Thanksgiving

11/25/05

My heart is heavy, my head is light. At home, stateside, people are just finishing their turkey dinners. Left overs are being wrapped up and put in the refrigerator for tomorrow's sandwiches. Some is being fed to dog. Dessert abd drinks are being prepared. It's time to kick back with the family, pack more food into an already bloated belly, get drunk (or more drunk), and relax. Let the melatonin seep through the veins. Save some of the dishes for tomorrow morning. Sleep heavy tonight.

Here in Gulu town, it is another day. I woke up just before sunrise and walked down to the night commuter center that I visited last night. At 6:15am, the kids were already lined up at the steel door, waiting to be released into the cool morning, some wrapped in blankets, others shivering beneath thin torn tshirts. The doors were opened, and they started pouring out onto the dirt path. Volunteers count them as they leave, making sure that the same number that came in last night go out this morning. The kids seem happy to see me, we had fun last night, I greet them with the few words they taught me and they greet me with smiles and shrieks of laughter. I take pictures, one roll, two.

I walk back to the motel, I pass by three girls hanging out under a tree. Oranges start to drop, and I look closer and see a fourth girl high up in the tree, plucking and dropping the fruit. I make it back to the hotel, I set my bag down, I think about taking a nap, instead I decide to hit the streets again.

I walk east thorugh the waking town, the boda boda drivers already posted on their corners, waiting for a fare, shop owners sweeping their stoops with their branches and whisks, cows and chickens (and a turkey, how ironic) grazing in the trash filled gutters.

But then I see two kids coming up the street. Kids of the threadbare and ragged variety. They stop here and stop there, they bend down, they sift through the trash, they find something of interest and put it in their plastic bag, but more often they find nothing, they push on, they graze in the gutters like the cows and the chickens and that turkey.

My heart starts to ache, part of me says, 'take a picture', another part of me says 'don't be a fucking asshole, go buy them some bread.' I do the latter. But by the time I am leaving the shop, the kids are far up the street, and I have to start walking quick to catch them.

But now I notice more kids, and more, and fuck, I only bought five rolls, and there are kids everywhere, and they're all ragged, they're all picking through the gutter, look another one there, and two more down that street, and look at that little girl hulahooping with a bicycle tire.

I make it to the kids, their number has grown, I give them each a bread roll, the transaction happens in silence. They are embarrassed, embarrassed it seems to take the food, to be ragged and threadbare, picking through garbage in their long walk back to their home. To their refugee camp that serves as a home. But they were probably born in the refugee camp, so it is home, it's the only home they know. And they don't know how embarrassed I am, embarrassed that it's thanksgiving, that if I was home I would be packing pumpkin pie and ice cream into my bloated belly, drinking my third or fourth glass of expensive bourbon, ready to turn it into shit and piss while I sleep. Embarrassed that I still want a picture and embarrassed that I am too embarrassed to take it. We finish our silent transaction.

And some asshole boda boda driver says something loud and probably rude and his friends laugh and the kids run off with their breakfast and downcast eyes.

I start to walk back towards the hotel, realizing that I have accomplished very little, if anything, and my heart is getting heavier and my head is getting lighter. I see a young girl, maybe six or seven years old, at first sight not even ragged or threadbare, a bookbag (albeit with a broken strap) even. But she is grazing in the gutter garbage too. As I pass by her, my heart a thousand pounds, my head about to burst, she finds something. She picks it up and straightens up, brushes it off. It is small, maybe a nut or something. She puts a corner of it in her mouth, tentatively testing if it is edible. She finds out that it is not. She throws it back in the gutter and walks on. My heart is in my toes, my head is floating away.

Thanksgiving, a time to appreciate what we have, what we have been given, what we have been given the opportunity to work for. I give thanks that I was born who and where and when that I was. I give thanks for all of the opportunities I have had, and for all that I still have coming. I give thanks that thirty cents for a breakfast of tea and chappati is within my reach.

I give thanks for this heavy heart beat.

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