Normalized

It is has been a really long time since I wrote anything, actually it has been since right before I went home for Christmas and there is a reason for that. I had such a wonderful time at home with my family and friends, drinking Dunkin Donuts, seeing the city, eating really good food, and playing in the snow. It was like a refresher, giving me everything my body and soul needed to take on another year in Uganda. It certainly helped that I had left UG with very positive thoughts and did not fear going back. Once I did get back I was quickly very busy with conferences and trainings and seeing my friends here. I was getting involved in quite many things and soon realized that year 2 is incredibly more productive than year 1. I knew it was going to fly by. What I did not expect was how normal life was going to feel after I came back. I had become used to my routines, used to the environment and the people, the ups were great and the downs were humorous afterwards. I was interacting with people as if I had known them for years. I finally felt comfortable being uncomfortable and living here felt like I was home.

That is the reason I have not written anything—I don’t know what to write about. I did not blog back in the States about everyday things and I did not feel the need to write about what was happening here because it felt to everyday. My life here became just that, living in Uganda. It was no longer a “peace corps experience.” Of course I am still having those incredible moments, but what has happened is they have become more a part of an incredible life rather than isolated events in an otherwise uneventful existence. When I hop onto a taxi to go to Mbale and causally make conversation with whoever is sitting near me, I do still get off and take a breath with the thought in mind—I live in Africa. I feel so blessed and fortunate and I am trying really hard not to take it for granted, because in 6 short months I won’t ever be living in Africa again (well, never say never I guess.)

Since coming back from home, I have had the chance to work closely with my PC office staff, whom I have grown to really love, on LGBT issues. I prepared and helped to facilitate a gender-based violence workshop for volunteers and their counterparts. I have traveled deep into the village to train a group of passionate people who want to start a trade school for girls who dropped out of school because of early pregnancy. I have attended and helped to carry out a regional HIV workshop with so many wonderful groups. I withstood the passing of an evil bill and the following support of it. I have traveled to new parts of this beautiful country, including climbing a mountain that rests on the border of Uganda, Rwanda, and DRC. I worked with student teachers to organize a school-wide Drop Everything And Read day. I have partied, relaxed, laughed, been bored, cried, and had hopes come crash down on me. All in all, my life here is great and when I look back on where I was emotionally one year ago I am so humbled by what this country has done to me, how I have grown, and so grateful to my incredibly intelligent and supportive friends who stuck by me and told me to keep going. In the next few months, I have even more big plans that I think are actually going to make an impact on my community and I am so excited for whatever happens. Even if things don’t work out the way you want them to, they work out the way they are supposed to. I love Uganda, even with all its many faults. I have reconciled with the fact that I am a visitor here, it is not my land. Everything that feels foreign to me should, I am the foreigner. Who am I to demand change or say that something is wrong, this is not the United States. But I can empathize with people and empower them to make the changes they think need to be made. There are many real problems here, most to do with corruption and abuse of power, but there is hope.