the great news is any future offspring have unbelievable protection against neural tube defects

You know how sometimes you’ll hop into your car after work and an hour later you’ll find yourself in your tiny, pathetic apartment preparing corndogs and EasyMac^TM while ironically/appropriately learning how to live your Best Life^TM on Oprah^TM and all of a sudden you have to stop and think, huh, how in Voldemort’s name did I get home? Because somehow, completely unbeknownst to your brain, your hand stealthily turned the key and your foot quietly hit the gas pedal and your hands skillfully avoided hitting a suicidal Portland cyclist? Well, except for that one time. And that could have happened to anyone…let’s just put it behind us and move forward.

It’s a strange moment when you realize you’ve been going through all the correct motions of life without really being present, when your brain is busy reminiscing about that school play in the third grade where you played a snowflake and sang a solo apparently written with Mariah’s vocal range in mind and out of nowhere you realize you’re reading a Mennonite cookbook or teaching a computer class or popping your third multivitamin for the day. The multivitamin habit would be especially worrisome if not for teatime at my workplace, where the sole ongoing conversation/debate seems to revolve around which Ugandan bachelor I should devote my life to. I strongly suspect the matchmaking isn’t based on complementary personalities and life goals but on the size of my birthing hips, which- thanks to an array of billowy skirts- misleadingly appear to meet the requirements for the ambitious eight children per superwoman regional average. In any case, I figure if one of these days I space out for an especially prolonged period of time and find myself married off and subsequently knocked-up, all the extra doses of folic acid and iron won’t be for nil.

I don’t really have a logical explanation for why the previously occasional disconnect between my brain and body is increasing. Perhaps it’s because the interruptions that would potentially snap me back into reality in America- Oprah’s booming voice, the familiar taste of corndogs and artificial cheese, the familiar bang of a cyclist’s body against my car- have been replaced by the continuous and monotonous soundtrack of cricket chirps and my own breathing? All I know is I need to get rid of this Mennonite cookbook. I mean, seriously, snow ice-cream? Those Mennonites are a notoriously cruel bunch.

no, no, i'm usually much taller...it's just the drugs

Every week I take a small, white unlabeled pill that makes the next 24 hours a bit more interesting. This pill is known as Mefloquine, a potent anti-malaria prophylactic. I’ve never really experimented with drugs but I’m guessing this one is about as good as anything you’ll find on the street, depending, of course, on the street design; if I’ve learned anything from television besides What Not to Wear, which incidentally includes every available clothing item for sale in Uganda, it’s that there’s a direct and positive correlation between the number of alleyways on a given street and the availability of crack, sex-workers, trashcan fires, stray cats, nearby hotdog stands and attractive men running around with guns. Portland’s alley-free, hotdogless NW 23^rd doesn’t have a lot to offer besides Noah’s Bagels but even those are highly addicting. I have my suspicions about the seasonal ‘angel-dust infused’ cream cheese. That Noah’s a bad seed.

If I’ve strayed from my original point, which oddly enough wasn’t a conspiracy theory against Noah or his delightful bagel spread, I unhesitatingly and enthusiastically blame the Mefloquine. In fact, the single greatest part about taking Mefloquine, better than the whole not dying from malaria ruse, is you have a perfectly acceptable or at least accepted explanation for all rash, annoying or otherwise unaccountable/inexcusable behavior. Take, for example, this especially likely scenario…Me: “Oh, sorry I’ve offended you! It’s just this crazy drug I’m on. I’m normally quite polite and courteous...honestly, your adorable baby’s adorable baby urine will be an absolute joy to hand-wash from my last remaining stain-free skirt!” Ugandan mother: “I completely forgive you! I hear that Mefloquine is one crazy drug. Here, you relax and watch the newest season of 30Rock while I scrub, iron and press your last quality garment.”

Frankly, Mefloquine is a Peace Corps volunteer’s perfect excuse for any preexisting personality quirk: crippling anxiety, impulsiveness, insolence, anger-induced incontinence, hotdog addiction…you name it. I’m thinking about making this a lifelong drug habit, if not to legitimize my personality flaws than for the shockingly vivid and outlandish dreams pertaining but not limited to: derailing trains, a surprising array of bizarre medical emergencies necessitating care that only I can provide, failing paper companies, human-sized bathroom faucets, newborns with Barack Obama’s adult face or any unlikely combination of said themes. The only real downside is the eventual and likely prospect of liver failure. Liver failure, life failure; at least I’ll have one stable thing on which to place my blame. That’s really all I’ve ever wanted in a life partner.

who needs complementary breakfast? i'll take a grande, low-fat mirror

In America it’s not only easy to know what you look like; I’d argue it’s nearly impossible not to have a clear concept of what you look like from any given angle at any given time. Think about it. You can roll out of bed each morning and look at your striking reflection in your bedroom mirror (assuming you A: have a striking reflection and B: don’t have an above-the-bed ceiling mirror…if you do own this eccentric 1980’s relic you probably A: also own a waterbed, B: are creepy and C: don’t actually need to get out of bed at all to check yourself out). After rolling out of bed you can make your way to the kitchen and catch your somewhat distorted yet wholly striking image in the toaster or a coffee spoon, enjoy your own company while you bathe thanks to your ingenious fog-proof shower mirror, steal a quick glance in your wall-sized bathroom mirror before you leave the house, watch yourself walk up to your strikingly shiny car in the strikingly shiny, mirror-like paint and flip down the visor mirror to get a good long look at your eyebrows (assuming you A: have eyebrows and B: are around 5’1”… if you’re taller you A: can probably see more than your eyebrows in a visor mirror and B: have no ride restrictions in case of an unexpected carnival).

Now try to imagine a place where, at least during rainy season, you’d be lucky to catch a glimpse of your reflection in a strikingly mosquito-laden puddle. Where each time you do see yourself in a real mirror, a.k.a. Satan’s moving picture window, you get confused and ask yourself ‘Who’s that white girl walking by and why doesn’t she do something about that hair?’

Having no clue what you look like isn’t purely a matter of vanity. It’s a genuine safety concern. I can’t count the number of times I’ve misjudged the amount of space I actually need to squeeze between two bumpers in crazy Kampala traffic jams simply because I haven’t been able to adequately study the dimensions of my hips in my eyebrow-sized, eyebrow-level bathroom mirror. Or I at least can’t count the number of times in the local language. Thankfully, in the midst of this humble Land of No Reflection there’s a magical oasis/hotel known as New City Annex where I can spend an embarrassing amount of time staring at myself in the complementary full-length mirror that accompanies each room. Of course by “embarrassing” I mean it should feel embarrassing. But the beauty of being laughed at and/or mocked every day just for existing, just for walking across the street to buy eggs or for sitting quietly on a bus is that you begin to forget what types of behavior you should legitimately be embarrassed by. And so I unabashedly stare. I’d probably attach it to the ceiling over my bed if I could, you know, merely for my future safety’s sake. Or else I’m an eccentric 1980’s relic.

damn this peace business...i should have joined pepper spray corps

They say time brings clarity but even after two weeks my only hindsight is to wish I had hind sight, as in the capability to have sight behind my, well, hind. Seriously, how intimidating could I possibly be that a grown man has to sneak up behind me? In the sand? With a machete? It’s almost flattering…

…but I’ll get to that. First allow me to rewind a few weeks to a simpler time, a time when I first had a simple yet alarming thought: it’s been much, much too long since I’ve gulped copious amounts of salt water or seen a plus sized Italian man in a Speedo. Having lived in a landlocked country for the past year, I was especially and naturally bereaving the loss of the latter phenomenon in my life. In light of this insight I planned a small trip to neighboring Kenya with another American girl I met here in Uganda. We picked Lamu, on the northern coast, as our final destination and set off early this month with visions of sunsets, Speedos and a very sweaty 26 hour bus ride.

In this part of the world Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, is not-so-lovingly referred to as “Nai-robbery” due to the high rates of, well, I’m guessing robbery? It’s a bit unclear. I think Kenyan tour companies even offer mock robberies for the tourists, you know, so they can get an honest-to-goodness feel for the history and culture of the local people. You get an “I was Nai-robbed” certificate at the end to commemorate the occasion because by that time your Nikon and possibly your eyeballs are for sale half price on the black market.

Alright, it may not be entirely true that tourists sign up to be robbed in Kenya. Not that I think they wouldn’t. My point is I’d be hard-pressed to travel somewhere referred to more often than not as the place you go to get screwed over... alas, Lamu has no such nickname. If it did I’m thinking it would be something catchy like “A La-machete may be used by a La-Muslim man in order to steal all your earthly possessions” or “La-w enforcement mu-stn’t be bothered in case of emergency.” Perhaps I’m still being vague…my friend and I were robbed of all our earthly possessions by a man with a machete and law enforcement couldn’t really be bothered to help us out. That’s about as straightforward as the story gets. It would actually be a funny story if it were actually a funny story but I think the man must have stolen my ability to lightheartedly elaborate alongside my money, passport, phone, camera, ipod and sense of security. That said, I’ll admit when my friend held her empty water bottle up to the thief as if she were confused about what trumps what in the game of rock/paper/crazymanwithmachete, I did smirk somewhere very deep down inside.

When I finally did make it home to Uganda, no small feat with 200 Ugandan shillings (11 cents) and a sunburn to my name, I discovered the tragic remains of a mass suicide of 100 plus crickets on my bathroom floor. I’m guessing they were probably robbed while on vacation in Kenya and decided they had nothing to live for. Poor bastards. I’d like to think I’m coping more gracefully. Even so, I keep wondering why this wuss felt the need to sneak up on us in such an exceedingly discrete manner. He might as well have been wearing Uggs and that invisible cloak from Harry Potter. I really would have preferred a more upfront, honest transaction. A negotiation even. Over Kenyan coffee. Maybe some soft shell crab. I dream of a world where thieves are trained in the ancient art of hospitality, if not for me than for my children. That’s right; I’m just like Martin Luther King Jr.