I hugged back.

A week ago I was sitting on a ferry with Aimee and Sarah, crossing the Equator and Lake Victoria to camp on the Ssese Islands. It docked on Kilangala and we walked down the white sand beach until it ended. Then we kept walking through the bush until we realized that perhaps the beach didn’t start back up again and turned around to set up our tent on the last patch of beach. Looking out at other islands and the sunset, I built a fire- years of camping with Uncle Stevie taught me well. We toasted bread for pb&j sandwiches, followed up by several rounds of marshmallows toasted to varying degrees of perfection. Saturday was our own self-proclaimed debrief time, reading and preparing for the final stretch of this semester. We collected extra wood for our beach fire that night and cuddled up to roast more marshmallows. At a point of quiet stillness, our heads leaned together and I wondered aloud: Since when are we old enough to be off camping by ourselves? In Africa? We are so far from home right now.

Perhaps the sharp reverberating pains that put me in a fetal position on my bed for a day and a half this week were the excuse I needed to curl up and feel young again. I cross the line from 2 decades to two decades and a year old this Sunday. In six months, somehow, I will be a college graduate. Really? Oh gosh, and I’ll be an auntie. In Luganda, the mother’s sisters are also referred to as mother. So, in four months, in the Buganda kingdom of Uganda, I’ll be a mother. Sheesh. More fetal position time.

“Franny now lay sleeping on her left side, facing into the back of the couch and the wall, her chin just grazing one of the several toss pillows all around her. Her mouth was closed, but only just. Her right hand, however, on the coverlet, was not merely closed but shut tight; the fingers were clenched, the thumb tucked in- it was as though, at twenty, she had checked back into the mute, fisty defenses of the nursery” (Franny and Zooey, 123).

Now I sit upright, and the antibiotic for the bacteria that might be hanging out in my intestines sits on my desk. And though I reserve the right to a good fetal position moment whenever necessary, I also embrace the exhausting joys of being here, so far from home and the nursery.

Through an enjoyable string of events (hooray for Aimee and her inclinations), I recently began to volunteer with a community center called Life in Africa (which does microfinance loans, craft sales, and community groups- all sustainable aid and change, organized by and for Ugandans). Once a week I go to either Banda or Ntenda and survey families (LiA members). The center is located in an Acholi IDP* camp and many of the members live in slum-like conditions. On Wednesday I surveyed Zuan Chandini who provides for her sisters five orphaned children. The 5 year old, second to youngest, is HIV positive. Even with the prevalent reality of HIV/AIDS here, the translator I was working with struggled to move to the next question after hearing of an infected toddler.

“Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who indeed knows why there can be comfort in a world of desolation? Now God be thanked that here is a beloved one who can lift up the heart in suffering, that one can play with a child in the face of such misery…Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who knows for what we live, and struggle, and die? Who knows what keeps us living and struggling, while all things break about us? Who knows why the warm flesh of a child is such comfort…” (Cry, The Beloved Country, 56-7).

The experiences of the LiA work refuse to sink into my reality. I think asking questions of food intake, future goals, past experiences with child abduction, etc. put my emotions in a distanced state for the sake of sanity. Sitting in a mud room that is home to three adults and three children, with the walls covered in cardboard and newspaper soccer clippings, I attempt to acknowledge the depth of the interaction. Instead I am left with an inarticulate flow of facts. In return for two hours of questions Molly Kyomukama gave me half an ear of roasted corn and a hug. What else could I give her? I hugged her back.

(^ Molly)

*IDP: Internally Displaced Persons