I spent the first four months in a Catholic Brotherhood where I saw the realities of living in the most corrupt country in East Africa. The initial challenges of adapting to culture and learning to do a job that I'm relatively untrained and completely inexperienced in where things I tried to take in my stride. Learning to live 24/7 with another person in the same situation is one of the things that made me feel like I was growing the most. The overwhelmingly welcoming nature of Ugandans blew me away and in the 4 short months I met people I knew I'd be friends with for life.
The overwhelming poverty left me in times of personal dilemma and is something that touched me the most. It led me to make the decision to use the school holidays in which I wouldn't be teaching to volunteer at a babies home in another district. There I found women and men dedicated to raising children as if they were their own. I grew to be patient and love those kids like nothing else.
Working side by side with the Aunties taught me everyday more about the Bunyoro culture and about real friendship and kindness; things I've never been shown so strongly.
When my project fell apart in September I learned to be resilient. A term I'd almost forgotten re-became my new motto: "bouncebackability". I made decisions together with my partner that we'd have to stand by and took responsibility for making the year work.
I learned to travel Uganda. I saw the most beautiful sights, such as Merchison Falls, and sights which were equally horrific, such as Idi Amin's torture chambers. I met with other volunteers and shared project stories and jokes about the never ending list of food we missed from the UK. The people I'd trained with but realistically spent limited time with became my best friends. We were a Uganda conquering team.
On Monday the 3rd September I made an official move from Dr. Archbishop Kiwanuka school in Mpigi to the Duhaga Boys Primary School in Hoima. Given a second chance at being a new teacher I got to grips with discipline and ultimately felt so much better about my work.
Secondarily I continued working at the babies home where I grew closer and closer to the women I was working alongside. We moved in with a new family where we learned to live comfortably with another culture through compromise and positivity. We cooked and played and laughed with the people who truly became our family.
I got more involved in the church, joined a fellowship club and made real friends where I independently felt that I'd really integrated into the community.
All of this was concluded into one night of tea and goodbyes. In the most beautiful way, which I feel completely portrays the heart of Uganda, the community who had kept and loved us for the majority of the year asked us to forgive them if they'd ever unknowingly wronged us. We thanked our hosts with bread and sugar, a gesture which will never be enough for the way we felt about them. Our friends made speeches and the true impact that they'd had on my life became clear as I looked around at all the people I was leaving behind. When I left he next morning it felt like it was just for a trip to Kampala and I'd be back in no time.
After landing in Heathrow yesterday morning and a day of being reunited with family and friends all I could comment is that everything felt too normal. As if I'd never gone, everyone's the same and everything's the same. And while my fear before leaving was that everything would be too different now I'm wishing that it was because maybe it would feel more real that I'd just got back from a year away. Instead I'm worrying that any minute I'm going to forget I was ever there because everything is so normal and I'm going to go back to the way I was. And consequently I'm feel like I'm acting weird in order to avoid acting the previous normal and forgetting everything that's just happened. And overall it's just overwhelming and as ever I just want to be honest about how the whole thing is making me feel. And it's my birthday tomorrow so maybe I'm having a 19 year crisis because I think this mix could definitely trigger such a thing.
Good enough I know it'll get better because I've only been back 24 hours and I'm probably crazy tired and I think I have every reason to feel a bit overwhelmed. And feeling these things is always part of this journey and once I start the next journey things will change.
I am incredibly proud of the year I've had and even more incredibly grateful for the people met and absolutely equally grateful for the people I've come home to, who I've missed and love.
I'm so grateful for the experience had, which I know so many people wish they'd been able to have.
I'm grateful to everyone who supported me in any way; letters, parcels for the kids, parcels for me, phone calls, messages, prayers, sponsorship, EVERYTHING. You have no idea how something so small can brighten a bad day in the village.
I sign off this blog permanently with a reassurance to everyone that I truly believe this is just the beginning. In whatever I go on to do next I'll hold this experience and I'm so happy it happened. While it might take some time for me to recover and portray that belief, just trust me that it's there.
oh Ugaaaaaanda we love youuuuuu.
No comments:
Post a Comment