Uganda - source of the Nile

We start the day with more omelets and pineapple and bananas. Today Rabbi Gershom and Lorne are driving north to Acegerekinei village to help with famine relief. Here is an article Lorne wrote about this trip.

It’s a quick drive to Kampala - we stop halfway at Jinja, the accredited source of the Nile. It’s a weird scene – kind of like the grand canyon in terms of ways and means to buy things. There’s a group of traditional dancers and musicians in vivacious blue and yellow and smiles. Turns out they’re filming a Primus commercial. The group takes a boat ride out into the source. I stay behind and watch mobs of school children recite together the text of a large plaque describing Jon Hanning Speke’s discovery of the source of the Nile. He’s a British explorer who sailed up here in the middle of the 19^th century. It sounds very serious – recited in unison by over 100 small voices. And then recited again. And again. When I read about his journey, it sounds like a mess – he went deaf and then blind and then he got better and by the time he got to Lake Victoria he had lost all his equipment so he couldn’t really say what he had found. It was later said to be the source of the Nile.

I am standing on the shore. I am thinking about sources – return, as in where one is going. Ultimately known – and meanwhile…

A bust of Gandhi. His ashes – some of them – were thrown in the Nile. His eyes cast down, or closed. He’s all ears.

Our group is the boat that is singing.

Meanwhile, famine. Meanwhile, 2,420 pounds of food is loaded off a truck in a remote village where people are hungry. Meanwhile, an old man holding a bag of corn meal tells Rabbi Gershom, "Thank you for saving us." Meanwhile, Rabbi Gershom tells 65 families sitting under a tree that Jews value human life above all else. Meanwhile, famine. Meanwhile, an email waits in my account from a friend. She says it seems I am asking a question she asks herself daily - "the world seems like such an impossible place for real living. how to continue?" I like this question because, it seems, we are asking it together.

Today was made possible by California Institute of the Arts.