on being home

Outside my window is white snow covering the bare trees and car tops and sidewalks, illuminated by the orange glow of the street lights. Trees are decorated, gifts are wrapped, and I almost can't wrap my mind around the fact- two months has gone by, and I'm back once again. One of the oft-asked questions people are curious to know about is this "So which country do you like more, Haiti or Uganda?" It’s a question I’m finding much more difficult to answer than I anticipated. In the past 2 years, I’ve called many a place home, in love with each village or town or city for various reasons. To compare them or try to pick a favorite is like trying to compare and contrast your favorite movies or pick a favorite season; it’s nearly impossible.

I think of my love for Uganda—a passionate, fiery love that came like a flood, sweeping over me and drowning me in it. It is a head-over-heels love. From the moment I stepped off the plane, everything about the country turned me into a giggly, gooey-eyed teenager on her first date. Because I close my eyes and I can see the fog over a country of red-dirt, as the plane landed at 7 in the morning. I can smell the air and feel the warmth that sticks to my hair, see the smiling people and the laughing children and the scrap metal houses. I remember waking up my first morning in Bugiri, I can still hear the hustle and bustle of Jinja traffic up and down Main Street, I recall the crowded streets of downtown Kampala. I can hear the way the unfamiliar language sounds like music to my ears and soul, breathe the open spaces and miles of cornfields. The soles of my shoes are still coated with that red dirt, my feet and heart forever stained. Smiling, I still remember the way it feels to be in that place, everything about it beckoning me, calling out home.

When I stepped off the plane in Haiti, it wasn’t romantic the way the warm air stuck to my hair and the sun beat my shoulders. It was hot, unbearably so. I smelled the air and, yes Uganda smells like sewage and burning trash and poverty too, but this was a smell I couldn’t handle. Riding through the crowded streets days later, it felt suffocating to be in a place so squished. With small roads and so many vehicles and crazy mottos and trash littered everywhere. The language overwhelmed my ears, my head a spinning knot, trying to un-jumble all of this French and Spanish and Creole. The voodoo drums and the confusion and the darkness and the disorder of this country was hard to handle. This place, this place did not scream home. Looking back, I have to laugh at some of the first thoughts I think upon landing in Haiti on that hot Tuesday morning, “I’m so glad God is not calling me here longer than these two months.” Because this place did not have me lost in a rushing flood. This place was hard, and unfamiliar. It made me feel oh-so very out of place.

But then the weeks went by… the clouds cast shadows over the mountains, and I was left breathless. Voices sang from the church building next door, and my heart was lost in worship with these people though I knew not their language. The cement buildings still crumbled next to each other but I saw the children between them and in them, and their smiles melted my heart just a bit more. The corruption and the voodoo was dauntingly great, but the light and truth and love of my Jesus proved greater still. Sunday lunches were shared and laughter spilled from the table and strangers became dear friends. Late into the night dreams started and hopes happened and the future whispered. Kids learned my name and I learned their personalities and spelling words happened and games of basketball on the court in the afternoons and teaching phonics on the chalkboard. Slowly, slowly, -as the time passed- I found myself a little bit more and a little bit more in love with this place, seeing it in an entirely new light. And I found myself losing my heart a little bit and a little bit more until it started to whisper, “Home.” A whisper that started softly, and grew louder and louder as each day passed by.

Now a plane lands in Chicago, passing by tall city buildings and a beautiful lakefront on its way in. The air clouds at my breath, it’s unbearably chilly here, frozen solid. The train tracks click and the pre-recorded voice announces each upcoming stop as the skyline draws closer. Anxious, I know they are there, those people that I love more than anything else in this world, with arms outstretched, waiting. And I know I fit there, perfectly so. My heart flutters at the cars and the city traffic and the houses decorated with Christmas lights. I know this route home like I know the back of my hand, turning down streets that have been familiar to me all my life. And the car pulls up and suitcases are brought upstairs and I stand there, taking it all in. On the porch steps I see sticky summer days and melting popsicles, at the table I see the meals we shared and the jokes made and the birthday candles blown out. Walking up the staircase, I remember sliding down these steps on plastic snow saucers with my sisters, and I remember waiting here the many Christmas mornings where we impatiently waited for everyone to way up. In this bedroom where I now sit are the many different colors the walls have been and ways the furniture has been rearranged and dreams dreamt and tears shed and hopes whispered. I walk through this house with my footsteps sounding like the pitter-patter of a child’s feet… assuring me that, once again, I am home.