We dropped through the clouds and Lake Victoria slid into view. The hills and jungles came into focus, rusty red clay and deep green banana trees. Cattle and goats surrounding the runway, unimpressed by the jet landing thirty feet away from their heads, and it all came back to me. I love this place.
The transition is hard. I'm constantly surprised and a little taken aback by the range of emotions I experience in any given hour. I love this place, but I miss so much about home. I'm enjoying getting to know the people here, but I don't know them yet, and I don't know how to share this experience with them. Everything is new. I have to be humble and have quite a sense of humor about it all: Excuse me, sir, I don't know how to fill up my water bottle... can you help me?
There's still so much I don't know about the coming eight months. Right now, especially, as we wait for everyone to arrive, there is no schedule, the schools are all on break, and there's really nothing to do. The Western mindset rebels against this: get on Facebook! Watch a movie! Make a to-do list and then do all the things on it! Go out for coffee! DO something!
But when you push past this (like dropping through the clouds), there's gold to be found. We (as Westerners) have lost the ability to just be. I'm finding it again. Reading, meditating, praying, singing, talking, but also just being, with the sun on my feet and the stickiness of humidity on my skin and the smooth clay dust on my fingers and the unfamiliar birdsongs in my ears. Wherever I end up after all the adventures, I want to know how to be.
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