10 Things I’ve Learned (and Relearned) Through Four Months in Uganda

I'm over halfway through my time here. When I realized that I got scared... so I wrote this post to make sure that I've actually learned something. 

1. I’ve learned more about being present and communicating with people from a different culture. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s really hard and sometimes you just have to sit there and laugh even though you have not idea what people are talking about... In the words of Mindy Kaling, “I sat at the table listening and smiling and saying nothing, like an upbeat foreign exchange student who spoke very little English.” You just have to show up.

Sometimes when you try to go for a walk here people accompany you... 
these dudes were super excited. Don't worry, they weren't excited 
because I was there, they were excited because there was a football game.

2. PSsssshhh is the best sound to use to scare the birds away from the sugar bowl. I learned this before learning that keeping the birds out of the sugar is hopeless.

3. I’ve learned to appreciate the little things. Pancakes. Bug nets. Bird songs. Avocados. Unlimited guavas. JBiebs playing in the market.Tea time twice a day every day.

4. I’ve learned to rely a little less on affirmation from other people. I have only one person here who is truly my peer in all senses of the word and it isn’t her role to affirm me… that doesn’t mean I have to walk around in a cloud of self-doubt.

5. I’ve learned that there’s freedom in working solo. Sometimes you want to have a manager who is around, but sometimes it is super nice to work solo because it means the dock can be your office, or the restaurant, or that random bench that has a super good view of the sunset. Even the dreariest work is beautiful when you’re sitting outside soaking up the sun (while wearing sunscreen, of course).

6. Be like that beetle next to your desk that has been trying to turn over for three hours and don’t give up. Or be the person who helps the beetle turn over because it really needs a hand. (The real lesson: beetle analogies/puns might make people stop reading.)

7. I’ve learned how to make a mean curry… no recipe needed, just give me spices, veggies, a pot, and a single burner. I can even make it by candlelight if you’d like.

Peeling potatoes in the dark. #safetyfirst 

8. I’ve learned how to paddle a canoe in a relatively straight line. This might actually be the most useful skill I’ve learned here. I feel like now I can really be a Canadian. I mean, what kind of Canadian can’t paddle a canoe in a straight line?

9. I’ve learned that I’m not as independent as I thought I was and it’s okay. It’s okay to appreciate phone calls with your parents and Facebook messages from friends. It’s okay to accept that you need to be a part of a community, even if that community is halfway across the world and not right where you are.

10. I’ve learned more about development in the past four months than I ever could in a semester of Uni. To be specific:

•  Having limited funds is quite frustrating and a part of almost all development endeavors.
• People are human everywhere.
• People treat the poor with more respect here, but just like North America, they aren’t going to, necessarily sacrifice everything for community development.
• NGOs naturally rise and decline.
• That trend where the entire goal of an NGO is to leave the community is good… but it does have it’s faults.
• Partnership is good. (too obvious?)
• Be careful before arbitrarily making tourism a huge part of an economy because tourists are unpredictable and tourism rides heavily on politics… also unpredictable.
• Just because somebody else is doing it better doesn’t mean you should stop or give up…. Follow their lead and keep going.
• Aid workers are strongly opinionated and tend to think what they’re doing is the best… this is simply an attitude that keeps them doing what they’re doing because uncertainty freezes people and that might be even less helpful than being convinced you’re right.
• Don’t worry too much about other people’s opinions of your work/NGO/local organization because their opinions really don’t matter.
• Just because a community doesn’t seem poor doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement… communities at home need development too.
• Our plumbing, electricity, homes, roads, schools, churches- are the framework for our lives- improve those because they’re a lot easier to fix than the deeper issues… when these things improve the other, more complicated issues can then be dealt with.
• Money matters, learn how an economy works and you’ll have a strong foundation to build upon.
• Change comes from within but outside support is pretty great too.

Things I Love

Hiking and writing.

Hiking. Because when I’m on top of a mountain nothing else matters. The wind whistles through my hair and even if I’m all alone I’m in a place where it’s okay to be alone. There aren’t supposed to be other people on top of mountains. The tops of mountains are the places where not even the sturdiest of trees can survive. It's okay to be lonely up there and it's okay to not be perfect. It’s okay that I’m not who I wanted to be by now because I’m not even supposed to be there at all. There is nothing dignified about coughing your lungs up because you desperately need oxygen or sweating through your shirt. Some people say they like the climbing. I only go through that agony because I know that mountaintop high is coming. I know that there is something special in being someplace you’ve put effort into being. Maybe that is what I’m supposed to be learning from the rest of my life too. The friends you fight for are the ones you love the most. The job that requires the most effort is the most satisfying. Struggles make you stronger. Only when I’m hiking does the struggle lead so quickly to the satisfaction.

Writing. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s the only thing I know how to do when my world, the whole world, is falling apart around me. (It’s what I know how to do when I spend my day at a preschool filled with kids who could definitely use a few more vitamins, when I witness fatal car accidents, when I’ve said goodbye for the last time to somebody I love, when I’m not going back, when I realize that global warming is literally killing people, that famine is no joke, that I am selfish and think the world revolves around me). I know how to sit down, open my laptop and let out a stream of consciousness. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t but I know that in those moments of struggle, just as in moments of joy, my hands will make the thoughts flitting about into something concrete, something that can be sorted through and organized. Writing is the only way I know how to meet myself. When I’m writing I can begin to figure out who I am. I can see the common threads running throughout my thoughts. I can admit what is wrong. I can force myself to see what’s right. I can admit that the world is broken but I can also see where God is working.

I love hiking and I love writing because they make me love the world. They make me love the struggles, the successes, the failures, the belly laughs, the tears, the job applications, the job rejections, the daydreams. They make me love the mess of tangled chords that make up my life. Sometimes that mess is pretty damn hard to love so I think I just might keep on hiking and I just might keep on writing.

I wanted to post these photos but I didn't know where... so here's a little glimpse of the last mountain I climbed.

That in the background is Mt.Sabinyo, it took us 9 hours but we climbed all three peaks.

We didn't get many pics because of the rain but trust me, it was even more epic than this photo makes it look.

Does it look like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff? That's because I am. We spent about three hours climbing almost vertical ladders in the rain. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

Johnson is in the DRC, I'm in Uganda and Rachel is in Rwanda. Not often a hike takes you to a country you've never visited before.

Within 30 minutes of finishing we had declared that we wanted to do it all over again. What a beaut of a place.

Hospitality

I spent the last two weekends surrounded by beautiful people. Two of our co-workers invited us into their homes. It was beautiful. They went out of their way to prepare their tea the way we like it and treated us better than we could ever deserve to be treated. We walked through their villages, sat at their tables, and visited their churches. We laughed as their children played, took photos, and we tried to dance along.

Every culture expresses hospitality slightly differently but, at it’s core, hospitality is the same everywhere. Hospitality is an expression of love. It’s sharing in not only material wealth but in joy and in life. We create our homes and we fill them with our laughter and our tears. Then, eventually, we invite friends and sometimes even strangers to visit what we’ve created.

When we let others cross over the doorway it is a physical representation of tearing down the walls we’ve built up to protect our families and ourselves. Welcoming a guest into your home is saying that you trust somebody enough to know that they’ll respect the home you’ve created. A dinner invitation is an invitation to step more deeply into friendship.

Going to people’s homes has always meant more to me than visiting with them at some generic restaurant or neutral space. Maybe that’s a result of how I was raised but I think it’s true for most people. Whether or not we put words to it we know that to enter into somebody’s home is important. Hospitality isn’t a one-way street. It requires that the guests show up. It requires us, the guests, to give up our time and step out of our comfort zones. A families’ home reflects their values. You won’t always have the same values as the people you’re visiting. Their home might be so clean that forgetting to take off your shoes will have them frustrated or it might be so crowded that you don’t even know where to sit. Even though it might make you uncomfortable you still have to show up. You have to do your part.

Hospitality is really important and it’s something that many people my age are not so great at participating in, myself included. Inviting people in takes practice and stepping in willingly as a guest also takes practices. I hope that we will continue to practice hospitality both as hosts and as guests. I’m so thankful for the opportunity I’ve had here to be a guest. I hope that if any one of my friends here ever shows up in Canada I will open up my home to them the way they have opened up their homes to me.

Photo 1: One of the trading centers we visited with our co-worker Sam and his family.

Photo 2: Sam's beautiful family.

Photo 3/4: Evas' (our Ugandan Mom) and her hilarious family... they are super sassy and it's great.

Breaking Free

Do you ever have periods of time where you just feel like all your thoughts are muddled together and you try so hard to be happy but it just doesn’t happen?

I don’t want to be melodramatic but that happens to me sometimes. The past couple weeks have been a journey through that for me. I’ve felt sad and lonely, but I’ve also felt deep joy and peace and I’ve even laughed till… well you know what happens when you laugh really hard. When you live in a place that is foreign to you it’s easy to think that if you were at home things would be easier. That is a lie. Life isn’t better or worse at home than it is here. It’s simply different.

You can’t compare midnight skinny dips to a restaurant full of friends. You can’t compare post-supper dance parties to slowly falling for somebody. You can’t compare waking up at seven every day to the sound of birds to sipping lattes in coffee shops. You can’t compare the adrenaline of finding a snake in your house to the simplicity of a house that is always free of critters. You can’t compare the joy of learning to eat piles and piles of beans to the enjoyment of eating different foods every single day. You can’t compare the suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen in the day to the simplicity of having your day, week, and month scheduled out ahead of time.

These are honestly the things that I have tried to compare, but these are two different worlds. I am learning how to sit in one world without longing to be present in a different world. I have to learn to be content in every circumstance. I have to learn to enjoy and appreciate creation and people here just as much as I enjoy and appreciate creation and people in Canada.

Life has its ups and downs. I’m slowly learning to embrace what I’m experiencing here. Sometimes that means admitting that I am a missing out on certain things at home. The things is, if I had never left I couldn’t possibly comprehend what I’m missing out on here. That means I wouldn’t miss it but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be missing out. So here’s to four more months of learning and living and just being here. Get out of your comfort zones peeps. It's 100% worthwhile!!

I Lived

As we headed home from a weekend full of adventures the song I Lived by OneRepublic came on my phone. I’ve never really listened to that song before but in that moment the lyrics felt so true.

I swear I lived. 35 hours of bumpy, sweaty, crowded bus rides but I swear I lived.

Standing underneath a waterfall with the water pelting our backs.

Watching the red sun as it set behind a hill covered in matooke trees with a perfect breeze warming us as we stood in an abandoned quarry.

Crunching down on a handful of freshly roasted coffee beans.

With every broken bone, I swear I lived.

It doesn’t matter that my back was aching by the time we made it back home. It doesn’t matter that we spent more than we could really afford. It doesn’t matter that we used up our vacation days. It doesn’t matter that we might all have parasites from the water (what is medicine for anyways?).

At least we lived.