It's Not all Rosy

Uganda is wonderful and I am loving my time here, but there are some things here that I don’t really like and have had real frustration with. I want you to know that there are some things I don’t like and wish I could change. I will share 4 of them with you.

The Mud- I love the rain. I love how it sounds and how it cools everything off, butI hat walking in the mud it creates!! It is one of my biggest pet peeves when I slide around in mud and get it stuck to the bottom of my shoe or when my foot squelches in the mud. Yuck, it makes me cringe thinking about it. There is about a 4 minute stretch of my walk that produces this type of nastynss when it rains. When I am done walking through it I have about 5 inches of mud stuck to the bottom of my heal and mud all over my feet and calfs. I hate it!

The Lines- I appreciate my kindergarten education so much more after being here because of how much it taught me about sharing and respecting one another. The lack of such a thing as a line is so infuriating. It happens often at lunch when I’m in line to get water and I get cut by 5 guys who budge right past me. I have had to learn to be ruthless when it comes to lines and I’m a totally different person when I enter the scrum; I put my game face on. I don’t really like the way I become about them sometimes, but you gotta do what you gotta do! If I want to stay hydrated or receive any food I have to protect my spot like a child protects its candy after they’ve dropped it in the dirt and the mom tries to take it away.

The Seminar- What is missions? Let’s debate this topic for the next five weeks and throw Bible verses at each other like it’s candy at a Fourth of July Parade! Then let’s discuss all the evils of the colonists and all the problems they caused instead of focusing any where near what could be done to fix them now. Oh, and for icing on a cake let’s dive into the realm of poverty and argue about how much our government should actually spend on the military as if we can waltz up to our nations pocket and divide it out. I hope that didn’t come out too bitterly.
The style of learning that I experience in about half of my classes is the seminar style. This means that we sit in a circle and talk through different issues that we’ve read a couple articles on and our teachers somewhat facilitate the debate. Not a bad idea…but I have a harder time with that style of learning because I don’t process fast enough to keep up with the conversation. The biggest reason I don’t really like it, however, is that I have a hard time with the fact that we spend so much time in the theoretical. I think learning about the theoretical and such has it’s place, but I just get super frustrated when I don’t feel like anything we discuss in class I can apply or will ever use outside of the class. I’m not saying that the discussions we have our pointless becsaue there are some very knowledgable people in our class, but when we don’t move past the theoretical that’s when I get frustrated. It bothers me too that we talk about all these things (like poverty) as if we know everything about it or what it’s like and then also bash our own culture every time. Let me clarify that this may be a bit harsh and it doesn’t happen all the time. It helps to be able to talk with Kurty about it all afterwards and filter through our frustrations and find the practical application in it all.

The Familial Structure- So I love the opportunity to stay with my host family here and I really enjoy each of them when I get to interact with them. The part that has become frustrating is my father’s lack of involvement and the heavy patriarchal lean my family has. When my dad gets home from work he greets quickly and then almost immediately retreats into his room to watch TV until supper and then immediately returns to his room after. It’s frustrating mainly because I don’t feel like he wants to get to know me or engage with me. I feel like a burden to him. I don’t do well when I don’t feel like people like me and I really don’t do well when I feel like I’m a burden to people. It makes me sad, but I’m really thankful that I get along super well with Elisha. He and I have gotten to be really good friends and I love coming home and joking around with him and playing tricks on each other. Also, Rita is fun to be around as well and Enoch always brings me joy. My home stay just feels more like a dorm setting than a family because there seems to be only the teenagers and me and Steph (my roommate).
The other thing that bothers me is how patriarchal my family is. Rita serves Henry at all times of the day. Whenever he calls from the room she has to come running. If Enoch is being too loud and he can’t hear the TV she has to come quiet him. If Henry decides to stay in his room for supper because he’s not up to joining us Rita must serve him there and then when he wants more he clangs his spoon on his bowl indicating that he would like more. Rita is sent on all errands and I’ve only ever seen Henry help cook once because Elisha had to go to the clinic for medicine. My favorite was one night Henry said he was tired and didn’t want to be bothered and went to bed, but when a male visitor showed up he was Mr. Engaged. He introduced me proudly as his daughter and then shouted out to Rita that she needed to hurry and make tea, which is definitely African hospitality, but it just contrasts so sharply with the everyday I was bothered.

Well, if there is one thing that I’ve learned in my life it is to “roll with the punches” and find that ray of sunshine in every situation. Joy abounds everywhere, but it is up to us to search and discover where it lives. What an exciting task! Lucky me that all the farther I have to search is simply between my first and last name ☺

Consider it pure joy my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4