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Onslaughts of emails, texts, voicemails. I'm home.

During my long layover in Amsterdam, I was browsing a bookstore where I found a book regarding Africa. Quickly skimming the table of contents, I turned to a chapter largely about Uganda. The author had fallen in love with a Muganda girl and lived with her family for some time. He referenced matoke, saying, "For the Baganda, if you haven't eaten matoke yet, you haven't eaten."

I laughed to myself, remembering that I hadn't eaten matoke for the vast majority of my stay. And when I did eat matoke, it wasn't in Suzan's village. Thanks to the political geography which resulted from the colonial era in Africa, countries are many tribes, and between those tribes one finds differences. I remember leaving Uganda with USP and thinking that every Uganda ate matoke virtually every day. It never would've crossed my mind that part of Uganda didn't grow matoke, nor like it.

These comments are just meant to be an anecdote of my overall experience. It was very different than the first time I came. When I came to Uganda the first time, I was part of a family because I was part of an academic program (and I don't mean that to sound bad, because they are still definitely my family). This time, I was part of a family because I am, quite literally, part of a family. According to Suzan, the times that I broke down were the times that I was having the same struggles which African men have when they are trying to figure out how to be an in-law. I was constantly in a tense position and consistently critical of my selfishness and assumptions about others around me. My expectations of myself were high even when others expected nothing from me. Things didn't go as I expected, but I easily had the best three months of my life. I was around people I deeply love. People who do accept me, despite my fleeting attempts to impress them.

I learned a lot about shame. Several unforeseen events occurred as I was among Suzan's family. I never understood shame. I come from a culture where when someone commits a crime, they are violating paper. A rapist is sentenced because he did something against the law. The victim is considered a witness, not a victim. In Uganda, when somebody slips up, the thing which is violated is not a law, it is a human relationship. Shame is such a powerful force in relationships, literally possessing the capacity to make someone dangerously, maybe even deathly ill, which I have now experienced.

There are many things about my experience which I have not yet decided if I should share publicly. Please feel free to talk with me and ask me questions. I am still unpacking my thoughts and responses of my second visit in Uganda.

Before I go, let me explain a bit about the whole incident of the Kampala terrorism. Al-Shabab, a Somalia-based militant extremist group, has claimed to be behind the act. However, after the FBI and other organizations investigated, there is little to no evidence which supports Al-Shabab's claim (there is "a propaganda value in taking credit for spectacular attacks"). Of what I have read, only one person involved with the terrorism was partially linked with the group. However, it was that person's mother who revealed that fact, and she hadn't seen him for years. Others confessing to be involved claimed that the bombs were strategically placed at locations where Americans spent their leisure time, and that the bombs were more directly aimed at Americans. A head writer for the Uganda Record, an online news journal, has claimed that the attacks are government-linked. Recently, Timothy Kalyegira, this spokesperson, was arrested under the ever-ambiguous and dictator-friendly sedition law, which basically allows anyone considered a threat by the government to be arrested. His claims that the gov't has been profiteers and even schemers of the terrorism cost him his computer. It is important to note, however, that the arrests were illegal, because the gov't only has power to regulate printed publications (despite the claim of Freedom of the Press), not online publications. All of the mainstream newspapers sold in Uganda take the same angle on the events in Kampala. But when one deviating online journal ventures to question assumptions about who did what and whether these events could be tied to other recent Kampala-area terrorism (i.e. burning of the tombs, residential fires), its writer is arrested from his home. Uganda is seeing glimpses of totalitarianism, and my main question is this: how much do Ugandans believe in their ability to struggle subversively?

I did manage to go to the Ethiopian Restaurant where one of the bombs exploded. It's about a 15-minute walk from Suzan's place in Muyenga and a two-minute walk from where Meg stayed When she studied with Go-Ed. The gate is papered-up so people passing by having trouble looking inside. There are no people inside. Suzan and I walked up to the gate and tried various ways of getting inside until a lady roasting corn yelled at us, asking why we wanted to go in. That should be a hotspot for journalists, yet the place, a very big compound, is completely vacant and barely visible. Somebody somewhere is hiding something.