The Caterpillar Caught the Bus

**This is a fictional piece of writing and the characters do not reflect any one person or event specifically but are rather a collection and metaphorical entanglement of characters, stories, conversations, emotions, thoughts**


Dear Caterpillar,

I told you I used to sneak into the neighbours’ garden. I would climb the wood stack beside the shed, climb over and land in their cubby house. I didn’t have a cubby house. I would play in their sandpit. If I was lucky, other children would be in it. Until Mum turned up after frantically knocking on all the neighbours’ doors trying to work out who I had visited this time. She was busy with my sister. I was three and I had lots of questions. I wanted someone to talk to and someone to tell stories with.

We pretended I was in your garden. I watered your old Polish roses. You passed me out some fruit and nut chocolate, and a sparkling water with an umbrella in it. I liked the way you saw the stars from a sideways gaze. You told me something of your tears, and you were not even sure how it came out. It was like voodoo, you said. You wouldn’t be the first to say so.

I snuck into your garden. I wanted to someone to talk to. Someone to tell stories with.

Yesterday I lived with a girl. She once brought me coloured straws to sip through, all tied up in brown string. She bought another friend a hammock. She doesn’t keep cutlery in the top drawer. I like her a lot. She’s my friend. A month of settled bliss with a dog rolling around on our coriander, eating stolen figs and riding bikes to school. But today she said she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore, and I don’t know why.  

And my sister across the ocean lost her baby. Again.

And a woman came to ask for a pill. She couldn’t bear to lose any more.

Another didn't want to take hers anymore. Her son had decided to leave this world. Her other was taken. She thought maybe she could make another one. She didn’t know what else to do.

I didn’t take a breath.

I saw you and knew I’d known you before.

I met you for coffee. I couldn’t have coffee. I needed a breath.

We walked through the garden and you talked of worlds I knew and didn’t know. Did I respond? I don’t know. My mind was hyperventilating and I couldn’t quite hear. I walked the wrong way. And then again. Did I say anything back? The hair on your head was blonde, and in your beard it was ginger. “Are you confident?” you asked. I thought I was. Where was I? My backpack was almost bigger than me and I suddenly felt very tiny in my small high-top sneakers. You had headphones around your neck and sparkle in your eye. You waited for me to tell a story. Sounds came out. Were there words? You saw a gnome. The rooster I’d promised to show you wasn’t as big as I remembered it. Or maybe that was just because you were so tall? I felt so small on this stage.

The bus pulled away. The black jeans and denim shirt weren’t standing there with your small brown book after it did.

I didn't need a breath. I needed to breath out. Long and deep. And in again. And out again. Did I respond? 

Too late.

My friend wants to know why I’m not angry at the friend who gave me the straws. She was almost crying saying that if I won’t get angry for myself, she feels she has to do it for me. Everyone is angry for me and at each other.

But I’m not angry.

I’m crying. For the questions I don’t get to ask and the answers I don't get to hear. For the hands I’ve held in mine that are too far away to grasp. I’m crying because she’s not okay. I’m crying for your black dog and the stories that brought you to your knees. For my sister across the ocean.  I’m crying because my friend around the corner can’t get out of bed. Because she’s crying too. For the days my Mum couldn’t get out of bed. For the Polish roses and brown dog I may never meet. The garden I didn’t get to play in.

I just wanted to talk. Someone to tell stories with.

I wanted to tell you I’ve changed so many times since this morning. But you sat on the mushroom, your pipe puffing. And you didn’t ask “and who are you?” Or did you? Did I respond?

My Granny once told a boy I love he was allowed to lie to me, as long as it was a good one. I love him and his heart and his good lies. He knows how many times I have changed since this morning. My Granny had tea with yours. She told me not to worry - you’re just a sensitive boy. She said I remind her of the son she lost. 

She just wanted to talk. Someone to tell stories to.

We said goodbye. And then she was gone. I still write her letters. I just don’t know where to post them to.

There’s a current that runs through all of us. From one life to the next, he said. If you have met before, it will light up the night sky for a moment. Like the sky above your sand dune. He said he tries so hard to hold onto the light, because he knows it will be black again soon. He's the space between the stars and one day that space will swallow him whole. I told him he was a star lighting up the dark spaces. That sunlight will always run faster than moonlight. He said those words were like being able to hear your own music for the first time. 

You never get to hear your own song for the first time.

This is how I heard it.

Ruby.

New cushions

The fan is spreading a breeze under the clothes horse, airing my machine washed clothes. The handles on my carbon frame road bike look eagerly at me, the frame ready to jump and race out the door if I even mouth the word 'ride'. The 'Beaches' soundtrack we found on vinyl on a recent op-shop fossick is adding some oomph to the scent of spiced carrot cake wax melts.

I'm not in Uganda anymore.

No, this is Australia. Where trying to find the right colour / texture combination of cushions to match your new reclining lounge suite can not only become the focus of your day, but also cause a 'domestic'.

"I said from the start that lounge suite wasn't right for the carpet."

It's been five months since I left Lugazi, Uganda. And I haven't written a blog since.

Actually, that's not true. I've written a couple, but I haven't posted them.

The readjustment and reverse culture shock has been nowhere near as difficult, and simultaneously excruciatingly harder, than I imagined it to be.

I can't even reveal to those closest to me what I really think most of the time - for fear of sounding hypocritical, offensive, holier than thou, idealistic, negative, naive, bleeding heart, optimist. And did I mention hypocrital?

I will post the unfinished blogs. It's just every time I think to write one, I tell myself I'm not allowed until I finish the one I started when I first came home.

Today, I'm throwing out my self-imposed rule and starting from here. Sometimes I'll jump back. Sometimes forward. Sometimes things are not going to make a whole lot of chronological or creative sense.

But here it is. A letter.

When I started this blog, I wrote it as letters to my grandmothers: Betty Marshall and Sylvia Toohey.  As Betty's mother's name was Ruby, and Sylvia's maiden surname was Dove, thus the name of the blog (it was either that or Silver Betty...but since I've had a penchant for ruby coloured items for some time, it seemed apt).

These women are two of my favourite story-tellers. One has a timeless and tireless imagination for fairytales - the secret lives of the creatures who live in her garden, and her thousands of dolls who chatter to each other as she sleeps. I do not doubt there are fairies under her Maidenhair ferns. The other, has a wicked memory which stores names, relationships and most importantly, moments of joy, tragedy, tears and hilarity in a filing system only she can see. For those who listen, she will work her magic so that her true stories become your own - a gift to pass on if you open it.

But tonight, I am making an exception, and addressing a letter to Doreen, in Uganda.

Dear Doreen,

I am sitting here in Yeppoon, on the woven mat you gave me, looking at a pineapple. How could I not think of you? Despite the fact I can wander downstairs to the supermarket and buy a large pineapple juice from the fridge, I am tempted to boil the skin, wait for it to cool down, drink my 'juice' and think of you. Truth be told, I prefer your ginger tea.

I am currently employed as the Digital Producer at the newspaper I work for in Queensland, which means I edit online stories and try to grow our online audience by engaging with our community through our stories, and social media. Part of the challenge of building this audience, is to inspire the community to tell their own stories.

So, one of the things I'm asking people to do in the lead-up to Christmas is write a letter. They are being asked to log onto our website and write a letter to someone they won't be spending time with this Christmas. It might be someone they are far away from, or someone who has passed away. They are also asked to upload a photo of something which reminds them of that person. They can write about a shared memory, about what they'll be doing for Christmas, or just what it is they love about that person.

This is me kicking things off.

I wanted to write to you and say even though I may not be there, even though it may seem I am caught up in my life back home, even though I may not write every day, I have not forgotten you. Sometimes, I wish I could.

If I could forget you, I could complain more. I could buy more meaningless things. I could block out what is happening in the rest of the world. I could enjoy a gelati on the beach without wondering what you were doing and wishing you were here to soak everything up with me. I could block out the fact so many people don't have the privileges, opportunities and love that is available to me. I could forget how inspiring, selfless, determined and generous you are and just get on with the job of being a cynical self-absorbed mzungu (white person).

I wish you could all come to my place for Christmas. I know Jo and Beth have never been to the beach, and I'd still love to teach you to swim. You must be nearly due to have number three, and I would love to give you a holiday, and send you off to a foot masseuse and a spa. I will never forget how much Erin had to go through to organise a massage for you. You never had the time to leave the children long enough to leave the house, so she had to bring the masseuse to you. And then you still proceeded to scrub the floors, bring us tea and cook for everyone with two children running around your feet and claiming to be 'helping' you whilst really throwing rice, knives and soapy water from one side of the kitchen to the other.

So I just wanted to let you know, I am thinking of you Christmas Day and every day, and love you and your family with all my heart.

Amy.

#AfricaTime

You know those moments when people keep saying "You should write a blog"... and you think about it, and then you don't, and then it's too late. Well I'm in Africa. And you're never too late for anything in Africa.


I'm not sure why I booked a ticket to Uganda. I'm not sure why Valence's email stood out to me from all the others. But as soon as I signed up to become the social media coordinator for the Youth Focus Africa Foundation, something pretty phenomenal happened. A man called Joseph Kony became a household name, people suddenly had a clue where Uganda was, and the relationship between social media and non-government organisations in developing nations was scrutinised as much as the relationship between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. 


So, I promise I looked for Kony. I peeked under at least one banana leaf. But I couldn't find him. 


Instead, I found a nation full of gratitude. Of hope. Of beauty. Of exploitation. Of inequality. Of corruption. Of smiles. And of generosity.


These are the letters I have written to my grandmothers.




** For more photos from my trip and to connect with the Youth Focus Africa Foundation, please visit:


My Facebook site: www.facebook.com/amyjoanne.marshall
YOFAFO's Facebook site: www.facebook.com/YOFAFO

White Interlude.

Before I head into Part #2 of the 'Booty and the Bomb' blog, I wanted to introduce you to one of my favourite writers, and a concept known as the White Saviour Industrial Complex.

In March this year, just more than a week after the Kony2012 video went viral, Teju Cole tweeted a seven-part explanation of this complex, and took an articulate and witty lead on the backlash against this video made by Invisible Children.

In a follow-up to my blog about child sponsorship (you may recognise it as the one about my expanding "Kanina Kanene"), and in the lead-up to a blog about Ugandan politics and the media (and a safari which may see me bump into some hippos) I am copy-and-pasting this American-Nigerian writer's definition of this complex as some food for thought.

"1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.

2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.

4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.

5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.

7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly."  **

My thoughts about the irresponsibility of the Kony2012 campaign, could fill 100 pages. Its inaccuracies, its lack of consultation with Ugandan people, its promotion of the justification of militarisation in a nation whose democracy is already under threat from such ideas. And I whole-heartedly agree with Teju Cole about the way Westerners support militarisation and conflict in areas such as Haiti, but will fill their do-good egos by donating when there is an earthquake in the region. However, while acknowledging Cole is mainly pointing out the hypocrisy of it all, I wonder if (in this particular White Saviour argument) he fails to recognise the separation of long-term and immediate needs and the value of small community-driven grass-roots approaches.

My questions are:

1. Are all of our attempted contributions to the smoothing out of inequalities in the world, merely selfish acts in the pursuit of a "big emotional experience" to validate our privilege?

2. If it makes a positive difference, does it matter if part of the motivation was a selfish?

3. Do all acts of kindness carry a selfish element, in our desire for the reward of seeing a smile on someone's face and feeling their gratitude? How do we give without receiving, and do we have to to make a positive contribution to the world around us?

4. How does the everyday person, who does not have time to research the political / social / cultural context of every nation in the world, make a responsible and educated contribution?

5. Many volunteers who come to Uganda, and other parts of the world, spend the majority of their time travelling and simply playing with children. There are no doubt more productive ways for them to contribute to the world around them, and an element of them simply looking for an opportunity to 'grow as an individual' and put something on their CV. But if they make a connection, learn something about human rights and wealth distribution inequalities, become more open-minded and open-hearted human beings, and have a broader perception of their place in the world, is it worth it?

6. How do people living in the developing world tell their stories, from their own perspective, and have them heard, when Invisible Children can flood Twitter while these people often don't speak English or even have a light globe?

7. How do we do a better job of educating people not just about the world's needs, but the reasons behind those needs? And if Robinah is one of the world's 'needs', and money and advocacy would be more effectively directed at the source of why she doesn't have a pen or a pair of shoes, do we ignore her immediate needs?

8. And most importantly - since I am ego-driven, self-conscious and use technology starting with 'i' (which explains my perception about where the centre of the universe is) - do you think I am a victim / perpetrator of Cole's Complex?! :)



**http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/

Booty and the Bomb: Part #1

“You look nice and fat”

Interesting times at the YOFAFO Chalet. Thirteen volunteers been and gone, my butt grew to a more acceptable size, there’s been a terrorist threat, Doreen washed my hair, Beth (18 months) has learnt to ask if she can drive the car, and there are 30,000 refugees just over the border in South Sudan who don’t have any water.

I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Kampala, checking out the African version of Big Brother. Biggest brotherist difference seems to be the allowance of drinking and smoking in the house. My attention span for that lasted about five minutes, at which point I flicked the channel to find a documentary about Africans teaching some white guy to use a bow and arrow. Interestingly, the guard at the house I live in has a bow and arrow. I thought he had killed someone with it the other day. It was night time and we heard a flurry of thumping and banging and came running out to try and see the robber. Turns out the guard had picked up a giant log and was bashing a snake! Erin was very happy it didn’t slither into her room. Jo was giggling hysterically and a little too excitedly (he killed a lizard recently. But we can't really blame him, because whenever he refuses to wear pants, Doreen tells him a lizard his going to eat his "pushu". I don't think I need to translate. This will also explain why Beth has a fear of frogs...)

So do you want to hear about the terrorists or my backside first? Since this is a blog and I can't actually hear your response, I'll make the call this time.

I’ll stick to wear priorities lie in Uganda.

The downside to putting on weight as a female, is Westerners give more respect to women who look malnourished. Even if men don’t find it instinctively more attractive, and if magazines say they want to support a healthier size… they do not. Waifishness has become a symbol of grace, beauty and brains. If you are skinny then you must be working hard, you must have a sense of self control, and self respect. Confusion of internal and external perceptions are things we all struggle with.

In Uganda, if you are skinny, you are just scrawny. It’s a symbol of poverty and illness. How will you carry the children, the jerry cans of water, the matooke on your head with a bottom that size?!

Dickson says my arms look “fatter” and Valence says I am looking “healthy”. So even if my weight gain is a result of bloating and fatigue in response to my body not being able to process the food it is trying to make sense of, somehow it is more attractive. Normally, I would either go into a jogging frenzy or hide in my room for a couple of days after being told “you look healthy” or “you are looking nice and fat”. Because at home, this is supposedly literally translated to “you’ve gotten fat and lazy”. Yes, I understand this warped interpretation of a compliment may in fact just be my own screwed-up-body-issue-sense-media-influenced-disordered-view-of-myself. But I don’t think I’m alone.

I may have felt a twang of illness at these comments, and perhaps text a “frown face” or two to a friend. But there came a point when I was relieved for the added padding. I am still undecided on whether the extra attention from Ugandan men (ie. “Whoah!”, “Madame, madame, I love you, you are beautiful”, “Madame, pllleaaasee, give me your number”, “Wooooowwwww”, “Madame, what is your name. Please, I love you. Where are you going? Let me come with you”) is such a good thing. But as I have recently discovered, there’s no way you can dance properly in Uganda with a bony bum. (**NOTE: This goes for men too.)

It began with the arrival of 13 volunteers from the United States. The group of girls, aged between 19 and 22, were led by university lecturer Tiffany Hammond Christian. Tiffany first met Valence about five years ago. He had been invited to visit the United States by a university professor and was due to speak at the Appachalian State University. Tiffany was lecturing in development, saw Valence’s name on the list of available invited speakers and agreed to have him present to her class. When the class was finished and Valence left the room, Tiffany started to continue the next part of her lecture. But her class was silent. And then hands went up in the air.

“We want to go,” the students said.

“Go where??,” asked a baffled Tiffany.

“We want to go where he is going. We want to go to Africa.”

Tiffany made her first trip to Africa with 10 students in tow, no one to meet her at the airport (the group was going on safari before they were going to meet with YOFAFO) and no idea if the driver she had wired money to was even going to pick them up. She was as nervous and scared as any other traveller arriving at a very foreign airport for the first time. Except she was also answerable to a university, and the parents of 10 young people. Brave move.

Tiffany brings bubbles and glitter paint and becomes the star attraction at Kitoola.

In 2012, Tiffany brought her fifth group to Uganda. Each year, the group of students has spent time working with YOFAFO on a project in the village of Kitoola, connected with the community, and also found time to take in Uganda’s “Africa condensed” wildlife and scenery. White water rafting, hand drum lessons, horse riding in the rainforest, giraffe spotting, booty shaking and chimpanzee tracking.

They built the foundations of a four-room classroom block, and built on the foundations Tiffany has set for a long-term relationship with the community of Kitoola. And I was privileged enough to be a small part of their experience.***

It was challenging to begin with. So often our images of volunteering in Africa are of white girls in their 20s, hugging black children. This is not as easy as it looks! It wasn’t until I spent the day with the group, on their first day of brick laying, that I realised I had not had the level of interaction with children in the community as most volunteers experience. I was completely overwhelmed. And feeling unwell did not help the experience. There were so many children, and they were so desperate to engage. They kept jumping right in front of the camera lens, so I couldn’t actually take a photo of anything. As I tried to capture the volunteers in action, all I had was a blur of hands reaching and waving at me. Their giant smiles even became angry as they fought for a position in front of the camera, scolding each other and slapping each other’s hands away. No matter how many times I yelled “Extend! Extend! Daio!” (move back), they smothered me. They wanted to see the photo I took, and groped at my phone, losing the pictures as they squeezed the touch-screen. Even when I sat down, they crowded around me, waiting for some kind of performance. “You bring for me what?”. I had no crayons. No face paint. Just a pair of blue eyes, staring back at a still frame of a field of big brown eyes. I tried to make the photo in front of me fade away, as nausea set in and my palms became sweaty.

The fight to have your photo taken is not easy!

 And then I heard her bright voice beside me: “Are you sick?”

Mutesi Robinah

She looked about as close to a pixie as you could find in a human being.

“Yes, I’m not feeling very well.”

She shooed the other children away, telling them I was sick.

Her name was Mutesi Robinah. She wrote her name in my red journal.

“Do you have grandmothers? There is mine over there. And that one there is my mother, and that one there is my sister. Sister, come here! She is shy, she won’t come”

Her grandmother was small and shining in a golden yellow traditional dress, and her mother was laughing with the other women, cooking our lunch.

“What is your favourite colour?”

When I came back a week later, the surprise in her voice couldn’t cover up her smile, which looked like she had been expecting me to arrive that very moment.

“You are back.”

She was tiny and her feet were bare, her school dress too big. When the rest of the children were playing soccer during a match between the teachers and volunteers, and the students, she lay down to rest. When she wasn’t resting, she was by my side. One hand held mine, and she insisted on carrying my 1.5 litre bottle of water on her head for me. She showed me how she could dance a little, at the same time as carrying it. And just let an amused smile creep from her mouth when I tried to do the same.

 

I noticed her friend and her looked very similar. I asked if they were sisters.

“We are twins.”

In fact the girls were triplets, but the third girl had died. Their mother couldn’t afford shoes for them, or school fees. But Valence is allowing the girls to attend school for free, because they are such good students and because their mother and grandmother are YOFAFO community leaders. The girls are on his list of children needing child sponsorship.

Three of the girls from Tiffany’s group are going to sponsor a child. I am going to sponsor Robinah.

When there are so many vulnerable children in the world, the advertisements about child sponsorship start to lose their impact. We become overwhelmed at how much needs to be done, how many people need help. We wonder if international development has outgrown child sponsorship programs, and know something more drastic needs to be done to address human rights and wealth inequalities. But in the meantime, Roinah still needs to go to school. And when you look at Valence and see how much difference one sponsorship can make for a community, and see the excitement on Robinah’s face at the prospect of owning a pen that works so she can do her school work, it’s a little easier to see the truth in the power of small things.

I promised Robinah I would go back to visit her before I leave, and bring her, her sister and her friend a pen. So if I haven’t written about going back to visit her in the next fortnight, please write me an email and hold me to it. *****

Now, back to bottoms. My friend Erin Burn, a girl from the UK who has been volunteering in Uganda for four months and is developing a health promotion program for YOFAFO, has been attracting a bit of attention around Lugazi for her rear-end. As it has grown steadily rounder on Doreen’s cooking, and her love for Rolex’s (prounced like Roll-eggs. Quite literally, it is fried egg rolled up in a chapatti), Erin has been hearing the words: “Kabina Kanene!”.

It means “big bum”, and is a compliment. **NOTE: Erin's bum is NOT big. Just more grabbable than when she arrived.

I am still not Ugandanised enough to render myself ready to hear those words, but I was grateful for some extra cushioning on my last visit to Kitoola. It was Tiffany’s group’s last day in the village, and it was the evening following the teachers vs. students soccer tournament. I had learnt how to say “I don’t eat meat” so I didn’t have to chew down on a goat the community had especially killed and roasted for us, and was ready for the disapproving looks. I received them, but had my moment to make up for it….

I cannot explain to you how these bottoms shake. Mine does a pretty good job, but I have at least taken some dance classes in my life... and it still doesn't move the way it should! In this part of Uganda, it is something children must know from birth. I have seen girls as young as three or four getting their wriggle on. There are variations on the move and beat, but it basically involves pretending you are a duck, sticking your bum out and shaking the water off your back. All the while keeping perfect posture. And even if your bum is portly enough, everyone must have a special skirt thing, or a jumper tied around their waist to accentuate the visual impact of the booty-shaking. Generally, the women do the shaking, and the men have some other moves or are performing hand percussion. The hand drumming also seems to come freakishly naturally to people here. At lunch times, you won’t find children in a computer room or playing cricket. If they are not skipping, resting, running with a bicycle wheel or playing soccer, they are playing the drums. And when I say drums, I mean there are six children standing around playing plastic bins. As they get going, even the teachers ditch their yard duty and start leading a small schoolyard festival – the children in stitches of laughter as Mr So-and-so starts shaking it with Mrs So-and-so. And the dancing and drumming are never without vocal interjections which sound something like a cross between the Aussie “Coo-eee!”, a wolf whistle, and that Indian call done when one opens their mouth, lets out a soprano note and repeatedly hits their mouth with their hand. It goes something like this:

“YOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOYOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”

The school had organised special dance performances for us from the children (with the school principal giving the students the “yoyoyoyoyoyoooooo!” cheer during the dancing) , which was just amazing. But it wasn’t until after the goat (which I DID try… but spat out) that we were asked to join in.  I was privileged enough to have the school principal as my butt-shaking teacher.

The goat.

Now, no matter how many films I make in Uganda, no matter how many volunteers I recruit, no matter how much I fundraise for YOFAFO in the future, my greatest achievement has to be this one.

“You dance like a Ugandan”

*** In 2013, Tiffany will open up the opportunity to join her group trips to Uganda to all members of the community, not just students from her university. To find out more, visit www.facebook.com/youth4uganda

***** If anyone would like to sponsor a child through YOFAFO's child sponsorship program, please contact myself via this page, or Valence via info@yofafo.org