WINTER AND SUMMER

I get the impression that tears dry up pretty quickly here in the dusty red soil. Do people cry here?

I'm struggling a bit today, feeling very homesick and close to some invisible breaking point. Didn't take long. It's not the cockroaches, the albino lizard that lives with me, dreading my nightly toilet run, the constant anti-malarial drug enduced nightmares, being called 'white person' a hundred times a day, standing out everywhere I go (thought I would've liked that), trying to be culturally sensitive when I am hungry, angry, lonely and tired, messing up the few Lugandan phrases I know, missing friends and family, children either laughing at me or crying at the sight of me, the constant power-outtages-it's the feeling of being alone in the middle of it.

So poor me huh...people are living in mud huts around me (literally), suriving hand to mouth, dying of AIDS, running around parentless, fighting malaria (with poor meds), working seven days a week for peanuts, begging in order to put together a measly $20 for school fees (I just read that in America we will start rewarding school attendance with ipods, etc...) and more.

My "apartment manager" lives in the room across from me. He cooks on a little stove outside, sleeps on a mat on his cement floor and fills water jugs (from the bore hole nearby) for the building inhabitants. His job is a good job, pays well enough that he lives hours away from his wife and seven kids to keep it. He visits his family once a month. His is not a six month engagement, there is no end in sight. He smiles all the time. I've been away for nine days and I feel sad enough to stay in bed all day and hide from this foreign place.

Then I think about the Mulago Clinic I visited. A government run hospital that treats HIV positive Ugandans. Rooms full of people slowly dying, waiting hours in a hot room for an ARV injection, trying to 'live positively.' They stared back at me and I couldn't begin to fathom what they were thinking or feeling. I asked a doctor there if he ever just sat down and cried. He laughed and told me that some days, after treating 400 patients, he feels a bit overwhelmed. I didn't ask him too many questions, his time was too hot a commodity. How do you find hope in Uganda?

Perhaps I should think of the hundreds of street kids that run around barefoot in Kampala, the grubby, begging, starving street children. Does anyone love them? Or maybe I should think of the hundreds of orphans in Naggalama alone that are considered 'lost children' and a burden.

I hesitate writing this, I have this second voice that tells me to keep it light, make it sound funny. There will be days like that but today it's bare bones truth. This is tough. I didn't realize how much I appreciate basic sanitation, vegetables, clean water, Starbucks, email access and how incredibly cushioned my life has been. I didn't realize that I depended on many outside things to keep me sane, happy and useful. I don't feel useful today, I feel trapped in my own fears and thoughts, fully aware that my attitude is the key determinant in how I perceive the world. So I want outside factors to change but I know it's me that has to open my eyes, heart and mind to the beauty, hope and richness that are here somewhere.

Reading emails from home is a powerful thing, my one friend told me I would be in her kitchen nook with her Saturday morning as she wrote me a letter, there would be tea and muffins. Another friend suggested I name the roaches, I've already named the lizard 'Willy.' Wow...truly held and supported today from thousands of miles away. Thank you.

No matter what, I don't need to fly home, get drunk or 'fix' my feelings. I get to sit in this-whatever it is because it's a part of my experience and an intimate, much longed for view of another reality. Camus once wrote 'In the midst of winter, I suddenly discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.' I am searching for my invincible summer.

I have been paying attention and I have some ideas-I believe finding a focus for myself will help. There are so many orphans in Naggalama, they need a home and some love.