OZ

Ok so getting to a computer hasn't been the easiest nor the most urgent task here in YEI. Travelling with 15 people doesn't lend a hand to speedy anything. Alas, here I am at a computer in Yei Town. I don't even know where to begin. My last entry came from London and seems like lifetimes ago. Southern Sudan is a place like no other I've experience nor will I ever experience. It has a life, a soul, a personality of it's own. Our school site is a little Oz admist the bush.
Our flight from Uganda to Yei took us over the Nile, a site Ana and I tried to capture with colored pencils in hand. With our heads against the window we looked in awe at the river we had only read about.
We landed in a green field welcomed by smiling faces and open arms. Travelling Logobara Rd. to the site was yet another experience. I'm not sure my stomach has ever gone through such a time and that says a lot for me. 14 kilometers down a road into the bush where you'd never believe anything could exist and like Dorothy reaching OZ, the NESEI School appears. It is incredible. I'm unable to post pictures at the moment but can't wait to share. The dining hall, the farm, the dorms, classrooms, kitchen where Gracie makes our meals of rice and beans, rice and beans and rice and beans. Yes, I've eaten a lot of rice and beans. Last night we had a going away feast at an Ethiopian Restaurant and never has food tasted so good!
Being here is humbling, inspiring, hard, but oh so good for the soul. I've seen the most beautiful faces, heard laughs of sheer happiness, felt the pain of carrying buckets and buckets of rock in the 90 degree sun and relief in making it safely to the end of a day. I've only been here 10 days and I've done so much. T
his posting is a demonstration of how fragmented my thoughts are. I don't know how to talk about the damn rooster who wakes me every day, or how I'm trying to "like" the latrines, or how to correctly hang a mosquito net or remember to take my malaria pill or keep a white shirt white by scrubbing it in my basin. All of these things are part of my surviving and thriving here and I love it. I do love Africa.

I will end by sharing an interesting experience last night that I will never forget. As 16 of us were preparing to sit down to dinner a television buzzed in the background and all of a sudden the words, "the world must come together as one. We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones to make a brighter place so let's start giving," blared. I turned around to see Michael Jackson, Willy and Bruce Springsteen singing in front of a Help Africa sign. I remember hearing this song at 4 years old. I couldn't believe that 28 years later I was in Africa listening to this song in a bar.