happy anniversary

I realized today as I was sitting in the office doing quality checks on a seemingly endless pile of sandals, that yesterday as my one year anniversary in Uganda.

One year. One whole year.

In some senses a year is a long time.... like when I think about how long I've been away from my family and community in the States. But in a lot of ways it doesn't feel that long, when I think about people who have lived here for five years or twenty years or their whole lives.... and when I think about how much I still have to learn about Uganda and how much I want to experience here....

One year. 365 days.

I've learned a lot in the past year, and this place has become familiar. I know the names of all the neighborhoods in the city from Ntinda to Munyonyo.... I know that you pronounce "kirombe" like "cheer-om-bay"... I am no long intimidated by the idea of going down town and finding my way through the taxi park... I have a set of favorite restaurants I like to go to with my friends.... I have roommates that I love, that I have lived with for a year now...

I feel like a year gives me the right to look back on this time and say that I "lived" in Uganda. A month or so I would categorize as a visit.... And when I talk about my time in Spain I might say that I lived there for a summer, but I wouldn't ever say "Oh yeah, I lived in Spain for awhile." To me, saying you lived somewhere is a heavier term than just a quick jaunt or a dabble in a place. It implies that you put down some kind of roots. That the place feels like home.

When people ask me where I'm from, I always have a bit of a challenging time answering them. I could say I grew up in North Carolina, but most recently lived in Texas. Or I could say that I was born in Dallas, or that now my parents live in Houston (but I've never really lived there), or that I'll be moving to Austin when I move back to the States.... But I don't really have a particular home-base, which I suppose is pretty natural after living somewhere else for a year. And I'm fine with that. Because I have enjoy this year. Immensely. And I can't think of somewhere else I would rather have spent it.

So happy anniversary, Uganda. It's been a good one!

a move of the sseko-variety

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, how many words is a video worth?



I realized today that I told you that Sseko moved, but I didn't actually give you the details. It's true. We've moved. And it's also true that my new office has an amazing view of Lake Victoria!

For almost a year, Julie and I lived at work. We often walked into our living room to find it covered with stacks of shoes from the previous day's quality check. At the end of the day, the next day's work was always staring at me from the office right off our kitchen. There were definitely benefits of work {like being able to roll out of bed and start the work day five minutes later when you sleep late because your phone died in the middle of the night and no alarm went off to wake you up} but I think ultimately that I'm glad to have work and home spaces separate now.

These days Julie and I have to hop on a taxi back into town for about a 20 minute commute. But don't worry- we've made good use of this time. We're currently listening to the 7th Harry Potter book on my iPod during the drive home each evening.

And if you didn't notice from the video, the new Sseko Workshop is pretty legit. It really feels as if it was custom made for us. So we absolutely love working there each day. It's hard to believe we've only been working there one week! It feel so familiar, so homey, and so right already.

home sweet home (the second)

This week my roomies and I moved to a new house.... We had been planning on moving for awhile, because we wanted to be closer to the new Sseko workshop in Munyonyo. The new location of our house is only a 20 minute commute instead of the previous 45. Massive improvement is an understatement.

Strangely enough though, our move felt rather impromptu: we got home from work and decided that we wanted to move later that night. It was a flurry of boxes and packing and shoving things in the back of trucks.... and we didn't really get a chance to say a proper farewell to the Kikoni house the we had fondly dubbed "Sparkles the House."

But for some reason, leaving the place that had been my home for almost a year wasn't all that hard... And here are a few reasons:

1) the riots: any time a riot happens in town, the students at the university near my house tend to join in on the "fun" by doing stupid things like throwing rocks and the police or starting fires in the middle of the road with old tires. The riots were particularly near a couple Fridays ago.... the day that happened to also be the day that Kate and Prince William were married. We decided to splurge on our internet usage and stream part of the royal wedding live... And to make ourselves feel closer to London, we pretended that the sounds of gun shots and tear gas canisters exploding were actually just fireworks and confetti cannons being set of in celebration of the royal family's big day.

2) power outage: we were without electricity for six days straight. Then the power came on for about half a day and it left again..... Only to return in small spurts for the remaining four days. This led to a smelly, rotten fridge and lots of days spent working at coffee shops to use their power outlets.

3) landlord drama: our landlady is crazy. She does things like shows up without warning, threatens to kick us off her property, and then claims that we are like daughters to her. Schizophrenic much? And on top of all that, she's been over charging us on rent for the past five months.... And normally I wouldn't feel bad confronting someone about a situation like this. But here's the catch: she's old. Like ancient old and decrepit. She is always having health issues and seems so fragile that I feel like I can't chew her out for being completely unreasonable.

Needless to say, we were all glad to be out of the place that we had started calling "The Hell Hole." And all that made the small, teensy-weensy, insignificant problems of the new house seem like nothing at all.

Here's a link to Julie's blog with a picture of our new casa. (Sorry to have to send you elsewhere for a picture, but my Internet is currently acting up and won't allow the upload).

Lovely, isn't it? We sure think so....

The only bad experience I've had in it so far involved a rat. The story begins with a sleep over. Since we had just moved in, my bed frame hadn't been assembled properly so I moved my mattress onto the floor of Dani and Julie's new room. We thought a roomie slumber party would be the perfect way to celebrate our first night in the new house. Well, around 3:00am I woke up with a jolt. I wasn't sure what happened... if it had been a dream or not.... I prayed that it had been a dream. But I thought that a rat had just scurried across my legs. So for obvious reasons, I couldn't fall back asleep. I went out to the couch in the living room and finished the night there.

I told my roommates about it the next morning and couldn't remember the details.... only that it involved a rat and I wasn't sure about it being dream or reality. Well, the reality part was confirmed when Dani was unpacking her things and found said rat hiding her her suitcase.

For obvious reasons, I will never sleep on a floor in Uganda again.

But besides all that rat drama, I love love LOVE our new house. The location is so much closer to work, it's local without being so loud and susceptible to riots, it's a few blocks from the US Embassy (a little slice of American soil!), and we get hot water + amazing water pressure at the same time.

And when it comes down to it, little things like that add up to making a big difference.

absence makes the heart....

The phrase is supposed to be "absence makes the heart grow fonder"..... which I suppose is true. But experiencing friends departing here is so different than anything else I've experienced..... I think it makes me want to change the phrase to "absence makes the heart ache, and then move on."

Some of my best and longest friends left Kampala yesterday. Jon and Amanda had been in Kampala for 10 months.

Katie had been here 9 months. In a place where people are constantly coming and going, they were the stable ones. But now they're gone..... And even though I woke up this morning knowing that my life here had changed over night, I don't want this blog to become some sobfest or pity party, thinking "woe is me, my friends are gone!" Because I still have a good number of long term friends here. I still have my roommates, Dani and Julie, who will be around even after I leave.... and then I'll be the one who is the stable-long-term-friend that's leaving.

It's sad to see people go, and it changes the ebb and flow of life.... one person's presence (or in this case absence) can have a dramatic effect on the feel of our friend group. But then that's also the thing that makes this place exciting..... You never know who's coming next.

The summer-rush is about to come. We're getting our Sseko-Summer-Interns. Other friends' organizations are getting new interns. Random people will be backpacking through and sleep on our couch for a week. Cornerstone visitors will fill up the basement and we'll see new faces there every few days. The summer always brings in the masses. Some of these people will be interesting. Some I'll click with. Some I'll think are strange and won't understand. Some I'll share stories with and hear better stories in return. Some I'll watch come and go. Some will watch me leave this place. And that's just how things go here.... But you have to learn to love it.

I have to choose to get excited about the next round of people coming in. I can be sad about my friends who just left, reflect on the memories of all our good times, and know that the element they brought to my life here won't be replaced..... but also recognize that something else is always just around the corner.

I miss my freshly-vanished friends already, but I am choosing to look toward the next landing airplane and wonder who will exit the air craft and walk into my life here.