Lisa Manzi recently relocated to Pennsylvania. At the time of this writing, she has two books on her nightstand and five magazines on the floor next to her bed. Location of her current journal: freezer. Her writing has been published in Amoskeag, Compass Rose, Diner, The Jabberwock Review, Phobe, The Sun, and Yalobusha Review. Her chapbook Blue Throated Poems was published by Scintillating Publications.

I am supposed to be learning to fly fish during the summer of 2005. President Bush is saying, “The terrorists can kill the innocent, but they cannot stop the advance of freedom. The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September the 11th.” The line goes up, it misses a low hanging branch and lands far from the deep pool where the trout gather.

I’d rather not catch any fish. As I cast, I worry that I might. Without looking back, I can see the slow-moving ribbon unfurling around me, an elegance in its course which makes its own logic. I could have thrown a new river into the air; it lands in the kill where I sort my private lessons.

I remember the day, right after September 11th, long before the Iraq War, when I said maybe I’d vote for Bush next time; we both wanted bin Laden “dead or alive.” I remember kicking a man out of my house for saying September 11th didn’t bother him much since “they only killed New Yorkers.” Our death count was tallied and revised to 2,973. Later, the war in Afghanistan is christened, “Operation Infinite Justice.” War as justice sounded acceptable even if we learned only Allah delivers infinite justice. Since that day, the current of my mind has turned.
***
I’m not fishing in the summer of 2006. Instead, I raise funds. In August, we are ready and we buy ten plane tickets. I meet Michael at JFK when we drive down to pick them up; he is one of nine teenagers from a musical troupe of former street children from Uganda. The director, Milton, comes with them to visit rural upstate New York for one month. While they are here, my job is to be with them for their events. Their stay spans the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the five-year anniversary of September 11th.

Before meeting Michael, I think of him in journalism lingo: He lived in a “displaced persons’ camp” because of the “armed conflict” in northern Uganda. But those terms lose meaning when the American woman who taught music in Uganda whispers to me, “Michael can’t go back to his village. He and his brothers and sisters were forced to watch both of their parents burned alive. He’s the oldest boy. Which means unless he can care for the rest of his family, he can’t go back to his village.”
***
Before the visit, I look at maps of Uganda and see that they have a Lake George also. The third day the group is here, they’ve been invited to our Lake George for an American bluegrass concert. Most of the group is walking the shoreline before the show; we thought they were going to be able to meet the band before the concert, but that turns out to have been wrong.

When we planned their arrival, the American woman said that Africans don’t swim. One of the first things Michael asks about is swimming. He wants to go. It has been raining so I tell him how cold the water will be. He smiles and says, “If you keep your shoulders below the water, you will not be cold. You will be cold when you get out only. For me, I want to go swimming.”

Five of the ten will swim in this lake before they go home. The September water is too frigid for me and this is the first year I can remember that I don’t either swim or pretend to fish. Later, Michael will be the first one in the water; he walks the shelf of a rock that acts like an arm embracing a small arc of lake in front of the deck where I sit. He does back flips off the rock’s index finger. When he lays down on the rock, I can barely see his hands clasping the back of his head.
***
Before the bluegrass concert, sixteen-year-old Joseph sits next to me on the rock seat of the outdoor amphitheater.

He tells me, “The queen of England is coming to Uganda. I’m worried because right now, they are rounding up street children.”

He pauses. I wait, knowing that like most of the others, he once lived on the streets of Kampala.

Joseph continues, “Where they take the children, I was taken there when I was young. But, I escaped after one year. It was so bad. I escaped.”

I ask, “How old were you when you escaped?”

Joseph isn’t sure of his age. Three of the kids have birthdays on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day because they choose a date at the time they need to have a birthday on some official document, like a visa application.

Joseph answers, “When I was five, my parents took me to a man in another village. He was supposed to take care of me, but the man was abusing me. I escaped him.”

In the month ahead, I notice that Joseph has a way of pausing and making a sound in his throat while he’s thinking, which he does now.

At first it seems he has finished his conversation, but he has more to say, “Maybe after one year.” He continues, “I was living on the streets while I was six. Then I was taken to one of the orphanages they are sending children to now.”

I ask, “How long before you escaped the orphanage?”

“When I was seven.”

Each event seems to mark a year though I suspect Joseph had no real way of tracking time. He might have been swept off the streets when President Bill Clinton was coming to Uganda, but I don’t interrupt to find out. I listen while Joseph tells me he was homeless until the age of 14 when he asks a missionary for money. She says she has no money, but he could have something if he returns the next day. When he does, she gives him food. She will take him in. Later she sends him to Milton. She can’t control him.

I ask, “Can you go back to your village to try to find your parents?”

Joseph looks around and leans closer, “I was scared that after I was running away, I could be sent back to the man or to the orphanage if I was caught. I started giving everyone a different name instead of my name. I told people I was from someplace else each time they asked.”

I ask, “What about brothers or sisters? Do you have any?”

“I don’t remember.”

I ask him if he ever thought he would travel to America. He tells me, “No. I couldn’t imagine anything in the future;” making his noise, “I only thought of each day I was having. I just had to ….” his voice trails off as the others return from the shore and the bluegrass band walks onto the stage.

The Ugandans will be singing, drumming and dancing on the same stage a few weeks from this night. They look proud when the audience learns they are here and that they’ll be featured soon.

Whenever the American band finishes a song, Michael raises his arms up over his head and shouts, “Yes. Good!”
***
In Uganda the audience would dance. They don’t have to be invited, they just dance. When the group plays music in New York, the audiences do dance whenever the director invites them. Mostly this seems like a miracle to me. At one church, I cry while I watch a young mother hold the arm of her toddler who tries to jump around in front of the stage. She pulls him into her lap but he keeps trying to dance. When Milton invites that audience up, a stranger takes the child’s hand. The mother lets go and the boy finally dances.
***
Milton tells one audience that the source of the Nile is in Uganda. He points out that the man people say discovered the source was not the one. Milton’s people must have shown it to their visitor, so someone else had already discovered it before that discovery happened.

The day Milton swims in our Lake George, he tells me, “We have a saying: Even after the rain stops, it is still raining inside a poor man’s house.” Which reminds me of when I overhear him telling Joseph, “I am a rich man. You can be rich and have nothing.”
***
News from Africa breaks the surface sometimes, the group says peace deals are promised but peace never comes. Here the news is always focused on our own war. The Washington Post reports:
Asked point-blank whether the United States is winning in Iraq, [General] Abizaid replied: “Given unlimited time and unlimited support, we’re winning the war.” (9/20/06)

Sometimes I dream I am a reporter at the press conferences asking follow ups:
What is unlimited support – a limitless supply of money, weapons and soldiers?

Even if we somehow kill all of those who planned September 11th, haven’t we also killed countless more innocents there than they killed here?

How many more children, mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents will we kill and displace?
***
As my pictures of the group are developed, I notice Joseph looks either giddy or lost in them. At times, I try to decide if he seems alone or brooding.

When Joseph is in an alone mood one day, an American high school girl tries to talk to him. But he is quiet. She comes to me and asks, “What’s bothering Joseph today?” She tells me they talked for a long time and had a good conversation before. She wonders if he’s mad at her.

“He’s not mad at you. He’s far from home and tired,” I say. Walking away, I imagine how her face might appear if she could not remember her name, family, or where to look for them. I remind myself that at least all of the kids are no longer on the streets, unenrolled in school, trying to survive in unfit ways. That they at least escaped. I think of Joseph’s smile as he pulls a spoon from his mouth and tells me, “This is the best ice cream in my life.”
***
The day after our war in response to September 11th begins, Reuters publishes an interview with one of the first civilians in Afghanistan wounded by a cruise missile. He was an ice-cream vendor. Sixteen years old. He says,
“There was just a roaring sound, and then I opened my eyes and I was in a hospital. I lost my leg and two fingers. There were other people hurt. People were running all over the place.” (10/8/01)
***
On September 22, 2006, the Ugandans play in the Lake George amphitheater. They point out cracks in the cement floor that they tell me will open up when they play. After the four royal wooden drums are set up, the kids follow me to the village where we have time to eat Chinese food. They ask me if the Chinese food has too much sugar in it. I think of the morning I watched as the four Ugandan girls emptied half of the sugar in a glass coffee shop dispenser into their paper cups of steamed milk. I say, “No. Not too sweet.” But I’m wrong, the food is too sweet for them.

During that performance, when Milton invites the audience to dance, I hold my arms at my sides and kick my legs up high, trying to do an Irish step dance. I know the Ugandan girls will see me and think this is funny.

The boys stay on stage, keeping the rhythm. The music weaves and twists back in its course. It is as complex and natural as a river. It is winding and swelling toward its own mouth. In the beats, I hear some words I’ve learned from their songs that no one is singing right now.

Milton tries to introduce all of the people on stage at each show. Tonight, he says of the young diva, “This girl’s singing can take the Nile and make its waters flow in the opposite direction.”
***
I won’t find out until later that this is the day our troop deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq hit 2,974. We exceed our 9/11 death toll eleven days after its five-year anniversary.

When I read the news, I think how our nation tallies and revises our lives lost while it hasn’t kept count of the foreign civilian deaths.

If the Ugandans hadn’t come, yes, I’d be in the river instead of dancing. I’d be fishing for proof that we don’t think the only deaths that count are the American ones. I’d be sorting through conflicting reports of numbers between 100,000 and 600,000 trying to decide which to believe. Instead of realizing both are unjust.

If the Ugandans hadn’t come, would I have seen that I too have kidnapped people from their homes and land, and stolen parents away from children, children from parents?
***
Michael and I are in my car coming home after the group played for a school. I am going over the comments I can recall from the American kids as they stream into the auditorium.

One says, “Wow, people from Brazil.” Another, “Cool, Indians!” One boy points and tells his classmates, “Those are my ancestors, they’re from Jamaica.”

During one question and answer session one student asks, “How can I join your band?” A very young child raises his hand and says, “I have a new puppy at home!”

A music teacher comes up between classes and wants to know, “Do they make these instruments themselves in the wild?”

Michael wants me to pass the van with the others in it so that we are in front. As I pull out ahead of the van, he asks me, “What is your tribe?”

I remember being asked about my tribe once before. Over Thanksgiving break, in college, my grandfather’s sister sees the new gold stud I’ve pierced in my nose. She puts her hand under my chin, tilting my face toward her before pushing it back, asking, “What tribe are you from?”

I wish I could say again, “We’re both from the same tribe.” But this time I have no answer.