Turn Down the Music

It's hard to sum up my emotions a month into my semester here in Uganda...

Jaded...
Confused...
Frustrated...
Joyful....

You name the emotion I have probably felt it. Sometimes it feels like my life is an emotional roller coaster. One minute I will feel so completely thankful and overwhelmed with joy to be here and then something will happen and my emotions will plummet so quickly that it ruins the day. In order to really be present here, it has become just constant cultural immersion and sometimes I get so overwhelmed. I miss Josh, I miss home, I miss Wheaton desperately and yet I try so hard to not think about going home in December because I truly believe that will be detrimental to my time here.

Being here can be so amazing at times. Sometimes I feel such a genuine fellowship with the people here. I love running on the track every morning with my buddy Charissa (who makes me laugh so hard I sometimes think I'm going to pee myself...), having dance parties with Ugandan students (let me tell you - Ugandan men especially, but all Ugandans too can dance sooooo well...it is extremely intimidating), sitting through classes in the houses of my teachers and feeling like I am at home (especially when they make REAL coffee, not the nasty instant kind they always drink here), going out at night to get a rolex with some friends (rolex = chapatti + egg with cabbage, onion and tomato in it...pretty good although not my favorite), hitting up the canteens for a bowl of fruit (the pineapple here is incredible!)....and yet...

Sometimes I feel so jaded. Any interaction between me and a Ugandan student or male in general that is not initiated by me is worthy of suspicion. I am tired of walking into town and being the center of everyone's attention. Today I went to Mukono and did not see a single other white person the whole time I was there. I get stared at, hit on, asked for money, overcharged for things I'm buying...I now truly know how it feels to be a minority. This culture can be so demeaning to women and occasionally I feel truly oppressed. There are only a few men who can be my friends because I know they are harmless...any other man ultimately just ends up telling you that he has always wanted to date a white woman and that he thinks you are beautiful (and not in a platonic way...)

The poverty here is not so obvious at first glance. No, the people around me, especially on campus, are far from starving. In fact they eat so much food that I can't ever finish what is given to me. Yet when I walk on the streets, especially in Kampala I see how dirty and awful the conditions are and I know that I am helpless to do anything about it. When I am in a car and we are stalled by traffic and children come up to the window and hold out their hands for money, I am crushed and yet I know that the answer is not just to hand out money at every opportunity. And yet I hate it when people stereotype Africa as being needy and poor...because there is so much more to being here than that. Please don't ask me if I will starve while I'm here or if I'm constantly seeing starving children because that is a completely Western perspective...

I guess I am coming to realize more and more that just being present is enough. I can't do much to change the situation but I'm here and I truly want to learn. That's all that I really can ask of myself...What is my responsibility? I really don't know...but I do know that while I'm here I will learn more from those around me than they will learn from me and that is a good thing. "Helping" Africa has become such a fad in the church and being here has helped me understand that in some ways "the world Church is impoverished and incomplete without the insights that the Logos has been preparing for it in Africa" (to quote John Taylor's The Primal Vision). Maybe when my time here is done I'll understand more fully the implications of this idea...

Thanks for reading! I've had this Shane and Shane song running around in my head for the past couple days and in some ways it parallels part of my struggle here...(I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Shane and Shane by the way...if you don't know who they are you need to check them out...www.shaneandshane.com)

They sang this at one of their concerts I went to at the end of last semester and it's a little hard to understand without the story behind it...So one of the Shanes said that he had heard this man speak once and he had told the story of this church in Nazi Germany that was situated right across from a railroad track. Every Sunday the church would come together for their service and one day right in the middle of the service they heard this horrible noise and smelled something that smelled like rotting flesh. They realized that a train was going by full of Jews on the way to concentration camps and it had stopped right in front of their church. The Jews cried out for help and the congregation did not know what to do. This continued for a few Sundays and eventually on one Sunday the church decided to make some changes to their program...When the train came by this time they were ready and when it stopped they started worshiping as loud as they could, trying to drown out the noise of the people crying for help. The preacher kept yelling "Sing louder!" and the congregation worshiped to cover the sound of the suffering Jews. You can take the implications of this story any way you want to...to me it was powerful and challenging.

TURN DOWN THE MUSIC

If you were hungry
Would we give you food
If you were thirsty
Would we give you drink
If you were a stranger
Would we let you in

What would be the song we'd sing to you in everything
Would it be an empty hallelujah to the King

Turn down the music
Turn up the noise
Turn up your voice, oh God, and let us hear the sound
Our people broken
Willing to love
Give us your heart, oh God, a new song rising up

If you were naked
Would we give you clothes
If you were an orphan
Would we give a home
and if you were in prison
Would we visit you

What would be the song we'd sing to you in everything
Would it be an empty hallelujah to the King

Turn down the music
Turn up the noise
Turn up your voice, oh God, and let us hear the sound
Our people broken
Willing to love
Give us your heart, oh God, a new song rising up

Let it be our worship
Let it be our true religion
In this world but not of it
Holding on to our confession

Turn down the music
Turn up the noise
Turn up your voice, oh God, and let us hear the sound
Our people broken
Willing to love
Give us your heart, oh God, a new song rising up...