Memories of September 12

Do you remember how you felt on September 12, 2001?  I do.  The shock and horror of September 11 had faded, and the reality that our land had been violated in a most atrocious way set in.  I was working at a government client, site and our vehicles were searched for days after.  We had entered this new reality of terrorism, and were forced to find a new normal with this invisible enemy.

That’s how Holy Saturday felt to me this year.  The shock of the Garissa attacks had faded, though the horror remains, especially as information about the perpetrators comes to light.  The wait to observe the Resurrection seemed to last forever; I desperately wanted something to celebrate.

I struggled with reconciling my beautiful, somewhat bucolic campus with this new reality.  I’m used to seeing askari (security) around, and since the break-in, I’m used to seeing or hearing them more frequently around my flat.  I’m used to seeing our askari, the police, and the army working graduation.  I’m used to the police post on campus.  I’m not used to the thought that potentially, the police post might need to expand to include some element of an anti-terrorism unit.  We have 8,000 students on this campus, and close to 1,000 staff.  I’d say that’s a high-value target. 

Mary Jane and I have both had conversations with people in which, when they ask where we stay, they invariably reply with something along the lines of “why on earth do you stay out there?”  It’s only about 17 kilometers to Kampala, but if you can do it in 40 minutes, you’ve had an epic traffic win.  If you can make the drive in less than that, and it’s either 5:00am on a Sunday, or the zombie apocalypse has happened.  But once you get here, you see the green lawns, beautiful gardens, and a plethora of birds and monkeys talking.  Apparently, we’ve just had monkey maternity season here, and we see lots of monkey families running around, with little ones of various sizes.  Mary Jane calls it monkey daycare.

I think what’s hardest for me about this is the cultural loss of innocence. African hospitality dictates that you do everything for a visitor; the world stops for visitors.  If you don’t know someone, they’re a visitor, and you treat them accordingly.  I’ve seen a man drive up a motorcycle to get a large bag of maize that probably weighed over 100 pounds.  Obviously, he couldn’t do it himself.  So he called to another man who was walking to come and help him.  The man came over, they got the bag on the back of the bike, and they parted ways.  To ignore him would have been extremely rude. 

Where are we going from here?  I don’t know.  We’ve become accustomed to having our cars searched to enter shopping centers.  We’re becoming accustomed to metal detectors to enter churches.  Will this affect how we treat strangers and visitors?  I don’t know. 

We did this after the World Cup bombings in 2010, and we found a new normal, though over time, I’m sure some complacency set in.  I wonder whether we’ll repeat the pattern.