Thoughts more than stories

Most of my posts lately have told you what I've been doing. I just thought I'd take a sec to let you know what I've been thinking lately--mostly for me. So welcome to my brain for a sec.

My time is running out here in Africa.  I'm getting nervous to go home.  It feels like I'm at the end of my mission--when I know in reality that I have to go home in a month.  But part of me doesn't know how it will go.  Suddenly my life back home no longer makes sense to me.  Maybe that sounds bad.  I know that it's the right thing and it's where I should be...but I don't know how to process it anymore.  I don't know how to go about living my life back home after the experience that I've had here.  The same thing happened to me after the mission.  How do I go back to America and be me...but the me that I am now...after all of this.  My life has just had so much meaning here, the idea of going home to the unknown is a bit disconcerting.

I've had some of the most beautiful, happy days of my life here.  Up in Bunabuyoka, working until I'm exhausted, holding Damalie and Joseph during water breaks.  They're moments I wish could last forever.  Being so consumed by joy and love.  Holding a sweet little person that's completely melted into me, gazing at the beautiful sunset and thinking, "Does life get any better than this?"  It's hard to see how.

Last Friday we went to the Mbale Resort for a meeting for our teacher training at St. Stephens.  It was so strange and foreign walking into a building with tiled floors, swanky music playing, chandeliers, a staircase that TWISTS (that specifically blew my mind.  I just stared at it in fascination.), overpriced food and being surrounded by fancy things.  It made me feel uncomfortable--like I didn't belong there.  I walked through the lobby in my skirt, top and keens with eyes wide open, taking in all the details, feeling oddly out of place.  My recent reading material brings to mind the comparison of Katniss going to the Capitol for the first time. (Please think that I'm a nerd for giving you that comparison just now because...I just did that.)  Just wondering how much is necessary, trying to make sense of why my friends live off of so little, have poked out malnourished tummies, few clothes, dirt floors, but somehow there are chandeliers, fancy floors, furniture apolstered in ornate fabric.  My mind just can't process it.  It just seems unnecessary.  I want to understand the point of all of these fancy details.

It makes me think about going home.  It's a wealthier country.  We're so blessed.  I know it will be weird to go home to dishwashers, laundry machines (is that what we call them?), blow dryers, electricity, heated water, eating with utensils, clean clothes with no holes in them, clean streets, no pot holes, freezers, television, and I'm sure plenty of other things that my life has been void of that I can't think of at the moment.  I know things are different in these two places.  I get that.  But I worry about adjusting back to life where luxury here is the norm there.

The other thing that was weird to me was I saw my first white baby in 3 months when we were at the Mbale Resort.  It was weird.  haha  We were upstairs in the hotel and a mom holding a baby left the buffet room holding her tiny baby--WHITE baby.  I just blinked a bunch of times looking at it.  haha Why did I not want to hold that strangers baby?  I want to hold strangers babies all of the time here...everyday.  That's what my babies are going to look like.  But it was weird that white babies don't have the consuming effect on me that any and every baby I see on the street does.  Still trying to figure that out. haha

I was thinking about random little things that have changed in me since I've been here.  It's been kind of fun to grunge down and adapt to a less developed lifestyle.  For instance, Holly and I were talking in the kitchen one night after dinner and we saw a cockroach run between our feet across the kitchen floor.  We stopped talking, watched it, then continued on with our conversation.  Three months ago I would have flipped.  But was just nbd.  Something to notice for a second but...just nothing out of the ordinary.

Even in my bedroom, there's a lizard family that lives in our ceiling.  We see them crawling up and down our walls all of the time.  It doesn't gross me out, doesn't bother me, I'm not scared.  It's just my life.  There are lizards that life in the ceiling.

I love tucking in my mosquito net at night.  There's something almost cozy about it to me.  I think I'm going to miss it.

Well I think I've rambled enough for one day.  I'm going to visit an orphanage right now.  I haven't been to an orphanage before.  First timer.  I'm excited to go.  I have a bit of free time this morning and felt that showing some cute babies some love would be lovely.  Then I have to go help with the beading ladies and then teach piano lessons at the church.  Good times. :)  Love and miss you all!