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Written 26th/10/08

As I write, I am sitting in what is quite possibly my favourite room of our house--the one with bare walls, a cement floor, no ceiling, and mats for furniture. The room where we take our meals, kneeling on mats (as Maama has observed, "Amanyi kutulla bulungi" [You know how to sit correctly]). The room where we visit, where Simanda sometimes hangs out waiting for food, where Maama sorts beans for planting, where we sometimes (often) pass an evening by the light of a kerosene lamp, where my brothers play football with polyetheylene bottles, and where we can throw bones or groundnut husks on the floor because we will sweep them out in the morning. It is a comfortable place, a good place to come home to after a long day at school.
This morning, for some reason, the memory of my first impression of this room occured to me. It was the first night I came to Bukoto, barely 48 hours after arriving in Uganda. It was after the party they made to welcome me--the sitting room full of men. I remember being uncertain for awhile which one was even my host father, and I can barely recall now who exactly was there. The power had gone off just as darkness fell, but came back on shortly later. I had been shown my room and allowed a few minutes to settle. I had eaten food--luwomba, rice, macaroni, matooke, fruit--in the sitting room, and I'm sure there was soda too.
And then, as the party ended, I ventured my way back here for a few minutes. This room seemed so strange and foreign to me, full of women and children who stared at me strangely in the low light of the bare bulb hanging on the dirty wall. I thought: how will I live with these strange people in this strange place, how will I communicate with them, what am I doing here?
But now, I know their names and faces - Maama, Nakalawah, Hafisah, Entisimbe, Brender, Muta, Pito, Jaaja Susan, Susan, Maama Mellan. Context and experience have changed what once felt so foreign and strange into a place of comfort and rest. I feel at home here in this place.
And in so many ways, I think this room stands as a metaphor for the larger aspects of my life in Uganda. The faces, places, tastes, sounds, and practices which once felt so foreign have now come to feel familiar and comfortable. I am home.