The Love, the Lesson and the Leper

The twelve passenger van screeched to a halt in front of the soccer stadium, sending a cloud of red dust into the air, which didn;t seem to faze the cheery, heavyset woman passing by with a basket of ripe bananas on her head.I jumped out of the Ugandan version of the mega-taxi into a swarm of boda-bodas, double-seated dirt bikes sporting loud engines and even louder drivers.  One yelled out, muffled by a dark helmet, “Mzungu! Mzungu! Get on my bike!"  I laughed and shook my head, already accustomed to the local term for "white man" and the celebrity aura that comes with it.  As I shuffled through the gravel park and crossed the dusty street—barely avoiding two mutatus as they screamed past—I heard "Hey mzungu!" yet again.  I turned and squinted at the bikers, temporarily blinded as the late morning sun crept across their handlebars.  Two of them gave me the peace sign, smiled and shouted, "You take care, mzungu! You need ride, you come find me, eh?"  I tossed my hand up in a cheery wave, and began my lazy walk towards the market.

As I weaved through mounds of dry banana motoke and rows of fresh vegetables, a hoard of schoolchildren spotted my light skin and tore through a shoe stand, squealing and reaching for my hand.  This must be how Brad Pitt feels, I thought. Such experiences were common; walking hand in hand with locals as young as four or five, their tiny palms usually able to grasp only my first two fingers. We cannot understand each other's languages, so we only communicate through this brief but poignant physical contact. As was custom, I reached my destination, rubbed their tiny heads, put my hand up, and said, "bye." They beamed up at me, wiped their noses on tattered, oversized shirts and whispered, "bye."

After work, I climbed into a mutatu headed downtown, having to sit with my right leg at an awkward angle to make room for several bulging bags of potatoes.  A light tropical mist had turned the streets into mud and brought the mosquitoes out in full force.  I swatted at one after exiting the taxi, and jumped over a puddle to the entrance of Jinkas, a local fast food joint. After shelling out several Ugandan shillings, I took a casual step out of the side exit and the grey, menacing sky told me to take cover—fast.  I turned onto the main sidewalk, where I nearly stepped on a small form sprawled against the brick building.  The smile that I had been wearing since my interaction with the schoolchildren that morning immediately vanished.

His eyes looked hollow, but I was used to that by now.  Only the caverns burned into me, but I was used to that as well.  I wanted to sidestep him, but a flock of tourists appeared from nowhere, blocking the street.  At first I thought he was an amputee, but as he shifted his weight, two shriveled, bruised legs emerged, no thicker than a tree branch, and probably no stronger.  Lacking the power to speak, his plea came in the form of a half-opened mouth and a low, faint moan.  I tried to look past, as I had done countless times before, but my eyes eventually locked on the arm that tried to reach me—at its end, only a hideous, bloody stump remained.

A leper.  Another on the quick road to statistical insignificance.  By now I had recognized suffering as a daily ritual here.  Poverty had become my neighbor, war my subject, and hopelessness, my bedmate. I had interviewed refugees and former child soldiers, victims without limbs, cut down by their neighbors and friends, betrayed by their government and neglected by the world, all while suffering the indignity of being a posterchild for some disconnected, hollow bout of student activism taking place in a paradise that they could never comprehend.  I had seen families huddled in mud huts that double as a bathroom, trying to sleep and not gag on the smell of their own waste.  I had seen death—that child perishing from AIDS right in front of my eyes as I become consumed with the feeling of what it's like to be totally, utterly, helpless (should I take a picture to wave around and yell "oh, the tragedy!"?)  I was now accustomed to questioning God's existence, often unable to hide my wrath at His apparent betrayal of those who believe in Him most.

But there are limits to how much your heart can thicken, to how much your conscience can get acclimated to despair.  I looked down at the pathetic sight before me, about to take a bite of the prize I had just purchased: a hot dog.  A reminder of a home far, far away, a distraction whose comfort helped re-create fantasy.  No, what I was seeing was not really life.  No, what I was seeing was not a daily problem.  Daily problems were supposed to consist of deciding what to wear in the morning, how a night out would be spent, how a fifteen-page term paper would write itself in two days, how that attractive brunette in economics class would be won over.  Suffering was merely a creation of your our own discontent, not the persistent bullying of life beating you down time and time again. This could not be real. This was not real. It was all an illusion. The spatter of large, cold raindrops roused me from my self-pitying stupor. 

As quickly as it had come, my appetite was gone.  Without a word, I handed my lunch to the beggar, to the arm that had a hand remaining.  I waited for the tourists to pass, their Cannons and Nikons forever pointed up to the skyscrapers and craft shops, never dropping down to encapsulate the people surrounding them.  One of them dropped a People's Magazine, dated last week.  American celebrities smiled up at me, and I quickly remembered a society's obsession with the irrelevant; a lemming culture where the shallow dictate life's importance to the masses.

And the illusion was never more obvious.