Oh, and one more thing...

My dear British friend Laura offered this poem to me on my last day in Uganda. A friend had shared it with her, and now I want to share it with you with the hope that you can find solace in it as I have.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

Back in the US of A.

So I've tried multiple times upon returning to the States to write a conclusion post for my Uganda trip (how trite it seems to even call it a trip, but oh well), to bring some closure to myself and to you guys who were Born To Be Alive, to tie things up in a nice little bow and say goodbye. But as you can see by a lack-of-post I have failed miserably.

First I tried writing something reflective. That lasted all of five minutes before I realized that, yet again, I couldn't even coherently reflect in my own head, let alone in writing.

Then I tried writing a "what I will miss about Uganda" post like Brynna wrote about the Czech Republic. But that too proved wayyyy too complicated to sort out.

Then I tried recounting my first 48 hours worth of American meals. This seemed promising because the euphoria I felt about eating was the one emotion I could put my finger on and identify. But then writing this kitschy food porn also felt weird and frankly kind of detestable when it struck me that the variety and quality of foods I indulged in during those first days back was greater than what most Ugandans will taste in their entire lives.

Then I gave up on writing anything altogether.

Now it's been almost a month back. It's my night off from camp (where I'm a counselor this summer) and I'm in Denver with a belly smiling from my first drive through Taco Bell since last year. My friends went to bed and so should I, but I can't fall asleep and now I'm up late with my own flashes of recollection about Uganda. So I thought what the hell, I'll post on the blog.

It's hard to say I've even had time to be back in America, because I'm not in the "real world" -- I'm at camp, where I'm arguably just as cut off from the "real world" as I was in Uganda (only I get "time off" to venture into civilization for one day and one night each week). Time off is so weird because it's like being thrown into an urban world that is so familiar and so distant all at the same time. I drive on highways and shop at grocery stores and go to movies and eat at restaurants and drink at water fountains and poop in public toilets and lounge at bookstores and talk in English and it's all so very odd in the most unexplainable way. Every day since I've been back I can never quite shake the feeling that I'm living in a dream, or that Uganda was all a dream... basically it's like I can't comprehend that life in Uganda and life in America are both happening at this very moment on the same planet, like I can't make these two realities compatible in my mind, like I can't juxtapose them alongside one another, like I can't seem to reconcile the me in Uganda with the me in America. I'm sorry that none of this makes any sense. Well, I'm not sorry. But I acknowledge that it doesn't make any sense, and that's okay, and I hope you too can realize that that's okay.

You see, I can't really tell you what I learned in Uganda other than that life is cloudy and complicated and ambiguous and murky and that sometimes you just can't make sense of it. And sometimes you shouldn't try to make sense of it because the more you try to force life into a straight line the further away you bring it from the truth. I've learned that more often than not the most honest answer to a question is "I don't know" and that that's okay. I've become so much more comfortable with the "not knowing" that is so prevalent in our lives and so much more wary of people who claim to "know the facts." I almost feel silly going back to school to learn about the world because you can only learn about the world by learning in the world, not in a lecture hall at an American university. This is no offense to the professors that get paid to teach us about the world, but let me explain:

Last week I led a "Uganda discussion" with a group of 13-16 year olds and I felt so incredibly awkward with the entire set-up. It was like I was supposed to be their window into what Uganda is like... and the truth was I could never be that window, no one could ever be that window, because to know a place you have to experience it for yourself at an intimate level. You have to walk the streets, befriend the people, learn the language, get lost, get drunk, get smacked in the face by your own poorly-formed preconceptions of "how things are in ____," and finally get filled up with the unquantifiable, inexplicable sense of understanding that comes with calling a place your "home," if only for a short while. That's what you have to do.

Unfortunately this truth doesn't resonate all that well with upper-middle-class American teenagers whose schools have probably pounded into them that every question has an answer and every answer can be obtained via asking a responsible adult like a teacher or, say, a camp counselor, so I had to piece together answers that were prefaced with "Well, I don't know, but..."

I guess I would've been best off writing a post that went something like this:

Hmm, Uganda. I don't know, but it was wonderful.

One thing every person needs to do at least once in a lifetime: birthday suit bungee!

You know how there are certain moments that you can clearly identify as life-changing? Not life-changing in that ambiguous happy-fuzzy-rosy I-feel-so-alive way but that distinct, transformative, I-will-never-be-the-same way? Well I had one of those moments this past Sunday. In a complete reversal of everything I've ever done or dreamed of doing, I got up the nerve to go bungee jumping... naked.

It all started when two friends-of-friends who were visiting from Masaka, Kathleen and Michelle, decided to go bungee jumping into the Nile. This had definitely been on my to-do list, but as of late my rapidly depleting stores of money made the $65 price tag seem decidedly out of my reach. So I spent my Saturday watching DVDs on my laptop and eating ice cream. But then Kathleen and Michelle returned, visibly glowing and bubbling over with the remnants of the experience, and said: "Yeah we got there to check in and they asked us how we would like to pay: cash, credit, or the free option?" So what is this free option? You guessed it: you go nude, you go free. Michelle had taken them up on the offer, and judging by her complete and total state of satisfaction, I thought to myself "I can do that too." Save $65 by putting on my birthday suit? That's not really comparable to being a stripper, is it?

So the next morning my roommate Kate and I saw Kathleen and Michelle off and pondered the prospect of actually going through with this. We stumbled upon the phone number for Adrift and called, making a tentative reservation for 5 pm. Now Kate and I were accountability partners in this whole gig: it takes two people for them to open up the tower and we had made the reservation together and we were going, so neither one of us could back out now. That being said, we spent the afternoon chugging down Nile Specials (one of the local beers that's brewed just a hop, skip, and a jump away) because we figured that it's all fine-and-dandy to say you're going to bungee jump naked, but -- more for the naked part than the bungee jumping part -- it probably takes a litre of Niles to actually do it.

But at around 6:30 pm just as the sun was beginning to fall, we did it. Kate and I hiked up the tower, met the gorgeous Australian man and his Ugandan sidekick with whom we were entrusting our very lives, and after watching a few other brave souls take the plunge (clothed), we stepped right up, took a deep breath, and stripped. This is where the Big Life Change began.

The change was almost instantaneous: it was like for as long as I could remember I had this tumor of fear lodged in my stomach that would flare up and cripple me every time I thought about doing something "risky," like quitting my crappy job or standing up to my parents or calling a guy back, and the moment I stripped down in front of that sexy Australian bungee guy the tumor unlodged itself from my gut. Then, when I hopped over to the edge of the tower (they tie you in at your ankles... haha no harness or anything just your feet!), stood tall and proud in front of a crowd of squealing Ugandans and hollering muzungus, and 3...2...1... lept into the open sky with the Nile river waiting 44 metres below to break my fall, that knot of fear that had bound me all my life dissipated into nothing more than an unwelcome memory. As the air whooshed in my ears and the world enveloped my eyes, I was free. And when I reached the water and dunked into the Nile for just long enough to realize that I'd made it, I was flooded with ectasy.

The waves of joy and power and energy and liberation surged through my body as I bounced up and down above the water like a floppy fish. There was no was my smile could contain my joy nor could my body contain my energy -- I was seeping out the edges of my skin and into this beautiful world. The landscape spun around me as I tumbled through it freely, absorbing a stunning kaleidoscope of silver water, green mountains, and barely-broken sunset. Mind you I'm upside down this whole time, so the sights were so alien and disorienting and beautiful -- especially the sweeping upside-down sunset!

Once the bounces gradually became less and less high, out rowed the two guys who would raft me back to land. As they reached out to me with a paddle and cradled my naked body into the raft, little did they know that they were the first individuals on this earth to touch the new, fearless me. It was so adorable when they asked if it was "very much fun," to which I gave a resounding yes. Then one of them told me assuredly, as if to squash whatever anxiety a white woman might be experiencing when rowing naked in a raft with two strange Ugandan men, "We are all born naked easily."

We are all born naked easily. So what happens from that point forward, when trust and freedom become replaced by apprehension and shame? We spend an indefinite number of years losing sight of our innate perfection, learning to look-both-ways and be-a-good-girl/boy, walling ourselves off from our true nature and the true nature of our life on this planet: love. We are all born naked easily. And when I -- surprisingly easily -- reclaimed my nakedness, it was like something new was born inside of me. Something that, I hope, will guide me to a life of more joy and adventure and discovery and growth. The truth of the shift materialized when I stepped back on solid ground, my heart pumping hot blood and adrenalin: I knew that never again could fear limit what I might dare to attempt. That's a line from the Lady of the Bracelet definition that I'd always struggled to imagine for myself, but that very line is what spoke to me as I floated back towards the tower to retrieve my clothes.

Coming down from the tower, Kate and I gasped and giggled and stumbled around with big gestures and big remarks -- "Can you believe we just did that?!?!" "Ohmygod that was the greatest thing ever!" -- all because, in that moment, we were truly soaring on top of the world. When we reached the bar to order a pair of Nile Specials, never had the brand slogan seemed so fitting:

You've earned it.

One month to go...

So I woke up this morning after a way-too-short night of sleep (Cinco De Mayo and Man U v. Arsenal, y'all), sludged my way over to the office on my bike, and found myself bombarded with a calendar that prompted the thought "Today is May 6."

Today is May 6. My flight home is booked for June 6. One month left of Africa and then it's back to the States.

I've been getting the sinking feeling lately that my mental/physical/psychological/emotional transition back to American life is going to be way more difficult than I bargained for. [The food transition, however, will not!] As challenging as it is to live in Uganda, I'm starting to suspect that it may be more challenging to leave Uganda. It's strange, but I can't imagine leaving here and being plopped back into my "normal" life.

Soooo... Today is May 6. I have one month. Here's to making it all it can be :)

Part 1: Top 11, 12, and 13 Signs That You've Assimilated to Uganda; Part 2: Why I Can't Write a "Real" Blog Post

11. Your ATM card gets declined at Barclays. Yep, I got declined by a bank in Uganda... it doesn't get any more humiliating than that. Haha OOPS.
12. You see that ants have raided your box of cereal, and you don't even blink. Instead, you consider it a positive thing that you are probably consuming enough ants on a daily basis to count them as a significant source of protein. Ants as a health food? You betcha.
13. Your brain stem has finally, once-and-for-all detached from your cerebrum. This is made evident when you wake up to find that you have left a pot of water boiling on the gas stove ALL NIGHT and that both the gas and the water have run out. OOPS AGAIN. As my roommate Kate pointed out, we are very lucky that my lack of brain activity didn't cost us our lives via gas poisoning or fire!

So this weekend when I was up in Gulu in northern Uganda (more on that later! and more on all the other random trips I've taken and haven't even mentioned...), I was up late talking with Kate about the usual potpurri of topics, most of them revolving around that wild-and-crazy, impossible-to-understand knot of contradictions and complications we call "development." In the middle of the conversation, in which I was finally able to release many of the loopy, tangled bits and pieces of thoughts and feelings that have been bouncing around in my mind like Mexican jumping beans, I realized that the reason why I haven't been able to write a real blog post, one that delves below the surface and addresses some of those tricky, sticky questions about international affairs and development, is because I can't. Seriously.

It's one thing to have a totally unstructured and laughter-filled conversation with someone who has been living through the same experience as you and facing the same toxic mix of confusion and bewilderment, but a whooooooole other challenge to write down and express what is brewing inside you to an ambiguous audience of people who aren't here living and breathing it with you. After four months of getting really comfortable with living and working in Uganda -- and having a wonderful time doing it! -- it is still way easier for me to tell fragmented little stories or list out some of the superficial, humorous bits about life than to put into words what Uganda has really taught me. Hell, most of the time I don't even KNOW what Uganda has really taught me!

This gives me such a huge respect for authors and journalists whose job it is to travel to a foreign place, absorb all they can about a given topic there, and then barf it back up in the form of a book or blog post or article or news story. There are obviously people who are brilliant at taking something as full-out INSANE as development (or any one of the smaller sub-issues therewithin) and processing it into a form that the average American reader can understand and appreciate. Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed by now, I am not one of them. So here's hoping that with time I'll be able to sharpen up my conclusions about what works in development and what doesn't (in case you were wondering, as of yet I've got a much firmer grasp on what doesn't) and be able to share it with you via the written word. I'm nowhere close to being at that point, but when I get there, you'll be the first to know :)

Top 10 Signs That You've [Finally!] Assimilated to Uganda

So I could update you on what on earth I've been up to since I last posted over a month ago, but I have zero idea where to begin! Sorry if you were hoping for something substantive, but my brain is waaaay too scrambled. But one running thread that has characterized the past few weeks is the steadiness and comfort that goes along with feeling more and more "at home" here in Uganda (not that this is my home... no one freak out that I'm staying here for good!). So, in case you were planning on dropping everything and spending an extended period of time in good ol' Uganda, here are the top ten signals that you've been here long enough to make the "tourist" status on your visa seem so misrepresentative of your real life...

1. Your English skills have noticably declined. Well, I take that back. Your American English skills have noticably declined, but your Ugandan English skills have sharpened remarkably. This becomes apparent when you catch yourself saying "You first come," "Sorry please," and "Good day please" (if only I could type that with the accent!!) but you can't remember common American words and phrases to save your life. I wish you could understand how difficult it is for me to write a coherent blog post, because my vocabulary has plummetted by at least 40%. I use a dramatically lower number and variety of words over the course of the day, which actually has made me realize how few words you need to really get by.

2. You get unduly exited by a hot shower. And by unduly excited, I mean over-the-moon, orgasmically ecstatic. This past weekend a series of random circumstances led me to spending the night in the beautiful, luxurious home of a couple working for the U.S. Foreign Service, and this meant having access to a hot, steamy shower that put me in a good mood for at least the next 48 hours. I swear I thanked the couple Sarah and Dan at least fifty times and offered to buy them a goat for their generosity or something absurd like that.

3. You have a mile-long stretch of children that, rather than yelling out "mzungu!! mzungu!! mzungu how are you? mzungu byeee!" when they see you, yell out your Ugandan name and call you over to them in Lusoga. This is my favorite thing, because it makes me feel like I'm part of a community rather than just a mere outsider. Of course no matter how long you live here you'll always be a mzungu, but to the people of Budondo I at least have a name of my own. And as small as that seems, it makes me oh-so-happy.

4. You have developed a wide array of creative excuses for NOT giving out your phone number to random Ugandan men who ask for your number before asking your name. The most ingenious and multi-purpose of these I have courtesy of my friend Kate: "Sorry, this is a work phone that belongs to my work and I can only use it for work." Direct, polite, and gets the point across!

5. You have slipped up on your evasion tactics and given your number to at least one strange man who has then called you multiple times a day for over a month even though you never once pick up. I do not understand the mindless persistence.

6. You haven't shaved your legs for four months. For real. But don't take this one as a general rule -- it's probably just me and my lack of motivation to do anything unnecessarily extravagant with regards to my appearance.

7. You have a questionable "tan" that may or may not be a combination of dirt and sunburn. My money's on may.

8. You have a network of free-avocado hook-ups that shower you with dozens of avocadoes at every chance they get. This isn't exactly a problem, but it can become one when the two dozen avocadoes you have in your kitchen decide to go rotten before you get a chance to eat them...

9. You litter. So much for responsible environmental behavior...

10. You have come to view toilet paper as a luxury item.

Kale bannange nmaze okuwandika. Njaa okuwumula kati. Sula bulungi ate weekend enungi! Bye!!

Miraculous

Just thinking about how these little guys came from a fruit

that we smashed to bits a couple weeks ago blows my mind.

I had never stopped to think about how amazing seeds are until I went out to Budondo this week and saw the thousands upon thousands of tiny little germinated seedlings speckled across our nursery beds. A little nondescript seed gets planted in the right mix of manure and soil. Then you water it with care every morning and every night and some magical process happens below the ground (I really really want to take a plant biology class now so I know precisely how this magical process works!). And then up springs a baby tree that will grow into a big tree that will supply one of the women in our group with a sustainable source of income and nutrition.

Miraculous.

The more time I spend around seeds and trees and such, the more I soak in their lessons. And the biggest lesson of all is trust. We always seem to trick ourselves into believing that we're in control, that if we only push hard enough, strive far enough, press long enough then we'll be able to force life to go our way. We subconsciously believe that if we don't push against the tide and assert ourselves against the "battles" life throws our way, our needs will not be met and our lives will not be right. I'm noticing in my own life that this all comes down to trust: if you fully, completely trust that everything will turn out all right regardless and that you have everything you need inside of you, then you no longer fear letting go. You no longer feel the need to worry or to stress or to overwork yourself towards a narrow goal. And while I have moments of openness and acceptance that remind me that yes, every little thing will be all right, I have yet to reach this complete level of trust.

Trees are the perfect teachers of trust. They don't try to be strong and beautiful and giving and serene, they just are. It reminds me of a lovely afternoon walk with Sabrina Ward Harrison (http://www.sabrinawardharrison.com/ee/) when our workshop group paused in front of a gorgeous tree and Sabrina said, "Look at this tree. It didn't work to become itself, it didn't try, it didn't think, it just did." Spend even one minute of quiet time with a tree and you'll begin to feel its peace permeate your skin and work its way into your soul. You'll realize, even for a moment, that you have nothing to worry about in this world. That if you let go and let yourself grow untethered by ego and pressure and self-imposed expectations, you will become your own miracle too.

Another reason why I should drop out of school and take a job with an organic agriculture NGO here? Just kidding (well, sort of...)

Much love and happy weekend :)