It is becoming real life. And then not, again…
“We have to pay them for the food. You have to get the money.” I begin to walk up the dirt road, past the children playing, barefoot and giggling. I step over the puddle. The road is bumpy to the left. I step right. I step over trash, soggy clumps of paper and plastic bags patching, It is hot out, just past 2:00 pm. My third trips to Mbale awards me with a familiarity of roads, routes and enclaves. I’ve walked between town and school many times this week. I know the way. I get to pavement, turn left, and shuffle along the sidewalk. Sweat now dripping from my forehead, I walk past a store—cotton t-shirts and slinky dressing hanging between in and out—another—simple foods, biscuits, juice. The opposite side has tables, women selling candies, men cutting jack fruit. A cart with fried bread and Samosas. Blankets strewn on the ground scattered with purple onions and bright red tomatoes. It will take me ten minutes to walk back to the hotel, will I make the board meeting?
Something in the air breaks. Can’t tell what prompted it. Some sort of sense, perhaps, we have not yet named or defined? And I hear inner voice aha to herself— “I’m in Africa.” Suddenly , everything becomes just a little more vivid, focused, sharper. I picture a map, the continent V-shaped and massive. The country, small and eastward. The spelling U G A N D A. I picture the distance from above: zoomed over Denver, New York, London, Morocco, Kenya. Zoomed closer past Kampala, Jinja, Mbale. Closer still with pink clock tower, woman balancing a load on her head, van driveing shakily on pot-holed road. Closer still, zooms right to me. I feel hidden in this world. Far far away. And exposed, open in this space. I feel out of context and loving the absurdity of it all. The distance, both cultural and physical, settles into me. The newness becomes striking. This experience defines itself by place and people. It is step by step, faces passing, East African pop songs— sounds like rap, sounds like drumming, sounds fast tempo-ed and high pitched.
I feel independent, because I chose to come here. I feel proud. I know this place, as if it belongs to me, familiar and kind. I know where the sidewalk ends.
I am privileged, engulfed in a community that gives me purpose and inspiration. I am circumstanced, awarded passport and dollars. Soul-fed, for the break in the air cracks open the mundane, washes over my eyes to make everything brightshiny. The moment echoes back in honking horns and foreign tongues. I have crawled into another world, another paradigm, another way to experience this breath. Time passes in rhythmic off beat rotation of spheres.
I lighten. Suddenly the money, the board meeting, the heat, all of it falls away, leaving me with pure movement, that mystical flittering now. Boda drivers holler out, and this time I answer them laughing as I mock myself. They reciprocate the mood. And for this instant I have gotten past the difference, past the questions and finally fall into awe.
