I live in Africa

Sometimes it’s easy to forget where I really live. Yes, I’m by far a minority fair-skinned person among the dark black Acholi of northern Uganda. But, being a minority becomes so normal that I often don’t notice skin color. I never get into a car to drive anywhere; instead I walk, ride my bike or get a motorcycle taxi. This becomes normal. I yell back “Byeee” to the kids saying “Munu, munu, byyyeeee”. It’s just normal.
But then, occasionally, something hits me and I realize “whooo, I’m living in Africa.” And it’s crazy how normal it all seems.

While enjoying a lazy Saturday afternoon watching “House” on DVD (my newest addiction), I decide I’d like a soda. I have none in the house. I take an empty glass soda bottle and exit my high-walled gated compound to walk down the street. Outside my compound gate there are kids on their way back home from fetching water at the near-by bore hole. I greet them and start walking.

Someone calls out my name. It’s my neighbor, Grace. She says “You’re going to get a soda?” Yes. Why don’t you send someone to get it for you? Because I’d like to walk and get it myself! I ask her what she’s doing as she’s not at her house but another neighbor’s. She’s collecting guava from the tree. I continue down the road.

More kids to greet.

I glace at the incredibly muddy road now that the rainy season has started up again. I quickly navigate the best route to take. Jump over this mud puddle, jaunt to the right, then back to the path, leap over another muddy section and I’ve cleared it.

Arriving at the small shop (more like a “stand”), I open the fridge and pull out a Mtn Dew. I have a Coke bottle so I negotiate with the shop owner for her to still take my Coke bottle in exchange for a Mtn Dew (a Pepsi product). She agrees. I give her my 1000 shilling note and a young girl behind the counter gives me my balance of 300 shillings. The soda cost me about 32 cents.

I head back towards my house. Maneuvering back thru the muddy road. Past the neighbors’ houses; all round mud-brick houses with grass-thatched roofs. I consider saying something to the boy who’s throwing grass at the baby goats and the mamma goat. I take note that the babies seem to be doing well. They’re only about a week old.

I pass Grace again and she says that the guavas are good. Their season is starting. She tells me I should come get some when more ripen.

I open the “peak-hole” of my compound gate, open the latch from the inside and enter. Closing the gate behind me, I realize how vast and different the world is. In particularly, how different my worlds are here in Uganda.

I have my Ugandan world of riding my bike to visit a school, greeting all the kids who want to touch the Muzungu, playing with the kids at my house and picking them up and holding them, going to the market to purchase tomatoes or chitenge material for the tailor to make something. That’s the Ugandan lifestyle. It’s all normal to me.

Then there’s the world I can slip into in my house and watch a movie or TV show from America, I can go to The Coffee Hut which is the Panera of Gulu, I can text friends and meet up with them for dinner, I enjoy a contemporary church worship service on Sundays, and I occasionally ride in a car. This is also all normal to me.

I’m beyond thankful for this small Western world within my Ugandan world.

So which “normal” is now normal? I think it all somehow blends together into a lovely balance.

This is my life. I live in Africa!

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