Au revoir, encore

12:05 Sunday, February 14, 2010 – Gulu. As I sit on my balcony slightly guarded from the piercing, sandy, dry wind swooping down from the north, I think about the journey the air has taken to get here. Possibly beginning at the arctic, just south of Tierra del Fuego, travelling up the southwestern coast of South America. From icy arctic waters to the mountainous coast of southern Chile where it makes it way up to the driest desert on earth: the Atacama. After sucking the earth dry and leaving only the heartiest of life behind, I continues into the Andes: the ancient, mysterious, majestic and unpredictable mountain world of the Southern Hemisphere. After a few weeks paralyzed at the equator, the slow march up and across the Pacific begins jetting from pristine waters to the green coast of Central America, though the Sea of Cortez and up to desert I call home. If it’s winter this same wind may be the bane of some young surfer’s session as it cuts his face with the cold salt of the Californian morning. Moving up once again through the central valley, into the violent storms of the Rockies, across the barren prairies of the Midwest, throwing a banker against a glass apartment store building in New York then over to the maddened seas of Ireland, across mainland Europe down through the Mediterranean until its final march across thousands of kilometer of Egyptian and Sudanese desert until it whistles through the grass-thatched huts of Northern Uganda and finally pounds on my windows with the violence of a lifetime of struggle and the dry, merciless dust particles of the worlds it has seen.

Whenever the time comes to leave to a certain place, I frequently find myself observing weather patterns and dreaming of the movements of the heavens that are always with us and touching us wherever we may be. I think it makes it easier to say goodbye. If I feel like we are all connected in this seemingly vast, but unified mass then I know that those who I leave will always be with me and vice versa. As earth dwellers we experience the same water, the same earth, the same rain, thunder, lightning, sun, moon, stars, clouds, fire and wind, give or take some variation of course. And as human beings we all experience the same pain, joy, love, sorrow, comfort, loneliness, confusion, hope, fear, selfishness, generosity and fascination with this strange idea of life. My exploits in this continent as well as others have forged this perception of mine.

As some of you may have already heard, I leave for Haiti in two weeks. In January I visited my organization’s headquarters in Paris to discuss my next posting. The office was mayhem. The earthquake had only hit 7 days prior. In the scramble I managed to speak to my superior concerned with new postings and after passing through names like Sudan, Yemen, etc. I stopped her and told her I wanted in. I wanted to be part of this.

There are some strange questions you ask yourself when you find yourself eager to get on the ground of a human tragedy of the scale as that which we have seen in this poor Caribbean nation. Initially you find yourself defensive over your excitement of the crisis. Then the guilt settles in and you realize that not only do human catastrophes excite you, but it becomes your livelihood, which is quite a twisted notion. I will not attempt to legitimize my ambitions. I do believe that there is something very bizarre and potentially nefarious about pursuing this type of work. I was told once by a person with substantially more experience in the field than myself that, many times, the best you can do for the people of Haiti, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Afghanistan, etc., etc. is to be a witness. Be a witness to their suffering and make it real to those back home. TV images may provide a degree of potency in certain situations, but it is exponentially less effective than hearing about pain on a human level from someone you love and trust. This will be my first promise as I set off. Though Northern Uganda has its plight and it is quite grave, I have not felt the same amount of desperation that I expect in my next mission, or possibly even in the prior one. But this time, I will try and provide updates as frequently as possible and tell you about it when I come home. You are forewarned.

As I prepare for my departure I am taking care of some final business here in Uganda and also some personal preparations for Haiti. Initially, I was intended to leave this weekend, but it got pushed back because of some internal changes. To tell you the truth, I am chomping at the bit. My project here is winding down, and this month is mostly intended to train the new Program Manager to fill my place, handover most of the projects, and write some final reports. I suppose it is nice to have some time to leave things properly and not just escape ‘like a thief in the night’, but I can’t help being eager. I ‘m on our website, BBC, MSF, reliefweb, etc. everyday trying to stay up with the crisis. Ever since I left school, I have been trying to get into emergency/disaster/humanitarian relief. This is what I have been waiting and preparing for. Though my work here in Gulu is incredibly challenging and fast moving at times, the context is rather stagnant and somewhat lacking in dynamism. In other words, I am a bit bored.

To prepare for Haiti I am cramming French like a high school senior desperate to graduate. I have a Congolese teacher who visits for two hours daily and I am feeling slightly more comfortable, but I still have a ways to go. My other preparation is much more personal. I am trying to use these few weeks to collect my thoughts and prepare myself mentally for the task at hand; daily meditation, yoga, lots of sleep, and walking around town are a few ways that I am doing this. Trying to enjoy the peace and pace of life here are others. While not necessarily lagging with work, I am trying not to kill myself, and to organize my duties so that by the last week I can spend most of my time supporting the new Program Manager. I feel that decompressing before I arrive to what is sure to be a very intense situation (both in terms of work load and environment ) is incredibly important.

So that’s about it. I guess it would make a bit more sense to write more frequently as to avoid heavy posts such as this one, but unfortunately it’s the best I can do. As the wind continues to howl and remind me of far off places and people on this Valentine’s day I will be thinking about those I love who I am not with today. Though I continue to feel you in spirit, it doesn’t make me miss you all any less. Thank you for your support. Hopefully my absence from your lives will be less prolonged once I return to the Western hemisphere. Regardless, I appreciate those of you who have continued to put in the tremendous effort it takes to keep me in your thoughts and I promise that it is very much appreciated on this end.

I wish you all the best on this strange day and I hope to see you when I am back in California in April.

In Solidarity,
Chris