Two things I have to pick up on — Writing here and hitting the gym.

M. thinks I may have lost some weight in Uganda. In fact, he’s been brainstorming the new ultimate in U.S. travel, tapping into weight loss and spa treatments. The trip plan is you head off to the developing country, get fed developing portions of sub-nourishing foods, steam up in the tropical heat and voila, instant weight loss and exotic travel bragging rights.

Me, I’m still convinced a bunch of parasites have taken up residence in me, their charming new host organism. An on again off again headache and knowledge that I swallowed a heaping helping of schisto-laden Nile have kept me guessing. Sure, I’m probably just a hypochondriacal freak. But, a tapeworm might do me some good for a little while. Not the liver flukes, mind you, just a nice clean, slimming worm.

The six-vial, one sheet and a small tube stool collection kit handed to me at the HMO lab is psyching out my desire to get a full, clean bill of health. It’s complicated like a badly planned science fair exhibit. I long for the olden days of medicine, when you probably could just poop in Dr. Welby’s hand and he’d take it from there.

But, failing disease, I probably should work out a bit. According to some guidelines I saw while hanging at the doctor’s office to get some delicious Cipro, I’m probably at a coefficient of obese. Maybe I read it wrong, or maybe I’m huge. I can’t tell any more.

As for writing, I gotta say, on top of lazy, I’ve also had some ‘puter problems that I wasted some time not entirely solving. Minor, backup data stuff, but annoying nonetheless.

Worse, I have pissed away so much time on the foolish claims that are Larry Sinclair’s–I swear I blew Obama and them Black folks be all enjoying that crack cocaine–I feel a sickening sense of shame. One should not allow themselves to fall prey to such idle, idle, pointless raging. The counterpoint raging site is a better read, but still a horrible sinkhole of time wasting.

I’m going to lose my mind, my job, my home, my sanity if I read much more. Reading the Larry supporters is like reading stupid on steroids. Blend in good, olde-timey racism and some conspiracy-theory absurdity and you start questioning whether living is even a valid alternative. If these people were the majority, I’d probably cut my head off with a chainsaw, such would be my hopelessness.

The upside is I’m back to the western world where our well-fed bellies can help our brains construct great big heaps of stupid crazy, because we can. I think that’s my biggest life lesson at the moment as I read complete bullshit on the internet. We here in the U.S. have ample time to make shit up and feud over dumb stuff. We have so much time and the resources, we can fuck around with total strangers we will never lay eyes on and flame away on websites, blogs, and bulletin boards.

A lot of places in the world would much rather use that energy on something constructive. Like acquiring a sandwich.

By the way, I’m posting more pictures over here: picasaweb.google.com/FarfromBraintree. The stuff that has actual people that touch upon my professional life are in some of those shots. No need to drag them over here (see notes above about stupid internet).

Over here, insult me, swear, fuck around, I don’t care. But in the places where my actual getting paid and shit matter and innocent people (who I like) are involved, please shut the fuck up.

Technorati Tags: Africa, Americans, campaign, Politics, primaries, self-esteem, work, worry, writing

While we were in Uganda, there was a semi-big flap in one of the local papers, because our group didn’t travel to Northern Uganda. Northern Uganda is by some expert opinions and pretty much all local opinion I heard, a pretty fucked up part of the country.

The group didn’t head there largely, not because of the deliberate snub as the article would suggest, but the sheer logistics. It’s a haul on bad roads, and we already had a lot of miles to cover. I would imagine the organizers had to figure in the risk-benefit of trucking us into a war zone, as well. You know, old fashioned American liability issues.

Anyway, a group from the north did come to us and met in a conference room at our hotel. There, leading women from the community, including one who had lost her daughter for seven years and another who has been a foster mother to children limping home from war, and a colonel from the legit army gave us a background on the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony and an update on the current state of affairs. The signs are the conflict might end soon and Kony surrender. The fucked up part to me was all of the talk of forgiveness and reconciliation.

You see, to my jaded, western perspective, a madman who starts an army in the name of god and kidnaps children to be his soldiers gets no forgiveness. He gets no reconciliation. He gets no healing from me. Nope, he gets locked in a very dark, dank place forever.

The women passed around drawings the abducted children had made while in the company of counselors trying to help them put down weapons and wounds and move on with childhood. I took these excerpts at the conference room table with my iPhone.

I’m back at work, back at home, back in the U.S. and just plain old back. It’s nice to be back, and I’m hoping after about seven days of sleeping normally, I might even feel back to my old self again.

Meanwhile, I’ve started going through a half a million pictures of Uganda. I took tons. Some of the cream of animal depictions can be found here:

Animals in Uganda.

There will be many more to come, along with a lot of verbiage I suppose. For the short term, though, I plan to try to shake what is probably an ordinary head cold, but I imagine to be a rare tropical illness.

It took a whole lot of plane time, but we made it to Kampala, Uganda. Unfortunately, my very impressions from the airport to the hotel were dimmed by the darkness of night and the fact that I wasn’t able to sleep on the plane.

From San Francisco to Washington, DC, we logged six hours on Friday in the air. On Saturday, starting in the evening, it was first 8 hours from Washington, DC to Amsterdam, and then somewhere in the fuzzy Sunday morning another 8 from Amsterdam to Kampala. I just flew in from the U.S. and boy are my arms, and every other part of me, tired.

Finally, after all of that flying there was another 45 minutes or an hour to get to the hotel by bus.

All of the flying happened after a four- or so hour meeting where I got to meet my fellow travelers and hear about some of Uganda’s history and issues. It was a long weekend, but not in the usual, restful sense.

Today, Monday, we started early with breakfast, Uganda’s first woman veterinarian, followed by a few hours at our nation’s embassy and an afternoon with agricultural researchers. I wish I had slept last night to be better able to process the information. Perhaps tonight exhaustion will will out over my lifelong neurotic tendency to lie awake in strange beds. I envy folks wh0 can fall asleep anywhere and on a dime.

As for my first photos and first thoughts, they’ll have to wait until a good night’s rest and the ability to think clearly. I’m afraid tomorrow morning’s 7:30 a.m. start for an outing at Lake Victoria doesn’t bode well for my sleep fantasy.