This tree is in Paige’s yard in Kampala.Thursday, August 30, 2007
The Monkey on the Roof
This morning I woke up to the sound of monkeys dancing on the roof.
This tree is in Paige’s yard in Kampala.
This tree is in Paige’s yard in Kampala.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Firsts
“Would you like a hot towel, ma’am?”
I’m sitting in World Business Class (thanks to a frequent flier upgrade) for the first time ever and am being offered a hot towel before my dinner of goat’s cheese with peppers, beef tenderloins with a horseradish sauce, a cheese plate, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
I am quite sure I do not belong here.
Thank God for the Indian businessman next to me, whose mime-like gestures helped me figure out how to use my button-adorned chair.
With attendants offering me bottled water and eyeshades and wine and fresh fruit and “raspberry vinaigrette or balsamic, dear?” and pillows and “anything else I can get for you, young lady?” I am stuck somewhere between very comfortable and horribly uncomfortable with my situation. I like my big chair and the little television that pops out of my arm rest, but I also feel like I do not deserve this seat. What about Helen, the elderly Danish woman I met waiting at the gate, who is wheelchair-bound? She certainly needs the attentive staff more than I do, and would probably appreciate the extra space more. Why should she sit in the back of the plane while I sit comfortably (or not) in C-06? The single, yet defining, separation, of course, is money. Pieces of paper – that we all agree – mean a minority of passengers get a substantially better lot than the majority on board.
I think that this feeling, this guilt, that I have money when others do not and that I have this not by any merit of my own, but by the luck of my birth – that I was born in a Minneapolis suburb rather than rural Uganda – is something that may haunt me over the next four months.
My name is Sarah Schewe. After being accepted to Dartmouth College last spring, I chose to defer my college matriculation for one year. This fall, I will be volunteering for MIHV in Uganda and Tanzania, where I will blog, write articles for MIHV’s website and other literature, and provide photographs for these publications.
Three flights and 24.5 hours after leaving Minneapolis, my flight arrives in Entebbe.
When I step off the plane, it’s only 8:15 pm, but the sky is dark, and the moon is full. A new cycle starts tomorrow. A beautiful, dark face catches my wide eyes and crinkles into a smile, saying “Welcome to Uganda.”
I’m sitting in World Business Class (thanks to a frequent flier upgrade) for the first time ever and am being offered a hot towel before my dinner of goat’s cheese with peppers, beef tenderloins with a horseradish sauce, a cheese plate, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
I am quite sure I do not belong here.
Thank God for the Indian businessman next to me, whose mime-like gestures helped me figure out how to use my button-adorned chair.
With attendants offering me bottled water and eyeshades and wine and fresh fruit and “raspberry vinaigrette or balsamic, dear?” and pillows and “anything else I can get for you, young lady?” I am stuck somewhere between very comfortable and horribly uncomfortable with my situation. I like my big chair and the little television that pops out of my arm rest, but I also feel like I do not deserve this seat. What about Helen, the elderly Danish woman I met waiting at the gate, who is wheelchair-bound? She certainly needs the attentive staff more than I do, and would probably appreciate the extra space more. Why should she sit in the back of the plane while I sit comfortably (or not) in C-06? The single, yet defining, separation, of course, is money. Pieces of paper – that we all agree – mean a minority of passengers get a substantially better lot than the majority on board.
I think that this feeling, this guilt, that I have money when others do not and that I have this not by any merit of my own, but by the luck of my birth – that I was born in a Minneapolis suburb rather than rural Uganda – is something that may haunt me over the next four months.
My name is Sarah Schewe. After being accepted to Dartmouth College last spring, I chose to defer my college matriculation for one year. This fall, I will be volunteering for MIHV in Uganda and Tanzania, where I will blog, write articles for MIHV’s website and other literature, and provide photographs for these publications.
Three flights and 24.5 hours after leaving Minneapolis, my flight arrives in Entebbe.
When I step off the plane, it’s only 8:15 pm, but the sky is dark, and the moon is full. A new cycle starts tomorrow. A beautiful, dark face catches my wide eyes and crinkles into a smile, saying “Welcome to Uganda.”
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