African Mornings

There are now twelve people in the guest house, (teachers with Schools4Schools and a few of the Invisible Children staff) and I am one of the first out, so I try to get ready quietly. Doreen arrives about 6:00 to fix our breakfast; she stays all day to prepare lovely Ugandan dinners and clean the house. Agnes comes to do laundry; when there is water it is a big job to wash all of our clothes and sheets and towels by hand. A day like yesterday, however, was especially difficult for her because we had no running water. She, along with most people in Gulu, walk every few days to the bore hole to fill huge plastic jugs with water. They haul these back to their homes everyday at great expense of time and energy. Even the littlest of children carry jugs of water from the wells.



I say goodbye to our night watchman (Ocelle Abraham Lincoln), walk out of our gate onto our dirt lane and follow it the short distance to the main road into town, where within moments several motorbikes (or bodas) have approached me to see if I want a ride. I ask if they know the way to Sir Samuel Baker school (they might say yes even if they don’t know), and I negotiate the price before getting on the back. (Usually about $1.50 for the 15 minute trip.) This ride has become my favorite part of the day. Gulu is just waking up. Children in brightly colored uniforms are everywhere on the streets walking to school. They yell “muzingu” (white person) or good morning and I wave. Women in their very pink, yellow, green African prints also have begun carrying their water jugs to and from the wells; men in dress shirts and ties join the walkers along the side of the road until there are literally hundreds of people walking into Gulu town.

The boda takes me 7.5 miles to my school on the other side of town, so we travel a few miles in town on paved roads; he must constantly swerve and negotiate his way around the bumps and potholes in the road. Even in town, the modern Western style houses with indoor plumbing and electricity are right next to a plot of land with a garden, a clay hut, and goats or cows in the yards. As we leave the paved road and head out to my school in the countryside, I am nearly overcome with the beauty of the morning. It is a bit chilly; dew rises over the green grass and fields and bush; I travel down the deep red clay road with an absolutely clean morning sky. To me, Africa is color: deep blue sky, white clouds, red earth, black skin and rich, fertile green land.