Processing the Return to Uganda

 

I prayed that I would know.

So far, I know very little. I feel a lot of things, most if them seem conflicting more times than not. Sometimes I’m scared to leave my room because I don’t know what I will feel outside my door. I’m scared of loving and I’m scared of despising. I keep waiting on the moment that the change will miraculously spring inside of me, that I will look around and suddenly see everything I’ve ever wanted, right in front of me.

I keep waiting.

I will say that stepping off of the plane, getting my visa and walking through the anonymity of the airport into real Africa was exhilerating. I was so excited to see the black, warm night, weak fluroscent lights barely lighting dingy concrete and exotic palm trees. I met my driver, a very warm young man with a wide smile and immaculate manners. He took all of my bags and I was instantly reminded of all that I loved in Africa. I walked out to the van and we began driving. He rolled down the windows as we passed through the darkness. I was amazed at how street lamps never seem to give much light to a Ugandan night, whether because the voltage is weak or the sky just that dark.

I closed my eyes, the warm night passing quickly through my hair. I inhaled deeply and smelled Africa. Not the people, all smushed together in a bus, not the food or the slum or the scent of the jackfruit trees, Just Africa. It has a smell I never realized was there until I left. It is deep and earthy, a culmination of the wet ground and dewy leaves. Dank and musky and beautiful, the smell is capable of filling my head with a thousand memories, but decides in that moment to whisper one word, and one word only.

Home.

I watch the mountain before me, black and giant, tossing lights into the sky. If the mountain was not slightly darker, the far-away street lights not slightly bigger, I wouldn’t be able to discern it from the night sky itself. I watch the concrete businesses fly, bright colors painted as building-sized advertisements for the local cellular provider, Pepsi, Omo laundry soap. I observe the alleys around me, winding from the paved road in dusty paths. I see a woman walking down one of them, barely lighted by the street lamp, her distinctive Ugandan gait leading her to a place this paved road wouldn’t be able to imagine with it’s striped asphalt and clean boundary lines.

We turn off the main road, uphill onto a tightly-packed dirt path. I see semblance of that which I have forgotten as holes deep and plentiful pepper the road. As my driver dodges them, driving up the steep dirt beside the road, deviating onto the grass, I am completely reminded of what it feels like to take a charter bus, flying over these holes at relentless rates of high speed. I’m just thankful Patrick, my driver, is gentler than the nameless drivers I’ve had before.

As we pass by high grasses and trees with broad leaves, concealing homes and gates with wide, secretive hands, I smell the ever-present village scent, deep and smokey, and I can’t believe I ever forgot it. I close my eyes and inhale as deep as if I will never smell it again. I’m outside Peter and Naomi’s house in Gulu, dishes done, residents asleep, and the neighbors are burning coal in buckets as they sit outside their mud huts, laugh, and tell stories into a night so dark it never seems to end. How did I forget the scent of burning coals, of late-night cooking and smoke that lingers after eyes succumb to sleep? In that moment, I am more acutely aware of being back than anything else would make me.

My mind has been consistently back and forth over whether to let my guard down or not. If I let it down too much, I might just realize this is where I belong, but not fall in love with it like I’d hoped. If I keep my guard up, then all the things that make me nervous about being here long-term don’t sink in, because I’m not really making the commitment to be here forever.

But then, I remember God called me. He didn’t call me because it is comfortable, nor did He call me based upon my preferences. He called me because something in my heart that He gave me holds something needed in this place. As I find myself giving more and more of my heart to the people, the landscape and all of the uncertainties mean less and less.

So what do I give up? Sleeping without a mosquito net each night? Sleeping past the crack of dawn each day? Being able to blend in a crowd of nameless white people? Air conditioning? The occasional Taco Bell? The mall? The movie theatre? Any semblance of my life in the west?

When I have a heart to heart with a woman who calls me “sister”, it’s worth it. When I play with Jotham and his little sister and see them grab me to go swing them on tree branches, it’s worth it. When I walk into the overwhelming odor of a small room filled with fifty female prisoners and sing and dance to the Lord with them, it’s worth it. When I preach the love of God to them and hear them shout “Amen!” after every time I tell them that God loves them passionately, it’s worth it.

Then it’s worth it.

My preferences matter very little. All I want to do is keep putting on my dusty shoes, day after day, walk the road, and die to myself with each step.

I love all of you. Blessings from God’s city.

Lira, Uganda.