Tamia Dow is aglow, smiling so deep her dimples plunge like arroyos and talking in a stream-of-consciousness flow—fast and animated, giddy as a child showing off Christmas presents, her sunny disposition providing a counterpoint to the cold drizzle blanketing the Valley this morning. A bacony tang creases the air inside the IHOP on Maryland Parkway. Amid clatter from the breakfast crowd—men leafing through newspapers, women talking, businessfolk caucusing—Dow's voice resonates as she narrates pictures of her recent vacation to Uganda: There she is at the equator next to a sign reading,"What took you so long?" There she is with her host family. Cradling a crying baby. Befriending a pygmy (he comes to her shoulders). Backdropped by Bundibugyo's lush countryside.
Other pictures are disheartening. Here she is building a brick wall at a battered-women's shelter—"an angry husband tore down the wire fence." Here's the inside of the barren refuge, where there's no furniture except bedding. This is her amid orphaned children and abused women—wives who've escaped batterers, girls who have fled the female genital mutilation that's widely viewed as a cultural passage into womanhood. I wince at a grotesque photo of a woman without lips: "They were chopped off by her husband," Dow says. Instead of a mouth, the woman has a circular mound of pink flesh exposing three longish, misshapen teeth and gums that look discolored and pulverized. I wonder how she eats.
At this, the Metro policewoman voices what would become a common refrain during breakfast: "God called me to Uganda."
Located in Central Africa and bordered by the Sudan, Kenya, Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania, Uganda is a study in dichotomy: invigorated economies in metropolitan areas, rampant squalor in the sticks; generally peaceful in the south, entropy in the war-ravaged north (Joseph Kony's murderous Lord's Resistance Army abducts and slaughters civilians with impunity). In the past 18 years, more than 1.6 million people have fled to squalid refugee camps in Southern Uganda and in places like Sudan, which, until Sunday's historic peace accord, had Africa's longest-running civil war.
Dow came here to see her money in action and to minister—the nation is 80 percent Catholic and, remember, God called her. For years, she's financially supported a shelter for battered women run by Uganda Police Force Superintendent Helley Aylek, whom she met at a conference of the International Association of Women Police. A detective, Dow's long been interested in women's issues, periodically teaching workshops on how female cops can survive gender discrimination and sexual harassment. The plight of the Ugandan women was something she wanted to see up close.
"They're treated like property, bought and paid for with a dowry," she says. "Domestic violence isn't a crime. Men can be arrested for assault, but most women don't testify. They are financially dependent on their husbands, so that limits what they can do."
Her pancakes, bacon and potatoes arrive at an untimely point: She's describing female genital mutilation. Every December, girls are dressed up nicely and taken to the bush and sliced up with a knife; healing involves men urinating on their butchered crotches, then stitching up the wounds tight. "When the woman has sex again, imagine what that does," Dow says, cringing her face and body.
So for 12 days in November, Dow explored southern and western Uganda, drinking in every experience—flattered by the young boys who bowed to her and young girls who kneeled to greet her; inspired that most of the children had biblical names; thrilled to educate pygmies on human rights; perplexed by being called mzunga, which means white person (her caramel skin is lighter than the Ugandan norm).
The abuse shelter is sequestered in a remote part of Uganda, its location kept secret to protect the inhabitants. Aylek created it as an Underground Railroad of sorts, a way to strengthen a patchwork escape system for abused women. Usually, they would stay in homes of the sympathetic. Often, somebody would spot them and tell their husbands, who'd come to the door demanding their return. Dow spent three days at the shelter, a free-standing home a stone's throw from a camp for the displaced, mostly refugees escaping Kony's carnage. It's there that she saw her money in action.
As spartan as it is, the shelter is a haven for woman whose lives are rife with indignities created by culture: HIV-infected men sleep with virgins, believing it will cure them; abused women are cowed into silence; husbands often get away with murdering their wives by burying them in back yards. Some of the children swarming Dow in the pictures are lucky to be alive. Some villages believe that killing virgin children brings prosperity. Whatever the shelter lacks in amenities—furniture, indoor latrines, stoves—it makes up for in peace of mind, Dow says. "These people now have a chance to live."
As much as there is to lament about Uganda, Dow says there's more to celebrate. She could talk for days and still not cover the highlights. I ask her to eat—her food's getting cold.
But the memories keep rushing onward. No sooner does she finish one story than another comes up. Sometimes she stops in mid-narration, mentally noting a point she wants to revisit. "I'll just bag the food," she says, rushing back to a story.
She remembers elections in one village, where constituents literally stood behind their supporters. And the feeling of ancestral connectedness, of spiritual synchronicity with the preachers, of being at home in places like Masaka ("It looks like Boulder City") and the very modern Kampala. Or visiting a rehabilitation center for abducted children awaiting return to their tribes. Some of them were taken from their homes at such an early age, they don't know what their tribe is. Juxtapose their reality with that of blacks 400 years into their stay in America. "I told them that many African-Americans can't identify our lineage," Dow says.
Dow smiles widest recalling Ester, the 15-year-old girl she asked about her career plans "because I wanted to know what careers African girls dream about." A lawyer, as it turns out. Boys are generally the ones with a chance to go to school (which costs $200, more than most families make in a month); since she was the oldest, Hellen Aylek got an education. "Look at what happens when women are given the opportunity," Dow says.
The waitress arrives to box her food.
"I took this vacation to fulfill a cause in my heart, to spread the message of God's love and to educate people," Dow says. "I encourage people to do this. You can volunteer anywhere in the world and you're able to explore as well as make a difference ... For me, this vacation paid off more than a trip to Cabo."