Return to Uganda

I went over to Davida Berger's house today where Jennifer has been staying since her guardian, Abitimo, went back to Uganda a couple of weeks ago. Jennifer was getting a goodbye visit from the two families in Maryland who hosted her during much of her facial surgery at Fairfax Inova Hospital in northern Virginia. Jennifer formed close friendships with the Trost-Magnussens and the Goldbergs, especially Maddie Magnussen and Madeline Goldberg, both her age. I think, and this is only my armchair analysis, that with them, Jennifer felt part of a group for the first time in her life. Jennifer felt like a normal kid with them, not a war child, not a burn victim. Just a kid. okay, just a teen.

I missed the moment when the families arrived, but Michael Wirtz, the photographer who is coming with us to Uganda, was there and said Jennifer was ecstatic. The three girls were sitting around painting their toenails and talking by the time I got there. I went with the families and Jennifer to lunch at that diner on Germantown Ave. in Mt. Airy. Myself and the two mothers found plenty to talk about. But the other side of the table with the three girls was nearly silent. Maybe we three adults stifled the conversation.

Jennifer is really being pulled by emotions right now. One minute she is buoyant about being reunited with her mother and siblings in Uganda. The next she seems sad at the thought of leaving behind her friends. Both emotions are good in my book. They mean she still feels connected to Uganda and and made connections here in the United States.

Just as I got there late, I left them early at the diner to finish a million tasks I have to do before our flight Tuesday. The goodbyes will be hard, but the families hope to stay in touch with Jennifer and help support her family. If she does well in school, they may help her return to the U.S. for a visit. I think that will be of little comfort now for Jennifer. Tonight at least, I think she will feel more sadness than excitement. But, as she has repeatedly learned since I met her that December day in 2004, who knows what tomorrow may bring.

Michael, Jennifer and I all went separately to the Philly airport. Jennifer was driven by reader and helper Sue Fernandez of Blue Bell, who also has driven Jennifer to many hand therapy appointments. Michael wanted to get there plenty early in case security took a long time going through all of his camera equipment. It's a good thing we got there at 4:30 p.m. for a 7 p.m. flight.

A brief mix-up with Jennifer's visa took some time to clear up. Also, Jennifer's carry-on wasn't packed to meet security standards. We moved a lot of her eye drops, hand creams, lip glosses, etc. to check-in bags, my little plastic bags full of my liquids, or an extra Baggie that Michael had brought. We also had to smash her purse and laptop and acceptable items into her carry-on tote bag, since London only allows one carry-on per person, including a purse. I ended up buying Jennifer as large a rolling carry-on suitcase as allowable at a store in the airport. Everything fit -- with me practically sitting on it to get the zipper closed.

So now we are in London. Michael and Jennifer are napping while I am here in the airport Hilton's business center blogging. As usual, it's hard to tell how Jennifer is feeling about going home or even missing the United States. She seemed already to miss Davida Berger, her last host in Philadelphia.

Jennifer is in a very good mood, though she said she didn't feel any excitement. She enjoyed listening to the plane's radio channels and watching movies. She ate a lot of meats at the Hilton for breakfast, which also is unusual for her. Jennifer lost weight in the United States. Partly, I think she never fully embraced American food. The next part is my own theory: I think Jennifer wanted to be thin so she would fit in with her teen friends in Maryland and Philadelphia.

Me? I'm excited. I'm really looking forward to meeting Jennifer's family, especially her mother. I am curious about Jennifer's life before the attack. Plus, I have set myself a mini-goal of teaching her mother, Regina, how to sign her name. When she gave guardianship to Abitimo, me and my husband Tim, her thumb print substituted for a signature.

I also am looking forward to talking with other kids in the north -- those who returned from abduction as well as those who suffered without being kidnapped -- to see the challenges they are facing. The peace talks being held in neighboring south Sudan are back on, and everyone is hoping that this time, after 21 years, peace will finally and fully come to northern Uganda.

June 7, 2007 -- I have never seen Jennifer this happy. Not just a little, oh-that's-a-good-song-on-the-radio happy. We're talkin' happiness erupted and spilling across the countryside. We're talkin' joy.

She was excited in small, brief bursts as we landed at Uganda's Entebbe airport yesterday morning. We left immediately in a minivan taxi (the driver stops inches away from the vehicle in front, which in turn repeatedly stopped my heart) and made a brief detour to Kampala to exchange money. In the lobby of the exchange bureau was a small. There, American Jennifer was on full display. She pointed to a pair of pink sandals with rhinestone straps that had skinny, 3-inch heels and said, "I want to try those on." I said no and that they were completely inappropriate for a girl her age in Uganda. Unpersuaded, she growled something I couldn't understand. Oh, is she ever going to have trouble readjusting to Uganda, I thought.

After a four-hour ride pockmarked with holes in the dirt and cement road, we got to Gulu. Jennifer started getting more and more excited. When she started recognizing places, she stretched her hand from the middle seat toward me and shook my hand. She was smiling and doing that Jennifer dance/bounce motion in her seat. We drove to the Roma Hotel where she was staying and 73-year-old Abitimo -- her medical guardian in the US and who owns the school Jennifer attends in Gulu -- was there to meet us. Jennifer and Abitimo hugged affectionately as though they were grandmother and grandchild.

Next we went to the school, the Upper Nile Institute for Appropriate Technology, or UNIFAT, which Jennifer started attending about two months before she and Abitimo went to the United States in December 2005. That's when it was as clear as the sky over Gulu that Jennifer truly was home.

It's great that Jennifer made good friends in the United States. It's terrific
she learned to speak fluent English. Home is Uganda. Immediately, teachers and students came up to Jennifer and said the traditional greeting of "you are most welcome."

"She's so different, especially the eyes," said headmaster Oloya Juliuis Bosco.

Jennifer's smile somehow extends beyond her face when she sees one of her roommates at Abitimo's house, where Jennifer stays in Gulu. The chatter in the Acholi language is too fast for my interpreter to get, but the way Jennifer is holding hands with her friend, Lucy, says it all. I never saw Jennifer look this comfortable in the States, not even when she was with her good friends in Maryland.

It's about 6:30 p.m. and Jennifer's mom has not arrived yet from Kitgum. Michael and I invite Jennifer and Lucy to take a room at the hotel and stay there tonight -- in case Jennifer's mom comes, we want to see the reunion. We were at the hotel eating dinner when Abitimo called to stay Regina, Jennifer's mom, was there with a cousin and Jennifer's 2-year-old sister Sharon.

We drove back to Abitimo's house at about 9 p.m. Jennifer had barely stepped inside the house when her mother ran forward and the two hugged tightly. They let go, laughing. They hugged some more. Break. Hug. Laugh. Hug. Did I mention bouncing? Jennifer was bouncing weith excitement. Jennifer's 5-year-old cousin hugged her too. But Sharon didn't remember Jennifer and would not go up to her.

Jennifer showed impressive patience in winning Sharon's favor. She held out her hand from across the room, took a step forward and stopped. She did this until she was right beside her with Sharon seeming at ease, though still shy. Incidentally, Regina has no picture of Jennifer before the rebel attack but, she said, Sharon looks just like Jennifer did when Jennifer was 2. I also can see a resemblance in the cousin, whose name I obviously can't remember at the moment.

Regina's mother is wowed by how different her daughter looks now.

"I am really, really happy," Regina said through an interpreter. "The hair was halfway up on her forehead on her head. Most of her hair was missing in the front. "Now it is almost normal," she said.

Jennifer's nose and lips are better-defined and much better looking. "Her eyes, they look more like a normal person," said Regina.

Jennifer is listening closely to her mother and to me when I describe the details of the six major surgeries on Jennifer's face and hand. Everyone in the room -- family of Jennifer, family of Abitimo, friends of both -- look fascinated as I talk about the wonders that DC-area Dr. Craig Dufresne performed on Jennifer's face and Dr. A. Lee Osterman of Philadelphia performed on her hand.

By 9:30 p.m., Jennifer had visited her school and had her reunions. She had eaten her first Acholi meal -- greens in a vegetable sauce that she ate with a local dish called posho. Posho is soft, mealy cornbread. Jennifer picked up a small ball of it in her hand, knead it between her forefinger and thumb, and then dip it in the sauce.

Michael and I left at 10 p.m. The evening was a vivid illustration, not just in love and longing for family, but in the importance of belonging somewhere. Jennifer and Uganda belong to each other.

June 8, 2007 -- Jennifer spent her second day back in Uganda visiting with her mother, sister, cousin and friends in Gulu. She still seems ecstatic and they still are treating her as though she is a movie star -- with the exception of her 2-year-old sister Sharon. Sharon was only six months when Jennifer left Uganda to spent 15 months in Philadelphia and metro Washington DC to undergo surgery for her face and hand. Sharon obviously didn't remember Jennifer when they saw again yesterday. Jennifer was very patient in slowly getting Sharon to let her hold her. Now, Sharon will walk around holding hands with Jennifer or letting her big sister pick her up. Still, as Jennifer said, "she's acting funny."

Jennifer, Michael and I met with Sister Pauline, who works with the Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services humanitarian organization. We had Cokes on the patio at the restaurant of our hotel, the Roma. I had two purposes in meeting with Sister Pauline and bringing Jennifer along. CRS has an interesting program to train northern Ugandans to be paralegals in the displaced persons camps. As the region becomes stable and people are returning home, issues such as property rights are beginning to emerge. I'd like to learn about that. Also, I have asked Sister Pauline for her help if Jennifer has readjustment problems. Sister Pauline wasted no time acting: When we met, she said she already had arranged for Jennifer to have a counseling appointment on Monday. To my enormous surprise, Jennifer agreed to see a counselor.

I actually spent more time yesterday with Regina, Jennifer's mom, than with Jennifer. Some U.S. families who got to know Jennifer want to help support her family, so I am making arrangements to open a savings account in Regina's name. We got Regina's photos taken at a local studio so we can have an identity card made -- part of the requirements for opening an account. There were some interesting challenges in these preparation, but I'll get into those when I return to the United States and write a fuller story on Jennifer's return for the paper.

June 9, 2007 -- Jennifer really misses her older sister, Alice, 18. I thought all of her brothers and sisters would be going to Gulu from Kitgum on Thursday when we arrived, to have a reunion with Jennife. But only Jennifer's mom, one sister and a cousin who lives with them came. Jennifer had yet to see Alice, and her brothers Okeny, 12, and Kalokwera 6. Jennifer used my mobile phone to call Alice (a nearby friend of Alice who has a phone is the go-between) while we were meeting yesterday with Sister Pauline. She didn't just talk to Alice over the phone, she pined for her big sister over the phone. Since she starts classes on Monday, I figured we should make a quick trip today to Kitgum -- a 90-minute drive away on a dirt road -- so Jennifer could see the rest of her family.

The drive was easy. We stopped to talk to one woman who was farming near the roadside, otherwise it was a straight trip. Jennifer has never been to the village where her family now lives. After I started met Jennifer in a nearby displaced people's camp and started trying to get her to the United States, I enlisted the help of Abitimo Odongkara, owner of a school in Gulu and a house in Philadelphia where much of her family lives. After we got Jennifer to Philadelphia, Abitimo took it upon herself to move the rest of her family out of the filthy, small and overcrowded camp where they lived, to a nearby village with more spacious houses and better sanitary facilities.

Jennifer couldn't wait to see Alice. She ran from the minivan inside the thatched-grass roof hut and the two sisters hugged, squealed, and jumped up and down in the dim light. Jennifer then said hi to Kalokwera and Okeny and hugged them. But she really wanted to see Alice's son, Michael, who was born while Jennifer was away. The baby was with a neighbor, so about 20 minutes -- long minutes to Jennifer -- passed before she met her tiny nephew. I didn't realize Jennifer was so baby-crazy, but she is, and played nonstop with Michael.

The day passed with visitors greeting Jennifer and bottles of black cherry soda being bought to celebrate. The men sat outside; women inside. Initially, only men got the soda. I bought the round for the women. There was singing and dancing to traditional Acholi songs. About seven women danced and sang inside the family's hut as I taped them. Jennifer finally got coaxed into joining them.

Who I call American Jennifer emerged only once, when she tried to tell Alice the best way to be a mother. I took her aside and reminded her that Alice was the better expert on mothering since Alice was a mother. We had hoped to leave by about 4 p.m. to get back to Gulu before nightfall, but Jennifer wanted to eat first, and I wanted to talk to Regina some more. We ended up leaving about 5 p.m., with Ayelo the driver speeding along bumpy, muddy roads at a frightening speed. We made it home tired but alive at about 7 p.m.

Today we gave Jennifer some private time. Michael and I went to a displaced persons camp with Godfrey and Albert, two Ugandans who work for a nongovernmental organization (NGO, same as a nonprofit) called The Kids League. TKL organizes soccer teams for boys and competition for girls in a game called netball, which is pretty much like baskeball. The soccer game was between UNICEF blue (blue for the shirt color, UNICEF because it sponsored the team) and MTN green (MTN is a South Africa cell phone company). The green team included one young man who had been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and forced to be a rebel soldier. His story, being forced to attack others and march around carrying heavy loads is like so many other abducted kids here. He said that soccer helped him forget the bad memories. It seemed to help lots of people, including non-playing kids and adults, who formed an audience of at least 100 people. MTN green won.

The girls played netball with as much intensity as the boys showed in their soccer game. The passes to teammates were hard and straight. The girls would dive to get loose balls. All of the shots to the basket were one-handed. As the girls played, I interviewed one young woman who had been kidnapped. Believe it or not, she is one of the lucky formerly abducted girls because she wasn't forced to have sex with a commander. That might have been because she took care of one commander's babies. Actually, there were twins, but one of the babies was shot in a battle.

After the displacement camp, which has been around for years, we went to one of the new camps being built as the fighting has subsided. They are called decongestion camps and are deeper into the countryside and closer to people's own property so they can do subsistence farming more easily. The government chooses the sites. These camps are somewhat less crowded, but no preparations are made before people move to them. There are too few water sources and often no schools nearby. People are forced to dig latrines, but not provided with cement slabs to use as latrine covers. So instead, people make covers from sticks. There are more trees around these camps, but they are going to get cut down mighty quickly as people need them for building huts, for firewood and for latrine covers. Yet, these camps -- hopefully an interim step if peace holds and people can later rebuild their villages -- represent progress.

Jennifer returned to school today. First, one of the teachers at her school, UNIFAT, gave her a placement test. Jennifer scored really high on the English portion -- she went from knowing little English to near fluency while she was in the United States -- but did fairly poorly on the math section. She was assigned to a form 4 class. Because the Ugandan system is based on the British model, form 4 is not equivalent to American 4th grade, though I don't know the exact difference. There was a 15-year-old girl in her class who is closest in age to Jennifer, 16. There were a number of 13- and 14-year-olds too. The education of a lot of kids has been interrupted here because of war, poverty or other hardships.

Jennifer stood out among her 90-plus classmates. First, she hasn't gotten a school uniform yet and so was dressed in a black t-shirt and pink skirt. Secondly, she was the only student with a water bottle on the long desks kids sit behind. She was, in fact, the only kid with anything other than a notebook and pencil in front of them. She had a little trouble following the teacher's instruction for an assignment, but got it in the end.

Some kids looked at her once and asked her what she had brought them from America. Actually, kids were staring more at the two white Americans, me and photographer Michael Wirtz. After we leave Gulu, which will happen tomorrow,I think the novelty of Jennifer having been in the United States will quickly wear off.

I think Jennifer will have many challenges in getting used to being a full-time student in Uganda. Her schooling was sporadic in the U.S. because of her many surgeries and doctors' appointments. Jennifer obviously feels a bit overwhelmed now, but I hope she will triumph over any difficulties because education is truly the key to her future -- and she has a lot of catching up to do.

Michael and I are trying to squeeze in as much as possible before we leave for the town of Kitgum tomorrow. We went in the morning to an HIV/AIDS clinic, then I met with a group of people being trained as paralegals, ate a small lunch, napped for an hour, and then went with Jennifer to an introductory counseling session.

The AIDS center was heartening and sad. Heartening because a lot of HIV-positive people are now getting drugs and other services; sad because so many aren't. One woman who hadn't gotten any was in the center's hospital room. She looked terrible. Her eyes were sunken and her lips were trembling uncontrollably. The center staff was going to start her on antiretrovirals that afternoon. We were told we should check in on her again and see how well she most likely will be doing. We will, when we return from our three-day trip tomorrow to the town of Kitgum.

A brief on the paralegals: They are being trained to informally resolve disputes in internally displaced person's camps. The biggest source of arguments now are domestic violence and property rights disputes. With the cessation of hostilities agreement that has flowed out of peace talks, some people are returning home and trying to claim land. It's a huge problem.

I am, unabashedly wearing two hats when it comes to Jennifer: journalist and friend. I had started making arrangements before I ever got to Uganda to connect Jennifer to a counselor in case she needed someone to talk to about readjustment pains. Sister Pauline of Catholic Relief Services, humanitarian aid organization, took Jennifer and I to a counseling center in Gulu run by the Catholic group, Caritas. To my surprise, Jennifer agreed quite easily to go. The center's director explained the counseling to all of us, then took Jennifer into a private room for a brief chat. They came out and the director announced that Jennifer was excited to have someone she could talk to about her life and Sister Pauline, bless her heart, offered to arrange transportation for Jennifer when she had appointments. I'm very pleased that Jennifer will have this outlet. I don't know if she will talk about the attack, but I think it would be good for her.

We're going out to the biggest internally displaced person's camp -- or at least it has been the biggest, with over 30,000 people who have had to leave home -- in Kitgum district.

We are going to see a program run by Food for the Hungry International, a nongovernmental organization based, I believe in the U.S. FHI has a program for helping formerly abducted girls (that's one jargon-y name for them) who have had babies in the bush. They also are known as child mothers. Other vulnerable girls also can participate. Some Northern Ugandans complain that there is all sorts of help for formerly abducted kids and not much for everyone else. Don't think of that as jealousy: Think of that reaction as being reflective of the layers of problems in northern Uganda. Lots of people, including kids, have never been abducted, yet have deep problems because of the war and poverty. One girl we talked to today was an orphan with a baby of her own. She has struggled, but she has a relative who has helped her take care of the baby. The FHI program taught her to write and skills like baking and parenting. She also went to a tailoring class.

We left the camp early because our vehicle doesn't have four-wheel drive. It's a minivan taxi. We needed to leave before the day's downpour (it rains heavily just about every day in the rainy season) because the roads get too soupy for our poor, old vehicle to make it through.

When we got back, we met again with Egidio, a returned abductee who helped start an income-generation program. He is the one who knew about the attack on Jennifer's village, though tonight I learn he had escaped before the day that Jennifer was burned in her hut. He nonetheless told me many details of that night, which he said he had heard about from numerous people. What he said differs in some ways from what Jennifer's family has told me so when we get back to Gulu today, I will go over what happened with Jennifer's mother, if she is willing to talk in more detail about that day.

We ended the day by visiting two of the income-generation programs supported by Egidio's group: Men who work with honeybees and women who quarry. Those kind of programs are essential if this country is to overcome the war.

Oh, the camp where we can look at the goat-breeding income-generation project is only a 30- or 45-minute drive away, said Stephen, the Kitgum director of the Youth Social Work Association.We will be back in under two hours. As the skies darkened for the daily rainy season downpour, Stephen reassured me that the minivan we had hired would have no trouble getting back. He knew a road that always stayed dried.

Six hours later, two of them stuck on a muddy road, I can say this: Stephen has questionable judgment.

His intentions were good enough -- to show off his group's program in a Kitgum District internally displaced person's camp. But the rain came down harder and longer than any other day we have been here. That dry road Stephen had mentioned was indeed dry. But he didn't seem to consider that we also had to take a tiny road off of the good road that was more like a rocky path going up a hill. We went a few yards, but there was no way we were going to make it. The first time we got stuck was when Ayela was trying to turn the van around. A couple of passersby kindly stopped and helped push out out.

We backtracked the 45 minutes it took us to get stuck and went on the road we had used to go to the camp. The road was soup. The mud was soft and cars had made gullies with their car tires. We got stuck in one of them. One of the back tires got stuck up to the van frame and we simply weren't budging. We became the entertainment in the area as people gathered to watch. A few young men helped to rock the car to move the tire, but it was useless. I had visions of being stuck there late into the night -- and I'll explain later why I was trying to get back quickly. Finally, a public-transportation truck full of men and women finally came from the other direction. I don't think it would have stopped to help except we were blocking the road. After another half hour or so, Ayela used the truck's jack to life up the back end and place some bricks men had collected and put them under the tire. We finally got back to our hotel at about 5 p.m. after what was supposed to be a quick morning trip.

We freshened up a bit and Ayela pushed on to Gulu. See, a subplot that has run through this visit is that my mother has been hospitalized in a Cleveland suburb with pneumonia so I am cutting the trip short. Michael and I are scheduled to return Thursday June 17. Now, I'm shooting for Sunday or Monday but we are encountering difficulty in changing our reservations. Still, I wanted to get back to Gulu, which is closer to the airport, say goodbye to Jennifer, and be ready to speed to the airport if possible.

We got to Abitimo's house in Gulu at about 7 p.m. Jennifer gave Michael and I big hugs and we all went into the house to chat. It was dark in the living room -- electricity in Gulu is off as much as it is on it seems. So by two flashlight lamps, we chatted. We talked about the apartment that leftover reader donations will finance for at least for a couple of months. We are hoping to find a small piece of property and a house to buy for Jennifer's family, so everyone can move from Kitgum to be with Jennifer in Gulu. We audio taped Jennifer pretending she was a radio reporter interviewing her mom, then videotaped an interview with her. We'll post them when we get back. Then it was time for us to go. I told Jennifer to be humble, respectful and a serious student. She agreed and we hugged again. As we were driving out of the compound, Jennifer was walking toward the kitchen. Under the Gulu night sky, Jennifer's journey ends -- for now.

We are now in Lira District, the site of the worst atrocity in the 21-year war occurred. Today we visited the Barlonyo internally displaced person's camp, where the Lord's Resistance Army killed 301 civilians in a 2004 attack. The rebels first came and defeated the handful of government soldiers who were in a nearby barracks. Then they stormed the camp, shooting, hacking and cutting people to death. All the huts were set on fire. People fled if they could. Some never saw relatives again: One woman who still had a dazed look in her eyes -- the look I saw in Rwandans' eyes in 1998 -- had suffered the killings of all four of her children.

You would think Uganda would have descended upon the camp, once the area became safe enough to reinhabit, to help surviviors rebuild their lives. Yet it is isolated and has gotten little help.

On our way back from the camp, we stopped and talked to a woman who had gotten both ears and her lips sliced off by the LRA. I asked her if she was angry at the commander who gave the order to mutilate her. She said no. Why, I asked. Because he did not give an order to kill her.

Evaline is the closest I've ever gotten to Oprah.

The talk show queen had a segment on the war in northern Uganda a while back and Evaline, am LRA abduction victim who suffered a mouth wound, was brought to the audience. She was brought to the United States for surgery on her mouth by a former Fox television producer named Cori Stern, who has become an activist on numerous African child issues. Jennifer was in Indiana for nearly two years and just came back in December. I figured she would be a good person to talk to to see how Jennifer's adjustment might go. Evaline had her problems. School was tougher in Uganda; some kids at her private boarding school were mean. She seems to be doing much better now, though she just recovered from malaria and typhoid -- two frighteningly common diseases here.

After leaving Evaline, we went to a village where people were coming home to because there is enough security now. People still were nervous that the ceasefire would break and the rebels attacks would renew. Still, life in their camp was lousy. It was crowded and the sanitation was, well, it was absent. Lots of kids got sick. They were happy to be in an area with space, close to their homes they had fled years ago, and accessible to their gardens. But the harvests haven't come yet and the government, which is encouraging people to return home if it is safe, gave them little or nothing to rebuild their villages and their lives. They need everything, but they managed to build homes and they are strong and intelligent. I hope they get the assistance they need and deserve.

June 19, 2007 -- We left northern Uganda as stars -- sort of.

One stretch of the potholed Lira to Kampala road went through a region where a heated election contest was underway. In front of us was a truck with loudspeakers blaring a candidate's message. Talk about coincidences, our car was bright red -- the color of that candidate's popular political party. People on the roadside were jumping up and down, smiling and waving at us, apparently thinking one of us was the candidate. I don't know what went through their minds when they saw two whites in the car with our driver, Frances.

Now that I have an earlier plane reservation and I can;t use work as a distraction, I can't stop thinking about my mother, who is in the hospital with pneumonia. The doctors are having trouble getting her off the respirator because her blood pressure goes up everytime they try. I think my mother is very scared. So am I.

I was in my 20s when I went to get my ears pierced. My mother was with me and spontaneously decided to get her ears pierced as well. She was nervous about it and asked me to hold her hand. I did, and we both came out with our new lobal fashion. Now, I want to get back to suburban Cleveland and hold her hand as the doctors wean her off of the machine. I am not sure I will be allowed to get that close to her since I just have come from a malarial zone, but I would like the chance to hold her hand, be of help, and tell her I love her. It's a good thing blogs don't show teary eyes.

It has occurred to me that I am battling my own hardship in a land of hardships. I met victims of atrocities in northern Uganda. I spoke with people dreaming of peace and trying to rebuild their lives. The resiliency of people here is amazing. The stories I will write for the paper, I think, will be compelling and important. But my pondering on hardships doesn't go further than making that observation.

All I want now is to be by my mother's side.

Goodbye Uganda.