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This is Charles Okot, our gardener (and Chicky, who wants to be in every picture.) Yesterday, Charles and I were working together to build a bridge just outside the back gate to the house. We dug a drainage ditch, laid foundation stones, and placed a couple of large stones on top to bridge over the ditch. As we worked, many neighbors passed by, some stopping to help. Some teased that they didn't trust the bridge and took a flying leap rather than walk over it. We're hoping it will help to prevent the road from washing away.

After we'd finished, Charles, who's 28 years old, spoke a little bit about his last five years in Kampala. He had left his home of Kitgum in Northern Uganda after he was forced to quit school due to insecurity. Rebels were terrorizing villages, raiding schools, taking children and forcing them to become soldiers, often after having murdered their parents in front of them. He came to Kampala to escape the violence and make a living. Unfortunately he found that opportunities are scarce and life in the city is expensive. He eventually ended up working for a local businessman, whom he said treated him in such a way that he felt less than human. In his five years working there, "I lost all of my wisdom in my life", he said, explaining that he still wakes up in the morning fearing the next screamed insult. He also mentioned some of his ideas for the future. I guess he feels it's a bit brighter now that he's managed to break out of his last situation.

I was having this conversation with Charles as terrorists were flying commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center in NYC, the Pentagon in DC, and into the ground in Pennsylvania. It's strange to think that at just the moment I was appreciating how free I have been in my life and how good it is to share that with others, a group of people were expressing in the most barbaric way their loathing for the country where I developed my sense of freedom.

An American political analyst on the BBC this morning said the "root cause" of what has happened is that these terrorists and all of their supporters hate the United States. I'm not sure if hate can be overcome and a mutual understanding attained if each feels their way of life is being threatened. After such a despicable act, can you begin to build bridges of understanding? And yet unless we search for a way through this mess that doesn't rely upon Star Wars and a police state or all out war (and who, exactly, is the enemy?), our way of life has already been changed. Americans will never feel safe at home again.