Where I Live

I made it home, safe and sound. I'd like to thank you again for your interest in East Africa, and for your interest in my own personal experiences.

It's 5:08 AM in the morning here in Texas, and I've already been awake for a couple of hours. My first week home has been exactly what I expected - good but bizarre. My internal clock is still set on Ugandan time, and it's been difficult to readjust to American suburban life.

I came home to a stack of papers, letters, and files that need my attention, so I don't really have the luxury of easing into anything. Maybe that's better. Maybe it's better to jump in without any hesitation.

I've started working on my presentation, so I think the next post will be more information about that. Let me leave you with these words, taken from a piece of art in Ilea's house. I saw the piece as soon as I arrived in Kampala, and it has been tearing me apart ever since:

If you have come to help me
you are wasting your time...

But if you have come
because your
liberation
is bound up with mine,

Then let us struggle
together.

Brussels

I have a four hour layover in Brussels so I thought I would type an entry out. Fast internet is confusing for me so I am visiting every site I have ever heard of. Also, this keyboqrd is setup for people from Belgium so the letters are in different places. This is zhqt it zould look like if I just typed nor,qlly qnd didnùt look qt the keys on the keyboqrd: I cqnùt figure out zhy they ,qke you shift just to get q period:

I at least made it safely to Europe. I am about to head out to JFK in NYC, where I have a five hour layover. I might type another message from there for fun.

Also, I hope you can come to my get-together. I brought goodies...

Now I am going to Publier Le Message. I hope that means Publish and not Delete Everything on the Computer.

The Fifth

It’s August 5th, and I have a plane ticket that says August 6th. That’s wild.

I’m not ready to leave Kampala yet. I miss everyone back home in Texas, but I’m really not ready to leave. I’ve met so many amazing people here, and I’ve grown up a lot. I even drink coffee now! And I have a briefcase. That sounds like the real world to me.

I apologize for not updating in the past couple of weeks. I think I’ve avoided updating because I’m in denial. I don’t want to think about leaving. I’m really enjoying the work, and I feel like we might be making some progress. I want to keep running with it.

I’m also involved in quite a few new friendships, and I’m not even vaguely interested in putting an ocean between us. I’m confident we’ll all keep in touch (we’re already planning reunions), but it’s not the same as being here. To be honest, I’m getting a lump in my throat just writing this.

There’ve been a lot of ups and downs in the past couple of months. Sometimes, I was ready to buy a house in Kampala. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. Right now, though, I feel like this was one of the best experiences of my life. I’d put it up with my time in Oxford and my last semester of college.

Let me try and summarize it like this:

The street I live on isn’t paved – it’s dirt. It rains all the time in Kampala, so a lot of times my road is a mix of rock, sludge, and mud. You have to be careful where you step, or else you’ll be up to your shins in orange mud. Unless you make sure you’re walking on rocks, you’ll get stuck.

I think that’s how simple life is. It’s messy and there’s nothing you can do about the messiness. You can only decide how to handle it. You walk with God and you’ll make it. If you don’t walk with God, you’ll sink. There is absolutely no way around it.

Even when you walk on the rocks, though, it’s still messy. You’ll still have mud caked on your shoes. You’ll still get mud on your pants. That really bothered me at first, but I learned to accept it.

I think that if you don’t have any mud on you, you’re doing something wrong. I think you’re missing something.

I’m also trying to figure out how the same rain that showers the dirt off of me creates the mud that I have to walk on. I don’t know what that means yet. Maybe I’m pushing the analogy too far. Or maybe I have a lot more thinking to do.

The night before I flew to Kampala I was sitting at a friend’s apartment in Dallas. I told you my flight plan. I guess I should bookend this trip by doing the same.

Tomorrow night, I fly from Kampala to Belgium to New York to Dallas to Austin. I’ll land around midnight on Tuesday night. I suspect I’ll be numb to depressed until I can process this trip. But I don’t think I’ll want to be by myself for a while. I’m looking forward to running around town with my friends.

There’s a girl here that I trust more than almost anyone, and she told me that it was healthy to go home feeling frustrated asking a lot of questions. I’m relieved she said that, because that’s exactly how I feel and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Here’s what I do know – I can’t put this summer behind me. I can’t bury this. I can’t go back to who I was in May. I don’t think I’d want to, either.

I think this is the last real entry that I’ll post on here. from Kampala. I hope you’ve gotten something out of these 74 days. I hope that this is a beginning for you, and not an end.

I want to say thank you to everyone reading this. To my friends and family back home – thank you for your kind words and for your photos and for your never-ending Facebook messages. I’m really looking forward to having everyone over, and I’ll post more details on that later. To my Kampala friends – jebele. You’ve done more for me than I can tell you, but I think you knew that anyway. To strangers – I have no idea what you googled to get here, but I’m glad you showed up. To Bianca in CA – email me because I want to talk. To Ugandans – you’ve got a great place. It really is the Pearl of Africa.

Final bits of random trivia:
I may or may not have worms living in my feet.
I may or may not be featured in a Ugandan television commercial.
I have one painted toenail.
I can take a complete shower in under 75 seconds.