As I write, I am sitting on a shaded wooden pavilion that juts out over the Nile. The early morning sunshine hilights the clouds, causing spotty yellow reflections across the surface of the water. The birds twitter and chirp their early morning songs and occasionally I can hear the yell of farm-workers as they communicate instructions with one another. It is beautiful here… lush greenery disguises the otherwise red clay dirt. The weather is cool enough for a sweatshirt, especially in the crispness of the early morning air. After dreading Africa for months, maybe even years, I am stunned with its beauty. I've suspected that the Lord wants me to remember my roots and fall back in love with the beauty of Africa, but I'd hardly guess I'd start to feel this way so soon. Camping on the banks of the Nile might have been just the way into my heart.
After we landed in Uganda, we took buses to our campsite in Jinga. On the way, we stopped at a grocery store (the largest one we'd see all month) to buy some food items for our week-long debrief since the nearest restaurant is over an hour's walk from where we're staying. At the store, I was overwhelmed with the amount of foods and name brands I recognized from my childhood. It all came flooding back to me like a long-forgotten dream. I filled my cart with goodies, for once unconcerned with their cost, and as I checked out, the cashier smiled at me and said:
It was more of a statement than a question. I smiled back in agreement. And then the funniest thing happened: my South African accent came back, if only for a few precious moments.
