"Home"

I've been "home" for over three months and haven't written a post. I just didn't know how or even what to say. Yesterday I found this scribbled in one of my personal notebooks, ink running in certain places as a result of tears that fell on the pages while writing. Hopefully it will help you understand where my heart has been...

March 15th, 2014

Two days home and I'm already unsure of where I am. I wake up in the middle of the night completely confused.

I drove today and felt completely  backwards on the other side of the road. It took everything in me not to cut people off or drive in the grass around them like I've been expected to do for the past 6 months.

I stopped at Barnes & Noble where I  ordered an extremely overpriced coffee.  B&N used to be my little place of refuge when I was home when I longed for a little  peace in my soul.  I strolled around the store that I'd been in a hundred times before, but now I felt lost. The bright shiny book covers overwhelmed me. Whatever they were holding in the pages behind them, the "secrets to life," did it really matter?

Somehow I found myself in the "Travel" section. My eye shifted through the names of foreign countries written in bold fonts down the spines of the thick books. As my eyes only browsed, my heart was searching desperately. It wasn't there. No map, no book. Did it even exist? Is Uganda a place I dreamed up in my own mind that nobody here even knows about?

People ask me questions all the time, but then only half listen to the answer. Do they really care? And sometimes it's not the questions that  get to me. "I bet you're so happy to be home," they say, not even asking but telling me, because who could ever find happiness in a small little land-locked country in Africa? What "privileged" American girl could ever stay in a 3rd world country any longer than a few weeks without wanting to run back to her Starbucks coffee and Ugg boots?

I started crying right there in the middle of the Travel section of Barnes & Noble because it now hit me, I wasn't in my little Uganda anymore. And the little haven I thought I had here suddenly turned into a place just like the rest, a place that wasn't Uganda. I wiped away the tears and kept walking. I walked past the window and caught a glimpse of my sparkly polished self in it's reflection. Just a few days ago I was knee  deep in red dirt, helping remove jiggers from little feet in the village and now here I am drinking designer coffee with a face full of makeup.

Readjusting is going to be much more difficult than I thought...