DESCRIPTION:
the victoria nile at night is darker than outer space but brimming with sounds. i lie awake all night. stomach churning. heat. africa.
this night the villagers burned patches of field behind their huts for cultivation. the flames, dancing on the hillsides, turned the moon blood red. men gathered around dim light bulbs in town. the dangers here are real. lions. snakes. near the equator the crescent moon lies on her back like a cheshire cat's smile. i am here now. as in a dream. here where the half moon lay bleeding above the fields when the Lord's Resistance Army roamed them murderously not long ago. little brother and little little brother. such a big road such small feet.

before i left for Uganda, i watched a documentary called "war dance" which followed a group of children from Uganda's north, where i am now, as they prepare for the big music competition in the capital city of Kampala. during the war years, the LRA was notorious for taking child soldiers. children as young as five or six years of age were abducted from their parents, forced at gunpoint to kill their own neighbors and kin and made to fight for the rebels. the children in the movie bare these scars of war. but in making music they find forgetting and redemption "when i dance i feel free" says an orphan named nancy.

her testimony makes me wonder whether there exists an inverse relationship between actual power and the spiritual empowerment available through music. do the weak experience the might of music more broadly than the autonomous who aren't forced to call on her for emotional feats of endurance? i think i've encountered this kind of inverse relationship between power and music in my own life. there was a time when i was utterly powerless. in those days, music carried me. like atlas. like a bridge. like an arc. i might have slipped into oblivion if she hadn't said to me "I see you. let's dance while we wait". as i grew out of my situation and gained control over my circumstances, music became increasingly ornamental. a luxury. no more a need. while i am very grateful to have moved past the particulars of my youth, i occasionally miss the intense relationship i had with music then.

maybe that is why i wanted to come to africa.
maybe i wanted to remember the beautiful ways in which we survive.
what i found, instead, are the stunning ways in which we thrive.

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