There's another American staying with the Abayudaya. Lorne Mallin. He’s an amiable guy spending his retirement touring around the world. He's teaching here and writing for and about the community. We wake up a little after dawn to help a local farmer and his wife plant 100 eggplant seedlings. He leads us down the slope of the hill in narrow paths through banana trees, coffee, Irish potato plants, beans, cassava – these are from the World Bank and yield three times as much the local cassava plants. Maybe seven cassava a year. It requires such patience, agricultural time. To care for this plant for one year and then to harvest 7 cassava. Is that a week’s worth of food? Some kind of patience.
We arrive at a small rectangular plot of dirt. The farmer shows me how to dig holes – the depth, the spacing, he marks them and I dig. Soccer ball sized craters. – about 6 to a row. It’s tiring work. We need to dig 50 in all as each hole holds two seedlings. His wife carries manure in a plastic container from their cow. We put them in the holes and mix them with light dirt. The seedlings are wrapped fragile in banana leaves. We unwrap them – wet book pages – and place them in holes, tucking them in with fertile ground. The farmer hacks up a banana tree and we place the stiff, light bark over the holes to keep the seedlings safe from sun. My back is sore. The novelty of helping worn off. This is hard work.
Omelets for breakfast. Fresh pineapple. Local coffee. Luxury.
We meet with Rabbi Gershom. This guy has a big mind and a big smile. He’s the first rabbi to be “officially” ordained by the international community. He went to rabbinical school in Los Angeles, actually. He just came back last year. I wish I could remember more of our conversation – yes, as a rabbi, he allows people to incorporate traditional ceremonies into Jewish ceremonies. The holocaust is part of his identity as a Jew in that he believes one can live in a way where god is in the room and this is an image of the urgency of this work. And then Katori asks about whether he would accept homosexuals – this is a really hot topic in Uganda, a country where homosexuality is illegal and gays can face discrmination, imprisonment and possibly ill torture, according to Human Rights Watch. And now a new bill is being introduced that would prosecute those who “promote homosexuality”, not simply practice it – and he answers in this surprising way: he says he doesn’t want to go against the political or social will – that’s not his battle – but he doesn’t think homosexuality is a sin as long as someone is being true to his/her own nature. If he were to sleep with a man, he says, it would be a sin because it wouldn’t be true to himself. I’m inspired by the way he takes in every person and every question and considers it and responds openly – without fear.
The group takes the rest of the day to be tourists. We drive to Sipi Falls – water falling off cliffs. Such a simple thing and it takes the breath away. We hire a tour guide and he leads us through people’s backyards to the base of one of three waterfalls. One by one, we stand in the force of spray and sound bouncing off rocks. Wow. The people who live here have a tremendous gift.
What was the tour guide’s name? He had a way of seeing that I couldn’t wrap my head around. Open. He says that he was given this gift of being open with people – being able to talk to anyone – and so he became a tour guide. He takes the work seriously – organizing other people to give tours that have a certain kind of standard – chasing away children who are begging – otherwise, he says, they will not go to school. They will follow tourists around and ask for money and then where will they be? He has lost his parents from AIDS and supports his younger siblings and grandmother. He is used to thinking about taking care of a group of people. I find myself thinking – is he telling the truth? And if he is, is he telling me this story so I buy things? From his body language, I am inclined to think, he’s being friendly.
It reminds me of my friend from Uganda who is here – among many other things – teaching dance to young people living in the Salvation Army. This one young man calls him “Africa”. As in, “Hey Africa, why you using those big words!” Like – ok, look, he’s a impeccable storyteller but I forget all the details so I’m going to skip to the punchline - there’s a stereotype of Africa as being poor and my friend explains, it’s a different thing to be poor in a beautiful place where everyone is in it together. There’s dignity in it. (Yes, of course, poverty itself can be dehumanizing, but also what do I add to it in my thinking and action that dehumanizes people?)
And here – we are in the habit of circling up under the stars outside the guest house. In the dark on the top of a hill. Conversation becomes – how does sweetness remain a space for serious contemplation? Erik models this exploration – our tour guide steps off the path a moment and reemerges with a chameleon on his finger. We see “green” – he sees individual plants, a chameleon. A calling to the work of discernment. The chameleon is afraid, his arms making furious mindmills in his attempt to escape onto a neighboring leaf. The chameleon is afraid – not because he is experiencing pain or injury – but because he doesn’t know himself. He doesn’t know that he will not be destroyed by whatever threatens to overwhelm him because he doesn’t know who he is. By whatever strange means we come to know ourselves.
It reminds me of a dream I had several months ago – I am on the bus, in Uganda, and I am turning 30. And my father gives me a present. It’s covered in writing. A song. In another language. But three words are translated. I can’t remember the literal translations, but put together they could mean – To know yourself is to be without self. And/or. To stand in the presence of God is to be in God’s absence. I remember the act of reading being disorienting in my dream. I don't know what this has to do with genocide or theater, but for myself, it is a reminder that desire does not necessarily consummate in fulfillment. Home is not the clarity of answers, but the confusion of standing fully inside your own questions, or need or seeking or whatever you want to call it. Maybe when I say I need to understand the work of grieving, I am really saying I need to arrive outside of this work. Maybe when I say I need to understand why I am here, I am saying "get me out of here!" Maybe there's a kind of a kind of meaning that is just to stay present to a thing. Rwanda. Uganda. This new space. An agricultural patience. I don't know.
Today was made possible by the California Institute of the Arts.
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