THE END IS NEAR!!!

Well, the end is near.  

I'm sitting on the bed, looking at my bulging duffle bags and honestly, I feel pretty crummy.  

We're leaving tomorrow morning after chapel for Kampala and we'll spend a week there before flying back to the States.  I'm all mixed up.  Part of my doesn't want to leave Uganda, part of me really misses home, part of me totally does not want to go back to the busy-ness and the complicated nature of life at home, both practically and socially.  And then there's another part of me that just sort of feels nothing at all.  

I just really like staring at mountains everyday, reading my Bible with a cup of coffee.  I don't want to go home and dive back into all the busy-ness.  There are so many distractions, I didn't realize before how much I didn't notice or feel them....until suddenly they are all not there and I can breathe.  

I like Uganda.  I don't want to come back.  It's confusing though because in my mind, I'm already home...and yet I'm here...in Uganda.  It's an identity crisis of sorts.

Also I'm tired of discussing the election with British people.  

So let's reflect for a moment.

....I'm coming home in a little over a week.  My life is changed, my soul is altered, I'm going to have weave in my hair........let's just say I will never be the same.  I've eaten goat.  I've eaten chicken liver, chicken gizzard, fried banana cookies cooked in less than desirable sanitary conditions, kasava, one thousand chapati (a pancake of sorts made with lots of oil), a billion mandazi (a doughnut like thing fried in oil).  I've eaten matoke, pumpkin, sugar cane, dodo, and lots and lots of toast.  I have also drank more soda while I have been here than I have ever in my life.  (that includes middle school)  oh yeah and I also ate a fruit that no one knows the name of.  

And you know what?  I really have enjoyed all of it, except the chicken stuff....really gross since in Uganda, many chickens are not actually fed and they just go around pecking at whatever is layin' around (trash, stones, other trash).....so it was sort of disgusting.

I had a really terrible day today.  I went to the maternity ward to see if I could actually witness a birth before I leave, but I was totally discouraged by one of the UK elective students and then I felt like I was in the way because I'm not a doctor......so I got really sad and this all compounded on the homesickness and the not wanting to leave Uganda feeling and I went and sat behind the building and cried for a bit.....

and then I realized that there were a bunch of Ugandan women sitting on the sidewalk just across the way and they were all staring at me, shocked.  White people cry?

So I decided I would make myself feel better and go buy some soap for my friends in the fistula ward.  So I went down there and carried the huge box of soap on my head and we sat and stared at each other since we can't speak the same language, but I felt better because they're my friends now.  

You know in high school when I used to feel discouraged like that, I would go to the mall and shop.  

How things have changed.  

They really have.  I won't be the same when I get back.