Another chapter...

Before coming back to Uganda, I suspected that perhaps the children didn't really believe that they would see me again after I left last August. What I didn't realize was that the adults, more than the children, would experience disbelief when their muzungu friend was in the flesh before them once more.

This realization -- that my return was not guaranteed in their minds -- didn't actually set in until the good-byes began. For me, it seemed obvious that we would see each other again -- working together, laughing, dancing, struggling, celebrating. But my sister Flo really gave me a perspective shift when she offered this fact -- that while she and my adult friends and colleagues heard my promises, until they saw me here again, they refused to believe that I would return -- she said they endure here in Uganda, but what they don't want to do is to add unecessarily to their load of enduring. If you believe and then are proven a fool, you suffer -- she said. It made sense to me -- but yet selfishly, I wanted my word and my promise to mean to them what it means to me -- yet I am not them and I do not lead the same life that they lead -- we are together and we are the same, to be sure -- but our lives shape us and my life -- my coming up -- couldn't be more different than that of my friends here.

I am telling you, or re-telling you, what Flo said to me because I have had so many instances in the last few days where the essence of the past few weeks has been distilled down -- the chatter and white noise silenced, the beat of the future and the harmony of the past is our sound scape -- and Flo was saying to me something that was important for me to hear: We struggled before you, we struggle together, and we will continue the struggle on and on with or without you. But, you are most welcome to join us, most welcome.

I am humbled by seemingly everything here -- I am challenged to be more, to do more, to let my actions express my intentions as often as my words, to come together in my second home with the people I believe in and struggle again and again, come together over and over -- this is the space in which change can and does happen -- when disbelief becomes faith, when words become deeds, when one and one becomes ten and a hundred and a thousand. Knowing that my friends here would have accepted my absence as a part of life, knowing that they would continue to toil for a lifetime, no less dedicated to excellence in their lives, an no less willing to recognize success brings me to a place in my life where the path ahead is clearer.

I am no longer an honored guest -- I am not a beloved American friend, sister, mother -- but rather, I am returning to come together again, to struggle again, to achieve again, to see again, to grow again -- instead of wishing me 'tukka bulungi' or 'reach well' as they say their good-byes, my friends are sending me with the parting words 'Tugende mumaso fenna...mpola, mpola.' We shall meet, we shall work together, we shall break bread, we shall grieve and we shall experience joy -- they are saying 'We go forward together. Slowly by slowly." As we part, there is no disbelief or doubt, there is only a recognition of what is, what has been before and what will be -- they are explaining the past, observing the moment and foretelling the future...mpola mpola......

Much peace and love