Life Experience is our Purpose

“Have you made a difference over there,” asks a friend?

I react, “No!”

I think for a second…

Life isn’t about linear progression. I don’t need a life purpose because our lives are not measured by growth. Ha, I said it!

We do not have to grow, we don’t need to succeed, we just try to survive. Survival techniques are important just as our attitude towards ourselves is key.

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It has taken me two years away from home to come to terms with this realization. One year in Madagascar and one year in Uganda.

Life is about experiences. Experiences vary as personalities vary. Experiences change as we age. We must always be open to strange, new experiences.

Are there bad experiences? Yes.

We need bad experiences to understand our past and our future.

Are there exceptional experiences? Yes.

When exceptional happens, I am stunned and wary. Later, I realize, indeed, that was exceptional.

My recent discard of success and growth as the measurement of my validity was followed by a lightness in my bearing.

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I had planned to work with agriculturalists for two years when I moved to East Africa. As stated in previous blog entries, threats to my safety have not made that possible. My third post is based in a different region, with a different language, and in a small-sized East African town. I am surrounded by commodity crops, mainly maize and sugar cane. My intent to discuss soil fertility, greenhouse gases, and global climate change, all detrimental to the nutrient content in food crops, is gathering dust along with my certificate in sustainable agriculture from Colorado State University. Projects will materialize; they will not be the type of projects I thought were most important when I set out on this journey.

Plans are pointless in East Africa.

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To answer the question, “have you made a difference over there?”

The difference made has been anointed on me.

These shots depict community members dancing for us before we enter their National Park in Uganda. The national parks only exist with community support, we appreciate what they do to conserve these wild places.

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Kadodi in Manafwa District

Kadodi Experiences

2024 December

I had already seen Kadodi parades in Mbale and marching by my house in early evenings since moving to the Mbale region in September. These were only a preliminary act for the days-long Kadodi gatherings that I have seen this first week of December and I have been assured by various people it will continue to intensify until December 31. 

Family support on Kadodi parade

For each boy that is to be circumcised, there are days of preliminary marching in the village and throughout the district. The parades vary in size until the day before the circumcision, then suddenly family members from out of town start to arrive and the intense partying begins. Families and neighbors of all ages drink around the clock, party music blares through large speakers pulsating all night before the circumcision, then on the day of the circumcision there are a few more parades before the cut. At the actual circumcision, men and women press against each other to witness the cut, dancing and laughing together once the circumcision is complete.

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Third Site Assignment

10 months

Third Site Assignment

Masindi Town, Midwestern Uganda

I had another security incident in July 2025 and have since moved to my third site. It is a sensitive subject. I was not injured. I really can not share the details of what happened.

I miss my dog who slept outside my gate door. She is the one who protected me the last night in the Lira district. I live in a different region now

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I have put together this blog as a place to describe my work experiences from this last year. I am having a difficult time adjusting to city life but as Peter says, “no one told me that living independently in Uganda was going to be easy.”

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Sharing Tea at the Coffee Farm

November 2025. - Essay

I leave on foot up the mountain behind my house at 6:45 (AM). The slippery trail of a road is deeply rutted from the heavy rains we’ve been experiencing this month. Children, groups of women, and men pass me. 

I have an appointment with Christoper, chairman of the cooperative that I am working at, for a coffee farm tour. I have a vague idea of where his house is, I continue walking for 45 minutes. Local farmers assure me that I am heading the right way then suddenly the trail stops at a tidy looking farmhouse. A Ugandan farm wife waves and calls to her husband to come out, the young children stare at me from a distance. I might be the first American to climb this trail!

Their names are Joseph and Lona, and they graciously spend an hour with me answering my questions about their lifestyle. After a tour of their garden plot and their livestock shelters, Joseph shows me where his family gets their water, a 20 minute walk through small coffee tree farms. This public well is adjacent to Joseph and Lona’s church. There is a new primary school adjacent to the church that they need funding to establish. The school is a simple mud and wattle construction. Each small schoolroom has benches and a chalkboard. They educate over 100 children ranging from nursery school through primary school.

As we talk about the school’s potential, my work supervisor rings. John is surprised that I walked so far on my own. I hang up and tell Joseph that John is expecting me to walk back to Christopher’s farm. Joseph and I climb the path back to his house and we sit with his wife under their coffee trees. I pull a flask of hot rooibos tea from my bag. We sip the hot beverage together, smiling and appreciating the morning. Christopher and John can wait. 

Details:

• Joseph is one of the few farmers who tends to a kitchen garden. He grows beans, tomatoes, squash, and greens for his family’s consumption. The garden is fenced with barbed wire to keep the free range poultry and animals out. 

• Joseph has multiple plots of land scattered across the parish on which he maintains coffee farms. 

• Joseph and Lona send their older children to boarding school in Mbale. Their commitment to their children’s education is commendable and rather unique. Many children in the Buweswa parish have not been attending school this year because the coffee harvest was devastatingly low.

Coffee Farm in Manafwa District

A student of Lumasaaba

Sarah and her class

November 2024

I see Sara climbing the steps, she deftly kicks off her slides at the door and enters my cold, slightly damp front room and we begin our lesson.

I start reviewing terminology introduced last lesson. Sarah very firmly corrects my pronunciation. She’s an experienced secondary school teacher and, as a mother of six, her youngest is the last one home. She has the patience to take me on. I am her new Lumasaaba student. 

Our two-hour lesson reaches an end. I realize Sarah will be an ally within the community. She has already checked with the various vendors to see which items I prefer and how much I pay for them. “Sarah,” I ask, do you grow coffee”? “Yes,” she replies. “Our coffee farms are up there,” she points at the mountain behind my house. “Do you sell your coffee direct or through a cooperative?” “We don’t get much for it, we’ve been waiting for you to get here,” she replies. 

Students at Sarah’s school

Help is not on the way

October 2025

Random Road with drainage

Counseling Questionnaire

After two safety incidents I asked to speak with a professional counselor. Here is my first answer to the 13-question online intake report.

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Counseling Intake Questionnaire
SECTOR: Agriculture Economic Development
COUNTRY: Uganda
Entry of Service:
Arrival date in- Country (month, year): 08/2024
DOB/Age: old enough
Date Questionnaire completed:
23, August 2025

  1.  What led to you seeking support from Behavioral Health and Outreach Unit at this time?
Anxiety and inability to describe my opinions and fears to others.

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Visit the Coffee Farmers

Late 2024

Rainy Season …. still

“We're going to climb today to visit another savings group, remember?” Yes, I remember, visiting farmers in the field is the best part of the week for me. The clouds look thick this morning, so I am anxious to start moving. He must have noticed my eyes glancing towards the door, “We can’t get there before 11 AM, because the farmers are in the fields all morning,” says John. Yes, I remember this too, but all the same, once the daily rains start, the mountain roads are slick trenches of mud. “Good, you wore your good boots today, you will move very well,” John says appreciatively. 

John is the Manager of the Buweswa Growers Cooperative Society, located in Mufufu village. We have been working closely together since I arrived at the site a little over a fortnight ago. The BGCS property is at the center point of the village, and my little colonial-era cinder block house is right on top of its hill. I can see mountainous coffee farms covered in mist from my front porch. 

John with VSLA member

This will be the ninth savings group that I have visited. Our window of opportunity is narrow because the rains begin at 1 PM, or earlier. We begin trudging up the muddy road, still sticky from last night’s showers. Boda Bodas come from both directions, hauling supplies going up, and people coming down. Villagers heading to the main road several kilometers down the mountain. We reach the tiny village at the top of the mountain behind my house, about a 45-minute hike, and we keep climbing. I haven’t had a chance to really explore these high-altitude villages because of the rainy season, but this morning the clouds parted, and we feel the full force of the equatorial sun on our faces. Small holder farmer families have built their homesteads close to the mountain road; they tend to their various plots spaced throughout the district. We stop to greet everyone; they are all curious to hear a foreigner greet them in Lumasaaba.

High-altitude Arabica coffee source

After another 45 minutes of hiking, we reach the savings group who have gathered in a church building on top of an adjoining mountain. The church is missing a wall and is an open shelter at this point. Our group of farmers are all very much at home, calmly looking over the coffee farms and mountain vistas, comfortable in the cool mist. “Let the meeting commence.”  

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Alone

Alone

I ran outside to greet the children in the community

In turn the children mock me, my mispronunciations a weird delight

Banging on my doors and windows, shrilly mimicking those few phrases I have in my head.

I still go out, but I don’t speak much now, why would I?

I rush out as soon as the rains stop, though there’s not much to see.

Muddy slippery roads weaving through small landholdings all the way to the top of mountains.

Plantains, cabbages, coffee trees as far as one can imagine.

I dream of a time I can escape the constant rain

A place where I can be proudly alone.

Diary Entry late 2024

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October 2024 Diary Entries

Diary - October 2024

• First night: Sunday

• Second night: Six Kids arrived to help with segiri. They took my oranges, all of them.

• Third day: Two Kids arrived Tues morning, I gave the 2 of them milk since I bought too much. More kids arrived PM, I gave them bits of meat.

• Fourth night: Kids arrived Wed. evening

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24, October

Visit local officials with Counterpart and Supervisor

District Residence Authority asked me if I knew about the homosexual law in Uganda.

Staring back at me, he said the best way to learn the language is to sleep with the language. I feigned shock and stated I would not be sleeping with the language. I would learn from children. Which is really impossible, they speak incredibly fast, and I haven’t the foggiest of what the children are saying. 

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proprietor of local dukka

 Diary

Food is cheap, what of it there is. My local choices are greens, mini bitter green eggplants, cabbage, onion, eggs, tomatoes, avocado, banana, goat/beef meat. The market at Bududa had ginger root, different kinds of greens, carrots, white sweet potatoes.  

I gave away slices of avocado last night. That is what I’ll have to do. I can’t eat all of the food fast enough. 

Kids arrived; John chased them away. I told John to stop, then I took a brief walk, but the roads are greased in wet red clay, so I went home. Some kids came back. I gave them slices of avocado and did calisthenics (Marc Lauren app). The kids were quite entertained and said I was strong. 

 Oct 30

So many malnourished children and women and maybe men

There are twins down the road, and one has grey hair. Today, a baby had terrible skin and the mother’s breast was withered. She could not be producing enough for the baby. Stunted children, one boy was so despondent his eyes were sunken into his skull. He stood watching me at the side of the road. 

A bit of Ugandan history

1952-1962 Sir Andrew Cohen was governor of Uganda. He and Mr. R Dreschfield’s committee decided that the co-operative movement deserved to be independent of government control. He eliminated discriminatory price policies and offered private African access to coffee processing. Coffee cooperative history is not a simple story.

Cat at work

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First Placement, Mufufu "a" Village in Manafwa District

Site Visit October 2024

• Find the public bus park

• Board bus

• Wait seated two hours until bus is full full

• Leave Mbale City towards Bududa 

My stop is at Weswa junction, just before the town of Bududa. Half a dozen boda boda drivers cry out to me, “1000 shillings!” just to motor me that last kilometer to the coffee cooperative. I walk.

Mist hung over the Manafwa River, swollen from recent rains. The surrounding mountains dodge in and out of the clouds. Dreams of primary forest filled with colorful birds and endemic monkeys have long been forgotten. The region has been efficiently terraced, with banana trees, coffee farms, and rows of maize. The Ugandan side of Mt. Elgon National Park blends into the surrounding farming communities, or rather the other way around. 

Coffee flowers

My sponsor, Buweswa Growers Cooperative, is organized from a series of colonial-era buildings solidly planted in the late 1940s. The board members were waiting for me on the hill. A bag of lightly roasted Arabica was opened, we stirred grounds into mugs of hot water and sat on bright blue chairs in the main office. After our introductions, was it an hour?, they eagerly escorted me to the white-washed building which will be my house. The cement floors were scrubbed clean, new mosquito screens were installed in every window frame, even my outhouse was freshly swept. 

 As I open my front shutters, cloud-filtered light fills the room. There is the path that leads down to the community well, I will be drinking and bathing with their spring water now. This is Eastern Uganda, like no other place I have been.  

Mailing Address:

Buweswa Growers Cooperative

Weswa Subcounty

Buweswa Parish

Mufufu “A” Village

Uganda

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Progress is Fun - The Fall installment three

Cyclists aren’t particularly known for their juicy asses. They do have, especially after 40 years of cycling, large quadriceps, toned hamstrings, and exquisite calf muscles. The gluteus maximus is the engine for all of these muscles, so participants of the sport have lean, slender fannies. 

15 years ago France… or maybe 20?

When my Ugandan physiotherapist took her first look at my skinny tuchas, she immediately said, “You need to do my exercise regime 2 times a day and swim for more than 30 minutes every day this week. You must build more muscle.”

I agree with her swimming recommendation, but to say I need to “build muscle!” is insulting. I pouted for a day then reluctantly added her regime to my daily calisthenic ritual. It took me another day to find a pool where I could purchase day passes. 

Two days after that was my next physiotherapy session. She immediately asked, “How do you feel?” “My buttocks hurt,” I answered She beamed with pride; she couldn’t be happier for me. “Baby got (little) back.

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The Diagnosis - The Fall Installment two

Hospital in Kampala

After a seven-hour ride on a taxi-bus (mini van transport) Michie seeks a diagnosis.

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Suburbs of Kampala

“Orthopedics always try to sell the surgical option,” Michie thinks to herself. Clutching her MRI images, X-rays, and ultrasound report, she walks to the doctor’s consultation room. “I will not accept the first surgical recommendation… where would I get a second opinion?.... Durban, Denver…" her thoughts racing from one alternative to the next. Calmness is not Michie’s nature. 

The doctor looks up from his desk; his office window faces the wide tree-lined boulevard framing the hospital. “Have a seat.” She remains standing. “Well, you see, it hurts to sit, I mean,” Michie arches her eyebrows. “I can sit.” She slowly lowers herself into the very clean decades-old chair. “But after two minutes I will be in a great deal of pain.” Michie immediately jumps out of the chair, “see I can squat,” she does a couple of deep sumo squats. “I can kick my legs from side to side,” she begins side leg kicks in the office. Doctor T quietly looks at her performing calisthenics in front of him.

 “But sitting is the one activity that I cannot do without pain,” Michie explains as she lowers herself once again into the patient’s chair. 

He pushes aside his notes and begins his examination. He looks at the MRI images a second time as Michie stands in front of him. “Come have a look,” Doctor T patiently describes what the images illustrate, to Michie’s surprise. “There isn’t permanent damage then?” Michie asks. “No, but I am afraid I am going to have to prescribe exercise,” says Doctor T. 

Michie breaks out into a grin, nods her head, encouraging him to continue. “You should go to physiotherapy and begin swimming.” “OK!, this will work,” Michie thanks Doctor T profusely and leaves with her prescription card.

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