Heading back to weather fluctuating between -5 and -17 celcius and countless pages of readings and essays to write in just under 48 hours. I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve entered and exited Uganda. However, this – albeit brief – trip has been unique. Christmas celebrations in a small village near Masindi. Just a dusty road lined with a few shops; not marked on the national map. Welcomed into a home for meals of matoke, posho and beans cooked over the kitchen-courtyard fire. Greeted by the wider community not as a foreign NGO worker but – perhaps – more as part of the community itself. Refusing to take boda-bodas after an accident a few years ago, I mastered the matatu system far better than times before. The stubborn heat, sweat and noise of Kampala for a week. The debauchery of the Ugandan middle class over New Year’s weekend – from never ending parties on the shores of Bugala Island in Lake Victoria to iPads and glasses of wine in Entebbe’s beach bars. The middle class is growing, the country is getting richer and – at least since 2007 – there seem to be some improvements. Yet, the same frustrations of fluctuating power, difficult access to water and a failing health care system remains. Will 2012 bring any changes?

A boat carcass dressing Hornbill Camp’s beach. Bugala Island.

The sun setting over Lake Victoria.

Uganda’s ‘middle class’ enjoying food, wine and a swim in Lake Victoria on New Year’s Day.

It is not surprising that Indonesia, and perhaps more specifically Bali, does not leave people short of inspiration. After spending a few days in Ubud, I took a bus to a small island called Nusa Lembongan. The water, deep blue or turquoise, broken by the white crests of offshore breaks and small bobbing specks, surfers waiting on their boards. Occasionally, a powerboat or water scooter roars by; a not so subtle reminder of the space you are sharing in the peak of European summer holidays. Island residents, both on the modest board walk and tucked behind the beachfront compounds, comb through rectangles of seaweed of all colors: dark and light green, burgundy, yellow and beige. Every few hours, a boat unceremoniously dumps a new load of tourists onto the white sands.

As I have discovered, you are never alone in Bali. While half expecting the type of solitude you can find in parts of East Africa, even during the peak season, such emptiness does not seem to exist here (or at least it is not easily accessible). At the same time, the Balinese do seem to manage to keep Hinduism, i.e. religion, (but not culture generally) and tourism separate: tourism is to make a living while the temples and the rituals remain sequestered, or at least are kept sacred to some degree. While one can visit these temples – with mandatory plain coloured sarongs tied around anyone baring their legs – it is likely that participating in a ceremony would be a difficult invitation to secure and areas where the ceremonies are actually held are often blocked off.

Religion and faith is clearly all encompassing in Bali. Carefully ritualized beliefs mark every corner. In the morning, women clean up the detritus of old offerings and prepare new ones. At the end of the day, outside each house and business, lie flattened grass stalk baskets still partly filled with flowers, fruits, banana, Styrofoam cuttings, sticky rice. Run over by pedestrians and scooters; blown off balcony railings and out of spirit houses; happily consumed by errand dogs and birds. Incense, a smell still  familiar from Salt Spring, persistently lingers.

During a walk around the island, I double a number of women walking to the temples in their elegant sarongs, belts and lace tops with baskets of offerings on their head. These larger baskets are made from the same neatly plaited grass stalks and filled with fruits, rice. The fragrance of fresh cut flowers trailing behind them. The men loitering outside the temples, testing their drums, wearing starched white trousers and shirts with their traditional headdress. Despite all this careful and attractive preparation for a religious ceremony, the cemeteries I pass are strewn with garbage, the only sign of obvious care being – at least to my untrained eye – the colorful umbrella sported by each gravestone.

Tourism economies develop similarities. In Ubud, known as a creative town, there were many shops selling ‘tourist-art’, something I have seen before in Damascus, Uganda, Kenya and Zanzibar. Thin strips depicting naked women carrying baskets on their heads in the African countries and similar images found in Ubud; in Damascus, painted into heavy canvases were old men hunchbacked over cups of thick coffee and smoking cigarettes. The children on the beaches in Zanzibar would appear, their sand covered feet first: “Would you like some shells?” Theirs being the big and boisterous kind you can really hear the sea in. Lining the ramshackle boardwalk on Nusa island, young children – not quite yet of school going age – sit selling their shells: “Do you want my shells? Do you want my shells?” Collected as the sun sets and sold the following day.

Another day was spent biking across Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan Island. They are connected by a rickety yellow suspension bridge, gaping holes between boards that have shifted with time. In the morning, people are harvesting seaweed in the bay between the two islands. Upside down straw bowl hats and baskets in hand. On Nusa Ceningan Island, someone has targeted the bluest cove for construction and developed a jumping site called ‘Blue Lagoon.’ Nothing is free in a tourist economy and three perilous plunges cost $6. Near the Blue Lagoon cove, another cove harbors a singular wave and two early surfers are paddling, catching a slumbering break.

As the sun sets at night, children come out in numbers to fly kites, the sky dotted with modest to ambitious sizes and shapes. The owner of the Lembongan Inn has almost finished his stalking – as he seems to spend most of the day roping in tourists to his Inn, renting out bicycles or organizing snorkeling trips. Done with his duties he tends to his nephew’s broken kite, fixing tears with scotch tape melted with an incense stick.

His mother makes me sweet coffee. Not being able to speak any English, we communicate through miming: she motions towards another guest’s room, imitates retching and points to a Baileys bottle on the fridge. Shaking her head and laughing. As the sun sets, I try and teach their three year old niece how to skip coral. But as the boys begin to swarm the beach with their kites, she is taken away. She emerges a few hours later, the sun having set, to stand boisterously at the entrance of the inn squealing “hello!” at every passing tourist. Clearly drawing immense pleasure from this determined harassment.

Landed in Jakarta yesterday evening. Something like the Cairo of Southeast Asia. Phnom Penh’s temporary tranquility is a backwater compared to this city: turnpikes, skyscrapers, traffic jams. I found my way to the National Monument this morning. An open area carved into a slightly run down but substantial park and an imposing tower emerging from the ground. The park also seems to serve as the city-jogger’s route, with one brave young man sweating through a tracksuit in the noon sun. I arrived just in time for the call to prayer coming from the world’s fourth largest mosque (and largest in Southeast Asia), the Istiqlal Mosque. I forgot how often I used to hear this particularity: Nairobi, Kampala, Damascus, Istanbul, Lamu, Stone Town, Watamu, Dar Es Salaam, Mombasa. I remember the Damascus call to prayer most fondly: at dusk, eating olives and ful on the white-washed rooftop verandah. Eventually I also stumbled into the National Museum (but only after disturbing a military police battalion on what appeared to be some kind of holiday and a 15 person anti-neoliberalism protest outside a conference celebrating Indonesia’s Constitutional Court). The museum, in a dusty way, is peaceful; filled with statutes of Hindu dieties, delicate batik cloths, porcelain, shadow puppets, masks from Bali. 

Marathon running continues in another country. This time, I find myself running around the park squares near Independence Monument in the centre of Phnom Penh with other city dwellers coming out for evening exercise. You cannot start running here without a struggle against the heat, so we wait until it is dark before commencing a monotonous to and fro the monument. The square is surrounded by blinking vehicle lights – motos, tuk-tuks, cars – yet the smog does not quite reach us. This challenge reminds me of running in Damascus, except there the Kassioun runs were not only unbearably hot, but also straight up a mountain. And, at least compared to Uganda, I am quickly forgotten and provide only a minor distraction for the children.

Blogging has been slow here, primarily because I am not yet sure what shape this space will take now that I am veering off into a study/discipline/profession of which I have a very limited understanding and even less experience.

That being said, I did want to offer an update on the marathon training for all those who have donated so far (we’re nearing our goal, but ever so slowly, you can help out here!). I finished my first 30km training run in around 2h48 a couple of days ago. When I started training in March in Gulu, this would have seemed a daunting, unrealizable distance. After a few months of training, it was actually a breeze despite being a bit sore towards the end and for a few days after!

Over at Women of Kireka, children are already heading back to school and the women are preparing for the launch of our online store. They also spent a day tabling at the American Recreation Association market selling their wares and meeting other local jewelry makers.

Sometimes it is necessary to step outside Kampala’s madness and get a glimpse of the rest of the country. I finally made my way down to the much exalted Bunyonyi Lake in Southern Uganda, just hours from Rwanda. Fog-lifting on a still lake, pink sky, the sound of a thousand birds breathing morning over green and blue hillsides.