BROODING

It turns out that I fit some sort of terrorist profile. I found this out at 11pm last night when I was detained by Israeli security at the airport for a couple of hours while they interrogated me regarding my visit to Israel and literally every other aspect of my life. I think I'm a bit of an excitement junkie but truly...I yearn for just a few moments/months of unadulterated down-time. I'm almost laughing at the crazy stuff life is dishing out and trying to keep it in perspective. Israel is at war, surrounded by terrorists on numerous fronts...they're fighting for their lives and it doesn't help that Hezbollah just threatened the Tel Aviv airport.

At first I was pulled aside by a young woman and quizzed on everything about my life in the States, in Uganda and my time in Israel. She asked me the same questions many times, I think to see if my answers were consistent. I think the fact that I visited Jordan (went to see Petra, incredible) while I was in Israel, had been up north during my travels and was living in Uganda didn't sit well with them. Next, her supervisor took me through the same routine...apparently I still seemed dodgy because they then brought in four men in dark suits and a guard to stand by me. The suits questionned me for awhile, then they escorted me to another room. They had me show them my pictures, they looked through my journal, they searched me (they kindly let me keep my clothes on) then they unpacked every square inch of my luggage and went through it with machines, etc... They actually metal detected my underwear-I'm not kidding. After this they explained that some of my belongings would be sent on the next plane and could be picked up at Entebbe airports lost and found-for security purposes. This is how some people have to live and the frustration is intense. After awhile I started to think I had done something wrong-I can get a sense of how interrogation works, they twist your words, interrupt you, I think try to break you down. And I wonder if this is how the Palestinians feel every time they cross from Gaza or the West Bank into Israel.

Yesterday while sitting in an internet cafe, a gunshot sounded outside...everybody jumped, some people ran into the cafe-I still don't know what made the noise and after a few minutes everybody quieted down. I guess this is why groups like Hezbollah are called terrorists, because they put terror into your heart and that becomes it's own debilitating weapon as it wears you down.

The issues are complicated over here. It's not difficult to understand both the Palestinian and Israeli point of view, each of them wanting a home, both groups feeling entitled to the area. Did you know that many of the surrounding Arab countries, while hating Israel and giving their allegiance to Palestine, do not want Palestinians in their countries. And after the Holocaust it's not hard to understand why Jewish people feel they need a nation, a Zion. I've avoided taking sides all my life, always said I didn't know enough about the issues to need to. But now I think I have an opinion and I'm grateful for the education I've received on this trip to the Middle East.

Do you remember my fixation with Starbuck's Chai tea and how much I've missed it? I had a chai in Israel...and it gave me a stomachache-I don't think my system is used to all that dairy anymore. What has happened to me? The Chai tea thing isn't a big deal (I'm sure I'll work through the initial discomfort to reestablish my old addiction), but it somehow seems representative of the changes that have occured within me. Sometimes I long for the rosy-glasses view I had of the world and life before I left. I have lead an incredibly cushioned, secure life and that is how I thought the rest of the world operated. But it doesn't and bad stuff really does happen, all the time and not because people deserve it and need to simply change their behavior to avoid it. And bad stuff can happen to me, anytime and it probably will. I think I thought that if I was good enough, did enough good things, that the bad stuff would pass me by, that I would be immune to internal struggle, pessimism, cynicism. When I left for Africa, I told people I knew it would be tough but I thought it would be tough in a funny, get that bug off me kind of way-not tough in a way where I was brought to my knees. So many expectations. And it wasn't the physical challenges that got to me, it was the mental games, the constant questioning of old ideas and the isolation. And even more humbling is realizing that the challenges I've faced haven't even been that tough in the grand scheme of things. In fact, it was probably high time I toughened up a bit.

I love The Lord of The Rings trilogy. At the end of it, Frodo decides to leave middle earth with Bilbo and the elves and Gandalf. He tries to explain that he saw too much dark, that he didn't fit in Hobbiton anymore. Sometimes I feel like that...I'm not planning on leaving middle earth-I just don't think I can go back to my life before. But I want to, I actually emailed my old roommate and asked if my room was available...I had this vague dream that I could walk back into my old life and pick up where I left off, but I can't. And so I keep going, trying to talk myself into trusting the Universe, trying to believe that It is benevolent and wanting to believe that It has a plan for me.

This is a dark blog entry. I call days like this 'dark nights of the soul.' They are lonely and cold and scary. But when I get to the other side of them...my eyes are open a bit wider, I learn a bit more about myself, my faith grows and I become even more grateful for the little things in life that I love-like sunsets, runs when the wind is blowing and the thought of my little friend Akilam running to me when I get back to my village later today. It's nice how a hug from that little boy can chase all the bogeymen away for awhile.