiles with their mouths open to cool off.  zoe and bryn  loved the otters. we saw the national bird, the crested crane, and the kids took a ride on a donkey.  i most enjoyed watching the people and trying to figure out where they were from and who comes to africa to go to the zoo- (i mean at least i live here).

then we went for pizza on the shore of lake victoria. zoe made friends with a danish family, and the boys swam in their skivies, and jude ,of course, found a crew of local ugandan kids to hang out with. 

 i love this about him.  maybe most of all, because i didn't know he had it in him.  he tends to be shy.  he tends to take a while to warm up.  he likes the familiar and the routine and he can entertain himself well all alone.  but it turns out he's also the most comfortable of the three of them, playing with ugandan kids.  when they come over to our house they're always looking for 'judee'.  he's also the blondest and the palest which makes it even better. 

perhaps the highlight of the afternoon was being told by a german tourist who was watching my children swim in lake victoria, that it was very dangerous and i shouldn't be allowing them in the water, because of, you know, schistosomiasis.  i'm sure he felt obliged to tell me because he's seen us at the zoo, and figured we were tourists as well, just less informed tourists.  i thanked him, told him we lived here and would take our chances, but left out that i was a doctor so as not to inspire a false sense of safety that might draw him into the water and result in a parasitic infection. 

it was a great day.  the traffic was fine, no tickets, and the kids slept on the way home. jude even broke the camera, and i got a headache. but it was still a great day because what's a partially broken camera in the grand scheme of things, and headaches (eventually) go away. and i think it all started off well because of my newly discovered love of the low expectation.