January 9, 2009, Friday
6:00 am. My bed is a tangle. The mosquito net came down in the night. The pillows are over the edge. Outside is still dark. The call to prayer chant, in a scale not ours, sounds from below the garden. Below that is a rumble-roar of vehicle sounds. Uno the jungle cat’s bell is on the move. I click on my LED reading light to see my journal page. The yard light on my corner of the house goes off. Wilson, the night guard must see that the day is coming. The chanter has a speaking tone now; the language makes a rhythm with more variations than ours: the tone swings from admonishment to sports announcer. Layered over the engine sounds it could be Nascar. I hear the wooden clatter of Odin’s toys falling repeatedly to the floor. Perhaps he and Paige are up. Yes, now a gurgle. Read More!

6:15 am. The chant is finished. The car race continues. Ttaano the renegade cat wants in from the night of carousing. I’ll go see what’s up.

6:25 am. It was Odin and Phil, happy and stretched out in the Poang chair. I go to find a longer shirt to match the cool air. Trees silhouette against a deep blue sky. Birds now, whistling in a loop d’loop. Chirpadee chirpadee. Nascar sounds. Cat scratches on my luggage. Lights speckle the hillside facing us across the city. We are in Mbuya. That hill is Kosolo. Kampala, the capital city, is seven hills. Tea next. Odin is bungee jumping.

7:15 am. Sunlight reaches the valley houses. Nascar soundtrack. New MASADA Spiced Tea Bags CHAI BORA TRULY E. AFRICAN 50 TAGLESS TEA BAGS A cup with finest black tea &freshly ground spices. JESA FARM DAIRY 1 L. FULL CREAM JESA MILK Farm Fresh Pasteurised Homogenised Standardised MILK [black and white cow, white plastic bag in blue plastic pitcher closed with spring paper clip]

7:25 am Odin is dreaming and growing while Phil walks. Dreaming of growing Phil says. Uno jungle cat bell jiggles while he walks the patio.

7:30am. Sun on the top of Nakasero hill. Pink salmon light. African thrushes, pair of birds run along a high branch.

7:40 am. Quiet house. Shower for me. I worry about the frozen drains at home as I watch it working fine here. No freezing here.

8:03 am. More tea.

8:07 am. Odin is awake again. Condoleeza Rice on BBC Africa. Doors all open. Paige up. Barefoot all, except Odin’s fuzzy pajamas with the snowmen have feet in. Me on the patio reading. Wangari Maathai: Unbowed, One Woman’s Story.

8:25 am. Phil and Odin keep company. Odin chuckles when he gets tickled. A bird answers him. Paige comes and tickles him, too, and then he eats.

8:40 am. Harriet is here. Greetings, and then she changes into her colorful work clothes. Odin sitting and chatting. Phil teasing back. African harrier hawk and a crow in a nearby tree.

8:45 am. Patrick the gardener comes, “Good morning madam.” Odin is so happy to see Harriet. Her talk is fluid, African lilt,”Odin youcan’t come here yet. When you cry, then you come to me.” Itseems like a song.

8:55 am. Breakfast. Pineapple. Jesa yogurt [black and white cow]. BBC Africa. UN calls Gaza cease fire. Patrick is hoeing. Harriet is washing laundry with Odin in the baby bjorn giggling and wiggling.

9:10 am. Patrick, weekday guard, is reading the newspaper in the guardhouse at the gate.

9:30 am. Bugle. Dove. Mary is here to clean the house.

10:00 am. Drive to Fred’s. The driving is amazing. Every inch is a movie. [Watch for an actual movie in days to come.] As we turn into the neighborhood, traffic is stopped by a street fight. A mob of men shouts and pushes. Phil thinks likely petty thievery, always treated disproportionately to bureaucratic thievery, which gets largely ignored.

10:20 am. We are warmly greeted by Fred Mutebi.
I ask him how he got to be who he is:
I don’t know. There was some God in it. When I was a boy, it was peaceful I had my parents, it was before AIDS. [ I think Fred is 41.] My grandmother who attended to me thought my drawing was a waste of time. My uncle was an artist I saw what he did. Once I overheard my father say, I think this boy has talent, and can become like the uncle. Then AIDS came. I saw some of my older brothers go. We didn’t understand why they got sick. They left little ones, many little ones were without parents. I was left. I decided I wanted to be a role model. To show them they could be something. To show them with my art.
He pulls out his recent series of prints about the US election. They are wonderful. Here is what he said about them:
While I was traveling from the US, Europe, Africa, Obama was on TV, I saw people vote even when they didn’t physically cast a vote. You’ve thought about this, Change, Yes We Can, so we are going to do a mural on this at the Embassy because as a way of educating people about what Change means. I saw people excited, according to me, I would listen to BBC, and they would interview like Kenyans, and they would say OK now it’s going to be easier for us to go to the US. I was like, do these people understand what it means. There are many people who are excited about Change, but someone has to be committed. So this talking mural, I don’t know have you seen my talking murals? It’s kind of educational. It allows everybody to contribute the way they understand. So we want actually to know the way other people understand Change. And to me, as someone who was in the US, this is what I saw. I didn’t see people, I was seeing blue and red, the flag color. I am trying to compare elections here and in the US. There’s a difference. US people came together, you see democrats, you see republicans, independents, but you see color, styles, you see blue and red. I don’t know whether, Betsy, you’re mother’s an artist, but sometimes I wanted to find out, the people who design flags of countries, what did they have in mind when they design? And as an artist, when I was in the US, I saw stars, in space, the same way stars are in space is how the Americans were during the elections. And the same way you know, this looks like a zebra bottom, only this is stripes. The way zebras confuse the enemies they get together and you never catch it. Sometimes the lines just zebras. But the way they confuse by the patterns, they fight, one face for another. Talk about togetherness when it comes to solving problems. That’s why I brought in the flags. That’s why I brought in the zebra stripes to compare with these. And by the way, it took me back to colour. Because I was in my Orange Period, but that month, more than that, two months actually, I was there in May, and I went back in October and I was looking at TV and I was watching people mobilize, I was optimistic again, because I saw the goodwill of people wanting to make things better. So it took me back to colour. So I wanted to make five in two months, what normally takes me five months. That means when you were emailing and I didn’t reply to you in time, I disconnected myself from the rest of the world for about a whole month, and so now I want to see how the American artists express themselves as far as the elections goes and you can have an exhibition at your place, for what we do here with the Americans, and what we do together. Maybe what we can do together, we can think of, no, because we move from light to dark, we can think of something that we can do the two of us. You understand what I mean. You have a site, I have a site, you use wood, and I can help you to press, you put your paint, I put mine, and then we merge it. I think we might have an exhibition of me independent of nobody’s influence except the influence of the activities. And the children’s [work] they have nothing to do with the elections, but they have feelings about whatever affects them, and then the workshops with the Americans . . .
He gives us a tour of his compound, a building under construction, and says, This is what I built with your donation [from sales of his and the student prints]. But I ran out. It is not done, but there are three rooms, for therapeutic art. I will take a young person for two weeks, one person in each room, to work with them; they will make their art here.
Fred mentioned that he is working with young people in the villages.
I have to mobilize in the villages. The students, the teachers don’t know anything about art. I putout art materials and they look at them like a dog looks at money.
One of the schools he works with in the north, the war-torn region of the country, has seven hundred students. Most have no parents. Many have been child soldiers. Life is very rough. I think these are the students he hopes most of all to help.

12:30 pm. We drive home. No street fight this time. We are wiped from the intensity of it.

1:00 pm. Lunch, sandwich on the patio. Harriet is making doughnuts. She learned in culinary school, working in a hotel, to do each part of cooking. She would like to open a restaurant with a bakery on the side. I can make many things, bread, doughnuts. I need to first get the plan together. Get some capitol. Not a loan from the government; there may be losses. You need to get your own capitol to buy a few things, a few machines. But I can start small. I know someone who started with just a small room, two tables; she cooked and served the food. Then you can expand.”

1:40 pm. I write at the computer, looking out my desk window at a sunbird in the tropical foliage.

3:15 pm. Nap.

4:00 pm. I get up and notice two boys on the patio. They may have been there for a while. I recognize them from Phil’s blog photos, I guess they are about 12 years. Somewhat shy. Phil had told them his mother was coming and they asked, Does she walk with sticks, or is she firm? They are on school holidays now, waiting for their exam results next week. Phil gets up too after awhile. We get them some doughnuts. I show them my sketchbook, and one of the boys wants to know how I added the color. I will get paints out for them when they come back. They want to get a rabbit and keep it in the back yard here. Phil nixes the idea, but they don’t want to give it up.

4:30 pm. Phil and I go to the Italian restaurant and deli store to buy his favorite pasta to cook, and the favorite Parmesano. Then to the City Centre for more groceries and gumboots for Patrick in the garden. The escalator ramp is broken, so there is one track where people going up and shopping carts going down must use at the same time. There isn’t enough room, but it works out anyway, just like the driving.

6:30 pm. Odin is awake happy. Paige is sort of done with her endless valuable work, since it is Friday night. All of us go on the nightly garden walk near sunset time. We admire the work Patrick has done, and a new hibiscus blossom. Uno makes his nightly lawn run with big leap to mount the big stump.

6:45pm. Odin to his bath, Phil feeds cats, closes and locks the house doors.
Stay tuned for more . . .