Too Much for Words

I'm sorry for how long this post is in coming! I have been essentially busy out of my mind the past three weeks or so, plus when you are unable to get any internet at all it presents some serious problems in updating your blog...oh well, I'm here now and that's what matters. Let me tell you what has been going on in my life and in my head...
Well here we are about to leave for our rural home stays in the district of Soroti at the end of October. Cramming 26 people into a small coaster was probably not the most amazing experience of my life, but we definitely survived...After 6 hours we reached Soroti and camped out overnight in the backyard of one of the Ugandan staff members who has a home in that village. Sitting around the campfire, telling embarrassing stories and playing mafia, it was great to see how close we have all become. We even did a little "star gazing" - Brystal will know what I'm talking about if she reads this :)

The next morning we got dropped off at our home stays. Honestly I wasn't overly worried, mostly because I was coming into the experience with the expectation that it would probably be awkward a good amount of the time and that I would most likely be frustrated with many aspects of rural culture.
Here is my Papa and Toto! (Toto is Ateso for mom). My Papa was a chaplain at a boys secondary school near where their house was. He would talk to me for hours about pretty much everything. He was one of the most gentle human being I have ever met. When he would take me to visit people in the village who wanted to see the "visitor" he was concerned that I might "bruise my feet" so he would always take me on his piki (motorcycle) so that I didn't have to walk...Let me tell you, riding through dirt roads in the bush of Uganda on the back of a motorcycle with a live chicken strapped to the handlebars and a massive thing of coke and a container of g-nuts in my lap was probably one of the best experiences of my life.

My Toto was...well...bossy. But I loved her despite that - especially since that is just a part of the culture here (there really is no word for please. Instead of "can I borrow your bucket" it is always "give me your bucket"...I've kinda just learned to deal with it). But she genuinely wanted me to have the experience of a rural African woman. Although she would boss me around, it gave me so many new experiences and she always was very intentional about making sure she didn't overwork me.

One of the most difficult things about being in Soroti was that I felt so completely incompetent most of the time I was there. Honestly, I am not cut out for the life of a village woman. Every time I tried to do something I failed miserably. My 75 year old Tata could pick cow peas in the fields for more than twice as long as I could! I learned many things about my own pride and was finally able to realize that every person has a different type of strength. It was important for me to experience being the weak one for a change...Here's Tata! She's probably the cutest old African woman ever - spreading cow peas onto the mat to dry in the sun.

Most mornings we would wake up and do some sort of work - usually outside in the garden. When I was there, the cow peas were ready to be picked so that is what we would do most of the time. Let me tell you, now I know why African women when they get old are permanently stooped over. They do absolutely everything bent over double! - washing clothes, gardening, cooking, washing dishes. There was also a lot of time to just relax and sit and talk. They really value community so oftentimes we would just chill on a mat on the front stoop and talk or shell g-nuts. They tried to teach me as many Ateso words as they possibly could, although there were way too many for me to remember in such a short period of time...

Here's some other things that I did...
Serving tea...Peeling plantains...



Trying to make g-nut paste for dinner...I'm not very good at it.
Oh and planning with Katharine...or trying to anyway. She was still pretty afraid of me by the end of the week, but she would still smile at me and be adorable :)

Life in the village was a lot simpler than here...in some ways I was reluctant to come back. There's so much less pollution and dirtiness. They live their lives day to day, growing the food that they need to eat and living off the land. That was a new experience for me and one that I really grew to cherish the week that I was there. The hospitality that I experienced was incredible - I can't imagine coming into a more welcoming environment.

And yet...there were things that were difficult and frustrating. Gender roles here are so different than in America and often times I chafed from what I thought were oppressive gender roles. The women always sit on a mat on the floor to eat while the men sit in chairs. Toto even made me kneel twice to men who came to visit - something that I almost refused to do in protest, but ended up swallowing my pride and doing anyway. I learned a lot about humility. If Christ humbled himself in obedience, becoming a man and dying on the cross, why is it so hard for me to forsake my pride in order to show respect for a culture in which I am a visitor?

In his book Compassion, Henri Nouwen labels obedience and servanthood as key characteristics of God and two of the important ways he chooses to reveal himself. As I was reading that book I kept wondering why if the Bible portrays obedience in such a positive light, I have a difficult time with the idea of "submission" in gender roles. Obviously I'm not saying that the gender roles I see her are Biblical - in fact I think that in some ways they are morally wrong - but I am more convicted of my own pride and I can objectively say that there are some things about American gender roles which are a pollution of what God intended as well. Josh knows that I am not the type of girl who "submits" easily...but I think that I am more willing to admit now that obedience when done right does not have to be demeaning or oppressive.

Moving on...
This is Sipi Falls...possibly the most amazing place I have ever been to in my life. After our rural home stays this is where we traveled for debrief. It is in the mountains on the border of Uganda and Kenya and filled with all sorts of waterfalls just like this one. I honestly cannot even describe to you the feeling of being there...it was so unpolluted and a totally pure example of the majesty of God. I would sit out on this amazing wooden swing outside my room at night and look across the entire huge valley below with the waterfalls in the distance and I got chills some times considering how perfect God's creation is - and how horribly we have screwed it up.
On the second day we were there we made this hike which can only be described with one word: EPIC. It took us almost all day but we hiked to three waterfalls - both the top and the bottom of each. My friends described it using the Sigur Ros song Saeglopur - listen to it and try to imagine hiking up this massive mountain, through banana plantations and cabbage fields and then reaching this ridge looking over hundreds of miles of land right next to a waterfall...then going downhill and traveling to the bottom looking up and this mass of water cascading down hundreds of feet...ridiculous.

Here's my group at the bottom of the biggest waterfall I had ever seen in my life.

Honestly I didn't want to come back to Mukono. It is really dirty here, polluted and life in the mountains and in the village was so peaceful and calm. Here I am getting called mzungu all the time and getting hit on by random strangers on the street - in the village this never happened. Sure, people stared sometimes, but they treated me with so much respect and they all wanted to talk to me and spend time with me. I felt connected to them in a way that I don't necessarily feel connected here.

Well I don't want to bore you with too long of a blog post, I'll try to write another one soon because I have plenty more to talk about!! That's it for now though. Thanks for your patience with me!