Life in Uganda

Red dust clinging to my shoes, and already so many images imprinted in my mind. It’s hard to know where to begin. Africa. It sounds so exotic, so mysterious, when you say it you can just see the ideas popping into people’s head. Not even a country, but the whole continent is boiled down into “Africa.” But here I am, and even this small town could fill a continent with words. America seems like a distant memory, or like life there is happening in the future.

“There is a poverty of soul in the suburban world that is almost too much to bear much of the time.” Yes. The truth of that statement was weighing on my shoulders before I arrived. Here being surrounded by people who have grown up in various countries in Africa, I sometimes feel a sudden stab of guilt at how easy my life has been. They call us (the white people)- “Muzungo”. The children shout it out gleefully, hoping for your attention, the shopkeepers greedily, hoping for your affluence. But it makes you aware, constantly, that you are different… that this continent has suffered a million tragic histories and joys and that your understanding at its deepest-- is shallow.

The generosity of the poor humbles me, makes me ache to find ways to express my heart. My roommate from Uganda woke up before me this morning and washed (-- scrubbed the red dirt from my white socks) because I’d left them soaking. They are so willing to serve, to trust God for provision as they share their food and money, to have the faith I often find difficult. Some moments I feel like I am just coming out of a deep sleep, shaking off the strangeness of individualism, of competition, of my own confinements & western socialization. I’ve spent too much time looking for friends of a certain demographic, being here with people who are not like me reveals so much in my heart… my gravitation towards those easiest to understand instead of struggling for love and communication. A few of the people here who are from "the West" have this mindset that we have something to teach, a subtle superiority… our glorious modernization… I want to shake that out of my system.

Each week I have two cooking duties—already the campfire like scent of the smoky kitchen with its ashy floor, piles of firewood (ie. trees), and half-wall windows is comforting. All the modernness of America proved no help in this kitchen. So, I am relegated to chopping watermelon and making salad after rolling out mostly square chapatti. But the Africans... singing and dancing, even in cooking they have rhythm and grace. I think when there's been as much hardship and suffering in a continent as there has been here, you learn to sing. You learn to sing as you work, sing as you celebrate, sing as you mourn. It's something quite beautiful. And they aren't judging me at all. The only thing that holds me back from their dance is the grasping fingers of my self -composure, of order... they don't care if I look like a fool, if I clap out of rhythm or sing out of tune... they don’t care at all, its me who cares. Intolerable I. But it’s so wonderfully invaded here.

Africa is teaching me to slow down. It is creeping into my soul, as my skin glares white among dark bodies, as the sun kindly turns me darker, as foreign words float around me with meanings waiting to be captured like butterflies in a net... as I let throw off the ways I've limited God.

As I sit outside the office I peer through a grove of trees, behind which the view of the cantina is crisscrossed with clotheslines flaunting their bright garments to the subdued rust-colored earth, the unruly grass that sprouts up like bed hair, and the muted blue sky. I am content here, not because trouble is removed, not because life is easier (at all) but because I am listening to our Dad, I am not thinking "am I growing" I am just conversing and responding-- becoming more and more alive. There is no other word for this feeling I can think of than being gloriously aware of being a living, breathing being. The breeze is cool and gentle.

Songs fill my life here. The music- more specifically the worship in any African tongue, I don’t know how to describe it, it flies into you like a flock of birds- inhabiting your hands and feet and stirring them to flight. You find the curtain of your lips drawn open into a sunbeam smile, and when you glance at others it’s like joy and light itself has been captured. The song itself is alive, like the heartbeat of Africa, and in moments you can forget everything in this simple, yet stunning harmonizing of voices and hands … and I think it’s a bit like Heaven must be or at least the nearest thing to freedom.

Red dust clinging to my shoes, and already so many images imprinted in my mind. It’s hard to know where to begin. Africa. It sounds so exotic, so mysterious, when you say it you can just see the ideas popping into people’s head. Not even a country, but the whole continent is boiled down into “Africa.” But here I am, and even this small town could fill a continent with words. America seems like a distant memory, or like life there is happening in the future.

“There is a poverty of soul in the suburban world that is almost too much to bear much of the time.” Yes. The truth of that statement was weighing on my shoulders before I arrived. Here being surrounded by people who have grown up in various countries in Africa, I sometimes feel a sudden stab of guilt at how easy my life has been. They call us (the white people)- “Muzungo”. The children shout it out gleefully, hoping for your attention, the shopkeepers greedily, hoping for your affluence. But it makes you aware, constantly, that you are different… that this continent has suffered a million tragic histories and joys and that your understanding at its deepest-- is shallow.

The generosity of the poor humbles me, makes me ache to find ways to express my heart. My roommate from Uganda woke up before me this morning and washed (-- scrubbed the red dirt from my white socks) because I’d left them soaking. They are so willing to serve, to trust God for provision as they share their food and money, to have the faith I often find difficult. Some moments I feel like I am just coming out of a deep sleep, shaking off the strangeness of individualism, of competition, of my own confinements & western socialization. I’ve spent too much time looking for friends of a certain demographic, being here with people who are not like me reveals so much in my heart… my gravitation towards those easiest to understand instead of struggling for love and communication. A few of the people here who are from "the West" have this mindset that we have something to teach, a subtle superiority… our glorious modernization… I want to shake that out of my system.

Each week I have two cooking duties—already the campfire like scent of the smoky kitchen with its ashy floor, piles of firewood (ie. trees), and half-wall windows is comforting. We were preparing for a love feast to rededicate the prayer garden and all the modernness of America proved no help in this kitchen. So, I was relegated to chopping watermelon and making salad after rolling out mostly square chapatti. But the Africans... singing and dancing, even in cooking they have rhythm and grace. I think when there's been as much hardship and suffering in a continent as there has been here, you learn to sing. You learn to sing as you work, sing as you celebrate, sing as you mourn. It's something quite beautiful. And they aren't judging me at all. The only thing that holds me back from their dance is the grasping fingers of my self -composure, of order... they don't care if I look like a fool, if I clap out of rhythm or sing out of tune... they don’t care at all, its me who cares. Intolerable I. But it’s so wonderfully invaded here.

Africa is teaching me to slow down. It is creeping into my soul, as my skin glares white among dark bodies, as the sun kindly turns me darker, as foreign words float around me with meanings waiting to be captured like butterflies in a net... as I let throw off the ways I've limited God.

As I sit outside the office I peer through a grove of trees, behind which the view of the cantina is crisscrossed with clotheslines flaunting their bright garments to the subdued rust-colored earth, the unruly grass that sprouts up like bed hair, and the muted blue sky. I am content here, not because trouble is removed, not because life is easier (at all) but because I am listening to our Dad, I am not thinking "am I growing" I am just conversing and responding-- becoming more and more alive. There is no other word for this feeling I can think of than being gloriously aware of being a living, breathing being. The breeze is cool and gentle.

Songs fill my life here. The music- more specifically the worship in any African tongue, I don’t know how to describe it, it flies into you like a flock of birds- inhabiting your hands and feet and stirring them to flight. You find the curtain of your lips drawn open into a sunbeam smile, and when you glance at others it’s like joy and light itself has been captured. The song itself is alive, like the heartbeat of Africa, and in moments you can forget everything in this simple, yet stunning harmonizing of voices and hands … and I think it’s a bit like Heaven must be or at least the nearest thing to freedom.