This is Africa

Posted

  • People driving on the left side of the road

Of course, the list of things I will miss has become quite endless, with far more exciting entries (like buying meat-on-a-stick through a moving bus window). But I'll cut the list short. This sort of list doesn't really contribute to today's message: it just sets the mood.

The message is the one key thing which I didn't write on that list. The list was originally entitled, things which are easy to get used to; and this thing is not easy to get used to. I don't think anybody can ever get used to it. But it is something I will painfully miss. It is certainly a singular item; but I cannot describe it succintly enough for a single bullet point. So, my revised list of Things I Will Miss goes something like this:

  • Waking up in the morning
  • Walking out the door
  • Starting a conversation
  • Stepping into a taxi
  • Ordering a meal at a restaurant
  • ...

Here, waking up is completely different from back home. And that's because every day is so unbelievably unique. Last weekend I went to Sipi on a whim. Today my morning plans changed drastically because of an SMS which was waiting for me when I woke up. I don't have a clue what tomorrow will bring. And I can't even imagine what next week will be like. Hell, I don't even know when I'm leaving Uganda. (My most accurate prediction has a margin of error of about five days; even that level of certainty runs counter to the spirit of what I'm trying to explain.)

It's a fairy tale world. Absolutely anything can happen. Rags-to-riches and tragic downfalls abound; the former are truly inspirational, and the latter are absolutely mortifying. Any one life contains multiple love stories occuring in parallel, and each one is genuine. Death can happen to anybody at any time in any manner. Stepping outside your door is necessarily the beginning of a new adventure. Heroes, villains, damsels in distress, warriors, peasants, famine, magic, divine intervention: Africa has it all.

This is a double-edged sword. While reading a fairy tale is entertaining, that's because it's somewhat unreal. Africa is somewhat unreal, too. Life means something so different here than it does back home. Everybody is the hero in many simultaneous adventures. I think this involvement/detachment paradox explains to some extent why life is so cheap in Africa. (Hey, it makes sense to me, even if I can't explain it.)

Most people who live here tend to carve out a little place for themselves where the chaos isn't overwhelming. They don't go looking for a story; but even then, stories may pull them in. Family, home, village, church community: these are typically relatively stable facets of life. I have found these areas of predictability to be very comforting. Returning home after a long day (or napping at home after a short one) can give a wonderful sense of fulfillment.

Personally, I have not felt the same emotion twice since my arrival. New cocktails of rage, hatred, love, compassion, detachment, amusement, thoughtfulness, stupidity, etc. attack me when I least expect them. I have not thought from an unchanging perspective for any consecutive 24 hours. I get the impression that even were I to stay here my entire life, I never would.

Life is divided into one short-term goal and one long-term goal. Short-term is the one thing which you want to do today. (Aiming for more than one accomplishment is futile.) Long-term is what you want to be: doctor, teacher, etc. That's all! Trying to have more goals than this will get you nowhere. (This is probably why I feel I have personally been somewhat useless in my time here: it's impossible to be useful and to understand the culture at the same time, because that makes two tasks!)

This is what everybody lives every day. This is why I cannot stay here forever; and this is why I will have a hard time leaving. This is the cause of so much grief; and this is the source of such wide smiles. This is the most compelling reason I can imagine for getting up in the morning. This is truly living the moment. This is a whole other world. This is Africa.

PS. on the origins of this blog post's title: TIA is a playful abbreviation thrown around by expats to explain away entertaining stories. Things like: everything happening an hour late; a bed being carried on the seat of a boda; lemonade made of purely lemon juice and sugar; buses catching fire; etc. TIA was allegedly coined by the movie Blood Diamond (which I haven't seen), but plenty of fresh expats (my past self included) have spontaneously reinvented it. Everybody can instantly decipher the abbreviation, even without motion picture assistance. Hearing TIA connotes that you just told a good story.