travel vignette

Uganda, 2014. In a van, full of strangers:

Thatched roofs cap mud huts. One cow, flayed and hooves crossed, horns of pride attached by rope, strapped to the back of a boda boda. A man sold a newspaper with a headline that read, “I was paid 100M to poison so-and-so with a hyena’s liver!”

A boy danced by the side of the road while his cows grazed in a ditch. The view from the equator—tree tops in every hue of green, and a panorama of white sky. The doctor, still a resident, said, “people come in and die of things they shouldn’t be dying of.”