Home-achey-ness

Tuesday 12 August

I think this is more descriptive than the traditional term “homesickness” in describing the stage of adjustment I’m finding myself in right now. I’m a nurse so naturally I’m going to pick this word apart a bit more than any other person might. I’m not quite to the point of being “sick,” but rather a bit “achey.” You know the kind of achey that you feel when you’ve been on your feet, running around here there and everywhere, for a 12 hour shift, and just not feeling yourself to begin with – you can feel “sick” coming on, but you’re not quite there yet. Your muscles are just kind of whining “we’re tired”, your back and neck and knees and arms and feet in unison. You just can’t wait until you can crash on the couch at home, put your feet up and eat some good food and veg for a while? You find your mind wandering every few minutes to what might be on tv, what movie you have from Netflix, or what delectable meal you might be able to pull together quickly or pick up on the way home or order delivery…Well, that’s how I feel on a global level. My muscles feel fine, I haven’t worked a 12 hour shift since Nov. 15, 2007 (holy cow, I can’t believe it’s been that long…) I don’t have a tv or Netflix or the option of ordering food delivery, but lemme try to explain how it’s the same…

There’s a level of achey-ness one feels when living apart from all the things/places/language/custom that’s familiar and those people that are known and close and loved. For the first several months your mind and heart are pretty taken up with everything there is to learn and do and see and hear and smell, but as several months go by less of your minute to minute energy and presence of mind is occupied with these things and more of the familiar starts to seep back in. Your “cultural adjustment muscles” (which really do involve all of your physical senses and are often in operation 12 hours/day – and not just 3 days a week), start to whine “I’m tired” because you are beginning to remember what it’s like to not operate in such a way. You’re beginning to remember and find your mind wandering to tv and all of it’s wonderful mind-numbing capabilities, you’re beginning to remember the existence of food of any ethnic variety readily available, you’re beginning to remember what it’s like to have your own transportation and not to have to plan every trip to anywhere based on whether it might be dark or how much stuff you might have to be carrying with you or how much you’ve already spent that day/week. You’re remembering the comfort of familiarity and history in relationships and not just in general but the particular comforts of certain relationships and roles and communities…people who make you laugh, people who give really great hugs even when you’re not particularly a huggy person, people who tell it to you straight up regardless of whether you wanna hear it, people to get dinner or a movie with last minute, people to sit around doing nothing with, the familiarity of the people you go to church with, the people you work with, the people who are behind the counter serving you at your local ice cream place. And probably the crowning moment in my case being, you fully realize the implication of the decision you made 3 months ago not to go home for a dear friend’s wedding.

When I said goodbye to Larissa this last Thursday as she took off for the States, this reality sank in. She was going to be flying into Chicago at 6pm Friday evening…Chicago’s only 5 hours from St. Louis, I could have easily been back home by midnight, in plenty of time to join in the celebration of Leslie and Kevin’s marriage the next day...clearly there was no ticket for me to join Larissa in her trip back, but I wanted to go with her sooooo badly…I even briefly contemplated whether or not I could survive in a trunk for the duration of her flights home then snapped back into reality.
Plus, I’m here in Kampala by myself with more time on my hands to ponder these things, more times for my mind to wander to the familiar. But it’s been very clear to me that this is just where God wants me right now, here in Kampala at Rubaga Hospital for 8 weeks, and not just any 8 weeks but in these particular 8 weeks. So, I’m just trying to see what He has for me in it all and go with the flow, one day at a time. That’s not to say I’m not counting down the number of days I have left in the hospital, 18 to be exact.