Uganda doesn't feel a year away. It doesn't feel like it's been a year since I walked in the red dirt across campus, learned how delicious Fanta Passion is, or was given a Lugandan name. In a lot of ways I feel like I've just assimilated back into American life too quickly, too easily. When people ask about Uganda, I never have any idea what to say. I don't know how to articulate what I learned, how much it changed me or how much more I wish it had changed me. I don't know how to change how I act, how to let the things I learned actually affect how I think and what I do. I mean, there's the fun stories about rafting/thinking I could die or the safari and being feet away fro a hippo in the campsite. But I don't know how to describe the little things, like adjusting to food and finding food that I miss so much here, to not really thinking that my host families were poor and needed a better way of life. Going to Uganda changed my view on missions, made me understand it a little less. There were mission teams that went from Biola to Uganda and Kenya and I just wanted to ask them why, to ask what they were going to do. What do we have to offer Uganda? But I still want to go, still want to do something, somewhere that matters. I'm just less sure of what that is.
My dorm room is covered with memories of Uganda, with fabric-like pictures to pictures I took and other miscellaneous decorations. The shirt I'm wearing today is one I bought there. But seeing these things doesn't change me. I made a list at the end of last semester and I wish I could read it. I want to see all of the things I was so determined to do. So many things seem superficial and wasteful, but I tend to just ignore it, to push it aside.
I miss Uganda. I don't think I'll ever be back, but I miss the experience, the people. Sometimes I want to say Ugandan things to people but they wouldn't understand. I want to tell people they look smart or...other common Ugandan phrases or sentences that took me a little while to understand before. I want people to ask me more about my semester. I...I don't know what else. I want to see how this has changed me.
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