Filming Success, Emerson's Genius

Hello.

This could easily be my last day of constant updates, as I leave in the early morning for a remote region of Rwanda, however, it seems as though internet cafes are popping up everywhere.

Today I spent ALL day at the cancer clinic filming and interviewing.....like I said, this is all very hard to take in. The nicest little boy in the world, maybe 8 years old, had Burkitts Lymphoma and his face was the size of a watermelon almost...I mean its just crazy.

But I will give a more thorough update at a later time.

For now I want to share with everyone some notes from my nightly readings of Emerson....(thanks to my good friend Josh Moore for really introducing this guy to me)

These few quotes are some that really hit home over the last week of traveling and, sometimes, just sitting on the edge of a forest knoll thinking about life in general.....

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men - that is genius."

"The only reward of virtue, is virtue: the only way to have a friend, is to be one."

"To be great is to be misunderstood"

"In the woods, we return to reason and faith."

"A friend may well be the masterpiece of nature."


Yes, so I had underlined these passages from random collections of Emersons writings (Nature, Friendship, and Self Reliance). I thought I would share them.


Also, I might add that after the very depressing few days here in Uganda, after today I did feel like the was certainly some HOPE for the future of these kids...the film will explain that in greater detail....

Also, hopefully sometime later this evening I will have the chance to change this from an email blog to an actual plog page blog, which will be much easier to access and share.

There is no doubt in my mind that I will be returning to this region to do follow-up work.

Also, just to let you all know, if you've been following international news, you might have heard that in the last week there were some attacks in Ntarama, Rwanda. Yes...this is exactly where I am headed in the next 2 days. Just to give you all some comfort, the contacts I have there, in conjunction with the nearby refugee camps, are VERY WELL INFORMED and have let us know the absolute safest way in to the country. So, i could have just left that all out anyway but I figured some of you might have already heard of those attacks. So dont worry, Ill be fine.

Also, I am very sunburnt...apparently the Malaria medicine I took makes my skin very sensitive...but the good news is that it has all turned a dark brown except for on my upper chest where I wore a wife-beater one day and forgot (stupidly) to put sunblock right under my neck in....So literally my skin there is very nearly purple. Luckily, after seeing children today with softball size lumps growing out of their eye sockets...I realized any pain I feel from this burn is really nothing.

I should have some pictures up soon I hope. so far the internet speed has been unable to support picture sharing.

(Also because I added some people to this list just now this would be the first time you would have read any of this odd-formed email type blog. I promise I will get all the old posts viewable soon.)

Sula Birungi!!! (Tribal Ugandan for Good Bye!)

-ben