Always, always, always. You are reliably the first person to comment on my posts. Under the Bukkede post, you just wrote a simple, “hahahahaha.”

You even commented on “Tale of Two Worlds” on Flora’s Blog. I’ll quote here.

Maybe you’ve noticed that this was one of my running themes in the past blogging flurry.

And some blogger told me, when I told him that he had posted a very new picture of Gulu and that I wondered which the right picture was, he said `there is no right picture of Gulu’.

Hmm. We are all victims of one form of brainwash or another. Maybe I should stop blaming the Americans for being so naïve about Africa, as well

I know you read my blog all the time, and now I have a stat counter, so I know you aren’t the only one reading my blog every day. How come none of the Ugandans have commented on my last post? Have I scared them all away?

My intention was neither self rightiousness nor self defense. It came from a place of trying to bridge a gap between of understanding between Ugandans and Expats. I think a lot of Ugandans can’t really fathom why we’re here, and the cheap beer thing makes the most sense. And since it’s a world where the rules we grew up with don’t make sense, yes, we tend to make mistakes, so it’s easy to categorize us as naive or callous.

But I’d like to believe that people come here with a reason.

In the “Last King of Scottland” the Irish doctor spins the globe and it lands on Uganda so that’s where he goes. For some people the destination is as casual as that, but picking up and leaving everything you know behind for something that no matter how much you’ve read or studied or prepared is still something you know essentially nothing about is still a committment.

It’s a committment. Expats aren’t backpackers. We don’t pass through Kampala in three days on our way to see the gorillas. We’re here because something big enough to make use leave home, to leave everyone we know and love behind, has driven us here. No looking back.

I’m here because I came once to visit and fell in love with writing here. I found that I had something to write about. At home I struggled with silly topics and fruitless novels, but here I’m driven and focused, and, mpola mpola, my writing is going somewhere. My life is going somewhere.

I have no delusions about changing Africa with my writing. But sometimes I change some things. Last week I wrote about a big company not paying its workers medical bills, and hopefully one of the workers with whom I spoke, who was recently in an accident, will have his bills paid thanks to my article. Its not changing Africa, but it’s changing something, for someone.

And I can’t look at the dirty woman on the street every day, but I can do something – with myself, and sometimes, when things work out, for someone else too.