“Home” is a funny word. Although I lived about three hours from my parents’ home during university, I don’t believe I really understood having two completely separate homes. Kirksville is very much like my hometown, small, Walmart just down the road, students working at most of the minimum wage jobs, fast food restaurants open nearly the same hours, even closing on Sundays for church. I thought I had found myself a new home while I was there – I felt out of place with my parents even though I was still living with them part time – but it was really more of the same.
Uganda is completely different. I live on my own. My closest friends are my neighbors and colleagues, not necessarily those just down the hall. Although the social law of proximity still rules, even more so in such a foreign land, my friendships here are so different from the ones in the US. We rarely discuss politics, although it’s still more often than I did in the US, we talk a lot about the weather, a lot about the food we’re making. It doesn’t sound all that different, but I promise you it is. Hugs are less common, but somehow that’s okay. A smile means more than just “hello.”
This is my first time ever living alone. My ineptitude at this rears its head the hardest when I’m cooking, that’s one thing I really wish I had learned before leaving, but cooking, like every other part of living alone, has gotten remarkably easier through the last year. I have remarked several times on this blog, on Facebook, and in my own journal how Uganda feels like home, how it’s no longer this exotic place, how I feel more comfortable here than I would in the US. Over this past year, the thought of going home has become more an anxious one than an exciting one due to readjustment, reverse culture shock.
Cue Christmas. I’ve been so quiet because I’ve been in the US. I had all these plans of uploading pictures and videos to my blog and going through it, making it more cohesive, putting in hyperlinks, the works. Instead, I spent my time talking to people. People obviously wanted to hear all about Uganda, but personally, I cared more about what’s happening right now in their lives, how the past year has affected them. I almost didn’t even feel the need to “catch up” with people due to Facebook. We live in an amazing time of being able to keep up with our friends and family from around the world even though we’re living thousands of miles, tens of thousands of kilometers, 8 or 9 time zones apart. What I wanted to know from people was not what had happened in the last year that was Facebook worthy. I wanted to know how these things that I already knew had affected them, how they had changed. Many of my friends have graduated from college in the last year, moved on to “big boy” and “big girl” jobs, gotten married or moved in with their partners, and just generally, well, adulted.
The strangest thing about being home, though, is that I don’t feel like I went at all. All the travel, four days there and four days back, all the time I spent with people, all the glorious hugs and even presents I received, it all feels like a dream. Time is a funny, funny thing. Just the same as I don’t feel like I’ve missed much of my American friends’ and family’s lives in the past year, I feel like in the three weeks I was gone, I missed every part of my Ugandan friends’ and family’ lives. I could not wait to come back to Uganda and hear what people had done for Christmas and New Year even though I knew the answer was “church, family, and food” for each of them.
I really think my sister hit the nail on the head with this. She told me that to her it feels like I’m just away at college like I was the two years before Peace Corps. Because she always knew I would come home, because she always knew what was happening in my life from my Facebook posts, because we’re probably in better contact with each other than we were when I was away at college, it just feels like another semester, another year of school. I feel much the same way. Sure, I have missed things that I wouldn’t have had to miss if I was indeed at college instead of halfway across the world, but see when a place becomes home, no matter how different it is, and when you’re able to keep up through social media, it doesn’t quite feel like you ever left your original home. Your new home just becomes an extension of your original home. They are both places that you’re so overjoyed to come back to, both places where you feel so loved, so comfortable, that you don’t want to leave.
Now please don’t think that I’m saying I’m not grateful to have been home. I really, truly am ecstatic to have seen all of the friends and family I saw (especially the ones who put up with me during the first week I was home), and I am so beyond grateful to my family for bringing me home. What I am saying, though, is that if it weren’t for the things I brought back with me, the pictures we all took, the reactions of my Ugandan friends and family when I came home, I’m not sure I would quite believe I had gone home. It all feels like a dream, but it’s the best dream of my life.
Uganda is completely different. I live on my own. My closest friends are my neighbors and colleagues, not necessarily those just down the hall. Although the social law of proximity still rules, even more so in such a foreign land, my friendships here are so different from the ones in the US. We rarely discuss politics, although it’s still more often than I did in the US, we talk a lot about the weather, a lot about the food we’re making. It doesn’t sound all that different, but I promise you it is. Hugs are less common, but somehow that’s okay. A smile means more than just “hello.”
This is my first time ever living alone. My ineptitude at this rears its head the hardest when I’m cooking, that’s one thing I really wish I had learned before leaving, but cooking, like every other part of living alone, has gotten remarkably easier through the last year. I have remarked several times on this blog, on Facebook, and in my own journal how Uganda feels like home, how it’s no longer this exotic place, how I feel more comfortable here than I would in the US. Over this past year, the thought of going home has become more an anxious one than an exciting one due to readjustment, reverse culture shock.
Cue Christmas. I’ve been so quiet because I’ve been in the US. I had all these plans of uploading pictures and videos to my blog and going through it, making it more cohesive, putting in hyperlinks, the works. Instead, I spent my time talking to people. People obviously wanted to hear all about Uganda, but personally, I cared more about what’s happening right now in their lives, how the past year has affected them. I almost didn’t even feel the need to “catch up” with people due to Facebook. We live in an amazing time of being able to keep up with our friends and family from around the world even though we’re living thousands of miles, tens of thousands of kilometers, 8 or 9 time zones apart. What I wanted to know from people was not what had happened in the last year that was Facebook worthy. I wanted to know how these things that I already knew had affected them, how they had changed. Many of my friends have graduated from college in the last year, moved on to “big boy” and “big girl” jobs, gotten married or moved in with their partners, and just generally, well, adulted.
The strangest thing about being home, though, is that I don’t feel like I went at all. All the travel, four days there and four days back, all the time I spent with people, all the glorious hugs and even presents I received, it all feels like a dream. Time is a funny, funny thing. Just the same as I don’t feel like I’ve missed much of my American friends’ and family’s lives in the past year, I feel like in the three weeks I was gone, I missed every part of my Ugandan friends’ and family’ lives. I could not wait to come back to Uganda and hear what people had done for Christmas and New Year even though I knew the answer was “church, family, and food” for each of them.
I really think my sister hit the nail on the head with this. She told me that to her it feels like I’m just away at college like I was the two years before Peace Corps. Because she always knew I would come home, because she always knew what was happening in my life from my Facebook posts, because we’re probably in better contact with each other than we were when I was away at college, it just feels like another semester, another year of school. I feel much the same way. Sure, I have missed things that I wouldn’t have had to miss if I was indeed at college instead of halfway across the world, but see when a place becomes home, no matter how different it is, and when you’re able to keep up through social media, it doesn’t quite feel like you ever left your original home. Your new home just becomes an extension of your original home. They are both places that you’re so overjoyed to come back to, both places where you feel so loved, so comfortable, that you don’t want to leave.
Now please don’t think that I’m saying I’m not grateful to have been home. I really, truly am ecstatic to have seen all of the friends and family I saw (especially the ones who put up with me during the first week I was home), and I am so beyond grateful to my family for bringing me home. What I am saying, though, is that if it weren’t for the things I brought back with me, the pictures we all took, the reactions of my Ugandan friends and family when I came home, I’m not sure I would quite believe I had gone home. It all feels like a dream, but it’s the best dream of my life.
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