5/21/09 – JINJA, UGANDA

It is day two and it feels like we’ve been here for so long. Getting off of the plane two nights ago feels like half a life tie – making last semester feel a whole world away. And yet, for as much as there is most definitely a new world to be explored, Jinja seems strangely familiar – awkwardly both foreign and normal. Although our activities are far from normal. Do I write about the Baby Cottage, with the toddlers who stole me heart and made me want to never leave? Do I talk about our scavenger hunt and the comfortable way I approached strangers to ask questions and the way they responded? What about the rich conversations and contagious laughter with newly developing friendships? The attached realizations that I really do want to adopt someday. I am terrified of the process but spending the day with beautiful children in soggy diapers with regimented naps and play time and “mommas” to look after them...I wanted to take them all home. I would want to adopt from somewhere like Uganda. Or how about realizing in myself that I am more reserved in the familiarly unfamiliar? I am much more prone to shy away for a situation in the states that is out of my comfort zone than here, where technically everything is out of my comfort zone! I think, maybe, because everything is new I have no choice but to step up to the plate. And then, there is noticing today too the fact that it only takes a single common thread or a loosely connected bond to create an alliance. This has already been proven true in our basic conversations with the Ugandan people around us, but especially in our team. In a group of 18, with so many differences, we create similarities to keep our team strong. People we have no reason (and in some cases, no right) to talk to otherwise or back at school have become amiable conversationalist. And while I could talk more about any or all of the above, I won’t. What do you do with the realizations which fill more than a page...or even a day? How do you process that many things? Things which don’t seem so profound...but necessary. Crazy. What gets taken away from these busy days and what gets left behind? What can the mind continue to mull over and what thoughts simply take up space? Or maybe Uganda is a safe place to ponder everything...both culture and life.