It’s now been 20 days since we arrived in Uganda. I’ve seen a lot here, but something I’ve heard more than once is this question-
“What’s wrong with your arms?”
English is popular here, and people aren’t discrete. They are pretty blunt especially when white people are around. I get stares, I get questions and lots and lots of children petting my arms.
So what is wrong with my arms? There are 3 possible answers in Uganda.
1. I have freckles
2. I have a MAJOR sunburn (Which the kids LOVE to poke…)
3. I have hair on my arms. (No one here has hair on their arms.)
And honestly, I love it. It makes me giggle each time a child grabs my arm or draws their fingers across my sunburn to see the white marks it leaves behind for a few quick seconds. It’s a simple life.
You see this month we are living our lives in some huts, the floors are tiled, but it’s different from home. It’s a straw roof, where lizards and bugs watch us from above our heads at night. Thank God for mosquito nets.
The bucket showers are now on month 4, its been 4 months since I’ve taken a consistent shower, but pouring a bucket of cold water over my body is a new norm.
The place we live runs on solar power, somedays if it rains, we don’t have electricity. I get dressed every morning until the light of a headlamp and sit outside under the rising sun to get the light to do my hair.
One of the guys here taught the kids we live with to golf this month using an old bedpost and a dirt hole.
We built a road out of mud and clay.
We dug post holes with a crowbar.
We wash out clothes in buckets with our hands and hang them on a line.
We are living a simple life. A life where women carry Jerrycans of water from wells. A life where I learned I SUCK at slashing grass with a machete.
But I LOVE everything about the quiet simple life lived here. I write notes to children in the sand and mud on school days. I write and sign broken sign language to a man that digs holes beside me each day who’s never heard the sound of my voice, or anyone else’s.
I love the time to sit and think, without any distractions. And as much as it hurts I love ending each day exhausted and sweaty, excited for that cold bucket shower.
I’ve found in America we move way too fast. We go and go and go until we are burnt out, running on nothing. But here in Africa, I’m learning to lean into the quiet. To lean into the time for God to refill me.
God is teaching me to slow down, to take time to sit with people and hear their stories, to be filled up in times listening to others, and to the birds and the LOUD mosquitos.
Don’t forget to take a second to spend with God today, slow down, laugh at things like sunburn, and freckles, and never take post hole diggers for granted again, or showers. I know I won’t.
