Surviving America by proxy, or, Surviving Africa

So, I'm not in America for a while. Six months is the initial plan, after that, we'll see what God will throw my way.

Today I visited my first internally displaced persons (IDP) camp. It was rather dismal. Small circular huts were clumped too closely together on the red dirt, their gray mud walls leaving little room to pass between them. Children in torn if any clothes wandered and peeked around the little houses.

One man, obviously drunk, took a moment to introduce himself.

But this was after spending an hour in a small rectangular building, about the size of a dorm room, where Invisible Children employees make bracelets. They smiled and laughed as I knelt in front of each of them, asking and trying to pronounce their names. Their children littered the dirt floor and the mats they had laid over it. Mothers nursed while weaving reed into bracelets. All were manifestly happy to be there.

And it was also after walking along the road in front of the camp and talking to a woman who sells sugar cane. She walks from the camp to the city (maybe 3 or 4 miles) each day, and back. She smiled shyly as I asked her name and what she did. I told her I would buy sugar cane but didn't have any small bills on me. She gave me a cane for free. Can you imagine? She lives in an IDP camp, walking miles every day to get cane to sell, and she gave it to me for free.

So that's my experience thus far. It's all sugar cane and mud.