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December 27^th, 2010

The brisk northeastern air catches in my lungs and shocks my body to attention, like ice cold Merrimack waters on a 4AM crew practice.  No sleeping through this, no matter how jetlagged.  I feel energized, invigorated, alive – I am a New Englander by blood, and this is my home.  I find myself enjoying the softness of the grey Capricornian daylight, whispering rumors of snowstorms, as a welcome change to the blazing direct sun I’ve grown used to.  Any lethargy induced by months of equatorial heat is whisked away by the first icy gust of wind, and my skin welcomes the cold like a hug from a long lost friend… for about 30 seconds.  At that point images of warm things enter my mind, becoming obsessions I can’t shake until I’ve planted my body in front of my parents’ woodstove, hot cup of tea in hand and vowing not to move until my skin is at risk of spontaneously combusting.  Apparently I’ve lost my tolerance; but that doesn’t change the fact that I love winter like my border collie loves her special holiday PB & BBQ bones (sounds horrible, but somehow good).

I lounge on the couch of my parents’ 1779 farm house, where I spent all of my formative years.  On the coffee table rests a National Geographic article on the fast approaching Sudanese referendum, which in January will either spur the official separation of an independent southern Sudan, or the start of a fresh civil war after 5 years of shaky peace.  Uganda, just to the south, will hold its own presidential elections in February, which are unlikely to change the 25-year rule of the current leadership despite what the people of Uganda may want.  Meanwhile people I feel honored to know are fighting a court case for human rights in Kampala.  From a distance I realize how much of my heart is invested in East Africa right now.  I want to go back.

And from up close, as I soak up the peaceful energy of my living room, I am reminded how truly irreplaceable home is, and I want this week to last forever.  Nine short nights will slip by faster than I can blink, and while I refuse to cram them full of activity, I want to fill them with as much love as humanly possible.

Love.  Love is hearing the sound of friends’ voices for the first time in four months, and hearing each other smile through the telephone.  Love is getting an unexpected care package from soul mates I’m unable to visit, reminding me I still have a home waiting for me on the west coast whenever I am ready to return.  Love is baking six loaves of cranberry bread while listening to Billie Holiday, and marveling at my dad who’s learned the art of pie-baking during my absence.  Love is having your parents drive 3 hours and your brother take the day off from work so they can all meet you at the airport, and then take you out for a pint of real Guinness on draft (sorry Uganda – that’s one thing we have over you).  Love is having people ask you questions until you’re blue in the face from answering, because they’re really truly interested.

Over the course of my life I’ve learned that I have the ability to connect and create a home for myself almost anywhere I go.  I consider this a blessing, as it has enabled me to now call so many places around the world “home.”  But what does “home” mean?  Is home even based in a physical location?  Can it be?

For instance, my home in the truest geographical sense of the word will always be this old house on Brown Road, in a cow town of upstate New York.  Wherever else I go in the world, this will speak “home” to my heart in a language more native than any other.  At the same time I know I will never again live here, and there will quite likely reach a time when neither of my parents do either.  This language that speaks “home” originates from a town that offers little of what my soul needs now – but does this make it any less home?

Crossing the Atlantic at an unknown inter-time zone early-morning hour on Monday, I read a surprisingly philosophical article for an airplane magazine, reflecting on one traveler’s ponderings on home.  “Travel is ever more important precisely because it challenges our sense of home,” they said.  When travel introduces new ideas and people that speak to your soul – new foods you could be happy eating for the rest of your life, new landscapes that sing to your heart, new connections that enrich your life in a way you didn’t realize you were craving – where does that leave home?  For those of us that travel, do we all end up with as many homes as we have sides of ourselves?  The mountains and valleys of upstate New York are home to my body in a visceral, indescribable and even preverbal way.  Grungy Lowell, with its Beat influence and water canals winding through abandoned mill buildings, is home for having shaped and molded my creativity over years of good memories.  Seattle speaks to an authenticity and naturalness of being I’ve never found elsewhere, and where I met some of my closest comrades.  Boston is home because of its muddy waters, Red Sox and loud crabby people that love to hate the weather.  East Africa, while I cannot yet call it home, speaks to a feisty passion in my soul that I’m still attempting to figure out.  Western and Northern Ireland have the same affect, pulling at some hidden strings within my heart – of course I’ve heard everyone who goes to Ireland, Irish or not, feels at home while they’re there, so I probably shouldn’t romanticize it.  Besides, I’m Scottish.

With all of these places slipping off my tongue alongside the word “home,” can home possibly be just a place?  The same traveler in the article described home as “essentially an idea,” a piece of soul, and I want to sit with this thought a bit.  I feel at home when I feel connected – to blood family, to soul mate friends and loves, to a mountain or piece of ocean or willow tree, even to a music or a culture.  Home is a piece of soul when my soul blends with others and I’m reminded that we all share the same molecules of air.

So in this way, home is when I close my eyes and feel my family hugging me from across an ocean.  It’s the modern technology of cell phones and skype that allow me to stay connected to places I can’t physically be.  It’s finding the small seeds of connection in places so foreign and different you feel like a fish on a sandbar, and nurturing these seeds.  It’s meditating each morning (or desperately avoiding this practice…) and learning to sit and connect to myself, so that first and foremost I might be at home with me.  And it’s realizing that, if I have this, I can never be homeless.

My favorite way to start the morning - cereal with chopsticks and tea by the woodstove.

Brodie

Cooking our traditional breakfast, Christmas morning.

Beautiful.

regarding the dead cells coming out of your head

It’s something that people of all genders from many societies put a great deal of focus, energy and attention into.  In today’s media-saturated world, it’s something of especial importance to women: hair.  Since shaving off my curls last summer I’ve received interesting reactions from many people I know and others I don’t know.  Those that knew I was coming to Africa in the fall for some reason assumed that I had done it in preparation for my trip (to cope with the hotter weather?), and some even said I “looked African.”  In reality my decision to shave my head was completely unrelated to Africa.  My white skin and facial features, at least in my opinion, make it impossible for me to look African the way that was being implied (exception made for white Africans), nor did I think that I should look African when going to Africa, anymore than I should wear a beret when going to France.  (What does it even mean to look African?)  My reasons for engaging the clippers stem back more years than any thoughts about the continent and have more to do with personal anti-norm (aka, western-defined attractiveness) sentiments than anything else.  (Plus my ego gets a little high when it thinks of itself as a rebel, so maybe it got the best of me when I finally grabbed the clippers that day after years of debating.  Although I’m also aware that in doing so I engaged in another norm within a subculture… Hmmm, I guess it’s hard to get away from.)

Anyway after some interesting reactions here in the States, I was unsure as to the reaction, if any, my balded head would receive upon my arrival in Uganda – especially since I’d been associating it with a completely different culture than the place I was about to enter.  What I’ve found is that, while I got a couple of passing compliments from Ugandan males, the majority of Ugandan women here really want me to grow it out. 

**Disclaimer:  I remain ignorant to the full range of meaning, value, and history of hairstyles within Africa and specifically the Acholi of Uganda, and am basing all following thoughts on the limited impressions I have gathered as a foreigner through observations and interactions with people here.  I gladly welcome comments from any and everyone who can better inform, challenge, or expand upon these perceptions.** 

Hair in many ways seems to be a symbol of pride and status here, as it also is in the United States.  Acholi women who can afford it will plait their hair, usually adding extensions and twisting, braiding, or plaiting these extensions, or alternately making them into a straight or more westernized hairstyle.  Students, women who can’t afford to plait, and others for various reasons will keep their hair cropped short.  I have seen few Acholi women with their natural hair grown out and left as-is.  I wonder how much of this is cultural, how much is related to ease of maintenance and comfort, and how much is the influence of colonialism and the devaluation of anything non-western or non-European.  For instance during the slave trade and subsequent years of slavery in the U.S., lighter-skinned slaves with less kinky hair were more valued and deemed “well-adjusted” to western culture.  This started a trend of differentiating “good hair” from the kinkier natural African hair, which has had an impacted that has lasted centuries in the U.S. and internationally.  While intricate and elaborate plaiting styles date back long before European settlers entered Africa, it seems hard to argue that the straight and more Caucasian hairstyles adopted over the years aren’t a direct influence of colonialism and the devaluation of African culture – especially when you look at the influence of dominant media throughout the world today.

Perhaps I digress… but interestingly, most Acholi women here want me to grow my hair out and either leave it in its naturally (Caucasian) curly state, or plait my hair the way they do.  Those that encourage me to plait my hair seem to take pride in watching me become more like an Acholi woman, and this manifests in other ways as well.  One friend wants to buy me a traditional goma dress, many others have tried to teach me traditional dance, and the family always takes pride when I mingle good posho for dinner.  They are also eager to have me share my new Acholi-ness with my family and community back home in the U.S.  I'm curious if this cultural pride mirrors something similar in the U.S, and where it is inherently different.  For instance, the dominant culture in the U.S. tends to want immigrants and foreigners to assimilate and take on western characteristics.  It makes us more comfortable, it’s less threatening, and it validates our sense of self.  What does it mean however for Acholi women here, who are well aware that they are never portrayed in the media in the U.S. for people to emulate?  Does it similarly make them more comfortable to see me adapting and taking on their customs and styles?  Imitation is thought to be the sincerest form of flattery, so perhaps it's simply human nature to feel pride when someone from a different culture takes on traits from your own culture.  In this context, however, there’s the added dimension of reverse-westernization: by me plaiting my hair, I would be a Caucasian copying a Ugandan custom, amidst a culture of Ugandans who have for years been told that they should be copying Caucasian styles.  So perhaps their satisfaction in my emulating their culture stems from years of having the reverse shoved down their throat. 

Others, like I mentioned, want me to let it grow naturally in its Caucasian state.  I remember specifically a time back in October when one woman made a comment, in a conversation regarding my hair, about how African women are always copying western styles, so if I as a westerner am wearing my hair short “like an African,” what will they be able to copy?  I was unable to gain clarity about what she meant during our brief conversation so I won’t make assumptions, but I remember feeling uncomfortable.  Similarly I’ve had 2 different people – a girl of 17 and a young woman of 30 – tell me specifically that they’ve styled their hair to mirror my short Caucasian curls, which have grown out over the months, and both of these instances have disturbed me greatly.  Maybe it’s not that big of a deal and it’s simply a form of flattery – but I can’t help but get in my head about it and think, African women copying western hairstyles instead of embracing their own and telling westerners to F-off is just another symptom of neocolonialism!  Who decided natural European hair was 'better' than natural African hair?

There’s also the gender component, illustrated in comments I’ve heard (from women) like “Women are supposed to have long hair” and the like.  I’ve heard this both in the U.S. and in Uganda.  American and Ugandan men, in general, have simply failed to comment on my hair as much.  Maybe they don’t have thoughts about it, or maybe they just don’t communicate these thoughts.

Anyway, to make a long story not really that short, I’ve gone back and forth about the matter.  I personally love African plaiting styles for their sheer art form and creativity, and I think they look even more striking when using someone’s natural hair rather than extensions.  If I were blessed with dark skin and African hair I would be wearing my hair in dreadlocks for my own personal reasons.  As a munu, I have yet to land on a clear side of the debate about whether white people should plait, dread, cornrow, or braid their hair.  Sometimes I think that I should just relax and let my Acholi family here plait my hair in a traditional African style, that it would be a sincere gesture of admiration and gratitude and a “gift” that I could then bring home for my U.S. family to see.  In Kenya I did this, and my hair was braided (sans extensions) by a good friend of the family I was staying with.  It looked beautiful and it’s one of my favorite hairstyles I’ve had.  Other times I’m convinced that I was – and would be again – appropriating culture by copying, as a white person, a hairstyle that’s a marker of pride of a people marginalized by whites.  Still other times I’m missing my buzz and desperate to get my hands on a pair of clippers.  It’s interesting how a bunch of dead cells evolved to take on so much meaning.

Again, however, I tend to get in my head about things like this, so I welcome opportunities to leave this limited landscape and engage in dialogue with anyone interested :-)