6/6/09 – MBARARA, UGANDA

I am feeling very chewed – but not spit out. Like a piece of Andrea’s day old chewing gum. I have lost both my flavor and my elasticity but yet continue to be the object of continual crushing. Being spit-out sounds like such sweet release! Maybe then I could make sense of all things trying to take residence in my thoughts and mind and heart. I should probably spend more time talking about the things I’m learning and seeing and experiencing specific to today and Words of Hope but “I” keep getting in the way. And, admittedly, I am really struggling today. Somehow the frustration of yesterday has managed to build...and it’s not even the same frustration...but I feel like I am going to burst. The warning light is flashing and beeping and something sounds wonderful about letting it all fly out and turn into something. Actually, this sounds like a great time to cry. I feel like my experiences on this trip have cracked me, but not broken me. It hasn’t been enough to leave me in need of being put back together. And it hasn’t been enough to make me cry. I am a terrible crier but my prayer was that God would bring me to the point of tears, to allow that for me, while I was here. With just a few short days left, I have to be allowed that escape. In the meantime, I just feel so discontented. The questions without answers are gurgling barely below the surface and I fear they will never rear their ugly heads in order to show what is causing me such distress. I can see pieces, shadows, but not enough to even guess the picture.

I am definitely at the “so what?” stage of the journey. I t was an easy question to ask with weeks left to the trip and days of experiences to encounter but just days to come up with a guess, I feel panicked. For all I’ve learned and all I’ve seen and all I’ve done and all the little ways I’ve seen myself grow, I’m still trying to come up with why it matters. I was absolutely insistent for reasons I couldn’t understand that I HAD to be in Uganda. I fought so hard to be here and now I’m wondering why it was so important. I wouldn’t trade in my trip for the world, but I am stuck. I haven’t don’t anything that is going to make any sort of lasting impression on Uganda (not that it was the intention) and I’m having a hard time deciding what has been profound and meaningful enough to really leave an impression on me. To REALLY change the life I live. I’ve been in Africa three weeks...so what? My family and friends will be excited to see my excitement but they won’t actually care. I can’t make them care. What if I myself have given up on caring? I know I haven’t but I’ve reached that level where I just can’t take any more in. I don’t know how to care anymore, it no longer comes natural. If I can’t naturally care about Uganda, right now, as I watch women infected with AIDS spend four days to make a basket that will sell for $2. As I watch dirty children run around seemingly without a care chasing bubbles in wild circles. If I can’t care about that...why should anyone else?

I’ve been trying to make a plan, give myself something to endeavor towards because of Africa. The list is short. I draw a continual blank. I want to be able to walk up to people and say “I spent some time in Africa and this is how it changed me...” I have decided, however, I am coming back. Before I’m 30...so in the next 8 years. Perfect. But I don’t know why. I don’t have a plan or a mission or even a good reason. I just know I’m coming back. Great, Anika, sounds like a life changer. I don’t know that I came wanting so many answers but I wasn’t prepared to leave having so many questions. Longing for something to easy my discontent...a peace that passes understand and an ability to surrender all I do not know and cannot understand.