My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"




A quote has never summarized so accurately my current state of mind.

Many have asked me to write and explain what I am experiencing here, what is this place like? It's people, it's food, the climate, my work, the smells, the sounds, what IS Africa to me? I can tell you this much, it has taken until now for everything to stop being so sensually overwhelming that I can even step back and reflect upon it all. I haven't had even one spare minute to ponder and then convey to you, the reader, what I have been experiencing.

I was hit with my first sadness yesterday. The first time walking down Villa Road in a small sub-town of Masaka called Nyendo (a gross overstatement but Nyendo is Manhattan's Brooklyn, and not the current trendy hipster Brooklyn, the Brooklyn of yore, the seedy underbelly yet lively lifeblood of the citie's true people. The place where all the common workers go home, the place that doesn't even wake up until dark). Where all the small shops selling everything from clothing and shoes, to bread and sweets didn't overwhelm me with wonder at how these people live day to day. How the scores of children following me down my mile or so walk waka (home) screaming “Bye Mzungu! (white person)” didn't bring a smile to my face due to their unbridled optimism and total cheerfulness as they ran the streets sometimes barefoot in fraying school uniforms. Instead I saw for the first time what they were really saying and heard the second request, they have been taught from a young age to call out such because Mzungu doesn't just mean white person, it means money, for the second question bubbling right behind their impossibly white smiles is “You give me money.” Not a request, a demand.

This country and it's culture, thats what it does in a lot of ways, it demands. Even the vernacular used in every day questions is always in the form of a demand: “We move now,” “You eat,” “You want sleep.” The oddity of it all is that the people are incredibly non-confrontational. Want to make a Ugandan uncomfortable? Ask him what he thinks, ask him a direct question, ask him to tell you how he sees things as they really are: “Life is good!” “Fine fine, and you?” “Of course I support Museveni, he is our ruler.” They say this as their grandfather is laying sick at home dying, as a neighbor and good friend was shot last month by police for no discernible reason for driving his taxi with a few extra people squeezed inside for an extra 50 cents worth of fare, as the scars from riots still show on building walls and more importantly in the minds of the people.

This is what I have been waiting to uncover, waiting for the Siren song to end and my rose tinted mental image to crash on the shores of reality, to truly understand the term TIA (this is Africa). Africa is beautiful, heartrendingly beautiful. It's landscape is stunning, lush and green with two growing seasons a year. It's culture rich and deep, music pulses at all time of the day keeping cadence with your heartbeat, singers belting out in English and Luganda tales of everyday life mixed with hopes for the future. Usually you'll also hear tossed in American hip hop which personifies the wish of many of the young (but thats not all, wait till you're in a taxi and Celine Dion or Willie Nelson comes on the radio and everyone sings along, I plan to write a whole post on music culture). The ultimate beauty of Uganda is it's people. Beautiful, ugly, proud, shy, intelligent, humble, ignorant, hardworking, entrepreneurial, optimistic, sad, full of hope and life people. I am falling for Uganda, but as with any love throes, myriad emotions attack me and sooth me at all times. So in essence, Thomas Merton couldn't have described my current reality more accurately.

God Knows...