Shock
As touched on, my experience in Uganda has been one of the most impactful things in my life to date. At the end of my experience, I felt like I could stay there for a few more years. I was almost completely at ease with my daily routine and with the people I was surrounded by. Unfortunately, I had to go as all good things must come to an end at some point.
Fortunately for me, I leaving Uganda meant seeing my father in Tanzania. Seeing him made me so incredibly happy. Words cannot describe the feeling. He and I and another Notre Dame Student who had been in Uganda were scheduled to Climb the mighty Mount Kilimanjaro and go on a few safaris afterward.
While I loved the climb, and loved seeing all of the animals one more time, I quickly grew ready to go home. While I had grown to love Uganda, seeing my father made me realize how on edge I was all of the time from being surrounded by people who spoke a different language. While I loved interacting with them, I often had to strain my already bad hearing in order to catch the exact words and phrases they were using, whether in Luganda or English.
Eventually, time to go home came around and life got back to normal. The week that I had at home before school resumed I spent building a table. All summer long, I had been collecting bottle caps to be used for making a bottle cap top table. In building this table, I more or less hid myself from the world so that by the time I arrived back at Notre Dame, I still had not really experienced real American culture. What a reintroduction to America: going from people wearing shuka's (Tanzanian shawls) to Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers. For the longest time, I struggled with seeing these things. How could you rationalize people, including yourself, wearing individual t-shirts equal in value to a months income of someone you had just spent your entire summer with?
As a result of my internal struggle, I started doing weird things. Every now and then, people would find me randomly smiling or laughing to myself as I remembered walking through the endless fields of matoke on the narrow dirt roads of Nnindye. People could also find me constantly wearing boots, khakis, and almost completely unbuttoned, button up shirts. Weirdest of all though, every time I went to the dining hall, I would eat rice, guacamole, and ketchup. This strange dish allowed me to feel comfort through solidarity with the people I had been with all summer as they ate extremely similar meals of rice, beans, and avocado.
Since these first few months, I have started eating marginally more normal meals, now including meat and olives in my original Ugandan-American dish. Still, every day I catch myself thinking of those sweet summer days reminiscing about what was and what I need to do in the future. I still wonder why I was given so much, why they were given so little, and what I need to do to make things right.
The following essay I wrote describing the lasting effect that the people of Uganda have had on me. It was written roughly three weeks after I arrived back at Notre Dame:
"Nearly a month has passed and I cannot eat. Pizza is malnourished children. Chili is dirty Lake Victoria. Taco Bell is rural farmers. Spaghetti is dirt roads. Cake is a crowded taxi ride. These are my favorite American foods. These are the images emblazoned into my mind when I go to feast. The two intensely joined for the foreseeable future.
Stepping on the plane, I was so happy, celebrating the opportunity to get back home to a place of familiarity and comfort. If the price--20 plus hours on a plane--were a thousand times greater, I would gladly pay for the chance to eat the five skyline cheese conies my stomach had been craving for months. I would gladly accept the unnecessary pat downs, drug sniffing dogs and bag searching it would take to get through customs on both ends of my trip. If only I could experience the bliss of a chocolate milk and Zebra Cake breakfast on a hot summer afternoon. The way that perfectly processed white icing and vanilla cake compliments that smooth chocolate. Perfection.
If only it were all so simple. If only I could forget the unforgettable at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead, I have been left wondering why I am so lucky to experience such a cornucopia of delights three times a day. For the past few weeks, I have not been able to ignore the grief I experience when I enter the dining hall or pass Subway. It isn't so overwhelming that I lie awake at night. It’s the subtle kind of guilt one experiences when they realize that for their entire life, they have been living a dream.
All of the delights remind me of the unbelievably unequal livelihood I lead in light of Sewula and Mamma Ida. On the surface, they wear a different skin color and speak a different language, but deep down they are the exact same as myself and those I hold dear. Why couldn't I have been given nothing? Why couldn't I grind away my days, earning a few cents here and there to inadequately feed my children? Why couldn't they have been given everything in the world? Why couldn't they have been able to toil away their days with pointless sporting events, lying on the couch for hours and an abundance of food only a few feet away?
I ask myself these questions every time I sit down to break bread. Eating food is no longer an unknowing celebration of gluttony, but instead a fast for the forgiveness of what I was unjustly given and what I undoubtedly waste. All I can eat is the rice and fruit available to my brothers and sisters across the globe. I now know what crazy Kuzungu was talking about; despite our obvious differences, we are all united in our struggle, connected in our humanity, brothers and sisters.
I know at some point I will come around to emotions of thankfulness, motivation and jubilation, but for now those feelings are replaced with shame and confusion. Logically, I know that I should be happy that I was given so much, but I cannot help but to compare my situation to those less fortunate and realize how much I have wasted. I pay 1000 percent more than they do for every meal and I waste infinitely more at each meal’s end. Why was I given so much? Why were they given so little?
It is difficult for me to come up with the requirements the prompt demands: conclude each paper with a series of about 2-4 questions about the larger issue. How can I conclude with questions when I am often not even sure what to ask? I remember the saying that in life, it’s often not about the answer, it’s about the question. How true this is now. I often wonder why I was given so much, but am unable to get anywhere. I need something new. I need to transcend my routine, begin to connect my thoughts and ask the right questions. Still, this remains out of my reach.
I have sometimes been able to go to the dining hall and ignore my normal meditation and self-inspection. Getting rice, tomato sauce and guacamole has become routine. No thoughts, just do. In my routine, I am able to ignore decision making and with it some of the guilt. Still, every now and then something catches my eye. Today it was potatoes served in a creamy clam chowder sauce. I passed it once. Twice. The third time I had to get some on the way to the guacamole. While the taste rocked my world, so too did the implications of eating it and writing this paper at the same time.
A few questions are flooding into my mind now. Why was I given so many resources with which to build a healthy life? Why were they given so little from which they must eek out an existence day in and day out? What would I be like living their lifestyle? Will I ever be able to rationalize this glaring disparity? In the end, I just hope and pray that I do not quit this introspection before I find an answer.
I think it’s time to close this window into my battle with food related culture shock. I wonder if I have tried to paint too complex, too elegant and too depressing a picture for my audience. I don’t think it’s really all that complicated to explain. Some people in my circumstance have tried to encapsulate their feelings into one overly profound phrase. Others have made the declaration that they are the only clear individuals in a world of souls blindly content, ignorant to the glaring issues just outside their view. I do neither. Instead, I pause every now and then at the dining hall to wonder why?"
Fortunately for me, I leaving Uganda meant seeing my father in Tanzania. Seeing him made me so incredibly happy. Words cannot describe the feeling. He and I and another Notre Dame Student who had been in Uganda were scheduled to Climb the mighty Mount Kilimanjaro and go on a few safaris afterward.
While I loved the climb, and loved seeing all of the animals one more time, I quickly grew ready to go home. While I had grown to love Uganda, seeing my father made me realize how on edge I was all of the time from being surrounded by people who spoke a different language. While I loved interacting with them, I often had to strain my already bad hearing in order to catch the exact words and phrases they were using, whether in Luganda or English.
Eventually, time to go home came around and life got back to normal. The week that I had at home before school resumed I spent building a table. All summer long, I had been collecting bottle caps to be used for making a bottle cap top table. In building this table, I more or less hid myself from the world so that by the time I arrived back at Notre Dame, I still had not really experienced real American culture. What a reintroduction to America: going from people wearing shuka's (Tanzanian shawls) to Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers. For the longest time, I struggled with seeing these things. How could you rationalize people, including yourself, wearing individual t-shirts equal in value to a months income of someone you had just spent your entire summer with?
As a result of my internal struggle, I started doing weird things. Every now and then, people would find me randomly smiling or laughing to myself as I remembered walking through the endless fields of matoke on the narrow dirt roads of Nnindye. People could also find me constantly wearing boots, khakis, and almost completely unbuttoned, button up shirts. Weirdest of all though, every time I went to the dining hall, I would eat rice, guacamole, and ketchup. This strange dish allowed me to feel comfort through solidarity with the people I had been with all summer as they ate extremely similar meals of rice, beans, and avocado.
Since these first few months, I have started eating marginally more normal meals, now including meat and olives in my original Ugandan-American dish. Still, every day I catch myself thinking of those sweet summer days reminiscing about what was and what I need to do in the future. I still wonder why I was given so much, why they were given so little, and what I need to do to make things right.
The following essay I wrote describing the lasting effect that the people of Uganda have had on me. It was written roughly three weeks after I arrived back at Notre Dame:
"Nearly a month has passed and I cannot eat. Pizza is malnourished children. Chili is dirty Lake Victoria. Taco Bell is rural farmers. Spaghetti is dirt roads. Cake is a crowded taxi ride. These are my favorite American foods. These are the images emblazoned into my mind when I go to feast. The two intensely joined for the foreseeable future.
Stepping on the plane, I was so happy, celebrating the opportunity to get back home to a place of familiarity and comfort. If the price--20 plus hours on a plane--were a thousand times greater, I would gladly pay for the chance to eat the five skyline cheese conies my stomach had been craving for months. I would gladly accept the unnecessary pat downs, drug sniffing dogs and bag searching it would take to get through customs on both ends of my trip. If only I could experience the bliss of a chocolate milk and Zebra Cake breakfast on a hot summer afternoon. The way that perfectly processed white icing and vanilla cake compliments that smooth chocolate. Perfection.
If only it were all so simple. If only I could forget the unforgettable at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead, I have been left wondering why I am so lucky to experience such a cornucopia of delights three times a day. For the past few weeks, I have not been able to ignore the grief I experience when I enter the dining hall or pass Subway. It isn't so overwhelming that I lie awake at night. It’s the subtle kind of guilt one experiences when they realize that for their entire life, they have been living a dream.
All of the delights remind me of the unbelievably unequal livelihood I lead in light of Sewula and Mamma Ida. On the surface, they wear a different skin color and speak a different language, but deep down they are the exact same as myself and those I hold dear. Why couldn't I have been given nothing? Why couldn't I grind away my days, earning a few cents here and there to inadequately feed my children? Why couldn't they have been given everything in the world? Why couldn't they have been able to toil away their days with pointless sporting events, lying on the couch for hours and an abundance of food only a few feet away?
I ask myself these questions every time I sit down to break bread. Eating food is no longer an unknowing celebration of gluttony, but instead a fast for the forgiveness of what I was unjustly given and what I undoubtedly waste. All I can eat is the rice and fruit available to my brothers and sisters across the globe. I now know what crazy Kuzungu was talking about; despite our obvious differences, we are all united in our struggle, connected in our humanity, brothers and sisters.
I know at some point I will come around to emotions of thankfulness, motivation and jubilation, but for now those feelings are replaced with shame and confusion. Logically, I know that I should be happy that I was given so much, but I cannot help but to compare my situation to those less fortunate and realize how much I have wasted. I pay 1000 percent more than they do for every meal and I waste infinitely more at each meal’s end. Why was I given so much? Why were they given so little?
It is difficult for me to come up with the requirements the prompt demands: conclude each paper with a series of about 2-4 questions about the larger issue. How can I conclude with questions when I am often not even sure what to ask? I remember the saying that in life, it’s often not about the answer, it’s about the question. How true this is now. I often wonder why I was given so much, but am unable to get anywhere. I need something new. I need to transcend my routine, begin to connect my thoughts and ask the right questions. Still, this remains out of my reach.
I have sometimes been able to go to the dining hall and ignore my normal meditation and self-inspection. Getting rice, tomato sauce and guacamole has become routine. No thoughts, just do. In my routine, I am able to ignore decision making and with it some of the guilt. Still, every now and then something catches my eye. Today it was potatoes served in a creamy clam chowder sauce. I passed it once. Twice. The third time I had to get some on the way to the guacamole. While the taste rocked my world, so too did the implications of eating it and writing this paper at the same time.
A few questions are flooding into my mind now. Why was I given so many resources with which to build a healthy life? Why were they given so little from which they must eek out an existence day in and day out? What would I be like living their lifestyle? Will I ever be able to rationalize this glaring disparity? In the end, I just hope and pray that I do not quit this introspection before I find an answer.
I think it’s time to close this window into my battle with food related culture shock. I wonder if I have tried to paint too complex, too elegant and too depressing a picture for my audience. I don’t think it’s really all that complicated to explain. Some people in my circumstance have tried to encapsulate their feelings into one overly profound phrase. Others have made the declaration that they are the only clear individuals in a world of souls blindly content, ignorant to the glaring issues just outside their view. I do neither. Instead, I pause every now and then at the dining hall to wonder why?"
My experience, albeit short, challenged me to care about things I have never experienced before. The friendships I made and the people I met were constantly clashing with my reality back at home in Kentucky when it was all over. In the end, I think I have learned to view life through a new lens, constantly thankful for the little things, constantly thinking of how I can help others, not just here, but all across the globe. For me now, it is not enough to be content with my own situation or the situation of the society in which we live. No, we must set our focus on all people everywhere in order to fulfill our purpose on this earth: to serve others.