We were alive.
I did it again! Nachap, why!?!?! I insisted on driving to the village after heavy rain, and now the SUV is stuck in the mud. It didn’t really matter how many mud trails the Land Cruiser has defeated. This time it is stuck.
Just like the other times, I told myself we’d waiting enough days after the storm and the road would be fine. It wasn’t.
Just like the other times, there were people walking along the edges of the muddy mess of a path. They are kind and chose to help.
And just like the other times, Joel was trying to push this vehicle with all his might as I tried to accelerate and get the SUV moving.
In Karamoja, it’s always the kindness of strangers and the determination of the Karamojong that conspire to get through a mess and prevail. With our collective strength, we excavated the SUV from the mud and arrived at the village back in the summer of 2024.
But I first met Apus on short, first visit to Karamoja in 2016. Spending some time with me with a translator, Apus taught me how to winnow and made me practice. She wondered why I wasn’t taking pictures because that’s what white people do. I told her it was ok, not necessary - I was living in this moment of human connection and not there to gawk. She insisted. So yes, I took out my camera and took the pictures as Apus instructed. She introduced me to villagers, babies, and showed me the in’s and out’s of maintaining a compound. We laughed. She asked me questions. I gave long answers. The translator made sure to tighten up and simplify my answers. In the end, our presence, our being with each other, our mutual respect, and even more mutual curiosity helped us connect. Apus accepted me. I sighed. I wanted to be accepted. Don’t we all?
In 2016 Apus gave me a new name for a new beginning. From that point on, on the last day of this short pilot study visit, I would be known as Nachap in this land. Nachap - the girl of the weeding season. It was special. I promised to return. But I had a pain in my stomach - what if I couldn’t do my research here? It makes me sick to think about breaking promises. I told myself in that split second that my final research location didn’t matter. This place was special. These people were special. Apus was special. I would return.
And return I did the next January when my new world opened up in Karamoja. And I left again after 18 months promising to return. But time passed. COVID happened. I was in California living a completely different life from the one I knew in Karamoja. And I feared that the return would always be second rate to the original. Like a bad sequel, or even just mediocre. I remember returning to Guadalajara to visit after I studied at the university there. The visit was great. I will always love the place, people, and memories that gave me life there, but the visit was different. People move on. Things can change. Would that be the same in Karamoja? Especially after COVID?
In any case, I returned in the summer of 2024. Upon arrival, I asked my friend Joel, “Is she still alive?” I was afraid and ashamed to ask; the answer might break me. I feared Apus had passed away. Joel knew exactly who I was talking about. He understood. Afterall, he’d brought me to the village so many times on the back of his boda boda back in those gloriously alive days of fieldwork.
En route to Uganda just a week before reuniting with Joel, I found myself looking out the window as we took off from Doha to Entebbe with anticipation, fear, regret. I began to cry. Sob? Probably. But quiet. I am crammed in this row with two other people so I try to keep it to myself.
What if I’d waited too long? I mean, I hadn’t seen her in years. My spring 2020 trip was cancelled when the world was put on hold. So it is possible that she passed. I’m not sure how old Apus but I can confirm she holds two national identification cards with two completely different dates, months, and years of birth. In any case, she is of an age that it would have been reasonable to think that she might have passed away.
In that window seat leaving Doha, I told myself that if she had indeed passed, I did the best that I could. I did return, even if it was too late. Her family would know that I wasn’t like the other mzungus (white people) who say they will return but never do. My head tried to heal my heart with rationalizations but I knew the only thing that would put me at peace was actually seeing her in the flesh.
I surprised her once in 2017 on my first return and I wanted to do it again. Thank God Joel informed me that Apus is still alive.
But the SUV is stuck and my legs are heavy with mud. We finally arrive and I have all the energy I need to meander through the village to arrive back at the compound where I was initially welcomed. I see old, familiar, loving faces. Kids smile and giggle. Women are pleasantly surprised and happy to see me. “Nachap is back!” Yes, I am.
We proceed through the maze of compounds. I remember the route as if I never left. I bend down to enter Apus’s compound and there she is, sitting, maybe even waiting for me. I wonder what she will say. I hope she doesn’t scold me for my long absence. She makes me laugh with her quick and smart sense of humor because as she smiles at me, she yells, “I thought you were dead!”
“I thought you were dead”?!?! Wait a minute. I thought you might be dead! I didn’t dare say that aloud but I surely thought it. We both had incredulous laughs and huge smiles. I go to embrace her. I lean down and give her a hug. A long embrace that connects our souls, reveals my regret of taking too long to return, and calms me in relief that this moment is actually happening.
We’re both reassured and comforted that the other is alive. We just sit and look at each other. She puts her hands on my face to make sure I am real. She is loving, soft, and so present as she looks at me. I put my hands on hers to do the same. I don’t remember ever looking at her so closely before. She is beautiful, motherly, and regal in her own way. Her thick wrinkles are marks of wisdom and her smile reminds you of joyful youth. Her eyes are gentle, loving, studious. She’s alive, engaged, present. I’m alive, cherishing this precious moment. We’re meeting again. Promises fulfilled. Connection sustained. Relationship reborn.
That moment of seeing Apus again felt like slow motion. Everyone else was a blur. I was so full of gratitude and love, so relieved to see her. I loved her then. I love her still. She welcomed me into her world, shared her life, and I fulfilled my promise to return.
I give her a copy of the international development magazine with her photograph on the cover. She laughs and reminds me she doesn’t read. Without shame but just as a matter of fact. My friend and research assistant Selestina insists she look at the cover and translates the article out loud for her. Apus looks more closely and is amazed at seeing herself. Apus is dumbfounded. Could she be worthy of a cover? Of attention? Yes, she is worthy.
One of her grandchildren goes into the sleeping hut and fetches dusty, large ziplock bag inside of a plastic bag that’s been hanging in her hut since we first met. It’s full of all the pictures I have given Apus, and the writings that we read to her. After all these years, everything inside is still pristine. The ziplock has done its job admirably. When we finish translating the magazine article summary, Apus places the magazine, with her face, her home, her life on the cover, into the bag to be kept safe with the others. Zip locked. Hung up.
The rest of the visit was a dream - just to be in the presence of someone you care about. The chances of meeting would have been inconceivable before we met. A bad script of an unlikely friendship rejected by Hollywood. But it was real. And it still is.
Apus was not dead but fully alive. The visit was beautiful. We were truly living and thriving off of human connection. Two people who have no business ever meeting. From different continents. Different eras. Different cultures. Different lives.
But we belonged together.
And we were alive.
