Ever read something and felt like you could have written it? Seen something and flashed back to a memory? Been to a place and felt like you had been there before?
It is close to impossible to put some feelings into words. Some are better at it than others. I definetly fall in the “others” category. But I feel the need to try and explain this feeling.
Uganda.
I had been struggling with the classic mid-20’s “What the hell am I doing with my life?” crisis. On paper, or should I say, on social media, it looked like I had everything sussed. I had been travelling for 18 months, seen the places I had always dreamed of, been blown away by landscapes, fattened by foods, touched by people, inspired by stories.
I had found happiness. Or so I thought.
The few days leading up to my coming here, I began to panic. “Why the hell am I going to Uganda?” “Why have I committed to spend 6 months in a country that I couldn’t even place on a map 3 months ago?”
I cried on the plane over here. I usually only ever cry when I’m leaving places. I was terrified.
I arrived at the airport at 4am. I’d left 3°C Bruxelles and had arrived to 30°C Entebbe. The taxi driver who was supposed to meet me was nowhere to be seen. I realized that I had no contact number for him, or for anyone in Uganda for that matter. That was silly. Taxi drivers are charging at me, trying to grab my suitcase. A man is video calling a woman in front of me and is trying to get me in the frame. I am exhausted and I am terrified x10.
Billy, the driver suddenly appears, within minutes I’m on the back of a 4x4, whizzing down the left-hand side of the road heading towards Kampala. It was dark and the roads were barely lit. All I could see was a lot of dust. About an hour later, I had arrived at my accommodation. The housemaids came out in their pyjamas and escorted me to my new room. I lay in my little bed and just stared up at my mosquito net. “How on earth did I end up here?”
I woke up confused as to where I was. I could hear traffic, birds, bugs, children. Over the next few weeks, I was woken up daily at 5:30am by the nearby mosque. Then again at 6 by a man washing metal pots outside my window. Then at 7 by what I thought was someone whistling the “Sponge Bob Squarepants” theme tune - turns out it’s a bird. I walked into the living room out the back door and admired the breathtaking view, onto Lake Victoria. It looked familiar and I suddenly felt at home in my new home. Click
I spent my first week volunteering at Hospice Africa Uganda (HAU), assisting the clinical team, doing home visits. My first day, I saw a dead body. Yeah I wasn’t expecting that either. My peers were talking in the local language and I had not understood that we were walking into the room of a patient who had passed away that morning. We also visited a woman suffering from breast cancer, Harriet, living in a 5m2 concrete room with her daughter. They were both sitting on the floor and Harriet’s breast was out in the open, fungating, rotting away.
Tuesday’s at HAU are Day Care days, I got out of home visits and spent the day playing with the kids who come to day care. I did puzzles with a kid named Charles. He had skin cancer and had a foul smelling growth coming out of his nose. I was told with one session of radiotherapy it would be gone and Charles would be back in a couple of weeks and I wouldn’t recognize him. He never came back. Both him and Harriet have since passed away.
Sorry, this is not supposed to be a sad story. Back to the point.
After a few weeks, I started to sleep through the noises. I was less exhausted and really started to appreciate the things around me. As I said in my last piece, it is not about being around death. It is about being surrounded by life.
The birds. I have never been a fan of birds, nor have I disliked them, but it is impossible to ignore them here. You will see giant Storks in the middle of the city, little bright coloured Bee-eaters in the trees and kingfishers on the rivers and lakes. Yes I have become a 25-year old birder, sorry Twitcher.
The chaos. The traffic, sorry “the jam”, in Kampala like nothing I have ever seen. Except maybe in Vietnam. Not just road traffic, people traffic, there are people walking everywhere in the city centre, in the markets, sitting around, packed into buses. But it is somehow organized chaos.
The rain. Here rain = good weather. The locals pray for the rain as their crops, and livelihood depend on it. But the rain down in Africa is unique. When a storm hits here it feels like the thunder is coming from the ground right up into you and a lightening bolt is coming down from the sky onto you. It can rain non-stop for hours or for a mere few minutes. The whole city changes when it rains in a way which is difficult to describe. It also washes away some of the roads which is why at the first sign of lightening everyone leaves the office and rushes home.
The simple things.
I laugh daily because every single day I am still surprised by what I see. Pigs, full grown pigs, attached to the back of motorbikes. People walking around in suits carrying live chickens under their arms. Kids sitting in tool boxes. Women balancing anything and everything on their heads.
Now I am going to start to sound cheesy but I have found myself. I am at peace. I am happy, genuinely happy. I somehow now believe that everything truly happens for a reason and I do not get frustrated by things that are out of my control.
People here feel blessed to be here. They do not complain about what they lack. They take the time to talk to the people they bump into. They welcome you into their homes. They are content with what they have. They are generous.
Life is simple. You can buy anything and everything off the street. You can just wave your hand and have transport to anywhere in the city/country. You don’t replace old things, you fix them.
The staff at Hospice are as incredible as the patients. There are doctors here who work for £2 a day without complaining. Women walk all day to get medecine for their daughter’s. Sons drop everything to carry their fathers. There is so much more, but I’ll keep it for another day.
It is nothing like anywhere I have ever been, yet it feels familiar. It feels like home.
I am now able to count the days until I am scheduled to leave this incredible place. I know that I will miss the children screaming, the Spongebob-bird whistling, the chants from the mosque. I won’t miss the pots. I know for a fact that I will once again be whizzing down the dark roads with Billy the taxi driver. I know that I will be crying on that plane. I can not only now place Uganda on a map, but it is the centre of my map. I am no longer terrified about anything.
Uganda has made me understand what life is all about. It it not perfect, nothing is. But it has made me happier than I knew possible.
I just wish I could share this feeling.
