The One with the Neutral Car and the Poem

Crazy Traffic in Kampala

I mark the way I keep track of time by the number of days, weeks, and now month(s) that I have been home from Uganda. I am trying to learn what it means to live at home, to live faithfully, to not forget, but to  truly embrace and walk out my life. Sometimes I'm confused, sometimes I'm silenced, sometimes I'm frustrated and moody, other times I am super emotional and tears role down my sun kissed cheeks. They never said living in the tension would be easy, they told me that practicing "non-conformity" would be hard, and they are right, but I am finally getting to a point where I am more excited to try this stuff out instead of not accepting the reality that I am in America instead of Uganda. This has been a slow, painful, frustrating, and just different roller coaster ride. It has been by no means awful, just different, something I did not expect and had never experienced. I explained earlier that at some points I felt like I showed up to a prom dressed in rip jeans and a t-shirt and didn't know what was the right decision to make--to run away and change or to just have fun at the dance in what I was wearing. Now, though I still feel like that sometimes, I feel like I am in neutral. I am coasting along, but when you are in neutral you are not cruising, but at least you are moving. Sometimes I get a little push maybe by a great conversation, a good run, a worship service at Garden City, an email or what not and that gets my life going a little faster, but when you are driving in neutral it eventually slows down. Other times, I feel like I am very slowly chugging up a hill, but again I am still moving. I need to find some jumper cables and get my car moving, but for the first time I am content with the movement I am making. Every day when I go running I just remember what a blessing it is to have able legs to run, a safe place to be out in running shorts and sneakers, an ipod to listen to, and a God that listens to my prayers, and a family to return to after the jog. So maybe neutral is a good place to be. It is slow, but it allows you to enjoy the scenery around you, to truly appreciate the little "pushes" that keep you going, and a chance to just coast at your own pace.

Social Work Practicum- Our walk home :)

On another note, a team from Gordon College is currently in Uganda. They visited UCU and got to meet my entire family and visit my home. They sat where I sat every night, they ate Chapati and drank Fanta, and they got to experience .000009 of what was normal life for me for 4.5 months. It was a bittersweet feeling knowing they got to drink Fanta with my Mama, hear stories from my sister, and maybe even play games with Phio Baby. I was excited for the team because after you meet my family, even if just for 30 minutes, you cannot leave the same, but I also was incredible jealous and I just pray that the GC team knows how special that is to have sat in the tiny house with great people and to realize that the Chapati and Fanta bought for them is the epitome of African hospitality. That is money spent on strangers that I know my family sacrificed for, but because they were my friends, and came to their home, they were welcomed with loving and open arms.

I just read a message from my sister Irene. She poured out her beautiful Ugandan heart to me. We are sisters and you can tell that from her message---boy issues, school, stress etc. I also talked to her on the phone the other day, and YES we even got in a little fight though we are very far apart. Yet, by the end of our 30 minute conversation we hung up knowing how lucky we were to have been and to be sisters, to have this support system, and to have learned what it meant to find family in unexpected ways.

This is a poem that she had wrote for one of her communication classes. I know that you nor I can fully grasp how special this is to me and to her, but if anyone has ever doubted that I could fall in love with some "random" family in Uganda, well I hope this shows you how they are part of my life and truly are a family that I am so blessed to have been a part of, to have learned from, to have loved, to have grown, and to have been given a Luganda name, Kysache meaning "His Grace".

Irene & I

Mzungu Sister

A sister is someone who loves you from the heart,

No matter your skin color or your differences, you’ll never be drawn apart.

She is a joy that cannot be taken away,

Once she enters your life, she is there to stay.

On Sundays she convinced us to go on walks

And by the old tree we had many heart talks.

She never judged, she only cared,

And I thank God that we were perfectly paired.

My Mzungu sister is a little crazy but a lot of fun,

Though I will never get why she loved the sun.

She was super cool with her nose piercing

And always sneaking out, wanting to go dancing.

Though she came with a foreign name

We were all touched and never will be the same.

We will remember the laughs and all the smiles

Even though we are separated by thousands of miles.