August 23, 2009- Kampala- Calm after storm, with pink flowers and turquoise shutters

The rain out my kitchen window is a blessing. The farmers must be sighing relief over their cups of tea this afternoon, and for me it means I get to lose all ambition to go out today. Not that hard to lose, honestly. I just stand here and make stew, slice papaya with lime, and notice the way the thunderstorm sky looks on my neighbors pink, flowering trees, rust-tin roof and turquoise shutters. It's an amazing thing to slow down.

In the last two weeks, I slept in a tree house overlooking an elephant watering hole with no elephants, fought monkeys for my breakfast (and won this time), stared up at chimpanzees, red-tailed monkeys, grey cheeked Magabey's and a great blue turaco in the trees above me.

I toured microcredit programs in Western Uganda and asked tricky questions about how much women making more money translates into women having access to more money, and how much it means they work twice as hard to have more money to hand to their husbands. (Some promising things. . . perhaps, perhaps.)

I organized the content for a conference on violence against women and girls for the organization I used to work for, involving on-the-ground staff leading programs in 16 conflict-affected countries. Kenya Airways was on strike the day they were all supposed to arrive, but little by little as flights got re-routed, I greeted old friends from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire and Jordan. In a light moment of a serious conference, women and men working in Central African Republic, Congo, Syria, Sudan, Burundi, Uganda and Iraq, among others, did puppet shows and dances that made me laugh so hard I almost peed my pants. My beautiful West African friends--Gertrude, Amie, and others--created a song and dance moves that rhymed and inspired in the span of 45 minutes.

I still sit here, watching the pink, flowering trees post-rain. Blessed today. Thinking still of people strong enough to put themselves in the midst of pain and not lose their capacity to sing, or to make people laugh. Thinking how that, great blue turacos, and tree houses teeming with monkeys are all a part of this place. God, some days I love Africa.