Fantasy, I’ve learned, is often born out of desire and, with some luck and effort, can become reality. There are few forms which capture fantasy and the dream it embodies, more than the comic book. For those who can’t get enough of couture runway rundowns, this article takes apart the clothes of the caped crusaders who fashioned our dreams and captured our fantasy in comic culture.
In a week where my apartment’s lease expired, I unexpectedly discovered I’d be frequenting libraries on a daily basis again this Fall, and I was sent to Eastern Africa for three weeks, I learned that fantasy (again, with some luck) can alter your reality in a way you didn’t think was possible. Here I am - with a couple weeks’ perspective and a very weak excuse for my digital hibernation - lying under a mosquito net somewhere in southern Uganda.
In a country that’s most famous for its former dictator and used to be one of the world’s lungs (it is now boasts feeble forestry that is more facial fluff than oxygen source), I’m enjoying the Ugandan sense of humor that persists despite the personal tragedies that walk past you every few meters. I’m discovering what it feels like to be on the other side of the color norm (you know people see few whites when a passerby, despite your feeble frame, calls you Rambo), I’m wondering why the roads here are so nice while public health centers are plagued by fraud and a lack of basic drugs (if available, they distribute headache medicine for malaria), and I’m getting severely schooled on the village’s public pool table by kids who spend their days commanding a cue ball because they can’t afford to pay school fees.
The country’s average age is 15 - the lowest in the world. On my first day, I was told it wasn’t unusual to see families headed by children - especially in the rural southern district I was to visit. This primary culprit is HIV/AIDS, who’s first East African sighting was in this very village (Kyotera) and has (and continues) to severely ravage its people. Despite this, the children’s smiles are beautiful, even if their parents have passed and they live amongst chickens and goats in half-built houses. The local music is incredible - with indigenous instruments powering body-rattling pre-colonial dances which make Shakira’s hips seem pedestrian. A far cry from Technotown, I hope the people of Uganda, with a little luck, find their own cape and costume to lift them out of their rough reality soon.
